Wild Wild West
Wild ARMs 5 is the best game in the series since the first one, and arguably one of the best RPGs on the PS2.
Published: September 9, 2007
You can tell the development team at Sony's Media.Vision studio have played a ton of Japanese role-playing games. I know that's a weird statement when you'd think all of the development teams making games should do the same, but Wild ARMs 5 does so many things right to streamline and refine the formula of the old-school JRPG system that it's a wonder more games haven't adopted some of the same practices. Let's go down the list, shall we?
-Your party's HP (but not their magic) is refilled after every battle, eliminating the need to constantly re-heal after every fight, but also means the battles can be fairly tough at times.
-If you do die in a fight -- even normal ones -- you can continue right from the start of battle and change up your tactics, swapping out players as need be, which not only allows each of the characters' particular strengths to be used, but also the Medium, the items embued with specific roles like healing, attack or status effect bonuses to be tapped.
-No matter who you use in battle, all members of your party gain experience at the same rate, meaning no unnecessary catch-up battles.
-Encounters can be turned off once you've fight a little mini-boss at specific "Sol Niger" points in most levels, but even if you don't the encounter rate is extremely low in sections with a puzzle so you can figure things out without having to fight all the time.
-About halfway through the game, you get a vehicle that negates random encounters and speeds travel throughout the overworld (which is now in full 3D rather than the locked-in map that the last game had).
These are just some of the core things that makes Wild ARMs 5 an absolute joy to run through, and that's before I even get to the HEX Battle System that was first introduced in the last game that makes fights both challenging and strategic without ever seeming unfair or cheap (and in fact because you can always continue where you left off, you're free to mess around with strategies). Smaller stuff like having armor update in both the cutscenes and in battle or the dozens of little lines that are specific to the current plot points that are spouted out by each of the characters after fights add a nice little attention to detail as well.
To cap it all off, the game actually makes good on the storyline that's introduced early on. Those that played the last game and saw the opening moments when the sky shattered and ships flew in only to have the characters and storyline peter out into an endless string of clichés and boring plot can rest easy in the fact that this time around the story and characters have more going on in the first hour of the game than the whole of the last outing, even if you still have to deal with the heavy anime influence and the series' requisite kids-saving-the-world motif.
The improvements to the HEX System are fairly small; all of the skills you'll learn are still intricately built around attacking contiguous or line-of-sight targets, but new grids keep boss battles interesting and the fact that you don't have to have the full party in the same hex to use the series' infamous Lucky Cards and Gella Coins for double experience or money just iron out some of the more niggling points I had about the last system. What this means is that the battles are quick, enjoyable and yet still involved enough that you won't just be mashing the X Button constantly.
Status effects are still relegated to the hexes themselves instead of characters, so curing an effect is as easy as moving out of the hex to a clean one -- though of course if your characters get boxed in they'll be stuck, but even here the Jump command that siphons off a bit of the Force Meter that's built up by attacking and taking hits gives you a way out. Characters that die in a hex can be resurrected in the same space as someone far away to avoid a constant cycle of dying and reviving. The ideas are so wonderfully balanced that even normal encounters are interesting and the level of experience dished out means that power leveling is kept to a minimum for the most part -- though of course there are plenty of optional enemies and areas to explore, including hidden chests in the overworld and various fetch quests for townspeople.
-Your party's HP (but not their magic) is refilled after every battle, eliminating the need to constantly re-heal after every fight, but also means the battles can be fairly tough at times.
-If you do die in a fight -- even normal ones -- you can continue right from the start of battle and change up your tactics, swapping out players as need be, which not only allows each of the characters' particular strengths to be used, but also the Medium, the items embued with specific roles like healing, attack or status effect bonuses to be tapped.
-No matter who you use in battle, all members of your party gain experience at the same rate, meaning no unnecessary catch-up battles.
-Encounters can be turned off once you've fight a little mini-boss at specific "Sol Niger" points in most levels, but even if you don't the encounter rate is extremely low in sections with a puzzle so you can figure things out without having to fight all the time.
-About halfway through the game, you get a vehicle that negates random encounters and speeds travel throughout the overworld (which is now in full 3D rather than the locked-in map that the last game had).
These are just some of the core things that makes Wild ARMs 5 an absolute joy to run through, and that's before I even get to the HEX Battle System that was first introduced in the last game that makes fights both challenging and strategic without ever seeming unfair or cheap (and in fact because you can always continue where you left off, you're free to mess around with strategies). Smaller stuff like having armor update in both the cutscenes and in battle or the dozens of little lines that are specific to the current plot points that are spouted out by each of the characters after fights add a nice little attention to detail as well.
To cap it all off, the game actually makes good on the storyline that's introduced early on. Those that played the last game and saw the opening moments when the sky shattered and ships flew in only to have the characters and storyline peter out into an endless string of clichés and boring plot can rest easy in the fact that this time around the story and characters have more going on in the first hour of the game than the whole of the last outing, even if you still have to deal with the heavy anime influence and the series' requisite kids-saving-the-world motif.
The improvements to the HEX System are fairly small; all of the skills you'll learn are still intricately built around attacking contiguous or line-of-sight targets, but new grids keep boss battles interesting and the fact that you don't have to have the full party in the same hex to use the series' infamous Lucky Cards and Gella Coins for double experience or money just iron out some of the more niggling points I had about the last system. What this means is that the battles are quick, enjoyable and yet still involved enough that you won't just be mashing the X Button constantly.
Status effects are still relegated to the hexes themselves instead of characters, so curing an effect is as easy as moving out of the hex to a clean one -- though of course if your characters get boxed in they'll be stuck, but even here the Jump command that siphons off a bit of the Force Meter that's built up by attacking and taking hits gives you a way out. Characters that die in a hex can be resurrected in the same space as someone far away to avoid a constant cycle of dying and reviving. The ideas are so wonderfully balanced that even normal encounters are interesting and the level of experience dished out means that power leveling is kept to a minimum for the most part -- though of course there are plenty of optional enemies and areas to explore, including hidden chests in the overworld and various fetch quests for townspeople.
