Wild Arms 5 tells a story anyone experienced in Japanese anime or RPGs will be familiar with. An amnesiac girl falls from the sky, a young boy leaves his small town to see the world for the first time, ancient technology from a lost civilization litters the countryside, and an empire must be toppled.
Despite treading a well-worn path, Wild Arms 5 manages to set itself apart from the pack by embracing its cliches, rendering them with care and an eye for quality.
Gameplay
As with the story, the gameplay of Wild Arms 5 does not reinvent the genre, choosing instead to refine it to a razor sheen. As is traditional in RPGs from Japan, the battles are random. Where Wild Arms 5 differs from other games in the genre is that after every random battle the player's characters are brought back to full health. This is not a method to make the game laughably easy, but instead to make each battle a challenge worth facing.
The game also offers the ability to turn random battles off entirely once certain conditions have been met within a dungeon. This is a very wise, and well paced design decision on the part of the developers as this ability is introduced just as the characters have reached the sufficient level to trivialize battles within the dungeon. The game wants each battle to be one worth the player's time.
Overworld travel, like that of Dragon Quest VIII, takes the traditional 8-16bit RPG overworld and presents it in a fully realized 1:1 scale. It is an impressive feat, that appears in tragically few games.
However, they do not simply present a gigantic open world with nothing to do in it, instead there are treasures hidden across the land giving the player incentive to explore and take in the sights.
Graphics and Presentation
While the graphics cannot compare to the detail present in mega-budget titles such as SquareEnix's Final Fantasy XII, Wild Arms 5 manages to make its simplistic style work for it. The clean, attractive character models are very expressive both physically and facially. This is important as the cutscenes are all done in-engine, with no CG or cell animation.
However this does not serve as a detriment to the storytelling, as the more important cutscenes hold up to any big budget CG affair in terms of animation and cinematography. Even the less important non-voiced scenes are kept lively with character animations, and a constantly roaming camera.
Sound and Music in Wild Arms
As this is a story focusing on young teenagers with stars in their eyes, the voices attempt to convey the enthusiasm present in the characterization and general tone of the story. Unfortunately this tends to mean they are high pitched and slightly grating. Despite this the actors deliver their lines competently, with any wince-inducing moments coming from just how unrelentingly upbeat they are, and not because of any incorrect delivery.
The music is of a high quality, with strings and pipes and even a lively whistling tune. It is varied throughout, with no less than 3 different overworld themes, and still more dungeon themes on display. These themes are used to effectively heighten emotion, and subtly further the storytelling.
There is a portion of the game where the player's group of adventurers finds themselves in a big city, filled with technology, and entirely different from anywhere they have been. The music here is entirely different from any encountered thus far, and is a cacophony of synth sounds used to reflect the sense of confusion and alienation.
Wild Arms Overall
This is a sadly overlooked game on the PlayStation 2, that can easily hang with its more popular contemporaries. If given the chance to Wild Arms 5 will entertain, enthrall, and amuse players just as much if not more than others in its genre. Its only true detriment was a lack of marketing budget.
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