Easy, yet extremely fulfilling game.

Reviewed by benkosar on February 22, 2008  |  report this review

Wild arms 4 is a huge change, moving to a new studio (Xseed games). I have to say, it's different, but it's a good direction. To start with: The presentation. The obvious cel-shading look of 3 has been dropped completely (It was sort of experiment at the time anyway). The game looks and plays more like an anime than anything else.

There are four chars, which isn't bad. A healer, a swordswoman, an arms user, and an offensive magic user. The characters start to become fairly endearing after a while, and I found myself particuarly wondering what would happen to Raquel, the sickly swordswoman and Jules, the arm-user main character. These two are probably the most stand out characters in developmental ways.

The ending is very good, and it actually goes on to tell you what happens to each individual chars and what they grow up to do.

Wild arm's own box bills it as 'A coming of age story'. Yeah. Well I wish they would shut the F*** up about it already. You'll hear constantly about 'grown ups, how you can become corrupted, etc, etc'. It's a 'we're teenies against all the grownups' thing. It just gets played out after the first time it's gone over, and the game continually rehashes it so much it becomes eye-rollingly awkward.

The system goes from RPG to Hex, lending it a strategy element, using a new grid-hex system. You heal up completely between battles, so you don't need healing items in-between. But if you aren't careful, enemies will beat you. There is no world map to traverse. Instead you pick points to go to, much like Final Fantasy Tactics. The scale of the game is much smaller though.

The game is set in an apocolptic world this time around. With things like nuclear fallout, etc. It does a pretty good and unique job on theme, and you really feel like your in a decaying world sometimes. The music fits in well enough, and there's cutscenes that reveal plot with the main baddies like in an anime. The story is pretty decent and holds up, and the ending is rather endearing. Well worth the playthrough.

There is minor interconnectivity with Wild Arms: Alter code F, so keep your savegame data if you beat the game. This is just a gimmic for the most part and doesn't really add much to the game.

You can learn new abilities, etc, but it's fairly basic and easy to do. If your an RPG veteran, you'll find this game a rather easy walkthrough. There are after-game extras, but unless your a hard-core fan of this one, you probably won't bother with them once you beat the game.

I was excited to get this game, and would recommend it to anyone. Once I beat it however, I really didn't see the need to hang onto it. I DID however, throughly enjoy the experience while it lasted.