Wild ARMS 3

PS2

Sony CEA - 2002

Ok, the basics of this game is, Take the "Wild West" setting, take a very linear game, take the "dying earth" plot, and go with it! All in all they did do a good job with this, but the game never reaches the enjoyability of, say, Suikodens or Final Fantasys. But in its own right, it is a good game.

The game stars 4 main characters, and the opening starts out rather cool. You see the heroine, the "main" main character, rush into a traincart where the other three main characters all appear, apparently after some treasure there, and all pull their guns (ARMS) at each other simultaneously. Tres Chic. Then you play a flashback for each character, then they team up to fight some bad guys. Then they team up to travel together. Then you find out about bad guys wanting to kill the dying planet and you all stop them. Thats it, the best I can do without spoilers. And if you think that was a spoiler, you should be shot, for I could have told you that Jet and Virginia are related, Virginia's father worked with the Villians to save the world, and Janus gets transformed into a weird fish-dude and is extremely powerful. But I won't. Because that would be spoiling the plot. And I would never do that.

Ok, here are some things I need to mention about this game.
1. the game never strays from the town, dungeon, same town, dungeon, new town, repeat, rinse, wash, repeat again formula. I never really got bored of it, but I just thought I would mention that. And while none of the dungeons have the same "bland, 1 color look" of Vagrant Story, they are all very similar.
2. Even the dungeons are always similar. You go in, fight a mini boss, fight Janus, one of the Prophets, or Maya and gang, then you fight either them again or another one of the list above. Never really anyone else. This is good for it helps develop the other characters, the bad guys and such, but it gets annoying for you always know how to go about beating them down. (IE: Always take out the afro guy first in Maya's fight. He heals everyone.) But it also makes you wonder how these other guys get so much stronger every time you fight them. Especially Janus. Sheesh you fight him way too much for his own good.
3. I just need to mention the battles are a bit harder than WA2. And they just love status anormalties. So you die a lot. Especially since you can not run from battles. The game allows you to escape a battle by pressing a button before it starts, but you only get a certain amount, which means you can run out of them fast and then HAVE to beat every enemy in the dungeon from then on. It is not as bad as it sounds, but sometimes is annoying.
The game also likes to give you these things called gimel coins. You use them to continue if you lost a battle, or to save anywhere. I was worried that I would run out, but right now I have over 50, so use them to your happiness.
The last crappy thing is there is one merchant in the game who sells stuff. And he moves between towns randomly, so you will come back to town needing a status anormalty thing and he will be gone. So you will have to rest in the inn, but every time you rest at the inn it costs more the next time. So it is a vicious cycle. Sob.

Battles. You choose what you want to do (ie: shoot your gun, cast magic, use a special.) But you have to work up your meter to use magic or specials. So ususally the first round is to shoot. But each gun has only a certain amount of bullets, so you need to reload (ie: block) you can do this as much as you want though, and it never really gets truly annoying. Everytime you fire or get hit you work up your meter. After reaching the point where you can cast a spell, the meter will stay at the same place, so you can cast that spell (cure) over and over without having to work up your meter again. But if you use your special it will drop by a certain amount shown. Then you will have to fight again to raise your bar. The game just makes you watch your bar the whole time, which leads to some strategy. It is easy to get used to as well.
Also, the game has this "Intense battle sequences." This means that instead of standing in a row, the characters like to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. The game does not take into account where charactes are and there are no range attacks, so everything plays the same as if they are standing in a line, which is good since you can't control where they will run. It is just sad though watching your really weak character (usually Virginia) run AT the enemy! Why would you do that when you have 50 hit points left? Are you dumb or just plain stupid? Luckily it doesn't matter at all. Oh, and the makers of the game obviously liked Skies of Arcadia, since they incorporated the airship battles into a sand cruiser battles. But these battles are not very well done and still confuse me on what I can or can't do and why. Another fke innovative thing is the horses. While it looks cool that you can fight on horses, it plays exactly the same as a normal, ground fight would. No difference at all.

One thing to mention, the characters are really well written and enjoyable. Probably because Square handles the translation, and they have done a much better job than their older, (Ahem FFT) works. I think that is about it.

What liked: The battles are fun, the game keeps your interest and the dungeon puzzles are great. (Well all but one. You know the one, yeah that one! (Man I feel like FreeOhio for writing that.))

What disliked: Status ailments are the devil.

What to expect: Wild West Zombie-Final Fantasy. Very linear plot. Fun but nothing to write home about.

What not to expect: Final Fantasy

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: Wild West? Clever puzzles? Guns? No wait, all rpgs have guns these days. Crap on this!

Ratings on:

Control: 5 - Sometimes I walk off the sides of holes in the ground just by accident. I like the run-in-one-direction-so-as-that-you-have-to-stop-yourself-when-you-want-to-turn. It is creative. Annoying but creative.

Graphics: 8 - Purty. CelShading rocks my world. A definate improvement over WA2, and the colored pencil effect is especially amazing.

Sound: 6 - There is a lot of wistling and it feels very western. Just not my thing, so I turned it off faster than you can say "Malibu is so Crap."

Style: 7 - Ok, it has some new and innovative things. It also steals a lot from other rpgs. (Ahem Skies of Arcadia)

1st hour: 9 - F-U-N fun

5th hour: 7 - Didn't I just do a dungeon like that?

1st week: 7 - Am I gonna get another type of plot device than a dungeon with "Guess who?" at the end.

5th week: 6 - Ok, Why are my characters suprised every time they get to the end of the dungeon and the Prophets are there waiting? I definately wouldn't be. Maybe they are suprised they are at the end of the dungeon, seeming as that I haven't had time to heal them up for a boss fight. Oh well, time to use another gimel coin...

#1 reason why I hate this game: Status ailments can suck my...

by Hawke