Wild ARMs 4
XSEED’s first game is going to make a lot of RPG fans very, very happy. Hands-on impressions inside.
Published: December 6, 2005
Aside from perhaps Beyond the Beyond, Wild ARMs was one of the first “modern” Japanese RPGs to land on the original PlayStation. It wasn’t anything especially new, but it did offer 3D battles, some interesting characters, and above all else, a world that blended Western tones with more traditional Japanese RPG standbys.
It worked, and worked well, and since then Sony’s Media.Vision development team has cranked out two major sequels and most recently a PS2 remake of the first game in Wild ARMs Alter Code: F.
Wild ARMs 4, though, represents something of a departure from the formula that has slowly grown stale. For starters, that whole Western theme? Gone, replaced with a more generalized post-World War world that has the survivors picking up the pieces and trying to find their place in Filgaia. The battles, too, have expanded into something called a HEX Battle System, which we’ll get to in a second, but at the very least, the concept of ARMs and Drifters (mythical ultra-powerful weapons and mercenaries, respectively) is still very much intact.
Those things are anything but present at the start of the game, though, as a young boy scarcely into his teens suddenly has his world consisting of little more than swordplay lessons (which he ditches often) in Ciel, a village entirely populated by adults, shattered. This happens quite literally; while foraging for something to eat after getting busted for skipping his lessons, the sky overlooking a placid lake shatters and what look like jets suddenly start pouring in from a rift in the sky.
What Jude discovers quickly obliterates his prior concept of the world around him: The peaceful village and surrounding countryside he resides in are nothing more than an enclosed habitat floating high above the desolate, bombed-out plains and dilapidated ghost towns of Filgaia. As he explores the ships, he finds a sizeable army manning machines he’s never seen before, and people clearly bent on doing... well, something. Sneaking onto one of the ships, he quickly discovers Yulie, a mysterious girl locked in a room and Arnaud, a cocky kid only a few years his senior in the army’s employ.
After springing Arnaud from the clink (apparently back talking your superiors – especially if you’re just a mercenary – isn’t a good idea), the two discover both the captive girl and the army have disappeared, and given that there’s but one civilization in the habitat, they race to the village to find out what happened to the girl and what will become of the village.
The next sequence of events happen quickly. A casket is discovered, filled with what looks like sand, the boys are captured and the stocky commander rants about things Jude clearly doesn’t comprehend, and after a firefight and some threats from the army grunts, Jude instinctively activates the sand by mere touch, transforming it into an ARM (3rd Generation ARM, to be precise).
He uses it to dispatch the military force, but quickly loses control, setting off a massive chain reaction that will eventually cause the habitat to self-destruct. Yulie’s true purpose is finally revealed when she calms Jude’s rampage, but the three of them are quickly shunted into an escape pod and ejected out into the sea below, left to explore Filgaia on their own...
And thus the adventure begins.
It worked, and worked well, and since then Sony’s Media.Vision development team has cranked out two major sequels and most recently a PS2 remake of the first game in Wild ARMs Alter Code: F.
Wild ARMs 4, though, represents something of a departure from the formula that has slowly grown stale. For starters, that whole Western theme? Gone, replaced with a more generalized post-World War world that has the survivors picking up the pieces and trying to find their place in Filgaia. The battles, too, have expanded into something called a HEX Battle System, which we’ll get to in a second, but at the very least, the concept of ARMs and Drifters (mythical ultra-powerful weapons and mercenaries, respectively) is still very much intact.
Those things are anything but present at the start of the game, though, as a young boy scarcely into his teens suddenly has his world consisting of little more than swordplay lessons (which he ditches often) in Ciel, a village entirely populated by adults, shattered. This happens quite literally; while foraging for something to eat after getting busted for skipping his lessons, the sky overlooking a placid lake shatters and what look like jets suddenly start pouring in from a rift in the sky.
What Jude discovers quickly obliterates his prior concept of the world around him: The peaceful village and surrounding countryside he resides in are nothing more than an enclosed habitat floating high above the desolate, bombed-out plains and dilapidated ghost towns of Filgaia. As he explores the ships, he finds a sizeable army manning machines he’s never seen before, and people clearly bent on doing... well, something. Sneaking onto one of the ships, he quickly discovers Yulie, a mysterious girl locked in a room and Arnaud, a cocky kid only a few years his senior in the army’s employ.
After springing Arnaud from the clink (apparently back talking your superiors – especially if you’re just a mercenary – isn’t a good idea), the two discover both the captive girl and the army have disappeared, and given that there’s but one civilization in the habitat, they race to the village to find out what happened to the girl and what will become of the village.
The next sequence of events happen quickly. A casket is discovered, filled with what looks like sand, the boys are captured and the stocky commander rants about things Jude clearly doesn’t comprehend, and after a firefight and some threats from the army grunts, Jude instinctively activates the sand by mere touch, transforming it into an ARM (3rd Generation ARM, to be precise).
He uses it to dispatch the military force, but quickly loses control, setting off a massive chain reaction that will eventually cause the habitat to self-destruct. Yulie’s true purpose is finally revealed when she calms Jude’s rampage, but the three of them are quickly shunted into an escape pod and ejected out into the sea below, left to explore Filgaia on their own...
And thus the adventure begins.