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~Wild ARMs 4~ Playstation 2
Wild ARMs 4. A Game so horribly mundane, you question why you even picked up the controller in the first place.
The Wild ARMs series is one of my favorite game series out there. 1, 2, and especially 3, were amazing. Then XSeed came along (The people who made Shadow Hearts) and completely destroyed the Wild ARMs image.
Sadly, Wild ARMs 4 is a game I had high hopes for. But as usual, games deemed “Popular” or “Cool” by other people usually turn out to be a HUGE waste of money, time, and patients. For example, the main character is one of the most head-strong, lazy, “I must protect everything” kind of guys. You might think that’s cool and all, seeing as he likes jumping into battles, rather than sit there and wait. But, no. He enjoys jumping into horribly one sided battles. A) Its so easy, you get incredibly bored and sit there pressing X, while you rest your eyes for a few moments. Or B) The battle is so difficult that you press the reset button on the game, attempting to find a way around this “Forced Fight”
Wild ARMs 4 is a combination of Strategy, RPG (In battles) and a Platformer in Towns, and the “Overworld.” Yes, that’s right. A Platformer. You jump, kick, slide, and ground-pound your way through Puzzles, missions, and towns. Some might think this is innovative. I say its THE WORST combination in history. Tell me, if Crash Bandicoot fought enemies in a Turn based RPG, would he have still been fun? Hell, no. This is what Wild ARMs 4 is. Worst of all, the Battle screen is a sore attempt at Strategy. There are 7 panels you can move on. Think of this. You enter the battle; all your 4 characters (Which are dumped on you 20 minutes into the game, leaving no challenge to get them) start off on different panels. 7 – 4 = 3. Now add the enemies. Usually coming in a few groups. 3 – 3 = 0. Tell me. What’s the point of a Strategy RPG if you can’t MOVE!? All the squares are taken up, leaving you nowhere to move until you kill something. And by then, your character’s High Counter Rate has destroyed everything that attacked you. Wild ARMs 4 makes a poor attempt at a wildly popular (and my personal favorite) Genre (Strategy RPG, if you didn’t catch that.)
Now, onto the graphics. The Graphics are fine. A little on the kid-ish side, though, but I can get around that quite easily (Though Wild ARMs 4 looks A LOT more kid-ish than the rest of the Wild ARMs.) Sadly, though, you never get time to appreciate the graphics. The Anime Cut scenes are so few, and far between, you cant remember the first one, by the time you reach the next one. I would have even settled for your characters sitting there, camera focused on them as they talk in turn. But No. WA 4 takes a new (and disappointingly boring) approach. They use “Cut ins.” Meaning, the background goes fuzzy, and pictures of your characters pop up, each displaying an emotion (few as they might be) to fit what’s going on. That could be fine, except that these cut ins pop up in every new area you enter. Example. When you enter a new “Section.” Like when you walk through a door inside a base, or building? Every single time you do that, the idiots known as the main characters, pop up, stop the game, and talk of the most mundane, useless information you could ever think possible. Its like a 2 year old kid asking every 3 minutes “Are we there yet?” But this “Are we there yet?” drags on in Paragraphs that range from 2 minute conversations, to 15 minute conversations (No, you cant skip them) Of the most, idiotic, obvious, or, in most cases, the most useless information to ever have the displeasure of entering human ears.
And the ARMs we all so loved, are now gone. That’s right. Gone. The only ARM in the entire game, is the main character’s gun. You upgrade it. And rather than it leveling up with you, you are forced to find VERY rare upgrade parts, that are so few, and far between, your healer, and Caster are going to be doing the most damage (seeing as the warrior is as slow as water flowing uphill.)
There are a few good points to this game, but the bad points Overwhelm, engulf, and spit out all the good parts, making you rather want to play a sophisticated game, like Tetris, or Go play “Duck Hunt” for its amazingly detailed story line.
 Diana Crowe · Mon Feb 19, 2007 @ 08:53pm · 0 Comments |
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