I absolutely, positively loved the first Wild Arms because of its atmosphere, its music and because of Jack. Cecilia didn't really interest me because she was the token magical girl, Rudy was another voiceless hero (for the most part), but Jack, had such a brilliant intro and backstory. The second intro to the game that dealt with Jack's background had such a brilliant atmosphere! Besides, I loved the extremely puzzley dungeons, as well.

Then came Wild Arms 2nd Ignition. That game started out promising, but the story made less and less sense, and after defeating the terrorists (don't remember their name), it all went downhill incredibly fast. By the end the translation was so horrible I couldn't make ANY sense of it.

So now I AM looking forward to the third game, 'cause I really like the atmosphere, and I really like Contrail's games as a whole (Alundra, WA, LOL), but I'm not gathering too much info about it. I'll just wait until it's released and probably have moderately good time with it.

Sir Farren, just hopes for a good translation, this time.

I played the original Wild Arms because it was the only thing to play on PS at the time it came out. I skipped the second one, because I just didn't have enough time to play it. Since I'll have a Japanese PS2 soon enough, and since I'll be in Japan, I think I'll pick up Wild Arms 3.

For one thing, I played Shadowrun, back in the day, and I liked the system of dialogue. For another thing, I've yet to tire of the whole cel-shading idea. (I will someday, I guess) And for the final reason -- the real clincher -- I'm excited about the game's usage of furigana.

Furigana, for those who don't know, are the little miniaturized hiragana (or, rarely, in the case of words the Chinese name of which has become better associated with a Western concept, katakana) syllabic letters imposed above the kanji in Japanese writing intended for those who are still learning Japanese -- mainly, elementary school students and junior high-schoolers. The hiragana that comprise the furigana indicate the 'yomikata' or reading of each kanji character.

Kanji, Chinese characters, were actually not widely used in videogames until 1992. Final Fantasy IV was written entirely in hiragana and katakana. Perhaps that accounted for the horrible translation. No kanji, believe it or not, makes a game harder to read and understand. When the 'Sheep Man' talks, in the Japanese version of Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, his dialogue is in all hiragana and katakana, with no kanji. It hurt my head to try to understand what he was saying. In the English translation, the Sheep Man's words are all stuck together, with no spaces and little punctuation. I guess that's as close as you can get to simulating the effect.

No videogame, to my knowledge at least, has used furigana in its text. I'm assuming it hasn't been possible until now, seeing as how far behind the Japanese are when it comes to computers. Wild Arms 3 is making quite an advancement.

Furigana will help my own personal playing experience; while I've studied kanji for God knows how long, there are still the occasional one or two hundred characters I don't know the reading of. Having furigana readings will facilitate dictionary-using for non-native Japanese speakers, as well as teach kanji to younger Japanese players and eliminate my need to use my New Nelson's Chinese Character Dictionary.

The various different fonts visible in the screenshots excite me as well. Nothing as exciting as a nice Japanese font, I say.

--tim rogers, doesn't really find curvy japanese fonts that exciting, now that he thinks about it

By the time you're talking through town X, you have a dozen or so keywords you can ask people about. So- what if the first guy you met has awesome info, unlockable by the last keyword you got? Soon, you find yourself going through the entire town, asking everyone about everything. By the end of the game, you've got so many keywords, that it takes you hours to talk your way through a town.

Boom. Suddenly, a game becomes work. I think I'll go outside now, and try to draw 99 spells from the neighbor's dog.

Egads- could you imagine if something like this happened in an FF game? It would be horrible. At the end of disk 2 or so, you're in baddy-flying-fortress, and have set a bomb to blow it out of the sky, when the villian appears and starts up a dramatic converstaion. You have enough time to ask about 3 things. To get [great item #856], you have to ask him something paticular, but obscure and illogical, using a keyword you MIGHT have gotten from a cat on a rooftop in a town that's since been destroyed. If you don't get the item now, don't worry... you can always get it with [lame card game #7856] at the end of the game (when the item is nearly useless) IF, you've ulocked the card king before his villiage blew up/was frozen in time/blah blah blah. But I've digressed into a rant about the suckitude of FF secrets in the last few games.

In the early days, we were advised to 'talk to every person' for clues. In a town the size of Corneria, this isn't too big a deal, but in today's towns, with an 'ACT' style conversation engine...? Work work work.

Frankly, I'm starting to miss turn based RPGs with no special features, and a dungeon-town-dungeon gameplay.

Joseph Picard / Obsidian Zero
http://www.geocities.com/obsidian_0

Anyways. Here's a riddle for you: What's the one thing Microsoft could do to make the XBox even LESS appealing to hardcore gamers?

Answer: Force people to buy $500 or more worth of Microsoft-made games and accessories just to buy the damn thing. (Putting the price to $500 - $1200, *even if all you want is the console.*)

Details here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-000066885aug18.story?coll=la-headlines-business

Slashdot had the link. Basically Microsoft is paying off retailers to make them require buyers to buy $100 - $800 worth of Microsoft XBox accessories when they preorder an XBox. Anyone get the feeling that Microsoft might be a little worried that people won't buy their crappy addons?

Disgusting huh? They must think very little of us console gamers, if they figure they have to make the stores force us to buy their XBox extras.

Mark Cantrell aka
[KiTA]

AL

Although the Wild Arms games haven't been the best RPGs I've played, I still enjoyed both of them and am looking forward to Wild Arms 3. Some of the new features that are being introduced are intriguing; the ASK system being one of the main ones. If used properly, it could be a way of making a linear game become more non-linear by allowing the player to have more control over how the plot unfolds. One way of using this creatively would be to allow the player decide what missions to undertake next.

There are also a few things that could be improved upon the changes in Wild Arms 2, although some look to continue the trend. One of the bigger problems I had with Wild Arms 2 was the overuse of ARMs. While they were a special ancient technology in the first game that only one character could use, they seemed a lot more common in the world of Wild Arms 2, and lost a lot of their story-related intrigue. Wild Arms 3 seems to be continuing this trend due to the fact that everyone is using a gun of some sort, which may indicate that everyone is now an ARMs user. In addition, the Guardians seemed to be demoted to a much more minor role in the second game, and didn't seem to have much more explanation than the summons in Final Fantasy VII. Again, I much preferred the treatment in Wild Arms 1, where they were integrated into the story. I also wouldn't mind seeing the reappearance of the golems. I found them more interesting than the pyramid bosses of Wild Arms 2.

One thing that I loved from the first two games, and that I hope continues in the third game is the use of tools in dungeons and the overworld. After RPGs, my favorite genre is adventure games, so having a bit of an adventure feel in the game helped me get into it more. At times, in fact, the games almost seemed like Zelda, but with random encounters. I also hope the third game continues the outstanding music of the first two games. (Although I hope the individual songs are longer than the rather short selections in Wild Arms 2). The new cel-shaded graphics look nice as well, but gameplay is more important to me than how a game looks. As a result, that really doesn't have a big effect on how I view the game.

From what I've seen so far, Wild Arms 3 looks to continue the line of solid RPGs begun by its predecessors, and I'm sure I'll get it when it's released. I just hope they don't continue the trend of silly names like "Vinsfeld Rhadamanthus" and "Randolf the Magic Key". :)

Brian Sebby