Niahak's Place

I beat Wild Arms 5, and I have to say – of all the games on the PS2, it has the second worst plot I’ve seen.   The first goes to Wild Arms 4 – whereas in WA5, it is implied throughout that children are the future, adults are stuck in their ways and stupid, and that you can do anything if you’re a kid and you don’t give up (or, in Greg’s case, if you fall in with a bunch of kids and don’t give up)… in WA4 it is pretty much outright stated.

I still like 2 of the characters in WA5, and 3 of them in WA4… but seriously.  The first three were a lot more refined in their plotlines.  I’m hoping they ditch this trend in the next one, but that may be an impossible hope.

Last week, and through this weekend, I was playing Azure Dreams, just about the worst game I keep coming back to.  At best, it’s a Nethack clone with more pets and more dating sim.  At worst, it’s… worse?   Anyway, it plays pretty nice, but (as the title implies), as usual I got bored with it in about 15 hours of gameplay.  At that point, you build the casino, netting you all the money you need.  You’ve resolved almost all of the simple plotlines (the next being ~5 floors higher than you’ve gone before), so the game pretty much boils down to finding enough Blue & Red sand to power your gear up while leveling your monsters.

Instead of trying to finish that game, which I doubt I will ever do, I switched over to an oft highly-regarded RPG classic: Skies of Arcadia. 

Wild Arms 5 is still good. Just so you know. Unfortunately, it’s dragging on a bit – right now I’m supposed to destroy some four floozabads or some such, naturally along the path to saving the world from someone who started with a noble goal and descended down the path of evil, thereby proving that children are our future as long as they never give up.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the challenge of the battle system, I like the badge system, and I even like most aspects of the translation. But there’s very little that can save the vile cliche-filled main storyline of this game. Rebecca, Greg and Chuck are all good characters (which puts this game at 1-good-character better than FFXII, IMO) with some interesting sub-plots, and one of the evil characters is pretty cool, but there’s nothing new in the main plot.

I’ve been playing WA5 recently, having beaten P3.

I was skeptical at first.  WA4 was ridiculously easy and horribly short.  (I think the final boss could be beaten in 2-3 rounds, without trying, and the whole game was maybe 20 hours and a bit of change).

WA5 uses the same engine, and has several of the same characteristics (such as an incredibly annoying main character and a more action-based exploration system).   The engine’s hex-based and, also annoyingly, got rid of the Encounter Cancel system from WA2/3/F which made those games so nice.

Yet, somehow, despite the fact that it’s pretty much the same battle system, I’m enjoying it more.  They even got rid of one of the few redeeming features of WA4 (namely the giant character portraits that danced around the screen during plot scenes).  But I’m still liking it; it’s a decently tough game, with a few memorable characters.  Still rather cliched, but the characters are all decently fleshed out.  I’m even finding myself liking Rebecca some, and Greg is pretty much how Jack should’ve been done – a very dark character.  While they both have revenge as their main goal, Jack really doesn’t talk about it – at all – except when he confronts the demons (I think he mentions it twice?).  Sure, he hunts for the “Ultimate Power”, but he doesn’t say what he’s going to do with it much.

Anyway, yeah.  The difficulty level from the first couple games is back.  I don’t like how they did it (namely by making all magic spells cost a hell of a lot), and it’s still unbalanced (you heal HP to full after every battle, and Force moves are way overpowered), but it’s decent.  At this point there are a half-dozen PS2 RPGs I’d recommend over it, but I’m not done with it yet.  This game’s surprised me before and it may well again – and after all, Persona 3 is good at first, but it doesn’t really pick up until almost halfway through.

Other than WA5, I have picked up a copy each of God Hand and Lumines Plus.  GH is good fun – a simple-seeming, tough brawler.  Nothing really deep to it yet, but it takes a lot of skill to make it through.  For example, I continued 15 times in the first set of areas (about 2-3 hours of gameplay), but I *still* got a bonus for the number of continues I’d used.

Lumines Plus is a very soothing game.  All techno and puzzle.  When I start playing it, I find it hard to stop, honestly.  It’s quite immersive, but I haven’t played it a whole lot yet.