I'm about halfway through the game (slightly past Photosphere) and about 24 hours through and really having no motivation to beat it other than to see if they changed anything with the ending and the flashbacks in Arctica Castle.
The game is still easy and broken but with the 1 MP Fast Draw cheese removed, this means although you can knock out a boss in 3 rounds, you now can't just burn your MP on Fast Draws for regular encounters which makes the already pretty tedious random encounters even worse. Rudy also doesn't get any good utility ARMs like the Prism Ray so most of your random encounters will look like Rudy attack, Jack attack, and Cecilia cast some sort of offensive spell (like the original game, she'll never run out of MP anyway).
Now to the bosses. Since there are huge gaping holes in the game's balance like Rudy's 18 hit Gatling Raid, or how Jack's Fast Draw damage is determined by his Reaction which is doubled by Cecilia's Quick, or you can just use Force Carrot to Guardian bomb stuff to oblivion, so to have some semblance of difficulty the bosses do an insane amount of damage relative to your HP. It is not unusual to be hit for 50% more than your max HP on a single hit one person strong attack or hit-all attacks that do in excess of 60% of party's max HPs. Back in the original Wild Arms Cecilia has Hi-Heal (heal one guy for a lot) and Remedy (heal everyone for some), and you can get some emergency healing with Jack's Heal Blade. Well, now Jack doesn't have Heal Blade and Cecilia doesn't get her advanced spells at all, so a lot of the time you end up having all 3 your character heal/eat berries just to keep with the damage of the boss until a turn where the boss does a useless attack or you get lucky and avoid a physical attack. If everyone actually gets to attack it'd take at most 2 turns to kill most bosses, but getting the 2nd all-out attack turn is very difficult.
And there's plenty of stupid tricks in the game. For example just about every boss has an element that will activate them, which means they absorb it and now become way harder. Although on some it will be obvious (e.g. Golems), on other stuff there is absolutely no way to tell so you end up having to waste Cecilia's first turn on Analyze. Due to the lack of healing in this game and the relative low HP on bosses, losing the first turn on Cecilia is very costly.
Bosses also have helpers that, when killed, instantly comes back, which defies typical RPG knowledge of 'killing all but the boss first'. We're not talking about stuff like Yu Pagodas that come back a few turns after killed. We're talking about stuff coming back the turn they die. Again in a game where 2 turns of everyone attacking can kill the boss, wasting one turn trying to kill the helpers only to find they come back immediately is very costly.
The Migrant Seals, which determines what enemies you can avoid, are by no means trivial to find. With the rocket boots trick also removed, you can't avoid encounters efficiently and with Jack's Fast Draw MP cost way too expensive (and all his hit-all Fast Draw requires Acclerator too even if you somehow have the patience to get them to 1-5 MP), you end up spending a lot of time even on fairly trivial random encounters. If you're going to get this game be sure to at least download a guide with all the location of the Migrant Seals so you never have to fight anything you don't want. The encounter rate in general is just high, close to FF9 levels, and surprise encounters can't be avoided and are way too abundant. Like Wild Arms 2 you can get surprise encounters where one of your character has to fight the first turn solo, and if it's Cecilia against a group of strong physical attackers that's an instant game over right there. Every dungeon seems to have somewhere you can fall off on every screen that will boot you to the starting area of that screen, so you can't even dash effectively unless you have good reflexes.
And then there's some stuff that are just plain cheap. For example Luceid's attack does more damage the more elemental resist you have. I don't think you can remove your skill set in the middle of the battle and chances are you'll have quite a few of them loaded up on Rudy/Jack who has lousy magic resist. FFX tried to put some *tricks* in the battle, but tricks are only meaningful if you can learn something about it. By the time you realized that you're not supposed to have elemental resistances you can't remove them unless you game over.
The only redeeming factor of Wild Arms is the music. Every important battle music is good and unique. The graphics are actually pretty good, too, but I think I might have been better served to buy the soundtrack and the official art book instead of actually playing the game.
The game is still easy and broken but with the 1 MP Fast Draw cheese removed, this means although you can knock out a boss in 3 rounds, you now can't just burn your MP on Fast Draws for regular encounters which makes the already pretty tedious random encounters even worse. Rudy also doesn't get any good utility ARMs like the Prism Ray so most of your random encounters will look like Rudy attack, Jack attack, and Cecilia cast some sort of offensive spell (like the original game, she'll never run out of MP anyway).
Now to the bosses. Since there are huge gaping holes in the game's balance like Rudy's 18 hit Gatling Raid, or how Jack's Fast Draw damage is determined by his Reaction which is doubled by Cecilia's Quick, or you can just use Force Carrot to Guardian bomb stuff to oblivion, so to have some semblance of difficulty the bosses do an insane amount of damage relative to your HP. It is not unusual to be hit for 50% more than your max HP on a single hit one person strong attack or hit-all attacks that do in excess of 60% of party's max HPs. Back in the original Wild Arms Cecilia has Hi-Heal (heal one guy for a lot) and Remedy (heal everyone for some), and you can get some emergency healing with Jack's Heal Blade. Well, now Jack doesn't have Heal Blade and Cecilia doesn't get her advanced spells at all, so a lot of the time you end up having all 3 your character heal/eat berries just to keep with the damage of the boss until a turn where the boss does a useless attack or you get lucky and avoid a physical attack. If everyone actually gets to attack it'd take at most 2 turns to kill most bosses, but getting the 2nd all-out attack turn is very difficult.
And there's plenty of stupid tricks in the game. For example just about every boss has an element that will activate them, which means they absorb it and now become way harder. Although on some it will be obvious (e.g. Golems), on other stuff there is absolutely no way to tell so you end up having to waste Cecilia's first turn on Analyze. Due to the lack of healing in this game and the relative low HP on bosses, losing the first turn on Cecilia is very costly.
Bosses also have helpers that, when killed, instantly comes back, which defies typical RPG knowledge of 'killing all but the boss first'. We're not talking about stuff like Yu Pagodas that come back a few turns after killed. We're talking about stuff coming back the turn they die. Again in a game where 2 turns of everyone attacking can kill the boss, wasting one turn trying to kill the helpers only to find they come back immediately is very costly.
The Migrant Seals, which determines what enemies you can avoid, are by no means trivial to find. With the rocket boots trick also removed, you can't avoid encounters efficiently and with Jack's Fast Draw MP cost way too expensive (and all his hit-all Fast Draw requires Acclerator too even if you somehow have the patience to get them to 1-5 MP), you end up spending a lot of time even on fairly trivial random encounters. If you're going to get this game be sure to at least download a guide with all the location of the Migrant Seals so you never have to fight anything you don't want. The encounter rate in general is just high, close to FF9 levels, and surprise encounters can't be avoided and are way too abundant. Like Wild Arms 2 you can get surprise encounters where one of your character has to fight the first turn solo, and if it's Cecilia against a group of strong physical attackers that's an instant game over right there. Every dungeon seems to have somewhere you can fall off on every screen that will boot you to the starting area of that screen, so you can't even dash effectively unless you have good reflexes.
And then there's some stuff that are just plain cheap. For example Luceid's attack does more damage the more elemental resist you have. I don't think you can remove your skill set in the middle of the battle and chances are you'll have quite a few of them loaded up on Rudy/Jack who has lousy magic resist. FFX tried to put some *tricks* in the battle, but tricks are only meaningful if you can learn something about it. By the time you realized that you're not supposed to have elemental resistances you can't remove them unless you game over.
The only redeeming factor of Wild Arms is the music. Every important battle music is good and unique. The graphics are actually pretty good, too, but I think I might have been better served to buy the soundtrack and the official art book instead of actually playing the game.
