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Wild ARMs in all their Wild Glory

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Maxfield Slingerland
FAN EDITORIALIST

Wild ARMs is that other little series that could, assuming 'could' implies a Final Fantasy-esque all-the-same-but-different style of storytelling. While my experience with the series has been limited to playing 3 and 4 and helping translate 5 (officially mind you, I was interning for the Tokyo branch of INTAC at the time) There are themes that come up every single time.

This might seem like a bad thing, but as someone trying to win a copy of the game, and who has already admitted to playing two of them, as well as compare this to the RPG juggernaut that is Final Fantasy, one can easily surmise that such is not the case. In fact, I would go as far to say that I rather enjoy it. It gives a sense of solidarity to the world and the timelines, while at the same time affording the creative team a great deal of flexibility.

Allow me to come up with some examples: Same dying-desert world, same Western theme, characters with Guns (whether or not everyone has guns though, changes from game to game), and you usual Joseph Campbell story line. Granted, nearly every single JRPG, and a great many American RPGs can be summed up by J. Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" so we'll let that last point slide.

So what is the importance of this kind of story-telling? For one, it detracts nothing from the new player. They can react to everything as if it was new, and since the timelines of the arguably different Filgaia(s) and the different characters (at least in name. We'll shuffle the type casting under the rug here) prevent playing the previous games a requirement to understand the recent ones. *cough* I'm looking at you, Chrono Cross *cough*

However, if a player has played a previous Wild Arms game, then all the little nuggets of nostalgia come back, much like an intoxicated college student staring at the chicken nugget happy meal he ordered via a drunken slur of speech. Although Wild Arms games tend to induce a lot less vomiting.

Basically, Wild Arms has been a fun experience for me. And this three-fourths editorial and two-fifths review has done nothing but make me want to play the newest installment on the PSP. Also, my PSP seems so lonely these days, I just can't help but feel bad for it.