A Wild Western-style RPG

Chances are, you've probably not heard much about Wild Arms 3. This is mostly because it's one of those Japanese RPGs that gets released without much fanfare, and is aimed towards the hardcore Eastern RPG fans.

Many people who play it but don't "get" it will probably be quick to rubbish it. But I disagree completely - I think it's the best RPG I've played in years.
Of all the RPGs released on the ps2, I think Wild Arms 3 is closest to the traditional "Party! Adventure! Bad Guy! World Map! Dungeons! Airship! Sidequests!" methodology that existed around the time of ff7 and the other ps1 RPGs. It then goes on to largely ignore the slight evolutions that have happened since then in the genre, and make up it's own. The plot probably needs no further explanation, other than it's a standard RPG, where you must save the world from whichever villain or villains who pop their heads up and try to conquer and/or destroy it. It's still good, it's just it's been done before. The only thing that stands out is its setting in the wild west.

As I said above, this game doesn't really try to hide from the fact that it follows the "plot->go to dungeon->clear dungeon->plot" loop. I don't really find that a problem, because the dungeons are done so well.
For a start, it's one of the few RPGs that makes an effort to give you some decent puzzles. Don't quite expect a Zelda 64, but whereas pretty much every RPG recently has just put a couple of vague pretences of a puzzle in that takes two brain cells to work out, Wild Arms pulls it off quite well. While most aren't that hard to figure out, they do at least make you think, which is welcome. Then there are the few ones that are really clever...
Then there's the encounter system. Unfortunately, you can't see your enemies on the map, it's all random. What Wild Arms does though, is about a second before a fight starts, it warns you with a rough estimate of how tough the fight will be, and gives you the chance to run away from it completely (without even disrupting the game by loading up the battle engine, which is nice). Of course, there wouldn't be any point in it all if there was no limit to the amount of times you could chicken out, so you have a gauge that measures how often you can use it (with the more powerful fights taking more to skip, and the easy fights taking less, or even nothing, to skip). Even more clever, if you can manage to leave the room or jump of a ledge in that split second, you can skip a fight for free. Opening a chest does this as well, spoiling the realism, but it's a nice touch.
More cleverness awaits with the vitality system. As well as hit points, your characters have a vitality gauge. This is useless in fights, however it is used at the end to automatically heal your characters, saving you manually going into the menus and doing it with a healing item. What adds some challenge to the game, is that healing items are rare. If you play well and manage to live off of your vitality gauge, you'll never need a healing item. Play badly, and you start to run through your reserves.
Fights themselves vaguely resemble Skies of Arcadia, only with a far more twisted skill system. Skills, spells and boosts to stats come in the form of mediums. The catch is, the same mediums often do good things for different ways of playing (for example, the best spell in the game - good for a character with high magic - is on the medium which gives the highest attack power boost - good for people who want to ignore magic and just attack) leading to some tough decisions as to who gets what, at the price of giving a nice ability to someone who won't really be able to use it.
Resemblances to Skies don't stop there though. They also use the spirit system, (only each character has their own spirit bar). The catch here is, while special moves and summons take spirit energy away as usual, spells don't take anyway but merely require you to have a certain amount of spirit energy to begin with. Spirit energy also boosts your attacks, so there's another choice to make, between using powerful special moves, or holding back in order to use spells.
Unlike Skies however, you can really customise your characters to hell and back. Each has their own initial stats and preferences, hinting to how you are "supposed" to use them, however after a certain point in the game, you are more or less free to arrange stat boosts, mediums and abilities how you see fit, making one person's team very different to another's.
Another idea is that, using a save token, you can save anywhere in the game, not just at save points. Save tokens are used as continues when you get a game over as well, which is a very good thing if you forgot to save before a nasty boss, although they don't actually let you run away from the fight. It would be nice if this system was used to add some challenge, however save tokens are way too common. I finished with 99 in my inventory. That there is an ability to save anywhere without using a token later in the game is extremely pointless :)
The last point to make about the gameplay is the sheer number of Sidequests available. Many open up soon after the start as well. This game lives on sidequests. Only problem is, a couple of sidequests such as obtaining the airship are essential to the game. Should you not find them and go on with the plot, when you come to the point when you need them you will be very confused as to what you are supposed to do next. Also, seeing as some sidetracks are required, towards the end of the game it does not take into account that you will probably have leveled up a lot from them, meaning that the ending is a little easy.

Anyway, back to Skies similarities. As well as being able to get a ship and an airship, you can also have sea and air battles. Sea battles aren't quite as exciting or tactical as skies, however most of the tactics comes from which character you equip with what, and who you put doing which job. Again, the different stats of the characters come into play, meaning that depending on who you put where your ship will behave quite differently.
But, I really have to wonder why the airship battles are there at all. It's barely a minigame really. You only have 5 different types of attack, and there are only 3 possible enemies that you can fight in the air, you have to wonder what the point is. Fortunately, all but the first air battle are ignorable.

Now on to graphics. This game is about a year, almost 2 years old, so they're only first generation. And, even worse, there's cell shading. But, before you run for the hills, I must report that it actually looks really good. This and Dark Cloud are the only games I've played that manage to pull off cell shading, without making the game look like it's for kids. It actually looks really good!
But, the cell shading isn't just there because Wild Arms copies the crowd. This game thinks that it is an anime. It's divided up into 4 chapters, each of which has a different villain for the team to fight. Every time you load your save file, you get a cartoon opening, which changes with each chapter. While you can just turn off the power, if you quit the game instead, you get a short ending akin to the end credits of an episode.

Of course, it's not perfect - depending on what you like or hate about it, your opinion may vary. If you mind repetitive battles (not much worse than any other RPG though), or playing a very long game (and it is long) then it's probably best to steer clear. Another annoyance, is finding things on the world map. Rather than see them from a distance, you have to get right on top of them and search the area to find a location - very annoying given the vague directions you get. Even worse, there's no way to refill your vitality gauge and encounter gauge on the world map. >_<

You may notice that I've listed a whole list of pluses, and only about four minuses, which is odd for someone as pessimistic as me. That's because I really liked this game. You need to be deep into RPGs to do the same, this probably isn't a game to convert people who don't like the genre, but if you are then it rules.

Score: 9/10
Reviewer's tilt: Strongly for