Its a damn shame because I can see that they have some interesting game play ideas, the art’s pretty decent and the music is also pretty good.
Are there any Wild ARMs games that really have fun gameplay? WA4 and WA5 looked fun, but I heard they were just so awful! It just seems like a really hard series to get into.
I liked WA4, HATED WA5. VE and Wilfredo had the opposite reaction. Take that whatever way you wish. WA3 was pretty good imo and I’m sure we can all agree its a safe bet. It is, however, pretty fucking long… WA1 and WA2 are somewhat generic RPGs that experiment with different kinds of things, like the style of WA1 and a couple themes in WA2. I haven’t finished WA2 but its not a bad game.
WA2 is a better game in my opinion than WA3. Why? Because at least WA2 nknew how to pace its story. Did it go on a little longer than necessary? Yeah. Disc 1 and the Odessa arc beat the crap out of Disc 2. But there were moments in WA3 when I honestly didn’t know what hte team was really fighting for, when the story wasn’t going anywhere and I was just bored.
It’s really sad actually, because WA3 had the capability of being a really excellent game. Now, it just seems decent. I never beat it and have no desire to play it again.
Back to the topic: There’s a part in FF8 where you have to go Zell’s hometown. Turns out, he wants to go - he has to go with you, actually. I didn’t give a crap about Zell. My party was always Squall, Irvine and Rinoa. So, like an idiot, I pick Rinoa to fill the last slot.
So, here’s the thing. You can’t leave the town. You can’t change you’re party members. You have to fight Fujin and Raijin in back to back battles. Zell is horribly underleveled, Rinoa always functioned as my spellcaster, not my fighter, so the only person who can actually do real damage is Squall. It was just an asinine situation. Once I saved while in the town, I was doomed to do that double battle for days until I lucked out.
Wild ARMs 2 was the only game in the series I ever played. I beat it, but it was years ago. The way I remember it, the story, aesthetic, style, etc. of WA2 was great, but the egregious translation made it hard to enjoy the story, unfortunately. I liked the combat a lot because it doesn’t waste your time, but on the other hand, it was kind of…well, absurdly easy. It’s crazy that in random battles, you can kill enemies in one hit if you’re at the ‘right’ level.
Still, I enjoyed WA2 enough…I’m just thinking like, does it get better than that, anywhere?
WA3’s still a good game. WA4 is interesting, but very linear. I like what they did with it, mostly. They experimented a lot with it and I always give games bonus points for being interestingly different.
WA5 I hate virulently. Imagine a game with a story made by Tri Ace and given WA4’s combat system. That’s WA5. Its generic, filled with shallow stereotypes and fucking embarassing to play through. I just can’t stand the fucking characters. I want to fucking kill every last one of them. If that’s not bad enough, one of the main characters has a diary that she recites like a fucking Big Brother booth solliloquy about her life and what she things about what’s happening, mostly whining that the main male character isn’t noticing her like she wants him to because he has no fucking testicles (its THAT generic anime stereotype again 
:D). Its watching a 15 year old girl whine about how hard her stupid worthless little life is. Oh god…
Alter Code: F was the best of the series, I feel. Awesome gameplay, translation, graphics, music, battle system… I really have very few gripes about that game. Had plenty of stuff you could do otherwise, though not required… and one of the most expressive silent protagonists I’ve ever seen. 1 is still different enough,a nd fun enough, that I enjoy going back to play it as well. 2, as stated, has some good stuff in it, if you can ignore the translation issues. 3 is great, love the characters so much, though the story, I feel, was a chapter too long. 4 and 5… Well, like Sin said, opposite of what he feels like. Loved 5, hate 4 like the plague.
I’ll have to throw my opinion out there in support of WA2 and WA:ACF as well. WA2 might be tops if not for its hilariously bad translation. I always had hoped they would give WA2 the ACF treatment and re-localize it, it could’ve been the best in the series easily then.
I’ve played through WA2 a couple of times, and I think I’ve managed to see through the mess of a script, and there’s some surprisingly insightful parts of the game that look at what it means to be a hero, and when the world should stop relying on a hero. It’s nothing TOO deep or anything, but it’s probably the best of the series. Plus WA2 has some awesome music, the final battle theme in particular is one of my favorite final battle themes ever. It’s an epic, heroic remix of the game’s main theme, it’s great.
ACF essentially adds WA3’s gameplay and style to the original’s plot, with a few other bonuses. I still enjoy both the original and ACF (but I no longer have a PSX, and the original WA seems to have issues running on a PS2). But ACF wins over WA because you get to recruit Zed. That’s all you need to know.
I have heard nothing but good things about ACF but have never played it. I would like to though. Out of curiosity, is the soundtrack entirely new or is it remade? I gotta hand it to the WA series: they really worked out their own style. The games have a lot of music that I like.
It’s mostly redone stuff. Michiko naruke, the composer of the series up until 4, got a chance to go back and redo her earlier stuff with updated technology, and with three games of experience under her belt. And it is one of the best soundtracks for a game I’ve ever heard. if you want, I can hook you up with a few examples of how tracks evolved from 1 to AC:F.
The stuff that is new, are mostly battle themes for all the unique enemies. GOlems get their own theme, as well as each of the 4 quarter knights… well, okay, 5. Boomerang’s theme is fucking awesome. Same with Zed’s theme, and - well, i could go on for ages.
It’s remade. It uses most of the same themes from the first game, but aside from ‘To the End of the Wilderness’ there are no direct ports. And really, if you’re going to directly lift one piece of music from the original and not change it, that’d be it.
The game music nerd in me really enjoys ACF’s music.
There are a few places in the game where the music for an area sounds particularly different than the original, but otherwise all the music is familiar, but still remastered. Some new tracks were added, particularly the battle themes against the demons (each one has their own unique theme now).
My only beef is that Zed’s original theme is absent. He’s given a new one but it’s just not the same. You DO hear a bit of his original theme in the ending, but not during the game. Alas.
ACF has a lot of the features of WA3 as well, like the garden and dimensional puzzle things. As well as a few other playable characters besides the one I mentioned.
The Millenium Puzzles are my favorite part of the WA series. I love logic puzzles, and you don;t get any more simple and traditional than block puzzles. And the fact they are absolutely, 100% optional to do. The fact that you need to complete them to get at least 2 EX File Keys aside.
How’d Courage turn out?
Slower pace, more emphasis on brass/horns and guitar. In short, a bit more epic. You still know it when you hear it.
Hmm, most of the games that I could have commented on were among the first games, after that it’s just games that I haven’t played.
But I’ve got nice one to mention:
Rush n Attack.
… Basically the whole game? Mostly level 2, though. I’ve never made it further than that.
It’s was kinda obscure even when the NES was new, so I’ll give a quick description. 
The game is Contra-ish in that you run through a level filled with insanely stupid enemies that will just walk straight at you to die, and you are apparently made of crystal glass, because anything will kill you in one hit.
Unlike Contra, though, the only weapon you get is a shitty butterknife. You can find some other weapons, but they have extremely limited ammo, and you MUST use it whenever you’re holding it.
That gets really FUN (not fun) at level two when people come rushing at you, and you have to jump and dodge around, and your soldier is the slowest and most unathletic man ever to be accepted into the army, to avoid being hit by bullets fired by assholes in high guardtowers. Best part is, with no ranged weapons in the game what so ever, except the cannon that only fires in a straight line, you can’t kill them. All you can do is run like hell and pray that there won’t be any soldiers running in just as the sniper shoots at you.
If you have to dodge a bullet and kill a soldier at the same time, you’re dead. No way to avoid it.
If you stab the soldier, you get shot. If you jump to dodge the bullet, you can’t hit the soldier because you can only stab straight ahead, and if you’re a little bit too high off the ground you’ll miss, and the soldier will kill you.
Oh, and you can duck, which is even more useless because the guy will lie down, flat on the ground, giving the snipers a wider target to aim for. (Your entire body instead of just the top of your head.)
<strike>…Man, now I feel like playing it again, just to see if I can actually get past lvl 2, now that I’m better at games than I were back then…</strike>
Okay, so I did. Still died at level 2.
Forgot that you CAN use the knife while you hold the cannon. Knife is B, cannon is A, jump is up. Jumping is useless because when you land you’ll be stuck for half a second.
And there are some really fun enemies on the second level. They are smart enough to follow you and hunt you down, instead of just running straight ahead, and they have pistols. The only way to dodge a pistol bullet is to duck. God help you if you meet one of them next to a sniper, or even at the same time as regular soldiers.
Oh, and your hitbox is wonderful. I got shot in the back by a pistol guy in front of me because I stood up a bit to fast. And the knife animation is even better. Whenever you stab someone, your stupid slow-ass soldier will throw his other arm out behind him, doubling the size of his hitbox.
Bubble Bobble - Level 57…the one with the laser shooting bastards shooting downward and you have jump and blow bubbles at the same time and hope you won’t get hit to reach them. I normally resetted if I got to this stage before finding an unbrella to pass it.
FFX-the Chocobo race sidequest to get Tidus’s item to upgrade his ulimate weapon. That thing was just plain frickin’ luck for me. My friend and I tried for like three hours and somehow I did when he had to run to the bathroom and when he came back, he was all “WTF?”
I just remembered that at a certain point in Jagged Alliance 2 your largest gold mine stops because it is infested by… aliens. Aliens in Central America, supposedly the reason people don’t care about your band of mercenaries trying to overthrow the local tinpot dictator. The first aliens can be done in with normal weaponry, but after a point all but heavy weaponry is useless and if you had had that, you’d have stormed the capital before the aliens could do anything. Stupid aliens.
The optional Neo Granzon fight at the end of SRW 4 where all the grunts are lvl 99 Valsions along with Shuu and his 2 girlfriends, and all your characters start at a mere 50 morale (also the boss regenerates his health once he gets low). Of course there’s 4S which adds two more Neo Granzons to the match both piloted by Shuu as well.
Then of course there are the OG games as well (1’s R-Gun Rivale and 2’s near mandatory SP Regenerate for everyone).
Near mandatory?
If you want to do the harder fights and get some of the special units, ‘near’ isn’t very accurate. Beating the Inspectors at mission 15 without SP regenerate? Good fucking luck!
If you’re going for complete Skill Points/Battle Masteries and you’re on your first run then yes getting SP Regenerate for everyone should definitely be the highest priority. Otherwise it shouldn’t be that hard.
As for beating the inspectors in mission 15 you do have one guy who can regenerate SP, but with mid battle saves and the bosses’ lack of massive HP regeneration (so long as they don’t stop on the Deathstar) it’s really more of a war of attrition anyway.
The R-Gun Rivale on the other hand has huge HP and EN regen rates (plus if I remember correctly it’s HP fully regenerates after knocking it down to low health the first time) and a sick barrier to boot (you do get to use upgraded units for this fight though compared to the other one). EN missile abuse is really the only effective way to beat OG1.