Why Wild ARMs is not as Good as a Square Game

by Jonathan Weng 

Many months ago, about six weeks prior to the release of Final Fantasy 7, I began to get bored. It wasn't since Chrono Trigger that I played a new RPG. I tried to solve this problem by purchasing Wild ARMs, which I thought might be a pretty good game. I played it for a while and started to rank it up among Square's masterpieces. I thought it was great. It was after I finished the game, however, that I started playing Square games again. I quickly realized what a fool I was to ever think that Wild ARMs was so good. I realized many reasons for which I now think Wild ARMs ranks many miles below any game that Square ever made. There are four primary reasons.

The first main reason why Square games rank so high is because of their originality, which is something that Wild ARMs sadly lacked. Every Square RPG has a new innovation that sets it above the rest. Wild ARMs had none. In fact, almost everything in the game seemed to me like a cheap Square imitation. The Guardians bear an uncanny resemblance to espers, the Ruin Festival was a total spin-off of the Millenial Fair, and the story was merely that of FF6 with a few name changes. The war with the Metal Demons was almost exactly like the War of the Magi. To prove this point, let's look at a few excerpts from both games. First, an excerpt from the instruction manual of Wild ARMs:

Even though the war to save Filgaia was won, the planet suffered terribly during the battle. Shortly after the war, plants began to disappear one by one until most of the grassland were nothing more than desert wastelands.

Now, from Final Fantasy III (6 in Japan):

Long ago, the War of the Magi reduced the world to a scorched wasteland, and magic simply ceased to exist.

Next, from Wild ARMs' instruction manual once again:

Now, 1000 years later, the war is but a memory, and slowly a new civilization is rising from the ashes.

From Final Fantasy III:

1000 years have passed... Iron, gunpowder, and steam engines have been rediscovered, and high technology reigns...

Clearly, both wars are similar. Too similar not to arouse suspicion. In both cases, 1000 years later (what a coincidence that Wild ARMs chose the same time span) a forgotten threat is coming back to haunt the world. Final Fantasy, having come first, is obviously more original.

The second main reason why Square games rank above Wild ARMs is the characters. Every Square character has a unique background, as does every Wild ARMs character. However, Wild ARMs characters seriously lack in numbers (even Dragon Warrior 2 had 3 characters) and were drawn with heads the size of watermelons. People in the game are walking candy apples. Polygons jut out at unsightly angles, drawn and animated far worse than the smooth flowing characters of Final Fantasy VII. Every character landed in your party and stayed there: there were no transactions, no places in the story where characters left to come back elsewhere, and no characters that joined briefly to give a new face to enjoy for a while.

The third reason for which Square ranks above Wild ARMs is the battle system. Square divises a new and unique system with every game which makes it unique and exciting. Wild ARMs has the most basic battle system imaginable. You attack the enemy with your moves, and the enemy attacks you with his. There's nothing to it. There are no limit breaks, no double and triple techs, and no special factors, such as espers, that help give your characters unique abilities of your own liking. [Ed: Actually, force gauges and guardian summoning are factors in Wild ARMs' battle system, paralleling FFVII's limit breaks and summon materia.] Wild ARMs doesn't have active time battles, which are essential for exciting battles. I see no reason which any new RPGs should still be made without active time battles. Equal speed, my-turn-your-turn battles are simply outdated and inferior, not to mention unrealistic. Bosses are simple, as you can act three times for their every one. Without active time, you can sit and wait, sleep, and eat, and the enemies will simply wait for you to move. It's just stupid.

The fourth and final primary reason which Square outranks Wild ARMs is Nobuo Uematsu. Sure, Wild ARMs has a good soundtrack, but nobody beats Nobuo. This is the only factor that the producers of Wild ARMs were completely helpless against. This is the only one which wasn't their fault.

Thinking back to the time when I was playing Wild ARMs, I don't even know how I could dare rank it among Square's masterpieces. Perhaps it was just that I had been starved from a new RPG for so long that anything seemed good. Anyway, having recovered my consciousness, I went back to playing Square games only. Playing an old Square game gives me a feeling like meeting an old friend. Playing Wild ARMs doesn't.