Out of the recent games I've played, if Fate has the perfect story and Shining Force Neo has the perfect game system, then Wild Arms has the perfect music (actually a toss up between that and Kingdom Hearts). Unfortunately that's also all it has, though I'm beginning think with the medicority of recent RPG, you're better off doing one thing really well then just merely average/suck on everything. Of course it helps if the part you do well is more important to the game, like the gameplay or the plot.
To be fair, the music is amazing. They paid a lot of attention to all the battles. Just about every unique boss has his own music, and you have different music even for different party combinations. The OST for this game is well worth checking out even if you never played the game.
The story is the same as the first Wild Arms, but they seem to made everything that was good slightly worse. The unneeded love triangle with Jane/Cecilia/Rudy doesn't really add anything. It seems to me they're trying to make everything longer thinking that'd be better, but it rarely turns out to work like that. Another good example is at the ending you actually see Cecilia packing up and getting ready to go while reading the letter, which completely gives away the whole 'you left something very important - me!' part.
The battle system is really horrible. I think they're trying to top Xenosaga at the worst battle system ever designed and succeeded. If you just take all the ambush fights in the game that'd still be too many random encounter for a RPG, and that's if you have a FAQ so you know where all the migant seals are to avoid all the fights that are not ambushes. Most of the game's difficulty seems to be designed around the fact that you're supposed to have Jane Maxwell at your party at all times even though she only joins at the very end of the game, and very briefly during around middle of the game. If you've psychic power you'd use Jane for about 10 hours in the middle of the game to get all the stuff you need to beat the game via stealing (only Jane can steal). If not then you just get to die slowly and not being able to do anything because everything is faster than you and does exactly enough damage to keep every person on your party healing. Moving Mystic from Cecilia to Jane ensures you will never have enough healing power with Jane.
Even the random battles suck. The enemies are not powerful enough to kill you but are annoying enough to keep fights dragging out for a very long time. Malduke's Rabbit guys are the worst. They have insane reaction and the only attack the use is Rabbit Cancel (cancels out your move) or Heal, so while they're completely incapable of doing any damage to you, if your luck is bad you can stand there for 10 turns not even getting to move. That is, of course, unless you have Jane, who is faster than just about anything in the game.
My advice would be to get a FAQ so you can get infinite Gella while you've Jane and then hit level 100 about halfway through the game, so that the battles can never bother you again. The game's difficulty is trivial since the worst fights you'll ever get is the ones where you just spend the whole time healing until you run out of item/MP and die, but if you've Jane you've infinite money and you can upgrade Rudy's Gatling Raid to 18-hit where it'd kill any regular boss in one hit, so you'll never lose.
To be fair, the music is amazing. They paid a lot of attention to all the battles. Just about every unique boss has his own music, and you have different music even for different party combinations. The OST for this game is well worth checking out even if you never played the game.
The story is the same as the first Wild Arms, but they seem to made everything that was good slightly worse. The unneeded love triangle with Jane/Cecilia/Rudy doesn't really add anything. It seems to me they're trying to make everything longer thinking that'd be better, but it rarely turns out to work like that. Another good example is at the ending you actually see Cecilia packing up and getting ready to go while reading the letter, which completely gives away the whole 'you left something very important - me!' part.
The battle system is really horrible. I think they're trying to top Xenosaga at the worst battle system ever designed and succeeded. If you just take all the ambush fights in the game that'd still be too many random encounter for a RPG, and that's if you have a FAQ so you know where all the migant seals are to avoid all the fights that are not ambushes. Most of the game's difficulty seems to be designed around the fact that you're supposed to have Jane Maxwell at your party at all times even though she only joins at the very end of the game, and very briefly during around middle of the game. If you've psychic power you'd use Jane for about 10 hours in the middle of the game to get all the stuff you need to beat the game via stealing (only Jane can steal). If not then you just get to die slowly and not being able to do anything because everything is faster than you and does exactly enough damage to keep every person on your party healing. Moving Mystic from Cecilia to Jane ensures you will never have enough healing power with Jane.
Even the random battles suck. The enemies are not powerful enough to kill you but are annoying enough to keep fights dragging out for a very long time. Malduke's Rabbit guys are the worst. They have insane reaction and the only attack the use is Rabbit Cancel (cancels out your move) or Heal, so while they're completely incapable of doing any damage to you, if your luck is bad you can stand there for 10 turns not even getting to move. That is, of course, unless you have Jane, who is faster than just about anything in the game.
My advice would be to get a FAQ so you can get infinite Gella while you've Jane and then hit level 100 about halfway through the game, so that the battles can never bother you again. The game's difficulty is trivial since the worst fights you'll ever get is the ones where you just spend the whole time healing until you run out of item/MP and die, but if you've Jane you've infinite money and you can upgrade Rudy's Gatling Raid to 18-hit where it'd kill any regular boss in one hit, so you'll never lose.
