![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Wild ARMS
I had started playing the original Wild ARMS a few years ago when I bought it, but my PS2 was having trouble playing PS1 games and would freeze during the climax of the prologue. (Apparently it wasn’t uncommon for the first-generation PS2 to wear out their backwards-compatibility—my copy of Breath of Fire 3 also would tend to hang on that system.) I got back to it these past couple of weeks.
It's interesting seeing this as one of the transition points between the 16-bit and fully-polygonal generations of rpgs, as the map screens are all sprite-based, but the battles are done in polygons and constantly change camera angles. The map screen also tends to zoom in and out when you approach towns, for no reason other than to show off that they could do that. The first thing that strikes me as deserving of praise: Each town is loaded entirely into RAM at one time, so there's no loading when you enter or leave a house. You don't realize how nice that is until you experience it. It's also interesting to see the beginnings of mechanics that made it through most of the series, like Guardians and the Force Gauge.
The other thing that struck me playing this, especially comparing against some of the 16-bit era rpgs I’ve played recently, is the idea that a good rpg should be like a novel. You should get caught up in the story and want to keep moving through it, because you like the characters and are interested in the plot. When the system fights your ability to progress through the plot (needing to stop to grind levels at a critical plot point, for instance), that fights against the quality of the game. Though this game tends to get caught up in, "But wait! This wasn’t their ultimate evil plan! This was a distraction for something much worse! Again!" the plot keeps moving and the characters develop as it goes along.
The translation was decent; I spotted a typo here or there and it's not always consistent with the way they translated later games, but it does just fine and there's an occasional Americanism obviously thrown in by the translators. They do love using "quotes" to emphasize "concepts", though. (An aspect the second game kept.)
They remade this game as Wild ARMS: Alter Code F for the PS2, which makes the translation more consistent, rearranges a couple of plot points, lets you add various NPCs to your team, and redesigns the dungeons. That last part is the most important, I think, because they added better/real puzzles to most of the dungeons. For a game that has tools you can use outside of battle to solve puzzles and clear obstacles, there are a lot of stretches where the puzzle is "pick the correct path out of two or three, or you'll have to double back and fight an extra random battle". The Tripillar dungeon has you split the party and each take one path, but it doesn't automatically assign them, so you may find yourself restarting (as I did) if you send the characters up the wrong routes. (Though there's another dungeon where your characters split up later on, and that one is actually done right, with needing to switch members so they can activate switches and open doors for each other.)
The remake also fixed a very-abusable glitch which allows you to get 255 of any item you have one of, which among other things, can give you massive stat boosts, every spell, infinite healing items and 1 cost MP for every sword art, all before you finish the prologue. (...I may have used this a little. I have been known to enjoy gamebreakers. It’s a thing.) Note that even seriously abusing this still doesn’t make fighting the bonus bosses particularly easy—they’ll still do more damage with their best attacks than you have HP.
This isn’t the greatest game ever—it comes off as very dated, there are areas that feel a bit unfinished, and there are some glitches (though most of them are fun ones). Wild ARMS 2 and 3 added and lot and made for much stronger gaming experiences with plots that were just as strong. But the plot is definitely worthwhile, the system is decent and the bit of nostalgia for a very "transitional" era was worth my time.
It's interesting seeing this as one of the transition points between the 16-bit and fully-polygonal generations of rpgs, as the map screens are all sprite-based, but the battles are done in polygons and constantly change camera angles. The map screen also tends to zoom in and out when you approach towns, for no reason other than to show off that they could do that. The first thing that strikes me as deserving of praise: Each town is loaded entirely into RAM at one time, so there's no loading when you enter or leave a house. You don't realize how nice that is until you experience it. It's also interesting to see the beginnings of mechanics that made it through most of the series, like Guardians and the Force Gauge.
The other thing that struck me playing this, especially comparing against some of the 16-bit era rpgs I’ve played recently, is the idea that a good rpg should be like a novel. You should get caught up in the story and want to keep moving through it, because you like the characters and are interested in the plot. When the system fights your ability to progress through the plot (needing to stop to grind levels at a critical plot point, for instance), that fights against the quality of the game. Though this game tends to get caught up in, "But wait! This wasn’t their ultimate evil plan! This was a distraction for something much worse! Again!" the plot keeps moving and the characters develop as it goes along.
The translation was decent; I spotted a typo here or there and it's not always consistent with the way they translated later games, but it does just fine and there's an occasional Americanism obviously thrown in by the translators. They do love using "quotes" to emphasize "concepts", though. (An aspect the second game kept.)
They remade this game as Wild ARMS: Alter Code F for the PS2, which makes the translation more consistent, rearranges a couple of plot points, lets you add various NPCs to your team, and redesigns the dungeons. That last part is the most important, I think, because they added better/real puzzles to most of the dungeons. For a game that has tools you can use outside of battle to solve puzzles and clear obstacles, there are a lot of stretches where the puzzle is "pick the correct path out of two or three, or you'll have to double back and fight an extra random battle". The Tripillar dungeon has you split the party and each take one path, but it doesn't automatically assign them, so you may find yourself restarting (as I did) if you send the characters up the wrong routes. (Though there's another dungeon where your characters split up later on, and that one is actually done right, with needing to switch members so they can activate switches and open doors for each other.)
The remake also fixed a very-abusable glitch which allows you to get 255 of any item you have one of, which among other things, can give you massive stat boosts, every spell, infinite healing items and 1 cost MP for every sword art, all before you finish the prologue. (...I may have used this a little. I have been known to enjoy gamebreakers. It’s a thing.) Note that even seriously abusing this still doesn’t make fighting the bonus bosses particularly easy—they’ll still do more damage with their best attacks than you have HP.
This isn’t the greatest game ever—it comes off as very dated, there are areas that feel a bit unfinished, and there are some glitches (though most of them are fun ones). Wild ARMS 2 and 3 added and lot and made for much stronger gaming experiences with plots that were just as strong. But the plot is definitely worthwhile, the system is decent and the bit of nostalgia for a very "transitional" era was worth my time.
no subject