/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2090491

Wild Arms is an extremely interesting story, despite its PS1-era JRPG setup. While it may not be the most original piece, it definitely has a charm to it that is unmatched. It's certaintly worth an effort.

>>2090491
It's a solid game with side content and secrets in spades, and it's also very straightforward and doesn't rely on having to deal with a billion different minor details and undocumented things.

You're in for a great PSX RPG, anon

>>2090491
If you're mainly looking for full blown wild west sort of things in the series (horses, trains, everyone using guns, dirt and rock everywhere, etc), 3 tends to go the furthest in that aspect. The others tend to have more of a wilderness/frontier aspect to them without being full on wild-west, which is still pretty nice but may not exactly be what you're looking for though.

Been playing through the series in order myself and have been loving it so far (currently on 3). Just bear in mind that 1 and 2 have some translation issues to various degrees (the first is more minor in that, mainly names and terms not always being caught and translated right, but generally still pretty good; WA2 seems to have been lacking in decent editing, and while no illegible by any means, it can come off as awkward sounding). If you want a few tips to keep in mind there's a few I can mention if you want.

Anyhow, hope you wind up enjoying it. There's a lot of charm to the games (at least from what I've played thus far).

>>2090576
>If you want a few tips to keep in mind there's a few I can mention if you want.
As long as they don't spoil anything (or anything important) then sure, i'd be glad. RPGs are not my forte and some of those mechanics are quite weird for me (like that FORCE stuff)

I'm not expecting gun shootings and horse riding, don't worry. It's just nice to see games with some western theme without being actually western shooters, so far so good.

>>2090491

Wild ARMs is more like science fiction steampunk Wild West. And it's also very anime-ish. So if you're just a fan of Spaghetti Westerns you might not love it.

The most Wild West of all the games is the third.

>>2090617
>As long as they don't spoil anything (or anything important) then sure, i'd be glad
Okay.

The Awaken/Rise'n'Shine spell works pre-emptively, and knowing as such can make some encounter a lot more manageable (a lot of enemies love sleep spells) when they might feel like bullshit otherwise. Mentioning that since I don't think the game itself states it in the ability description (actually, hovering over anything in the items, spells, etc menus and holding triangle will provide a short description of what it does, which while not always clear is still quite useful), and I wish I had figured that out earlier in my playthrough of the first game.

What Force does tends to depend on the game. As I recall in the first game it's mainly used for special abilities (and reaching Condition Green clears any status effects). These abilities consume a certain amount of the bar to use (such as summons and character specific abilities, such as Lock-on, Accelerate, and Mystic). Later games (starting with WA2) also tie spell/regular ability use into the Force system, rather than use an MP meter, and it works pretty well, as regular abilities don't actually consume force, letting the player decide between regular spells, or if they need to temporarily sacrifice their regular ability use to do something big in a pinch with the abilities that do consume Force.

For certain characters (like Jack in WA1), ability learning is based on using stuff in combat, with a set percent chance to learn the ability (fully anyhow, in Jack's case), and influenced by the luck stat. As such for certain characters, the luck stat plays a big role in increasing their effectiveness (and not just for how many crits they get, attacks they dodge, statuses they negate), and make an item that increases luck temporarily, the small/white flower useful, so buy a good amount when you get a decent chance, as they can be hard to find later.

>>2090642
>hovering over anything in the items, spells, etc menus and holding triangle will provide a short description
Oh. I kept trying to guess what every item did because they had no descriptions.

>reaching Condition Green clears any status effects
double wow. so many items wasted

>For certain characters (like Jack in WA1), ability learning is based on using stuff in combat, with a set percent chance to learn the ability (fully anyhow, in Jack's case), and influenced by the luck stat

i'm screwed then? Jack's luck is pretty bad. Didn't found any white flowers so far but i'm still at the beginning of the game, i guess. Just finished their individual scenarios.

>>2090642
(Continued from last post)
Starting with Wild Arms 2, some of the games use the Personal Skill system, in that with every level up, you get 1 PS point to be spent on particular skills (some of which require multiple levels to max out, or even cost multiple points just per level). The important thing though, is that in Wild Arms 2, you cannot undo your Personal Skill choices once set (WA3 lets you redo yours on the fly, so Media Vision did learn), making the choices you decide on quite important. It's up to you what you want to do with them, though looking up which should be given priority (for some, like the +HP ones, starting early lets you get the most out of them as they increase on level up), and which are best avoided.

All the games tend to have some amount of resource management. The first and second games have ammo management as a big point, as Rudy, Ashley, and Brad need that to be on top of things come big fights, and ammo clips to restore them can be a bit rare, and at least some of the games after the first one tend to make the healing items a bit hard to find, as they can be hard to find a seller for, leaving the player reliant on enemy drops and what you can find (I recall WA3 and ACF allowing you to grow berries after a certain point, but it is understandably slow given the condition of the land).

The last thing I feel the need to bring up is that Wild Arms LOVES its puzzles. While some are generally simple, some will require you to think outside the box a fair bit, be it what item to use, or what sort of response to give (there's one in 2 that is really rather obtuse if you don't know what they're talking about, and the translation not being that well edited doesn't help). Don't get too discouraged though.

Anyhow, apart from that (which I hope isn't too much to take in at once), have fun. I only started playing the series a few months back but it's been a real blast. Wish I'd gotten into them sooner.

>>2090647
You're not screwed. Luck actually changes for better or worse when you sleep at an inn, so you can generally improve someone's luck by doing that with a bit of, well, luck (some games have an equip that causes the luck stat to not decrease while equipped). Small flowers are first buyable at the festival in Adlehyde, but there's a good stretch after that ends where they're downright hard to find, and when they do become available again, it's in small amounts (IE: one per trip instead of buying in bulk)

Oh, one more thing about Jack. When you get attacks labelled as ????, you can effectively use those in place of his normal attacks, as they do the same damage (at least in my experiences), and have a chance of teaching him a new move

Oh, and one more thing with WA1. If you haven't already, next time you boot the game up, let it sit at the intro screen a bit and it will actually go into a prologue clip showing events a while before the game actually opens. It's pretty neat and I only heard about that by the time I was at the end, so if you're just starting it will likely prove pretty neat to see.

>>2090642
In WA1, Force also increases your damage and defense.

>>2090672
Ah, right. I figured I'd forgotten a little something there.

>>2090656
the HP+ abilities have a scaling value so that if you take them later they make up mostly for not taking them earlier on. There is still a difference in how much you get overall but it is not significant.

>>2090617
There are usually some Crest graphs that are missable so you might want to look them up if you care about collecting everything.

>>2090763
The main ones that come to mind as being missable are the ones in Maze of Death, along with an optional boss. Forget if there are more missable ones in the first game.

>>2090778
The ones in the prison segment with Hanpan might be missable.

>>2090787
uh-oh, i think i missed them already

>>2090491
If you haven't already, let the game idle after booting it up and watching the first intro. There is another prologue scene which will unfold showing some back-story which blew my mind as a kid when I got far enough into the game to understand who the characters are and how their story relates.

WA1 is great all around
WA2 is good with a lot of flaws.
WA3 was where I decided this series is shit and cashed out. I hung in until the very end and beat the game and the stupid dungeon hoping for some ultimate redeeming factor. But it just wasn't fun like the first two, and playing it became a second job early on, about the time of the roof-top train battle.

dude, Wild Arms (1) is like, the greatest tribute to Ennio Morricone.

>>2091609
Fuck, really? 3 is my favorite, and it was at the point of the root-top train battle that I decided the game was fucking awesome and I was all-in.
As long as we're mentioning the PS2 games, I feel 4 is the weakest game of the series, but even with that in mind it's not a bad game, just average at worst. It introduced a new battle system known as the hex-grid which some don't like, but I find it alright, it just adds a bit more strategy to battles. If you decide you're a fan of the series after the first 3 games, then 4 is also worth playing,
5 is a great game, with a memorable cast, a fun story with a very engaging mystery. Its soundtrack is, in my opinion, is the best in the whole series. If 5 is to be the last WA title (yeah I'm not really including the PSP game here) then it's definitely a good way to conclude the series.

>>2091721
>Wild Arms (1) is like, the greatest tribute to Ennio Morricone

still in the beginning of the game but absolutely loved the intro music. are there any more music like it in the game (or games)? i'm in for a ride then

>>2091889
I can remember stuff from
once upon a time in the west
the good the bad and the ugly
Last day of anger

musics are a reason alone to play this game.

>>2091889
The music in general for the series tends to be quite good, though not all of it is done as homage (though still generally rather fitting in my experiences). Though in particular for Wild Arms 1, the overworld theme, Lone Bird in the Shire, sounds a hell of a lot like Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold.


>>2091818
Not him, but from what I've seen, some people just tend to dislike the PS2 games, and you even get the occasional person that dislikes everything after the first game (seen the translation quality and introduction of the friendship theme in 2 cited as part of the reasoning). Still, Wild Arms 3 tends to be a fan favorite for many, and in my experiences has been quite enjoyable (admittedly I still need to play through the rest of the series myself; think I'm a bit over halfway done with 3 and it's been great so far), much like the previous two games I've played in it.

>If 5 is to be the last WA title (yeah I'm not really including the PSP game here) then it's definitely a good way to conclude the series.
As far as I recall hearing, 5 being an anniversary title and celebration of prior games via cameos and such certainly makes it sound like a good wrap up game. Still, I do recall one of the people behind the series saying he'd like to return to it in the future (big issue being that he's currently busy with Symphogear), so perhaps 5 (or XF too) might not be the last actual title the series sees. And it would certainly be nice to see one of these older, currently dormant (or dead in some cases) JRPG series make a nice comeback (and hopefully not in the form that Capcom's trying to do with Breath of Fire 6).

>>2090491
Wild Arms 2 has some mistranslations in the directions to new towns so using a walkthrough is necessary.

I know I say this in every WA2 thread, but I'd hate for someone to wander around the wrong side of the map searching for a dungeon that isn't there.

>>2092247
>I think I'm halfway done with 3

I thought I was halfway done with 3 on 4 separate occasions. Every time you think it's wrapping a whole new upset happens.

>>2092247
>you even get the occasional person that dislikes everything after the first game
hi

>>2092262
I honestly don't remember having issues with that when I played it. Which towns/dungeons were most effected by that?

Then again, with the amount of stuff you can find strewn about with the search feature, I wouldn't say wandering around is entirely unproductive.

>>2092275
I'm mainly going off of levels. I think I'm at about 44 or so by now, which kind of feels like about the midway point going by how stuff's been paced thus far. I do wish the in game play-timer would take cutscenes and other stuff into account. Feels very off with it saying I've only played like 15 hours at this point.

About the only thing I'm disliking about 3 so far is the lack of ARMS skills that the first and second game had. I mean, every character being able to cast spells is pretty neat, but I'd have liked to have more than just regular shots and Gatlings using the actual guns.

>>2092289
Hello
What's so bad about WA2 again? Please try to have some good reasons.

>>2092289
To each their own. I mean, there's some pretty valid complaints about the translation quality (namely the lack of editing; honestly makes me wonder if the localization team used was rushed or simply inexperienced), but I never found anything horrible about the game on the whole.

>>2092247

A new Wild arm is being made, but very very slowly as a side proyect

>>2092481
Really? Last I'd heard the guy was simply expressing a desire to return to the series somewhere down the line when he gets a chance.

Do you mean they're actually slowly working on coding it right now, or is it still in the "design the characters/story/mechanics" stage?

>>2092304
Rumor had it that the localization was rushed because priority was given to Legend of Dragoon.

Whis is pretty funny if true, because LoD's wasn't any prize either.

>>2092574
*Which

>>2090491
some thoughts on wild arms
>it was made by some of the team behind lufia 2 so you should check it out if you haven't yet, it's got similar puzzles and battle system minus the western motif
>i actually like the cell shaded ps2 game better, i think WA4, but not retro so fuck off

>>2092301
i didn't say it was bad, and i don't come to /vr/ to shit on stuff people like. i simply found wa2 to lack the magic in music and characters that wa1 had, and if a jrpg doesn't do it for me in those departments then i dislike it.

unless you'd tell folks to skip 1 and go straight to 2, then i don't think we have a problem, anon.

>>2092892
I like the music in WA2

not as much as the original but that's pretty hard to beat, the scoring through the optional prologue through the character introductions all the way to the funeral scene is pretty fucking amazing

>>2092301
Not him but I didn't like the power ranger thing going on with the main character. It put the slider far too much in the anime side of the anime/western scale. I'm more tolerant of that now but back then it was a huge dissonance.

Also Lilika felt like a nerfed Cecilia.

>>2093000
Do Cecilia's Dual-casts trigger special techniques like Lilka's do?

If you use combos like Flame+Hi-Flame or Blast+Hi-Blast Lilka has a whole set of sorceries she can use by burning 100 FP with rocking names and effects like "Caloric Nova" and "Akashic Rewriter" that will totally destroy anything with an elemental weakness. They beat out Guardian Hi-Summons in damage for example.

>>2093000
>Also Lilika felt like a nerfed Cecilia.
>nerfed

I don't think so.

>>2093000
I have to agree with the other guys that she did a lot better than Cecilia, at least in my experiences (though it's not like Cecilia was bad in combat either). Only aspect she really felt worse at to me was that she had to use Extend (and thus have at least 75 Force) to cause magic, buffs, and heals to effect multiple targets, whereas Cecilia could generally do so as long as you had access to the right spells and MP to do so. On the other hand, not all of Cecilia's spells had multitarget variants to begin with.

>>2093019
Interesting, but that would wipe out her spellcasting for the next turn. At least in the first game my favorite uses of High Summon were tricks like the party revive+full heal. Damage was a bonus after all the buffs/debuffs were up.

Overall Cecilia was the better swiss army mage. Two resource tracks meant that she could switch up offense and support without sacrificing either. Lilka could do that to some extent too, but if she needed anything big or multitarget it would cost her both.

>>2093000
Lilka is cuter
She wins

>>2095215
Cecilia dances
Your argument is invalid

>>2093952
I'm pretty sure every buff can be accessed in multi-target using mystic and the appropriate item.

Lilka can definitely use Hi-Heal multi-target by using mystic on a Life Orb, which is reusable indefinitely since its an accessory and not an expendable.

So Extend is never really needed.

>>2095972
Fair point, I suppose. I actually don't think I spent a long time mysticing a lot of items apart from heal berries, restorative items, and lucky cards. Might have to try that on regular items on my next playthrough.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if in the Japanese version of Wild Arms 1 (on the PS1 anyhow), the demons were constantly called "Metal Demons," the way the western release of the game did, or were they just called demons, with the fact they were both metal and organic being mentioned much less often, but that the English localization translated it too literally that way? Admittedly I haven't played ACF, so I don't know how it's handled there in the retranslation, but since I'm playing 3 at the moment and the same type of demons appear to be back, and simply being called "demons," with the metal stuff being mentioned in a more conversational way and not all the time (in the first game, "Metal Demons" felt almost like a title or race name to me as it was used together so frequently), it's just gotten me wondering about what the deal was with the way the first game handled; whether it's a pretty accurate term compared to how the Japanese version handled it, or if it's awkwardly literal in comparison and the localization team latched onto it for the whole game for whatever reason.