If you’ve played the previous Wild Arms games, you’ll find Wild Arms 4 to
be a bit of a departure from its predecessors. Wild Arms 4 does not have as
strong a Western feel as has been the hallmark of this sci-fi Western RPG
series. The ARMs are still there – futuristic guns modeled on Old West weapons
that bind themselves to their owners through gene fusion – but the world has
more of an Orwellian 1984 feel to it than an 1884 one.
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| You'll need to do some platform style moves in Wild Arms 4. |
In Wild Arms 4, a teenager by the name of Jude Maverick finds his idyllic
life shattered when a fleet of military ships appear through a tear in the sky.
He soon learns that his world is an illusion, a self-contained virtual world
floating above the planet Filgaia. Filgaia is war-torn and under the control of
a militaristic government willing to sacrifice everything in order to obtain the
ultimate weapon. Of course, Jude and his companions embark on a quest to prevent
this from happening and to give Filgaia hope for a brighter future. Joining Jude
on this quest are Arnaud, a cowardly former soldier with a penchant for magic,
Raquel, a young beauty with a penchant for swordplay, and the mysterious Yulie,
a girl with mysterious powers that are somehow tied into the government’s quest
for the ultimate weapon.
The game itself is played from a third-person, 3D perspective. There are
light platform and stealth elements to the game, and some hardcore RPG gamers
may be put off by this. Wild Arms 4 is still an RPG through and through, and
you’ll spend plenty of time speaking with characters, watching cutscenes, and
fighting battles, but it seems that the game relies on jumping a little too
heavily in place of actual puzzles to be solved.
The world of Wild Arms 4 is broken up into areas divided into a number of
rooms or scenes. The exits are clearly marked as are interactive items, and
there are plenty of nooks and crannies to peek into looking for chests. Even
though the areas are largely non-interactive, there’s a lot of detail to each
one and this goes a long way towards bringing the world of Wild Arms 4 to life.
There is also a good variety of environments in the game, both indoors and out.
You’ll go from underwater to the heights of mountains and from desolate
buildings to cities.
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