Wild ARMS XF
Nov. 17th, 2015 05:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroClarissa and her faithful bodyguard Felius are following the man who stole her mother's sword, a relic that might be able to restore life to Filgaia's wastelands. But that's not the only trouble brewing in the kingdom of Elesius. Is Clarissa an amnesiac lost princess?
It's a tactical game, and its approach to tactics is very different from FFT or Disagaea, in that a lot of the battles require you to take a certain class and certain strategy, rather than letting you muddle by with overwhelming force. (Levels really don't matter much, and equipment differences aren't that big either.) Only certain classes can move objects or manipulate items, for instance, which means that if you don't bring them along you're going to lose and need to retry. They also love funky win/loss conditions, including needing to protect NPCs, needing to stay hidden from patrols, or needing to reach the exit in a limited amount of time. Occasionally you'll need to get every enemy on the battlefield into critical health without killing any of them. THAT'S a particularly annoying one. (And several of those occur during strings of battles that you can't save during or retreat from without re-doing the first batch.)
As the TVTropes page notes: There very few options for creativity in these puzzle battles; either you go with the dev team's strategy, or you lose.
The fact that half of your abilities--and virtually all distance attacks--can't be used after moving adds an interesting layer of strategy, as wizards become move-or-fire weapons. (Compounded by the fact they have low MOV scores to begin with.) VP declines every turn by the amount of weight (from equipment) your character has, and when it runs out, they start losing HP. This prevents you from dragging battles out by essentially applying a timer to a non-naked party--which again, makes strategy more complicated because characters don't move that fast and often can't move and also use a necessary ability.
The fact that every class has unique equipment and you have to do a full re-equip (including items) whenever you change classes is very annoying. You can save certain load-outs, but there's no "optimize equipment" feature, which you'd think would be a given. Also, the game will occasionally just randomly dequip characters during cutscenes, which can make the following battle very unpleasant if you don't check everyone's equipment in the interim.
The Emulator class is the Calculator-equivalent in terms of "hard to set up, but then broken as hell". Each character needs to individually "download" monster skills for it, but they include a full range of elemental magic that can be used after moving, and all of the game's status-effect spells. Petrify is massively effective, as it not only freezes the enemy but also makes them "shatter" and KO on a single hit. Dangerous Matter is the "demi" spell, which is invaluable for those "weaken but don't kill" battles. (And works on the 1000+ HP bosses relatively often!)
Some other classes really aren't as useful as they "should" be, though: All of the game's best items are labeled as "high-class items", which can only be used by a maxed-out Gadgeteer--that ability can't be equipped by other classes. And Gadgeteers have crappy other stats. The Geomancer class gives you a bunch of abilities related to ley points, which are great...but only appear on a handful of story maps. They weren't really focused on balance between the classes, here.
Credit to them that your main character is female, and your Exposition Master/strategist/smart guy is also female. And several of the main villains are female, including the final boss and the idiot who accidentally created the final boss. (The named party is balanced, actually: Three women, three men, and a dog.) There's basically no romance; the relationships in the story focus on sibling and sibling-like affection. The Power of Family, as it were.
All of the usual Wild ARMs names for powers and series standards reappear, though in different forms (again, as usual). Clarissa and her mom were searching for the Yggdrasil System to revive Filgaia. The Elisius royal family are mediums who can talk to Guardians. Elw Borea is a world in an alternate dimension, where Kressen/Weisheit and Felius both come from. Weisheit who controls golems, such as Asgard, and is trying to steal Lombardia the dragon-spaceship. The set-pieces are all there, just rearranged.
ARMs in this game are "Artificial Reincarnation Medallions". Kressen arrived on Filgaia centuries earlier and introduced them. ARMs both provide combat abilities and also data-mine people's ancestral memories (from a prehistoric Filgaian civilization--the "Legacy Ruins" had been written into people's genes). Kressen has been body-hopping using that same technology, and wants to steal Felius' body so he can pilot the Lombardia back to Elw Borea and exact revenge with the techology of the ancient Filgaians.
The magic/technology/Wild West melding of the series is maintained, though they err more on the side of "fantastic tech". We get half a chapter of random time trave of the "you were destined to do this already" variety, that ends rather randomly and abruptly.
It seems very clear, but goes bizarrely un-noted in the game: both Clarissa and Alexia were buried in the rubble when the Nationists attempted a coup in the past. They were accidentally switched when rescued, which is why Alexia isn't a Princess Medium (but can use Melissa's sword Iskender Bey), and Strahl Gewer responds to Clarissa. They channel the power of the Guardians in the final battle, and though the game presents it as "power of friendship", it seems pretty clear that Clarissa is doing it. Felius' companion Yulie obviously also ended up in Filgaia in the past, and had children--so Melissa and Alexia (her descendants) can use her sword. (The fact that Alexis and Clarissa look alike is just a "Prince and the Pauper" sort of coincidence.)
The pacing is kind of terrible. The last chapter is insanely stretched out, but the time-travel thing ends really abruptly. Enemies who by all rights should be dead and gone keep coming back for one last battle. And then, mostly to wrap things up, Kressen downloads himself into Edna just in time for the Fear Clysmian to kill them both in a very anti-climatic manner.
Overall: Unless you're really into the strategic aspects of trpgs or you're a Wild ARMS completist, this isn't really worth it. I wouldn't have gotten through it without cheat codes. Gameplay-wise, it just doesn't offer enough chances for creativity. Story-wise, it's trying to reach the level of epicness and poignancy of the first few Wild ARMS games, and it just doesn't get there. Play those instead.
It's a tactical game, and its approach to tactics is very different from FFT or Disagaea, in that a lot of the battles require you to take a certain class and certain strategy, rather than letting you muddle by with overwhelming force. (Levels really don't matter much, and equipment differences aren't that big either.) Only certain classes can move objects or manipulate items, for instance, which means that if you don't bring them along you're going to lose and need to retry. They also love funky win/loss conditions, including needing to protect NPCs, needing to stay hidden from patrols, or needing to reach the exit in a limited amount of time. Occasionally you'll need to get every enemy on the battlefield into critical health without killing any of them. THAT'S a particularly annoying one. (And several of those occur during strings of battles that you can't save during or retreat from without re-doing the first batch.)
As the TVTropes page notes: There very few options for creativity in these puzzle battles; either you go with the dev team's strategy, or you lose.
The fact that half of your abilities--and virtually all distance attacks--can't be used after moving adds an interesting layer of strategy, as wizards become move-or-fire weapons. (Compounded by the fact they have low MOV scores to begin with.) VP declines every turn by the amount of weight (from equipment) your character has, and when it runs out, they start losing HP. This prevents you from dragging battles out by essentially applying a timer to a non-naked party--which again, makes strategy more complicated because characters don't move that fast and often can't move and also use a necessary ability.
The fact that every class has unique equipment and you have to do a full re-equip (including items) whenever you change classes is very annoying. You can save certain load-outs, but there's no "optimize equipment" feature, which you'd think would be a given. Also, the game will occasionally just randomly dequip characters during cutscenes, which can make the following battle very unpleasant if you don't check everyone's equipment in the interim.
The Emulator class is the Calculator-equivalent in terms of "hard to set up, but then broken as hell". Each character needs to individually "download" monster skills for it, but they include a full range of elemental magic that can be used after moving, and all of the game's status-effect spells. Petrify is massively effective, as it not only freezes the enemy but also makes them "shatter" and KO on a single hit. Dangerous Matter is the "demi" spell, which is invaluable for those "weaken but don't kill" battles. (And works on the 1000+ HP bosses relatively often!)
Some other classes really aren't as useful as they "should" be, though: All of the game's best items are labeled as "high-class items", which can only be used by a maxed-out Gadgeteer--that ability can't be equipped by other classes. And Gadgeteers have crappy other stats. The Geomancer class gives you a bunch of abilities related to ley points, which are great...but only appear on a handful of story maps. They weren't really focused on balance between the classes, here.
Credit to them that your main character is female, and your Exposition Master/strategist/smart guy is also female. And several of the main villains are female, including the final boss and the idiot who accidentally created the final boss. (The named party is balanced, actually: Three women, three men, and a dog.) There's basically no romance; the relationships in the story focus on sibling and sibling-like affection. The Power of Family, as it were.
All of the usual Wild ARMs names for powers and series standards reappear, though in different forms (again, as usual). Clarissa and her mom were searching for the Yggdrasil System to revive Filgaia. The Elisius royal family are mediums who can talk to Guardians. Elw Borea is a world in an alternate dimension, where Kressen/Weisheit and Felius both come from. Weisheit who controls golems, such as Asgard, and is trying to steal Lombardia the dragon-spaceship. The set-pieces are all there, just rearranged.
ARMs in this game are "Artificial Reincarnation Medallions". Kressen arrived on Filgaia centuries earlier and introduced them. ARMs both provide combat abilities and also data-mine people's ancestral memories (from a prehistoric Filgaian civilization--the "Legacy Ruins" had been written into people's genes). Kressen has been body-hopping using that same technology, and wants to steal Felius' body so he can pilot the Lombardia back to Elw Borea and exact revenge with the techology of the ancient Filgaians.
The magic/technology/Wild West melding of the series is maintained, though they err more on the side of "fantastic tech". We get half a chapter of random time trave of the "you were destined to do this already" variety, that ends rather randomly and abruptly.
It seems very clear, but goes bizarrely un-noted in the game: both Clarissa and Alexia were buried in the rubble when the Nationists attempted a coup in the past. They were accidentally switched when rescued, which is why Alexia isn't a Princess Medium (but can use Melissa's sword Iskender Bey), and Strahl Gewer responds to Clarissa. They channel the power of the Guardians in the final battle, and though the game presents it as "power of friendship", it seems pretty clear that Clarissa is doing it. Felius' companion Yulie obviously also ended up in Filgaia in the past, and had children--so Melissa and Alexia (her descendants) can use her sword. (The fact that Alexis and Clarissa look alike is just a "Prince and the Pauper" sort of coincidence.)
The pacing is kind of terrible. The last chapter is insanely stretched out, but the time-travel thing ends really abruptly. Enemies who by all rights should be dead and gone keep coming back for one last battle. And then, mostly to wrap things up, Kressen downloads himself into Edna just in time for the Fear Clysmian to kill them both in a very anti-climatic manner.
Overall: Unless you're really into the strategic aspects of trpgs or you're a Wild ARMS completist, this isn't really worth it. I wouldn't have gotten through it without cheat codes. Gameplay-wise, it just doesn't offer enough chances for creativity. Story-wise, it's trying to reach the level of epicness and poignancy of the first few Wild ARMS games, and it just doesn't get there. Play those instead.
