(no subject)
I finished the game, and I have to say I am somewhat disappointed in the game. First I'll deal with the story aspects of it.
The story of the game felt very... shall we say, lowered for the sake of children. As in, the story focus around what it means to be a child and what it means to be an adult, especially with the views on war, friendship, and peace. Now don't get me wrong, one of the highlights of the game is that you start off with these children who grow into somewhat more responsible, my personal issue is that I don't care for children much in the first place. This game varied a bit from the previous games also, in that it didn't really include the guardians at all, nor was the focus on "natural" healing of the planet. The game though, does connect with the others about as loosely as the rest are connected, as far as I can tell this one happens chronologically last in the series up to this point.
The characters are interesting enough, but I do feel that several of them were common stereo types you would expect to see in an anime. There were also points in which things would shift into "anime combat", which as we all know is pretty unrealistic to begin with. I felt that hurt the game a bit, especially since the previous games attempted to leave things open to more realism… well until you entered into the battle screen of course.
The music in the game was good enough, but doesn’t live up to the soundtracks of the previous game. The opening song, though originally I didn’t care for it, eventually grew on me as I progressed through the game. The same thing happened with Wild Arms 3. The music was more on a modern note with not nearly as much of a “wild west” influence to it.
The series as a whole seems to continue to have a recurring problem, which is how and who can use "arms". In the first game the main character and a girl could use arms, but it was just them for special reasons. They explained as the Arms are part of ancient technology that normal people couldn't use. In two Arms were more generalized and anybody could use them with training, that being that there was an actual military with standard arms for use. In three, they continued to be generalized for everyone, and all four of your characters actually were equipped with them. Three also explained a little indirectly of how the girl in Wild Arms 1 was able to use them. In this game they totally rewrite it though, and make a bold claim that Arms activate by various "genes" in a person.
Another complaint about this game is that it is the first on in the series not to deal with demons, one of the more tradition enemies in the series. This game was focus on humans fighting with other humans through out it all. When I was entering into the final dungeon, I was wondering if they "demon card" would be played, but sure enough it wasn't and instead I was forced to suffer though some more anime combat cut scenes.
The Mechanics of the game has been completely reworked from anything previous in the series. This new gimmicky system deals with hexes and moving your characters around in a fashion similar to a game board. This ultimately results in a major weakness in the game as is commonly the situation when companies attempt to deviate from standard battle systems. The result was one of two outcomes in combat, the player would either start in a bad situation due to random chance and get raped, or they would bust out their one trick pony and the battle would be no problem. Damage Calculations in the game are really silly too; one of my characters without going out of my way to overly optimize them could almost outright kill anything even bosses once they got their turn. Despite the game playing not living up to the previous games, they did incorporate dual, triple, and quadruple techniques in the game, which I always enjoy.
The world map exploration in the previous games has been done away with for a more simplistic map. Instead of actually exploring the world, now once you hit the appropriate triggers a new area will become available for you to select on the map to go to. Also due to this limitation, I felt sort of shoved along in the plot being pushed down a linear slope through the game. In this regard, I was reminded of Valkyrie Profile 2.
The game also removed individual tools for each character, so now when you enter a puzzle room; all the tools you need to complete the puzzle are in the room. In the previous games the puzzles weren’t so… conveniently solved, I got the feeling that you had to use your abilities to solve the puzzle instead of the puzzle being tailored to what was available to you.
The ending to the game wrapped up the story well enough, but it felt a little out of place. Unlike in the previous games, I have little desire to go back and crush all the extra bosses and what not, I'm just glad the game is over. From a personal scale of me liking the game, I give it 5/10. From a more professional level, I give the game 6/10 due to it's more childish story, simple battle system, it's overtly anime influence, and it lack of any real challenge.