Wild Arms (Part 1) - Rudy's Introduction, Berry Cave
- Location
- Netherlands
Hey there!
This thread surely wasn't inspired whatsoever by that other one by Omicron, chronicling all of Final Fantasy - that would be silly. I'll eventually get back to my LOTRO playthrough (I took a hiatus on that for a while) but there's plenty of other games of a less massively multiplayer nature that I'm interested in, and writing out what I'm doing tends to help me in experiencing it more fully than just hitting buttons to make things go by faster... so having a thread to put my LP stuff seemed useful. For reasons that have nothing to do with getting a new rig which permits me to play a broader range of games than before, including ones on old consoles (through means best left unmentioned), I've been catching up on games I missed. And RPGs were always my favorites.
For the most part, I'll probably focus more on the story, setting, and lore than the mechanical specifics - I've been known to cheat my way past difficult bosses in the past because I'm far less interested in tedium and proving my mettle than just having fun. I'll note down if I actually needed to do that, though, heh.
Instead of stepping on Omicron's toes, I wanna focus in on some games that I played very little of when they came out, or only saw advertised but never tried. Games like those card-based RPGs on the GameCube, Baten Kaitos, or Skies of Arcadia, or the Shadow Hearts series, or that space RPG... Rogue Galaxy? Anyway, I'm sure there's dozens of others I'm forgetting here - I've only played like one Tales game, for example. I'm starting here with Wild Arms, mostly because I remember the box art, and it had a Western theme going on, which seemed neat. It got no less than four sequels and some spinoffs, so there must be something there worth looking into...
LP 1: Wild Arms
LP 2: Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Wild Arms was made by the Japanese company Media.Vision which was also responsible for the Chaos Rings and Valkyria Chronicles series, several portable entries in the Shining series, and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. Not bad! It was originally released in Japan in 1996 for the original PlayStation, and was later localized and released in North America in 1997 and Europe in 1998. The game is 2D for its normal gameplay, but the combat takes place in three dimensions - though those graphics are rudimentary. Wild Arms' release was overshadowed by hype for the upcoming Final Fantasy VII, but it was still a critical and commercial success, so it got a slew of sequels on the PSX and PS2 over the next decade, including an enhanced remake of the original. I'll be playing the OG here, since it's generally better-regarded and the remake apparently retconned in elements of its sequels.
After getting into an altercation with some minor demons on an oddly anachronistic elevator, the group makes its way over towards a so-called 'cocoon', which is believed to be the target of the demonic invasion currently in progress. The demons struck under the cover of a snowstorm, and things are going badly for the local population. Soon the monarch's retinue encounters a wounded red-haired lady who is identified as the 'Sword Princess' Elmina. She tends to the wounds of one of the blond knights, Garrett, whom she's evidently familiar with. Suddenly an axe swings in from nowhere and bisects the nameless third knight in one blow, catching everyone by surprise.
A strange creature then coalesces next to the group - it's difficult to describe, but it is like a large dog-like blob with a golden crown for a face and a few limbs sticking out from under its voluminous white cloak. This is Alhazad, of the fabled demon race of legend, and he is here to demand the thing the inhabitants here call a 'cocoon!'
The dead king's brother is all too happy to immediately give up the treasure in exchange for his life, prostrating himself instantly, much to the horror of his loyal knights. Alhazad vaporizes the sniveling man on the spot, and declares that all he can give in return for the cocoon is a painless death! Coldbird instructs Garrett and Elmina to escape from Arctica Castle so they can let everyone in the world of Filgaia know what has happened here, while he guards the retreat. The two quickly scamper off.
During their escape down a long, long corridor, the pair take a brief moment to catch their breath. Elmina tends to Garrett's wounds, then declares from out of nowhere that Garrett is a bigger coward than she thought. Garrett is obviously taken aback by this, but she goes on to explain that she believes he has no courage - because he's probably already thinking of a way to defeat the demons even now, right? All he'd be doing is throwing his life away! Is that courage? It's hard to admit, but they won't be able to defeat the demons right now, and fighting an unwinnable battle isn't courageous at all in her opinion. Garrett wonders what would be the courageous thing to do, but she doesn't answer him.
The pair run off once more, but Elmina lags behind due to a leg wound. They reach the gate leading to the frigid outside and Garrett runs straight through, but Elmina stops and closes the portcullis while she's still inside, locking him out. Garrett returns to the closed gate and demands to know what the girl is doing, but she explains that she definitely won't make it out due to the severity of her wounds. Garrett reminds her that she just told him that throwing your life away isn't courageous, but Elmina replies that while it's funny for her to say this as the Sword Princess, she's learned that you gain nothing from war. But she now fights to protect something important to her - and while she won't gain anything from this sacrifice, she won't lose anything either! Protecting something important is not a waste of your life!
Garrett begs to be let back in, repeatedly demanding that Elmina should open the door so he can help her fight against the demons, but she insists that Garrett must make it to the outside world of Filgaia to warn them of what's happening here. Also, he really shouldn't worry - she has no intention of dying here. She is the Sword Princess, after all! She then tells him that the ribbon she wrapped around his arm while tending to his wounds was very expensive, and she can't die until she gets that back! Talk about your classic cliché lines, huh?
Alhazad shows up once more, relishing in the fact that there are only two humans left alive in this castle. Elmina brandishes her sword and sets herself in between the demon and Garrett, yelling at her friend that he must have courage, now - he must deliver the Fenril spirit to their friends! He should run! He can overcome anything! Garrett tearfully promises to return her ribbon to her, then takes off. Alhazad then drives Elmina into a corner and giggles to himself about how noble and beautiful she is, and how his body is trembling with joy… (Ew.) Outside we see Garrett run away from the castle until he falls down into the snow and the screen fades to white.
There's one last glimpse of the hall where Alhazad first appeared, and this time the demon is present alongside another of his kind, one who is shaped like a super-sized traditional knight with a purple cloak. The camera pans up from where that earlier scene took place to reveal that they were standing right next to a strange object - a cocoon - attached to the walls by wires or webs, a strange pulsating blob of white and purple matter resembling a huge egg sac…
So... the game doesn't take long to reveal two things: firstly, that its localization is spotty (as was customary at the time, even for major titles) and that the themes are going to be hammered into our skull with all the subtlety of a brick to the face. Mr. Garrett over here is set up with the theme of 'courage', it appears, given that Elmina denounces his apparent inclination towards a suicidal charge of vengeance and basically pushes him out the door to get stronger and find his reason for fighting. More generally, I think we can assume this introduction introduces some of our major villains - Alhazad is a creepy inhuman creature, but a humanoid figure is shown towards the end, so I assume that the demons of this setting are more varied in appearance...
With that bit of mystery seeded, let's get into the actual game. There's immediately a choice to make - character selection! In a move that may well have been adapted from Final Fantasy VI, you can pick whichever one of the three starting scenarios you want to play and in what order, though you'll want to do them all before getting too much further in the game, just to get the party rolling. This game doesn't have a huge cast, so I won't be switching out my party - three main party members is what you're going to get, at least in this first entry of the series. These three people are a wandering blue-haired anime youth, a roguish treasure hunter with a furry pet, and a mysterious girl from an abbey with a wild streak. Luke, Han, and Leia archetypes, in other words. Time to saddle up!
The Luke vibes are heavy on the ground as we open up with a literal farmboy hero who just finished stacking barrels. He was hired at the recommendation of Mayor Pifer. I'll stick with his default name: this is Rudy. The farmer pays me for my hard work with a healing berry, then tells me to head over to the Mayor for more work. Before that, I have a look around town - I toss some conspicuous boxes around and find my first loot, a Hardy Apple, which raises the user's defenses a bit. There are a few different kinds of these apples which allow you to buff the characters along the way, though equipment generally has a more pronounced effect. After a boy called Tony annoys me by being a little shit, a nearby farmhand explains that there were once powerful berries called Holy Berries in a cave down south, but the last seed was used to kill a monster, so there's none left!
I ask for more information about that, and I get the full story - long ago a monster prevented the villagers of Surf from collecting berries from that cave, apparently their main export. They hired many bounty hunters to take it out, but it kept coming back to life over and over again. Everyone began to give up until one of the bounty hunters had a brilliant idea - to plant a Holy Berry seed inside the monster while it was regenerating. The berry sprouted and, sure enough, sealed the beast with its magic. Nobody really believes that story anymore though, it's considered a fairy tale. Unfortunately this is a JRPG, so naturally every single legend is entirely true (and god is probably evil.)
A boy near a well explains that every year the water gets a little lower than the last. Not too many people know this, but he's heard that the world is coming to an end, so this must be an OMEN! Another guy informs me that the village used to be livelier when there was still an active berry trade, but times are harsh now. Also, he's heard that there's a city holding a festival to the south, and he wants to go… I'm guessing that's going to be a Chrono Trigger-style mini-game festival, later? Gotta hit all the classic tropes! There's also a mention of the legendary outlaw Calamity Jane - stories of her battles are famous! She's probably very beautiful…
While scouring the village for petty cash I learn that Rudy is an orphan, as well as a silent protagonist - as was the style at the time. The implication is that he does actually speak to people, but we just don't get to read his lines. Oddly, this applies to Mr. Blue Hair alone, not the other two protagonists. This game is having its cake and eating it too, I suppose? I quickly head upstairs in the mayor's house, the largest building in town, and here I should briefly comment on screen transitions in this game - they're smooth as butter. Unlike a lot of games where you have loading screens at every door and staircase, different levels of the buildings just reveal themselves as required here, overlaying themselves automatically, so barring transitions to entirely separate maps like the world map or new floors of dungeons, everything flows together seamlessly. It looks pretty snazzy. Anyway, the mayor compliments me on my work, then rewards me… with infinite bombs. Wat.
Yeah, seriously. The mayor explains that what he's giving me is actually an artifact he dug up while exploring ancient ruins, which I might find handy. These bombs are powerful enough to destroy most small objects, some large objects, and large chunks of weakened walls, and they never run out. In the good old days he used those bombs to clear out debris at the southern cave, but there's no need for them now that the berries are gone. The world is fading, he laments, and the village is starting to feel the impact. This new [Bomb] is the first of a number of specialized tools that the three main characters will receive in this game, essentially Zelda-style world traversal upgrades you can unleash with a single button press. Switching between them can be done whenever, though right now there's only one option to choose from. Each character gets three or four of them, and you can easily change them out whenever you want with a button press. It's neat!
I try to leave so I can explore the much-discussed berry cave, only for a rude asshole to run me over on the stairs with urgent news for the mayor. Apparently a child from the village has gone into the Berry Cave! Convenient, that. The Mayor laments that there's not much they can do since the cave is verboten, then says that he'll have to talk to the townsfolk about this situation, and also asks for it to be kept quiet. Uh, there's like ten people living around here or something, who exactly are you keeping it quiet from? Either way, I head out to do some life-saving with my newly obtained bombs! They basically work like Bomberman ones, you drop them at your feet and they take a few moments to detonate. Luckily they don't really do anything to other people or yourself, and the only things they blow up in town are the fragile boxes I could toss around already. Meh.
I head down a short distance towards the nearby cave and find a guy there who says that a kid got past him - nobody's allowed inside, so what is he to do? Eat my dust, guy! Inside the cave, I immediately run into a so-called Balloon, and it's… well, basically a semi-spherical ball of screaming red souls surrounded by bloody tentacles. Joy. Apparently this thing is in basically every Wild Arms game? Sorry, man, you're not as evocative an enemy as a Slime from Dragon Quest or a Bomb from Final Fantasy…
More importantly, this is my first look at the combat screen and the battle model for Rudy - which is just entertainingly comical in its adorableness. He straight up looks like a chibi action figure of himself, with an oversized head and big elongated dots for eyes. In combat he can hit things with his sword… or pull out his ace weapon - his ARM! Rudy's special trick to deal with this weird fantasy universe is, naturally, to pull out a freaking handgun! Rudy's packing heat! His gun only has eight bullets at the moment, but it's a big old hand cannon which deals a ton of damage, so that's no real problem…
Combat in this game is mostly just a stock JRPG of the era, where you get experience and money at the end (with 'gella' being the currency.) You also have a bar called 'Force' which fills up as turns pass, as you attack, and when you get attacked - Limit Break style. If you reach a full four levels of Force you will get 'Condition Green' which eliminates any bad status effects that character currently has (but it doesn't restore HP or MP.) Every character slowly unlocks four skills across the game which are paid for with increasing amounts of Force - 1 to 4, naturally. Rudy's current skill is a lock-on which ensures that his next gunshot has 100% accuracy (and it might also power it up some, it seems like?) You get new ones via various in-story events, so I don't think you can really miss them, barring one optional sidequest reward.
This first dungeon is pretty simplistic, and reflects some of what we can expect from all of them - elementary switch/block-pushing puzzles galore.
There's also long paths which you can't sprint down lest you run into nasty bats. Sprinting in this game basically locks you into a direction until you bonk off objects in your path and get knocked on your ass, so maneuvering quickly is a bit of a slip and slide affair where you have to manage your momentum if you want to turn, and you can't just stop on a dime. Yes, falling off edges like in Zelda is a risk, though you do respawn somewhere close. The bats can spread a [Bad Omen] status effect which increases your encounter rate, making it even more of a nuisance to get through, so it's best to keep things slow. There's a Holy Symbol in a chest nearby to cure that status effect, just in case you got afflicted. I soon get to a save point - for some reason it's a Star of David - as well as a chest containing a Bullet Clip, which will refill my gun even if I'm not in town to do it for some petty cash. Handy!
I soon find the lost boy I'm looking for - Tony, the snot-nosed brat from the beginning. He explains that he came here to look for berries for his father, who's quite ill, and that these berries can be found on the other side of a nearby blocked passage. He knows it's not safe in here, but he needs to get those berries! He recognizes me as a Dream Chaser and asks if I can move the boulders. Some quick bombing later - these things pack a punch, contextually - I get into a partially submerged cave area where I pick up a Bandanna, my first piece of equipment. I also find a large glowing monolith with a spooky eye and an inscription, faintly glittering berries growing at its base. That's not concerning at all, I'm sure.
The moment I grab those berries, my control is taken away - Tony rushes in to thank me for my help and declares that with these berries his father can be healed, then he drags me back to the entrance of the mini-dungeon. The camera lingers on the monolith, however, which begins to crack from base to top, its spectral glow fading away. At the same time there's a violent tremor, an earthquake, and the camera pans out over the world map, highlighting a castle to the south, a bridge, and an abbey even further south, all of which experience this violent disturbance… Crap, did I just doom the world by accident? I did, didn't I?
Rudy and Tony return to the entrance to the Berry Cave, where the entire population of Surf seems to have gathered to meet them. Tony's mom tells her son off for always causing so much trouble, but after some bickering from various townspeople the Mayor decides that since Tony's safe, that's all that really matters - it's time to go home. Everyone goes to leave, until there's suddenly an awful noise from deeper within the cave, and a monstrous creature jumps out to attack the group. It's enormous and has glowing red eyes… It's our tutorial boss battle!
[Boss: Zombie]
The Zombie is the first boss of the game, and it honestly looks neat - it's more like a strange minotaur than the classic zombie like the name would suggest, with huge horns and spikes sticking out of it, as well as skeletal-looking limbs tipped with claws. For lack of better options I start unloading my gun into the thing, using the lock-on power whenever possible since normal hits are only about 85% accurate and I'd hate to waste my limited supply of bullets. Every few turns I'm forced to use a healing item, but that's fine. The most dangerous thing here is the Zombie's Rotten Breath attack, which has a chance to inflict the all too familiar poison status effect, but I manage to avoid that fate.
After reducing the monster to nothing, it seems that's not enough, as it begins regenerating like the stories claimed it could. Rudy quickly pitches the Holy Berry he retrieved from the monolith towards the boss, thereby preventing its resuscitation just like in the legend. Seems like when I took that from the monolith earlier, it was actually the exact same berry that was used in ancient times to lock this creature down there in the first place. Whoops!
Tony is happy about my victory, but the rest of the village isn't quite so pleased. The earthquake caused by the seal breaking did a lot of damage to the town, and Rudy flaunted his possession of the forbidden power of [ARM] by shooting the zombie with his big gun in front of everyone, so he gets shat on for that apparently great sin too. The Dream Chaser has cursed them all!
The Mayor thanks Rudy for saving Tony, but follows it up by reminding him that he opened the forbidden path and put everyone in danger in the first place. On top of those grave sins, there's also his possession of an ARM! He tells me I'll be judged for these misdeeds according to village law, and asks if I agree. Regardless of my answer I end up back in town, on the second floor of the Mayor's house, staring out the window while the people of the town discuss my fate a floor below. I'm able to overhear them, though, and it doesn't sound promising.
The elders soon come to their conclusion - I will be asked to leave town. Since the Mayor took me in after my parents passed, he says he'll inform me of their decision. When he gets to my position, he deduces that I was eavesdropping, so I should already know what's been decided - I'll have to start packing my bags to leave, and I shouldn't come back. My actions have brought chaos to this village, and if I have any conscience at all, I'll leave them to their peace!
I make one last round of the village, and it's discouraging - everyone's gotten quite xenophobic due to the perceived untrustworthiness of Dream Chasers which Rudy demonstrated, and some won't talk to the 'criminal' at all, or tell me to take responsibility for the mess I made. Only Tony's family is on my side, thanking me for saving their kid - the dad apologizes profusely, since his own injuries led to all of this in the first place. Tony himself catches up to me as I go to the edge of town, and he says that he should be the one who gets the blame, not me. He knows I did the right thing, and that the village is wrong… and he's terribly sorry for everything.
The screen fades to grayscale as the opening text crawl returns, declaring that even though Rudy used his skill to protect them, the people of Surf rejected him out of fear. Within him is a power he never asked for… the skill to use the forbidden ARMs. He still wanders the world in search of his soul… unaware of his inborn power! Well, he's a protagonist in a classic Japanese RPG, what else did you really expect?
Much like the intro to the game, the introduction of Rudy gives its own share of new questions - like the nature of the ARMs. It seems that even possessing a gun is considered forbidden, and it does seem pretty anachronistic in this fantasy medieval setting of scarcity and limited means. It's also consistently capitalized like that, suggesting it's a proper noun situation, like FF7's SOLDIER or WEAPON. The final text crawl suggest this is some sort of secret inborn power, the ability to use guns, so perhaps this is a DNA lock type of situation? This world comes off as kind of post-apocalyptic, so maybe these guns are weapons from the before-times? Rudy dug up an old footlocker from before the nukes fell?
Of course, if ARMs are that, then what does that say about the Mayor? Didn't he mention he dug up the infinite bombs in an ancient ruin? Did he give me some ARMs, then immediately turn around and banish me for using them? What a dick!
Next time: let's see what our other protagonists are up to, shall we?
This thread surely wasn't inspired whatsoever by that other one by Omicron, chronicling all of Final Fantasy - that would be silly. I'll eventually get back to my LOTRO playthrough (I took a hiatus on that for a while) but there's plenty of other games of a less massively multiplayer nature that I'm interested in, and writing out what I'm doing tends to help me in experiencing it more fully than just hitting buttons to make things go by faster... so having a thread to put my LP stuff seemed useful. For reasons that have nothing to do with getting a new rig which permits me to play a broader range of games than before, including ones on old consoles (through means best left unmentioned), I've been catching up on games I missed. And RPGs were always my favorites.
For the most part, I'll probably focus more on the story, setting, and lore than the mechanical specifics - I've been known to cheat my way past difficult bosses in the past because I'm far less interested in tedium and proving my mettle than just having fun. I'll note down if I actually needed to do that, though, heh.
Instead of stepping on Omicron's toes, I wanna focus in on some games that I played very little of when they came out, or only saw advertised but never tried. Games like those card-based RPGs on the GameCube, Baten Kaitos, or Skies of Arcadia, or the Shadow Hearts series, or that space RPG... Rogue Galaxy? Anyway, I'm sure there's dozens of others I'm forgetting here - I've only played like one Tales game, for example. I'm starting here with Wild Arms, mostly because I remember the box art, and it had a Western theme going on, which seemed neat. It got no less than four sequels and some spinoffs, so there must be something there worth looking into...
LP 1: Wild Arms
LP 2: Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Wild Arms was made by the Japanese company Media.Vision which was also responsible for the Chaos Rings and Valkyria Chronicles series, several portable entries in the Shining series, and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth. Not bad! It was originally released in Japan in 1996 for the original PlayStation, and was later localized and released in North America in 1997 and Europe in 1998. The game is 2D for its normal gameplay, but the combat takes place in three dimensions - though those graphics are rudimentary. Wild Arms' release was overshadowed by hype for the upcoming Final Fantasy VII, but it was still a critical and commercial success, so it got a slew of sequels on the PSX and PS2 over the next decade, including an enhanced remake of the original. I'll be playing the OG here, since it's generally better-regarded and the remake apparently retconned in elements of its sequels.
Prologue - The Fall of Arctica
Before even pressing Start, there's a scene which plays if you just stick around on the title screen for a little while - it's sometimes referred to as a 'hidden scene' if you look it up online. It takes place in a spooky castle in an icy wasteland, with glittering snowflakes descending from above. Several armed men make their way down the castle's passages surrounding a figure in white robes, the brother of a king who has recently died and thus the new monarch. His protectors are revealed to be a trio of Fenril knights sworn to protect him, with the dark-haired guard as their leader, a Chief Coldbird. ('Fenril' here is a translator's mangled take on 'Fenrir', the great wolf from Norse mythology. Expect many language foibles.)After getting into an altercation with some minor demons on an oddly anachronistic elevator, the group makes its way over towards a so-called 'cocoon', which is believed to be the target of the demonic invasion currently in progress. The demons struck under the cover of a snowstorm, and things are going badly for the local population. Soon the monarch's retinue encounters a wounded red-haired lady who is identified as the 'Sword Princess' Elmina. She tends to the wounds of one of the blond knights, Garrett, whom she's evidently familiar with. Suddenly an axe swings in from nowhere and bisects the nameless third knight in one blow, catching everyone by surprise.
A strange creature then coalesces next to the group - it's difficult to describe, but it is like a large dog-like blob with a golden crown for a face and a few limbs sticking out from under its voluminous white cloak. This is Alhazad, of the fabled demon race of legend, and he is here to demand the thing the inhabitants here call a 'cocoon!'
The dead king's brother is all too happy to immediately give up the treasure in exchange for his life, prostrating himself instantly, much to the horror of his loyal knights. Alhazad vaporizes the sniveling man on the spot, and declares that all he can give in return for the cocoon is a painless death! Coldbird instructs Garrett and Elmina to escape from Arctica Castle so they can let everyone in the world of Filgaia know what has happened here, while he guards the retreat. The two quickly scamper off.
During their escape down a long, long corridor, the pair take a brief moment to catch their breath. Elmina tends to Garrett's wounds, then declares from out of nowhere that Garrett is a bigger coward than she thought. Garrett is obviously taken aback by this, but she goes on to explain that she believes he has no courage - because he's probably already thinking of a way to defeat the demons even now, right? All he'd be doing is throwing his life away! Is that courage? It's hard to admit, but they won't be able to defeat the demons right now, and fighting an unwinnable battle isn't courageous at all in her opinion. Garrett wonders what would be the courageous thing to do, but she doesn't answer him.
The pair run off once more, but Elmina lags behind due to a leg wound. They reach the gate leading to the frigid outside and Garrett runs straight through, but Elmina stops and closes the portcullis while she's still inside, locking him out. Garrett returns to the closed gate and demands to know what the girl is doing, but she explains that she definitely won't make it out due to the severity of her wounds. Garrett reminds her that she just told him that throwing your life away isn't courageous, but Elmina replies that while it's funny for her to say this as the Sword Princess, she's learned that you gain nothing from war. But she now fights to protect something important to her - and while she won't gain anything from this sacrifice, she won't lose anything either! Protecting something important is not a waste of your life!
Garrett begs to be let back in, repeatedly demanding that Elmina should open the door so he can help her fight against the demons, but she insists that Garrett must make it to the outside world of Filgaia to warn them of what's happening here. Also, he really shouldn't worry - she has no intention of dying here. She is the Sword Princess, after all! She then tells him that the ribbon she wrapped around his arm while tending to his wounds was very expensive, and she can't die until she gets that back! Talk about your classic cliché lines, huh?
Alhazad shows up once more, relishing in the fact that there are only two humans left alive in this castle. Elmina brandishes her sword and sets herself in between the demon and Garrett, yelling at her friend that he must have courage, now - he must deliver the Fenril spirit to their friends! He should run! He can overcome anything! Garrett tearfully promises to return her ribbon to her, then takes off. Alhazad then drives Elmina into a corner and giggles to himself about how noble and beautiful she is, and how his body is trembling with joy… (Ew.) Outside we see Garrett run away from the castle until he falls down into the snow and the screen fades to white.
There's one last glimpse of the hall where Alhazad first appeared, and this time the demon is present alongside another of his kind, one who is shaped like a super-sized traditional knight with a purple cloak. The camera pans up from where that earlier scene took place to reveal that they were standing right next to a strange object - a cocoon - attached to the walls by wires or webs, a strange pulsating blob of white and purple matter resembling a huge egg sac…
The inset shows the two demons (or demon and big-ass knight) watching.
So... the game doesn't take long to reveal two things: firstly, that its localization is spotty (as was customary at the time, even for major titles) and that the themes are going to be hammered into our skull with all the subtlety of a brick to the face. Mr. Garrett over here is set up with the theme of 'courage', it appears, given that Elmina denounces his apparent inclination towards a suicidal charge of vengeance and basically pushes him out the door to get stronger and find his reason for fighting. More generally, I think we can assume this introduction introduces some of our major villains - Alhazad is a creepy inhuman creature, but a humanoid figure is shown towards the end, so I assume that the demons of this setting are more varied in appearance...
With that bit of mystery seeded, let's get into the actual game. There's immediately a choice to make - character selection! In a move that may well have been adapted from Final Fantasy VI, you can pick whichever one of the three starting scenarios you want to play and in what order, though you'll want to do them all before getting too much further in the game, just to get the party rolling. This game doesn't have a huge cast, so I won't be switching out my party - three main party members is what you're going to get, at least in this first entry of the series. These three people are a wandering blue-haired anime youth, a roguish treasure hunter with a furry pet, and a mysterious girl from an abbey with a wild streak. Luke, Han, and Leia archetypes, in other words. Time to saddle up!
Introduction - Rudy
I chose the Classic JRPG Hero™ route first, of course - for one, it's the one that's auto-selected. A text crawl appears over a rustic brown-hued Wild West town, setting the scene - and the depressing reality of this setting. The narrator announces that life is gradually fading from the land. Slowly but surely the destruction of Filgaia continues, as a devastated environment filled with ferocious monsters plagues the people who desperately cling to their suffering world. Huh, this was contemporary with Final Fantasy VII, right? Two dying worlds for the price of one? Anyway, those who dare to venture out are called [Dream Chasers], and there is a boy in the village of Surf - it's hard to believe - who has the potential to become such a Dream Chaser. What does he seek?The Luke vibes are heavy on the ground as we open up with a literal farmboy hero who just finished stacking barrels. He was hired at the recommendation of Mayor Pifer. I'll stick with his default name: this is Rudy. The farmer pays me for my hard work with a healing berry, then tells me to head over to the Mayor for more work. Before that, I have a look around town - I toss some conspicuous boxes around and find my first loot, a Hardy Apple, which raises the user's defenses a bit. There are a few different kinds of these apples which allow you to buff the characters along the way, though equipment generally has a more pronounced effect. After a boy called Tony annoys me by being a little shit, a nearby farmhand explains that there were once powerful berries called Holy Berries in a cave down south, but the last seed was used to kill a monster, so there's none left!
I ask for more information about that, and I get the full story - long ago a monster prevented the villagers of Surf from collecting berries from that cave, apparently their main export. They hired many bounty hunters to take it out, but it kept coming back to life over and over again. Everyone began to give up until one of the bounty hunters had a brilliant idea - to plant a Holy Berry seed inside the monster while it was regenerating. The berry sprouted and, sure enough, sealed the beast with its magic. Nobody really believes that story anymore though, it's considered a fairy tale. Unfortunately this is a JRPG, so naturally every single legend is entirely true (and god is probably evil.)
A boy near a well explains that every year the water gets a little lower than the last. Not too many people know this, but he's heard that the world is coming to an end, so this must be an OMEN! Another guy informs me that the village used to be livelier when there was still an active berry trade, but times are harsh now. Also, he's heard that there's a city holding a festival to the south, and he wants to go… I'm guessing that's going to be a Chrono Trigger-style mini-game festival, later? Gotta hit all the classic tropes! There's also a mention of the legendary outlaw Calamity Jane - stories of her battles are famous! She's probably very beautiful…
While scouring the village for petty cash I learn that Rudy is an orphan, as well as a silent protagonist - as was the style at the time. The implication is that he does actually speak to people, but we just don't get to read his lines. Oddly, this applies to Mr. Blue Hair alone, not the other two protagonists. This game is having its cake and eating it too, I suppose? I quickly head upstairs in the mayor's house, the largest building in town, and here I should briefly comment on screen transitions in this game - they're smooth as butter. Unlike a lot of games where you have loading screens at every door and staircase, different levels of the buildings just reveal themselves as required here, overlaying themselves automatically, so barring transitions to entirely separate maps like the world map or new floors of dungeons, everything flows together seamlessly. It looks pretty snazzy. Anyway, the mayor compliments me on my work, then rewards me… with infinite bombs. Wat.
Yeah, seriously. The mayor explains that what he's giving me is actually an artifact he dug up while exploring ancient ruins, which I might find handy. These bombs are powerful enough to destroy most small objects, some large objects, and large chunks of weakened walls, and they never run out. In the good old days he used those bombs to clear out debris at the southern cave, but there's no need for them now that the berries are gone. The world is fading, he laments, and the village is starting to feel the impact. This new [Bomb] is the first of a number of specialized tools that the three main characters will receive in this game, essentially Zelda-style world traversal upgrades you can unleash with a single button press. Switching between them can be done whenever, though right now there's only one option to choose from. Each character gets three or four of them, and you can easily change them out whenever you want with a button press. It's neat!
I try to leave so I can explore the much-discussed berry cave, only for a rude asshole to run me over on the stairs with urgent news for the mayor. Apparently a child from the village has gone into the Berry Cave! Convenient, that. The Mayor laments that there's not much they can do since the cave is verboten, then says that he'll have to talk to the townsfolk about this situation, and also asks for it to be kept quiet. Uh, there's like ten people living around here or something, who exactly are you keeping it quiet from? Either way, I head out to do some life-saving with my newly obtained bombs! They basically work like Bomberman ones, you drop them at your feet and they take a few moments to detonate. Luckily they don't really do anything to other people or yourself, and the only things they blow up in town are the fragile boxes I could toss around already. Meh.
Dungeon: Berry Cave
The world map is fairly barren, as befitting the backstory of Filgaia, but once you get near a point of interest the camera zooms in so you know you're getting somewhere even when there's nothing visible on the actual map.
I head down a short distance towards the nearby cave and find a guy there who says that a kid got past him - nobody's allowed inside, so what is he to do? Eat my dust, guy! Inside the cave, I immediately run into a so-called Balloon, and it's… well, basically a semi-spherical ball of screaming red souls surrounded by bloody tentacles. Joy. Apparently this thing is in basically every Wild Arms game? Sorry, man, you're not as evocative an enemy as a Slime from Dragon Quest or a Bomb from Final Fantasy…
Nice.
More importantly, this is my first look at the combat screen and the battle model for Rudy - which is just entertainingly comical in its adorableness. He straight up looks like a chibi action figure of himself, with an oversized head and big elongated dots for eyes. In combat he can hit things with his sword… or pull out his ace weapon - his ARM! Rudy's special trick to deal with this weird fantasy universe is, naturally, to pull out a freaking handgun! Rudy's packing heat! His gun only has eight bullets at the moment, but it's a big old hand cannon which deals a ton of damage, so that's no real problem…
Combat in this game is mostly just a stock JRPG of the era, where you get experience and money at the end (with 'gella' being the currency.) You also have a bar called 'Force' which fills up as turns pass, as you attack, and when you get attacked - Limit Break style. If you reach a full four levels of Force you will get 'Condition Green' which eliminates any bad status effects that character currently has (but it doesn't restore HP or MP.) Every character slowly unlocks four skills across the game which are paid for with increasing amounts of Force - 1 to 4, naturally. Rudy's current skill is a lock-on which ensures that his next gunshot has 100% accuracy (and it might also power it up some, it seems like?) You get new ones via various in-story events, so I don't think you can really miss them, barring one optional sidequest reward.
This first dungeon is pretty simplistic, and reflects some of what we can expect from all of them - elementary switch/block-pushing puzzles galore.
There's also long paths which you can't sprint down lest you run into nasty bats. Sprinting in this game basically locks you into a direction until you bonk off objects in your path and get knocked on your ass, so maneuvering quickly is a bit of a slip and slide affair where you have to manage your momentum if you want to turn, and you can't just stop on a dime. Yes, falling off edges like in Zelda is a risk, though you do respawn somewhere close. The bats can spread a [Bad Omen] status effect which increases your encounter rate, making it even more of a nuisance to get through, so it's best to keep things slow. There's a Holy Symbol in a chest nearby to cure that status effect, just in case you got afflicted. I soon get to a save point - for some reason it's a Star of David - as well as a chest containing a Bullet Clip, which will refill my gun even if I'm not in town to do it for some petty cash. Handy!
I soon find the lost boy I'm looking for - Tony, the snot-nosed brat from the beginning. He explains that he came here to look for berries for his father, who's quite ill, and that these berries can be found on the other side of a nearby blocked passage. He knows it's not safe in here, but he needs to get those berries! He recognizes me as a Dream Chaser and asks if I can move the boulders. Some quick bombing later - these things pack a punch, contextually - I get into a partially submerged cave area where I pick up a Bandanna, my first piece of equipment. I also find a large glowing monolith with a spooky eye and an inscription, faintly glittering berries growing at its base. That's not concerning at all, I'm sure.
The moment I grab those berries, my control is taken away - Tony rushes in to thank me for my help and declares that with these berries his father can be healed, then he drags me back to the entrance of the mini-dungeon. The camera lingers on the monolith, however, which begins to crack from base to top, its spectral glow fading away. At the same time there's a violent tremor, an earthquake, and the camera pans out over the world map, highlighting a castle to the south, a bridge, and an abbey even further south, all of which experience this violent disturbance… Crap, did I just doom the world by accident? I did, didn't I?
Rudy and Tony return to the entrance to the Berry Cave, where the entire population of Surf seems to have gathered to meet them. Tony's mom tells her son off for always causing so much trouble, but after some bickering from various townspeople the Mayor decides that since Tony's safe, that's all that really matters - it's time to go home. Everyone goes to leave, until there's suddenly an awful noise from deeper within the cave, and a monstrous creature jumps out to attack the group. It's enormous and has glowing red eyes… It's our tutorial boss battle!
[Boss: Zombie]
The Zombie is the first boss of the game, and it honestly looks neat - it's more like a strange minotaur than the classic zombie like the name would suggest, with huge horns and spikes sticking out of it, as well as skeletal-looking limbs tipped with claws. For lack of better options I start unloading my gun into the thing, using the lock-on power whenever possible since normal hits are only about 85% accurate and I'd hate to waste my limited supply of bullets. Every few turns I'm forced to use a healing item, but that's fine. The most dangerous thing here is the Zombie's Rotten Breath attack, which has a chance to inflict the all too familiar poison status effect, but I manage to avoid that fate.
After reducing the monster to nothing, it seems that's not enough, as it begins regenerating like the stories claimed it could. Rudy quickly pitches the Holy Berry he retrieved from the monolith towards the boss, thereby preventing its resuscitation just like in the legend. Seems like when I took that from the monolith earlier, it was actually the exact same berry that was used in ancient times to lock this creature down there in the first place. Whoops!
Tony is happy about my victory, but the rest of the village isn't quite so pleased. The earthquake caused by the seal breaking did a lot of damage to the town, and Rudy flaunted his possession of the forbidden power of [ARM] by shooting the zombie with his big gun in front of everyone, so he gets shat on for that apparently great sin too. The Dream Chaser has cursed them all!
The Mayor thanks Rudy for saving Tony, but follows it up by reminding him that he opened the forbidden path and put everyone in danger in the first place. On top of those grave sins, there's also his possession of an ARM! He tells me I'll be judged for these misdeeds according to village law, and asks if I agree. Regardless of my answer I end up back in town, on the second floor of the Mayor's house, staring out the window while the people of the town discuss my fate a floor below. I'm able to overhear them, though, and it doesn't sound promising.
The elders soon come to their conclusion - I will be asked to leave town. Since the Mayor took me in after my parents passed, he says he'll inform me of their decision. When he gets to my position, he deduces that I was eavesdropping, so I should already know what's been decided - I'll have to start packing my bags to leave, and I shouldn't come back. My actions have brought chaos to this village, and if I have any conscience at all, I'll leave them to their peace!
I make one last round of the village, and it's discouraging - everyone's gotten quite xenophobic due to the perceived untrustworthiness of Dream Chasers which Rudy demonstrated, and some won't talk to the 'criminal' at all, or tell me to take responsibility for the mess I made. Only Tony's family is on my side, thanking me for saving their kid - the dad apologizes profusely, since his own injuries led to all of this in the first place. Tony himself catches up to me as I go to the edge of town, and he says that he should be the one who gets the blame, not me. He knows I did the right thing, and that the village is wrong… and he's terribly sorry for everything.
The screen fades to grayscale as the opening text crawl returns, declaring that even though Rudy used his skill to protect them, the people of Surf rejected him out of fear. Within him is a power he never asked for… the skill to use the forbidden ARMs. He still wanders the world in search of his soul… unaware of his inborn power! Well, he's a protagonist in a classic Japanese RPG, what else did you really expect?
Much like the intro to the game, the introduction of Rudy gives its own share of new questions - like the nature of the ARMs. It seems that even possessing a gun is considered forbidden, and it does seem pretty anachronistic in this fantasy medieval setting of scarcity and limited means. It's also consistently capitalized like that, suggesting it's a proper noun situation, like FF7's SOLDIER or WEAPON. The final text crawl suggest this is some sort of secret inborn power, the ability to use guns, so perhaps this is a DNA lock type of situation? This world comes off as kind of post-apocalyptic, so maybe these guns are weapons from the before-times? Rudy dug up an old footlocker from before the nukes fell?
Of course, if ARMs are that, then what does that say about the Mayor? Didn't he mention he dug up the infinite bombs in an ancient ruin? Did he give me some ARMs, then immediately turn around and banish me for using them? What a dick!
Next time: let's see what our other protagonists are up to, shall we?
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