Wild Arms, A Terrific RPG on the PS1

The only thing I remember about Wild Arms is how I mistakenly thought it was a sequel to Thousand Arms. I’m not sure why I felt that, because the two games have nothing to do with each other.

This game has a dark Wild West setting. People in the game seem to be getting ready for the end of the world. There is a feeling I got from some of the characters that they’ve accepted that it is all over.

Wild Arms has a dark setting and story. The game mechanics are pretty good and don’t stray too far from what other RPGs were doing at the time. I would’ve liked the pixel art to be in the whole game, but the 3D models aren’t too bad.

TLDR:

Narrative

The story alternated between three characters. I wasn’t too sure if I liked it when I started. It is different from the other games I’ve played, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

There are three characters you can follow in Wild Arms. You can swap between the stories at a save point. Here are the characters:

• Rudy
• Jack and Hanpan – Jack is a treasure hunter who has a grudge against the demons. Hanpan is his talking rat friend.
• Cecilia is a princess who was studying at a monastery.

The introduction is a few hours long. It ends with demons getting hold of some item they need and stealing “golems.” It culminates in Cecilia’s father dying.

So, this is what is going on in the game. There is an army of demons who are trying to bring their queen back to life. In a previous war between the people of this dimension and the demons, the demon queen was defeated, and her heart was torn into three pieces.

These three pieces were encased in statues, and the demons want to destroy them. The Guardians gave our heroes powers, and they have to stop the demons. We’ll see how that works out for them. I’m guessing it goes poorly.

It did go poorly, and Mother is released into the world. Mother is the one who creates all the demons, and is planning on destroying the world and consuming the demons. It’s a little weird, but I like the twist.

So, you beat Mother, and it feels like everything is over. Until a group of demons known as the Quarter Knights shows up and says they are going to rule the world.

The Quarter Knights have been around the whole game, but they weren’t given a name until right before Mother comes back. This is the name of the demons who have been harassing you the whole game. Now the plot is about defeating them.

I like how this story is set up. It isn’t like Tales of Destiny, where the game has a natural ending point, and then keeps going. Wild Arms has a twist where the assumed main boss is too evil, even for the bad guys. It is a cool idea, and the game pulls it off quite well.

Gameplay

Wild Arms has a lot of gameplay elements taken from other games. All of these are executed quite well. I like the use of different tools to solve puzzles, the magic skills system is really good, and the turn-based combat is excellent.

There are a few spots where you have to switch between the three main characters. These are puzzle-solving sections, which is a cool idea.

Each of the three playable characters has a set of tools they can use. This is what the developers used to justify swapping between characters. It also plays into the narrative as some NPCs need to talk with a specific character, or you need a particular tool to advance the game.

In some ways, Wild Arms is set up like Dragon Quest II. You have three main characters, each one has a role: Warrior, Battle Mage, and Mage, and the big bad guy isn’t who you think it is. It isn’t an exact match, but I think it is close to it.

The items were a source of confusion for me. I didn’t have the manual, and the game doesn’t tell you what each item does. Thankfully, if you try to use “medicine” on something that isn’t cured by it, you don’t lose anything.

Wild Arms has a Force Meter on the combat screens. I wasn’t too sure what it did at first, and I couldn’t remember if the game explained what it was and what it did. The guide I was using helped out as it explained this meter was connected to the Guardian summons and your attacks (Link).

Rudy, the blue-haired, mostly silent protagonist, uses a gun, which is called an ARM in the game. This leads him to be kicked out of a town during the prologue. Throughout the game, you find more ARMs, and you can upgrade them. The things you can upgrade are:

• Attack Power
• Accuracy
• Ammo Clip Size

Like many other RPGs, there are puzzles you need to solve to get through the dungeons. Each character has a skill that can help you get through them. These skills are called Tools in the game. Here is a brief list:

• Bombs
• Hanpan – Jack’s little mouse buddy is considered a tool
• Lighter
• Watch
• Wand
• Radar
• Grappling Hook
• Skates
• Tear Drop

Several times during the game, you’ll have to split up to solve puzzles or advance the plot. These are very cool, as you have to figure out the best way for each character to get past the puzzles that are presented to them. This is where I would use a guide, unless you want to use trial and error.

The Magic and Skills system is a little odd. You have one character who can use magic, and to learn a new spell, you have to bind it to a Crest Graph. These can be found throughout the game.

Skills are taught to you by talking with seemingly random people in towns. It isn’t the worst system, and it also requires you to find an item to trade. I like the ARM upgrade system more than these two.

Jack’s sword attacks are a little odd. It took me a while to figure out how you learn them. I don’t like this system all that much. I like the idea, but I’m not sure about it. It feels a little too cryptic for me.

I didn’t think this game was all that difficult. The gameplay is very good, and I like that they incorporated some action elements into it. This helped to make the game more fun and the puzzles more challenging at times. There are some frustrating parts to the game, but those were few and far between.

Visuals

The graphics are pretty good, but can get a little too dark at times. I wasn’t playing this on a CRT, so that might’ve had an impact on the graphics. There are a few other things to note about the graphics here.

Wild Arms was one of the first RPGs for the PS1. Sony commissioned the developer to make it, and this was their first RPG. It was popular enough to spawn a franchise.

Most of the game uses 2D graphics that look very good. They are some of the better sprites I’ve seen in a PS1 game from the mid-1990s. The battle scenes use 3D graphics, and it is a bit of a visual clash from the rest of the game.

On the battle screen, your characters look like Funko Pops. This game came out well before Funko Pops were a thing, but they definitely look like them. I kind of like it.

The 3D graphics look pretty good, but they don’t have the same detail as other games. This was still early in the console’s life, and I think Wild Arms looks very good for a mid-1990s game. It isn’t amazing, but it gets the job done.

I like the 2D graphics more than the 3D scenes. I think the pixel art holds up better in the long run. The 3D scenes don’t look great, but they’re better than other RPGs that use 3D graphics.

The cutscenes use 2D graphics. This looks much better than if they tried to make 3D cutscenes. It is a nice compromise to have both styles in the game, even if I wish they had stuck with the 2D graphics instead.

The spells look very good. They aren’t as impressive as the RPGs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but I wasn’t expecting them to be. They get the job done and look good for the time.

Overall, I like the graphics in Wild Arms. As creepy as I find the character models on the combat screens, there is something charming about the PS1 graphics from this time. They were decent, but had some room to grow. I would’ve liked pixel art sprites for everything, but what is here looks pretty good.

Reviews at the Time

Wild Arms received Good to Great reviews upon release. The lowest was an 8/10 and the highest was a 94/100. It was released at a good time, as RPGs were starting to get popular on the home console.

This time, I looked at Game Informer, GameSpot, and IGN. I also looked at a few others, but I’ll be focusing on these three publications.

Game Informer had three people review the game. The average of those three reviews was an 8.75/10. All three liked the game and said it should hold people over until Final Fantasy VII was released. They were split over the graphics, but liked the gameplay.

GameSpot gave the game an 8.6/10. The reviewer loved Wild Arms’ story and said that it does many things really well. They also praised the different types of gameplay.

IGN gave the game an 8/10. The reviewers echoed many of the same things said in the other two reviews. It was seen as a good stopgap to keep people satisfied until Final Fantasy VII was released.

Looking over these reviews was fascinating! The reviewers all liked the game, and they were saying that Wild Arms would keep people satisfied until Final Fantasy VII. It was like they expected people to drop this game as soon as that entry came out. I hadn’t realized it was released so close to Final Fantasy VII, and I think Wild Arms benefited by getting to market at the right time.

8/10. There is a lot to like about this game. The pixel art is very good, the story is great, and I like the gameplay. The 3D art on the battle scenes can be hit-and-miss. I like how the player’s characters look, but many of the monsters don’t look that good.

Pros

• Good Story
• Nice Pixel Art
• Good Controls

Cons

• Average 3D Art
• Some Confusing Game Mechanics

Conclusion

Wild Arms is a solid RPG. It isn’t too difficult, but it is challenging enough to satisfy fans of the genre. The gameplay is varied enough to keep everything interesting. While there are only three playable characters, I think this works well for the story the developers were telling.

Going over the reviews from the mid-1990s was very interesting. Sometimes you can lose perspective on what else was happening when a game was released, and I can see how the hype for Final Fantasy VII helped this game. On its own, Wild Arms is a great game, but being released before Final Fantasy VII helped it quite a bit.

If there is one thing I wish had been changed, it would have to be the battle scenes. The 3D graphics were the only thing I didn’t like in this game. They look fine, but I prefer 2D sprites to the early PS1 polygon graphics. This is just a personal preference, and if you don’t agree, I can understand.

If you liked this post, please check out my reviews of Jade Cocoon and Thousand Arms.