...well, it’s been a while. I really underestimated how long it would take me to complete Wild Arms 3. Any regrets? None at all. I know I’ve said this before, but the 360 suddenly becoming useless might have been the best thing that’s happened to me for a while. If it didn’t, I may have never played the real of gem of a game that Wild Arms 3 is. It really surpassed my expectations going into it.

Pros

The dungeon exploration is a lot of fun. The vast majority of the dungeons have some puzzles to solve or obstacles to overcome. Most of these require the unique tools that every character has. Each of the characters have one tool each at the start, but they eventually get two more later in the game. They range from a doll that freezes things, special jumping boots and a grapple hook. Some puzzles have a plaque with a riddle, but most of the time you have to solve it yourself. Some of the puzzles are bit vague, but when you figure out something, it’s pretty satisfying.

Like some of the other games I’ve covered, the battle system is pretty unique (check my first blog about Wild Arms 3 for more details). The presentation of the battles is also great. If you’re on horseback while entering a battle, you’ll see the characters on horses while the enemies are running on the side. I thought that was a nice touch. There are two other modes of transport (which I’ll keep a secret). If you enter a battle with them, they have their own unique twist on the battle system.

As for the story, it definitely had a lot of surprises. It’s not your typical Wild West game. I really don’t want to say too much about it. All I can say is that it gets pretty cool. Some of the classic tropes are present, but you’d be hard pushed to find any piece of fiction that doesn’t use them these days. The four main characters are great. While they initially don’t get along that well, they eventually bond and share their stories. It kind of has a ‘bounty hunter anime’ feel about it.

For a 10-year-old game, it still looks pretty nice on the graphics front. It has a cel-shaded style very similar to what was used in Valkyria Chronicles (judging by the screens I’ve seen of it...yeah, haven’t played it...). The world itself is also nicely done. As you might expect from a Wild West-themed game, a lot of the game takes place in barren environments, but there are plenty of different settings as the game goes on. All done pretty well, too.

I really enjoyed the music in the game. Most of it fits really well. Mysterious dungeons have mysterious music and intense moments have intense music. A lot of the music is very Old West-style, but there’s some variety thrown in here and there. Again, I don’t want to say too much...

There's plenty of side stuff to do in the game. You can be rewarded with experience points, money and helpful items. The world becomes very open later in the game. It's definitely worth looking around.

Cons

The main problem I had with the game, and why I took so long to finish it, is that exploring can get pretty tedious. It’s not so much knowing where to go...it’s getting there. Battles can be avoided to a certain extent, thanks to the ‘migrant seal’ system in the game. However, once you run out of points, you can no longer skip battles (unless you have some white crystals around). This can be a problem if you’ve got a long way to travel. Healing items are pretty finite for a good portion of the game, so it’s not ideal to having to keep on using them. Combined with it happening inside dungeons, it resulted in me getting pretty fatigued with it after only an hour or so at a time. Later in the game, as long as you’ve collected more migrant seals, this becomes less of a problem. As a result, I played it a lot more near the end. To be fair, I think I did the best they could with the system (infinite skips would be madness), but I thought it was a flaw worth mentioning.

The game lacks any descriptions for items or arcana. While most of them are pretty self-explanatory, the only way to find out what a certain item or arcana does is to use it. Personally, I looked them up on the net. Whilst it's easy enough, I found it a bit strange how it just wasn't in the game.

Conclusion

If you're an RPG fan and you're looking for something a little bit different, I can't recommend it enough. It was a joy to play. Great story, great music, great gameplay. I'll probably check out more Wild Arms games in the future.

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Current Plans

The 360 you’ve heard so much about is currently being looked at by my sister’s boyfriend. He’s going to attempt to fix it. Not sure what he has planned exactly, but I gave him permission to do anything to it. It’s been out of warranty for a long time and I don’t exactly have anything to lose with it being useless to me as it is. If it gets fixed, I probably won’t risk going online with it again. An offline 360 is better than nothing.

So, here’s the plan. I’m going to wait and see if my 360 can be resurrected. If it can, I’ll probably take a little break from my RPG madness and play one of my many 360 games. Strongly considering going back to Enslaved, but it’s not definite. Whilst I still remember the storyline up to the point I played, I might be a bit rusty with the gameplay stuff after five months. I’ll wait and see how I feel.

...if the 360 is still as dead as a dodo, I’ll probably press on with what I’ve been doing. Really tempted by Xenogears, but I wouldn’t rule out a Final Fantasy title. I should be able to burn through whatever I select a lot quicker than Wild Arms 3 (due to the previously mentioned issue I had), so I’m not too worried about that.

...or, hey, I could even play Metroid Prime like I suggested to myself a while back. Forgot all about that...

Blog Future

As I said a while back, I'm going to rebrand my blog. I won't necessarily be blogging every week, so the old name doesn't exactly fit. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with something before the next blog (along with a new banner).

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To celebrate finishing Wild Arms 3, I thought I'd post three of my favourite tracks from the game. I hope you like them as much as I do.

A Person's Warmth (Music used in some towns)

Fate Breaker (Incidental/Dungeon)

There's Only One Family Named Shrodinger (Battle)

I would choose more, but three seems like a good number to stop at. Really liked the music in it.

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for reading and I'll be back with more in the near future. Not 3 months. I promise!

As one of three RPG-a-thon serial blogs that I follow (the others belonging to @Sparky_Buzzsaw and @PixelPrinny) I'm glad it has returned to the land of the living. Welcome back, duder. Also, don't worry about posting weekly, you'll burn yourself out that way. Best to keep track of your thoughts on an RPG until it's done and then go nuts with one big blog.

As for Wild Arms 3, I really loved it as well. I would say you're not far off with the bounty hunter anime feel, since the two animes with that description that I can think of very much split their time between Western tropes and anime insanity. Like, say, a rival bounty hunter that later transforms into a demon? For some reason? It convinced me to give Wild Arms 1 another shot as well as influenced the purchase of Wild Arms 4. Those are both good too, though 1 has aged a bit and 4 approaches boss fights with a much more puzzle-oriented "there is only one strategy to win and you need to figure it out before the guy kills you" which, while actually almost preferable to the usual protracted wars of attrition, might still feel like a series of cheap insta-kills until you've got the hang of them. 2, 5 and the enhanced remake of 1 (Alter F) are a little harder to find here in the UK, but I'd love a chance to play them.

(Edit: Also, man, did I just post this in the wrong blog's comments. Apologies. And also apologies to the people I just called out twice. Posting is fun!)

Thanks. :D Yeah, that's pretty much why I won't be doing blogs each week anymore (as a standard rule, anyway). I'll just post them whenever I start/finish a game now. I'll even do some of my themed blogs now and again. I still plan to post somewhat regularly, though (i.e. not 3 months apart...).

Yeah, it was stuff like that which drew me into the game. I definitely want to check out the other Wild Arms games. It's good to hear they're just as fun. That one with the grid battle system has always looked interesting to me (4, I think?). I'll probably get the remake over the original version of 1. If getting hold of them is a problem, I'll import. Not sure when, as I'm not exactly short of RPGs at the moment. I'm sure I'll go on an RPG buying craze at some point.

The only thing I remember from Wild ARMs 3 is that the last boss had fucking 16 forms or something insane.

I know it was double digits.

Yeah, there was 11 battles in one go. Pretty crazy stuff. I was daunted at first, but thankfully everything went well straight away. If it was a Square Enix game with that many bosses in go, I may have lost my mind...