Wild Arms

Ladies and gentlemen, guess what we have here? Its a return to sixteen bit superdeformity! ARGH! Huge heads, midget legs, and a sundry of other mutated body parts abound in this surprisingly fun old school RPG, along with a standard save-the- world-from-forces-of-evil plot. Ah well, its good clean fun, until Sukoiden 2 comes out...

Well, this title came out before FF7, so don't get your hopes up too high. Its starts with an high quality anime intro that for some ungodly reason had me humming the theme song to " the Good the Bad and the Ugly" when it was all over. Once that was over, you get to pick which one of three characters you start with. Guess who they are, none other than mysterious rogue-thief, adolescent distraught adventure boy, and stereotypical magic user girl. Yep, this title will throw in ever cliche in the book at you, some of which you will have tried to forget a long time ago. Once you select your cliche..err..I mean character, the game starts. The characters are all superdeformed, but the backgrounds are quite nice, with colored glass and sun streaming in. The graphics will give you a warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling, harkening back to all the hours you logged in on RPGS in years past. Eventually, you'll fight some monsters, using a nice interface that reminded me of BOF3 for some reason. Sadly, none of the monsters are really imposing or scary, and it always feels like you are beating the crap out of muppets. But they are tough and sometimes smart, so the battles can be challenging.

The sound for this game was quite nice, as the sound effects are quite clean and the music is not too imposing. No voice acting though, so you will have to read the text on yer own.

This is an RPG, not an action game, and the battles are turn based, so control is not that much of an issue. The menu interface is well done though, and its quite intuitive to use, so you can never blame the buttons if you screw up.

The gameplay here is quite nice, with nothing too complex or strenous. There are puzzles to be solved, but you will never really need a walkthrough. Each character will have specific items that can be used throughout the game at certain points, adding variety. The problem here is that I have seen every single thing in this game at least five times before. From the overused plot to communist choices to generic parties to the dungeons to the indestructable bosses, its just already been done! Just try not to pass out from deja vu during the map scenes or when you enter ANY town. I can honestly say that this title brings absolutely nothing new to the genre. However, it does take all of the elements in RPGS and combine them well. This is an excellent game to get for newcomers to the genre, because it is a wonderful introduction into what RPGS have to offer. However, if you are an experienced gamer like myself, my advice is really to try something new, like Zenogears, Parasite Eve, or even Granstream Saga. They do bring in new elements, and you won't be dissapointed.