Despite a few Wild Arm-isms, if someone was to tell me this was a Wild
Arms game, then I wouldn't believe them. There is a ton of changes in
this game from the previous titles, some for the worst, but other for
the better. I like the platforming elements to the game, the new Hex
battle system is really fun, they added voice overs, these are all huge
improvements. On the downside, I hate the new dot-to-dot map (it's
still better than the 3rd game), it makes the entire game extremely
linear, and the game also felt short. On the mix feelings, the story
wasn't terrible or great, the characters were ok, there could of been
more puzzle solving and longer dungeons but what was there was good
enough. I liked the comic book styled cutscenes, but there could of
been voice overs with them. I was surprised how easy this game was too,
I was really expecting somewhat of a challenge out of this battle
system, but it was way to simple.
Overall it was a decent
game, but I would recommend games like Radiata Stories over this in a
heartbeat. You can tell this was made on a low budget.
----------Battle System----------
Wild Arms 4 is a turn-based RPG. The game uses a somewhat-unique battle
grid, called a Hex system. The battle has seven Hexagon grids, with 3
elemental grids lit up as the battle starts. Your characters and
enemies are randomly thrown on the grid, your characters can share a
space and enemies can share a space. If you attack a group of enemies
or heal a group of allies then everyone will get the same effect.
Overall, this pretty similar to a strategy RPG, but with a fast paced
RPG feel to it. The battles are quick and usually pretty fun.
Each character has just one unique Force attack this time, but overtime
your characters will learn joint Force attacks that you can only use if
your characters have the required FP and are standing in the same Hex
grid. The leveling up and skill system is pretty good. Leveling up
doesn't really effect your stats to much, and you are listed from the
very start every skill you can learn. If you gain a level, you gain 1
skill point you can put anywhere in that skill chart, and after each
level each skill gains 1 permanent skill point. Overtime, if you gain
10 levels, and there's a skill that requires 10 skill points, then
you'll automatically gain or master that skill and you won't have to
use your other 10 skill points. It's a pretty fun system to work with,
but over time it can get to be a hassle, but each time you distribute
points you lose 50 HP, you can reset your points, but if you want to
keep your HP on a high level then you won't even bother buying new
skills with your current skill points and just wait until you master
them.
The tools system has changes from the previous Wild Arms
games, for example each character would hold various permanent tools
required to answer puzzles in dungeons. In Wild Arms 4, Jude is the
only character able to hold tools (and the only player you're able to
use actually). Jude won't find permanent tools like in previous, so
when he finds a Tool in a dungeon like a Sword, Staff, Box or Bomb then
he'll probably have to use it within that room. Jude can move between
rooms with tools, but he can't jump while holding a tool, so you'll
have to drop your tool if you come to a platform. This is kinda cool,
but it also makes puzzle solving that much easier, since if you do find
a tool you know you WILL have to use it somewhere near.
Along
with tools, Jude can jump, double jump, slide and knell. Jude can also
slow down time, to run across falling bridges or to jump across moving
blocks. These elements add to the puzzle solving, but this is still
about the easiest Wild Arms game I've played. The dungeons and towns
have two forms in this game, a free roaming form similar to a Tales
of.. game when you're in a town. It's slightly restricted, but you can
still run around in a 360 direction with go into houses. The other form
is a "Side-View" similar to Radiata Stories, this form restricts you to
Up, Down, Left or Right. This view is where you mostly do all the
platforming and there's alot of platforming in this game.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Jude, a young kid born on an isolated research island. One
day as he set out to pick berries, he stumbles upon an invading army.
He get's curious and decides to sneak inside one of their ships, where
he finds Yulie, a girl locked up inside. As he tries to free her, he
finds another person locked up, Arnaud. Jude ends up freeing Yulie and
Arnaud from their captures and makes a run for it into a new world and
get into even more trouble.
The story wasn't terrible, but
it was pretty generic, predictable and cliche for the most part. The
characters are pretty unoriginal, including the main bad guys. They all
have deep personalities though, so there's enough to keep you
interested, and there's alot of bad guys in this game, but once you
fight them you may never see them again. The story has a set pattern
that ended up getting old half way through. You enter a new dungeon, a
little dialog scene would pop up, then each time you enter a new area
of that dungeon another dialog scene would pop up, you would get to a
boss and watch the dialog scene, fight him and watch another. After you
beat the boss, you then watch a scene from the bad guys hideout, then a
new area would pop up, then repeat.
----------Graphics----------
The graphics are decent, a huge improvements over Wild Arms 3 but not
quite on a Kingdom Hearts 2 level or anything. The full motion/in-game
cutscenes do have a Kingdom Hearts / Radiata Stories cutscene feel to
them but slightly downgraded. The level designs are similar to Radiata
Stories aswell, but I think they look much better. So there's give and
take with the graphics. The main dialog scenes are anime still-shots of
the various characters. There's no fluent animation of these characters
during the dialog scenes, but their pictures often change depending on
their mood pretty often and the screen often splits up like a page from
a comic book. The dialog scenes are fun to watch sometimes, but the
lack of voice work over them kinda sucks.
----------Sound----------
There's voice overs! Finally! The only problem is there isn't much of
it. You'll get catch phrases within battle and a victory phrase,
sometimes before a battle there will be a cutscene and they'll have
voices and during all the full motion/in-game cutscenes. Other than
that, everything is pure text, that includes the majority of the dialog
during the comic book-styled scenes, chats with NPC and everything else
in between. The music has the classic whistle theme and some acoustic
work that comes along with a Wild Arms game, and then some weird jazzy
tunes and other weirdness that doesn't quite fit. It's not bad or
great, but not nearly as good as the other games.
----------World Map----------
The world map is a Final Fantasy Tactics styled connect the dots map.
Wild Arms 4 is an extremely linear game to begin with, and this map
even makes it worse, as you can only move back to previous dungeons and
towns while you're still linked within the same connecting links. Heck,
sometimes they won't even let you go back to the only town that has
sidequests if you go to far away from it. This annoyed the crap out of
me. I pretty much hate this map.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
26:00:05
It saves after the credits and takes you back to the save spot before
the final boss. The ending was pretty cool, other than that I don't
know if there was anything special unlocked or not. I still never made
it back to that town with sidequests.
