Autumn bonus game: Dragon Slayer
Welcome to the final entry of JRPG Journey 2023. My fourth year of this harebrained attempt to obliterate my backlog has been a blast—thank you for reading. Let’s get right into December’s game.
As I’ve been playing a lot of the PS1 JRPGs I missed, one gigantic problem consistently crops up in my takes on these old classics — the sluggishness of menus and text boxes, poor responsiveness, and overall pace of a lot of these that raggedly old console. Unapologetically, I was an N64 kid, and even after playing dozens of Playstation games, I’m still not used to the slowness. It kills my immersion and, frankly, interest in a lot of these games that I’d otherwise have few complaints about.
So, imagine my surprise when I started playing Wild Arms and things just happen … fast. This thing’s got practically zero load times, which does make sense, considering it’s a 2D, sprite-based game — aside from the battles, oddly enough. Those are rendered in full 3D, with chibi models that don’t half bad for an early PS1 game. It’s no Final Fantasy VIII, but it’s far from the horror of Final Fantasy VII’s in-game models, for example.
Otherwise, Wild Arms is a traditional top-down JRPG, set in the land of Filgaia. Its overworld map includes some PlayStation-powered flair, such as the layers of clouds that float by or how the camera zooms in on your guy as you approach a town, but it doesn’t offer anything conceptually new, and the same can be said about the rest of the game. Instead, Wild Arms chooses to take an old formula and turn the polish and presentation up to 11. Naturally, that means starting things off with a rousing yet confusing anime intro, full of spunky looking characters you’ve yet to meet. Never change, Japan.
The backstory here is that a thousand years ago, so-called “Metal Demons” from a place called Hiades invaded Filgaia. Humans banded together with a race called the elw (“eluu”), who are basically elves, to defeat the Metal Demons using powerful weapons. Maybe too powerful — at one point, they left a giant scar on the planet in the form of a desert. While that’s sick as hell, by the time the game begins, the desert is spreading, and it’s up to our heroes to stop it. Hey, that’s where Radiant Historia got the idea from! I kid, I’ll bet mysterious encroaching deserts are a somewhat common trope in fiction. After the war, the elw fled to.. somewhere, and are now known only as legend to the people of Filgaia, who have grown to fear anything having to do with ancient weapons.
Now, I’m a sucker for any tale about ancient technology or lost races, so this is right up my alley, but I’ve also got to admit I find it hard to get super engaged with the stories in these older games, and Wild Arms is no exception. Maybe it’s the 2D visuals, maybe it’s the overly curt and direct dialogue, maybe even the lack of voice acting — that’s something I thought I’d never say. See, while I don’t often get into the stories in 90s-era JRPGs, that also doesn’t affect my opinion of them much. Wild Arms’s plot points were interesting enough in the moment to keep me wanting to press on, to reach that next dungeon or see the next cutscene. The fact that I can’t remember any of them now doesn’t bother me, but it is worth mentioning. The game’s sure got got a lot of heart, though, and there’s way more to the lore as well as some genuinely fun surprises that I’m unwilling to spoil here. But I’ll give a quick overview for some context.
Reminiscent of Live a Live, you play through each party member’s intro chapters in any order before they come together for the rest of the quest. (Unlike Live a Live, there’s a lot more “game” after that.) I went with Rudy, cuz he looked like the standard hero type, a good starting point. Turns out he’s a “Dream Chaser”, this world’s name for an adventurer.. of sorts. For Rudy, that seems to just mean he’s got a good heart and helps his fellow townsfolk with their woes, though it’s implied he’s got a backstory yet to be revealed.
Anyway, his plotline begins with a mission to find a healing berry for a sick guy back in town. As you might guess, things go wrong, and it’s revealed Rudy possesses one of the game’s namesake — an Arm. Arms are ancient weapons designed to fight Metal Demon scum, but nowadays they’re more like rare, scary relics that most people want nothing to do with. In fact, only certain people can even use them, via “binding their will” in a process not fully explained, at least at first. Once the townsfolk discover Rudy’s got an Arm, they exile him, so he decides to head to Adelhyde, bringing his intro chapter to a close.
Jack, another Dream Chaser, leads the next scenario. He’s a treasure hunter, raiding tombs Indiana Jones-style, with nothing but his wits, his sword, and his pet mouse Hanpan in tow. They’re searching for what Jack calls the “Power”, a standard adventurer macguffin that needs no explanation. Fantasy world with ancient tech? Of course there’s some mythical “ultimate power source” out there, and Jack’s hellbent on finding it… even after he encounters a hologram warning left by the eluu to not go looking for something called “Lolithia”. Naturally, Jack assumes that’s the power he’s been after, so he sets off for the nearby town of Adelhyde to prepare.
Cecilia, princess of Adelhyde, is studying at a remote abbey when she has an encounter with Stoldark, one of the world’s “guardian” beings who opposed the Demons. He gives Cecilia a rune to summon him in battle, and warns her of the same “Lolithia” being, claiming darkness will return to the world. That’s some heavy stuff, so she heads back to Adelhyde to learn more.
If you’ve been paying attention, that brings all three starring characters to the same city, where it’s finally time to party up. I’m a fan of how Wild Arms handles these character introductions. Unlike in, say, Dragon Quest IV, they’re all short, while still giving you enough time to get familiarized with each character’s special abilities. Jack can send out Hanpan to reach faraway items across gaps, for example, or Rudy can use bombs to reach hidden areas, among others that you unlock as you play. These, along with a heavy emphasis on puzzle solving in dungeons, gives Wild Arms more of a Zelda feel than most JRPGs, which I really enjoy. It makes the basic, Final Fantasy-style mazes filled with monsters and chests you see in other games, even to this day, feel downright boring. Some of them are even kind of tough, or at least had me thinking more than usual, as I grappled with weird mechanics like a floating crystal that mimics your movements or split my party up to stand on multiple switches at once.
The three protagonists get enough early development that each of their intro sequences could have been the beginning of its own game. Instead, once the intros are over, it’s like starting an RPG with a solid understanding of each character’s background built-in, since the focus of the story shifts to the primary goal of saving the planet fairly quickly. No need for drawn-out character recruitment while the hero dawdles about doing menial tasks; Wild Arms delivers three short but complete mini-adventures, then gets right to the story it wants to tell.
The party gets involved with an excavation group headed to none other than Lolithia’s Tomb, which, as it turns out, does contain a weapon — Lolithia is in fact a giant mechanical golem left by the ancients. It might not be THE power Jack was looking for, but the party has bigger things to worry about when the sky cracks open the next day and demons descend on Adelhyde. Yeah, shit gets real in Wild Arms; we’re on the PlayStation now, and the cinematic action scenes make the most of that copious disc space at every opportunity. After making what might be the worst deal in the history of Filgaia by trading a magical royal artifact to the demons, it’s up to the party to use their unique talents to find a way to get it back.
Wild Arms spends a lot of time on its story scenes, and while I won’t detail any more, I will say they’re a step up from anything on previous consoles and proved two-dimensional visuals were still worth pursuing after the SNES era came to a close. Thankfully, nowadays we’ve got Square’s HD-2D line, the Star Ocean remakes, and many other titles big and small embracing a 2D style. Again, presentation is Wild Arms’s strongest suit. I didn’t think games started doing the whole “hours-long buildup until the opening credits” thing until at least the PS3 era; boy, was I wrong: Wild Arms hit me with that title drop six hours in, long after I thought that was even a possibility, and it comes at the perfect moment.
Plain and simple, the JRPG genre evolved a lot during the essential decade of the 90s, and Wild Arms was at the forefront of a new generation, not to mention the jump to 3D. While it didn’t fully embrace the latter, it nonetheless blazed a path for others to follow — if you’re unaware, this game came out before Final Fantasy VII in both Japan and the West. That includes taking risks and trying new ideas. Next is a spoiler for the early-ish game, so skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to read it (SPOILERS FOLLOW): Mother, the ultimate big bad set up as the game’s world-ending threat from the beginning, turns out to be an early boss, nothing more. Once you defeat her, she’s gone — no surprise resurrection, no crazy transormation, no demon form. Then, one of her henchmen tries to take over the world himself! I know this is well-worn territory, but not for JRPGs, at least not the popular ones I’ve played.
There’s also a whole ordeal involving the main characters’ backstories that I definitely won’t spoil; my point is there’s more to Wild Arms than a simple save-the-world plot. It explores ideas like the horrors of war, the fleeting quality of peace, paranoia, and fear of the unknown in ways that are a little deeper than what SNES-era JRPGs put forth. I only wish the specifics had stuck with me after finishing the game in the way Final Fantasy or Tales often games manage. Wild Arms never leaves that memorable of an impression, despite its impressive effort. But … why is that the case?
For one, the music’s nothing special: that’s both the worst and best thing I can say about it. Of course, when talking JRPGs, “nothing special” means the soundtrack’s still pretty damn good — Japanese studios simply did not release RPGs with bad music in the 90s — but I’ve got to compare against the incredibly high baseline. The title theme’s an instant classic, no doubt, but that’s true for most popular JRPGs, and Wild Arms lacks the kind of stunningly beautiful or instantly memorable compositions I look for from this genre.
Beyond the music, Wild Arms also lacks an instantly recognizable art style, which I think might be the biggest reason I didn’t connect with the story or characters as much as I’d hoped. Everything looks a bit bland, a bit safe, even boring. It’s certainly not bad, but looking at a random screenshot wouldn’t entice me into playing this one. And hell, it’s not like I see a lot of wild Arms fan art out there. Rudy, Jack and Cecilia’s designs are fine, but nothing more than fine. While they fit the game’s relatively gritty and grounded story, again, they’re not what I’m looking for in a JRPG magitech fantasy.
Enemies, on the other hand, tend to look great, especially the bosses, which get rendered in both 2D and 3D — I appreciate the amount of work that went into that. I’m a bit puzzled why the battles are in 3D, though, or at least why ONLY the battles are, but that’s not a complaint. They look good and offer something to provide a visual break from the otherwise 2D assets. I also don’t want to ignore all the small quality-of-life features I haven’t mentioned yet that make the experience less annoying to drudge through than many older JRPGs. For one, the game removes enemy encounters in certain confusing or puzzle-heavy rooms you’ll likely spend a lot of time in. Can every game do this, please? When I’m trying to solve a puzzle, I don’t need the annoyance of dealing with random battles; one challenge at a time is fine by me.
Even small tweaks to the formula, like how inns all cost the same, make me smile. It’s an indication that the developers were learning to question even the simplest, long-established “rules” of the genre. Inns getting more expensive as you progress makes sense on paper for games where you slowly get bigger rewards from battles, but the Wild Arms devs recognized that it’s more of an arbitrary increase that the player barely notices, so why include it? Not every RPG needs to follow the same mould, and Wild Arms does an admirable job of pushing established boundaries — not as far as, say, Final Fantasy VIII, but an important step regardless. The overworld’s zoom-in effect when approaching towns that I mentioned earlier has the side of effect of hinting at towns that are hidden when you get near them. That’s VERY cool, something I haven’t seen in any other game. Also, something about this game’s idle animations stands out to me — maybe it’s the way the sprites are shaded to look almost 3D, but it’s pretty neat.
Not all the devs’ ideas are great, though, like how certain chests can only be opened by certain characters. Even when your party is all together, you have to manually swap leaders to open them — why? I swear, sometimes games just want to waste your time. Which brings me to my biggest problem with Wild Arms: it’s too monotonous. What I mean is that the same strategy works on damn near every boss — use Cecilia to cast Armor Down and/or Slow down, use Rudy’s Hand Cannon, and have Jack go all-out using his best ability. I only recall one or two boss fights where I had to deviate from this strat, in a game loaded with bosses. That’s an unacceptable threshold of cheese allowance, and it’s no fun getting all these cool spells and abilities with zero reason to use them. And forget normal encounters, they’re an utter snoozefest of mashing X. The total lack of difficulty or interesting combat mechanics heavily hampers what’s otherwise a well-made RPG I wanted to get more immersed in than I did.
All in all, Wild Arms earns its spot as a PlayStation classic, but I understand why it’s not quite as well-regarded as some of its behemoth contemporaries. Here’s to hoping the sequel makes some serious changes to combat.
I hope you’ll join me again for JRPG Journey 2024 edition, where I’ll be playing 12 more games—at least!—in what will be my fifth year running. If you haven’t already, check out my write-ups from previous years. I try to cover a wide variety of JRPGs from all eras. Now go out there and play some old classics!
