You know, even if you game a lot, there are some games that just stick with you long after you've finished playing. Wild Arms 2ND Ignition, or simply Wild Arms 2 was such a game for me. Released during a major deluge of RPG goodness on the PS1 between 98-2000, this game was a sequel to the original Wild Arms, which was considered to be one of the best RPGs on the PlayStation before FFVII came and dethroned it. Still, due to being released around the major RPG fad of the late 90s, it has been a bit disheartening for me to see and hear how few people actually heard about this game, let alone play.
WA2 takes place on Filgaia, a planet that seems to be cursed to faced total annihilation every couple of centuries since the creative have revealed all the games do in fact take place on the same world despite all of them being barely connected. In the past, Filgaia was ravaged by a terrible demon known as Lord Blazer who had scorched the world o badly that even a millennium later, the planet is barely recovering from the devastation, he was defeated by a woman known as the Sword Magess, whose desire to save the world was so strong that Lucied, the Guardian of Desire itself, sided with her in the final conflict. She disappeared in the conflict, but a sanctuary was built in her honor and enshrined her holy sword, the Guardian Blade Argetlahm.
In Wild Arms tradition, we are introduced to the game three main protagonists: Ashley, a hot-blooded young man who idolizes the Sword Magess and wants to be a hero just she was; Lilka, a klutzy spellcaster who lives in the shadow of her superior sister; and Brad, an ex-revolutionary, now criminal, who was once hailed as the hero of his countries rebellion. Each game begins with a prologue chapter for each character to set you up on their character arcs and to give you a taste of how they play. Ashley is tasked with some other men to stop a hostage situation in a local mine. Ashley's desire to prove himself kind of makes the whole ordeal get deadlier than it should have, but Ashley is able to save the hostages in the end. He's hailed as a hero, but ends up being put under suspension from the local militia due to his recklessness. Here we meet Ashley's girlfriend who runs the local inn and lets him live there. She wants Ashley to settle down but he still wishes to prove himself and become the next Sword Maiden. Lilka's story is actually two. Her main plot involves her accidentally screwing up a spell and landing in a small village that is being ravaged by monsters who keep eating their crops. The elders were thinking of hiring someone when she literally teleports into their meeting. While she helps the villagers tackle the monster problem, Lilka tries to encourage herself by remembering the time she was trapped in the Millennium Puzzle (not that one, though surprisingly similar) and how her sister helped her make it through the puzzle to return to the real world. Brad's plot takes place several years before the main story and involves the night he tried to run from the authorities after his rebellion. In the end, he is caught and imprisoned.
When the story begins proper, Ashley is summoned to the Sword Magess cathedral because he was chosen along with his unit to work for a certain organization. Things become trippy when a weird noise is heard and everyone, including Ashley, are transformed into demons. Fighting his way through the cathedral, before his sanity is gone, Ashley is drawn to the Sword Maidens Holy Sword, and once he takes it, the demons and are banished and Ashley regains his human form, but the sword is now gone. After a few days recouping, Ashley is contacted by the man who summoned him originally, Irving Valeria. He is an eccentric and serious man who is descended from the Sword Maiden herself. Crippled at birth, he decided to use his family's fortune and prestige to build an organization called Wild Arms to deal with global threats due to the rise in monsters and other terrorist threats. It's here Lilka comes in as she was summoned by Irving as well, which was where she was trying to go in her own chapter. The two make up two-thirds of the strike unit for the organization and are sent on their first mission to rescue their third member: Brad.
From here the plot takes several twists and turns. The team investigate small disturbances across the globe and soon encounter Odessa, a major terrorist organization with ambitions to conquer the world. The rest of the first disc centers around the battle between Wild Arms and Odessa, which involves the party having to unite the various nations of the world to stop them. While this all sounds like your standard fluff, the game completely subverts your expectations in the second half with some serious plot twists that jump into Metal Gear and Lovecraft territory. For people who played the first Wild Arms, this is kind of par the course as that game also started off with a fairly by the book JRPG plot before the second half really changed things around.
One of the reasons why this game is on this list is due to the central theme: What is a hero? Why do we need heroes? And can change only be made through the sacrifices of heroes? Each of the games six playable characters struggle with the theme. Ashley wants to be a hero, but doesn't really understand what it really entails; Lilka has to deal with living in the shadow of her talented sister who sacrificed her own life to save Lilka from the Millennium Puzzle; Brad deals with the struggle of what does a hero do when their wars are over; Kanon, another descendant of the the Sword Magess, deals with living up to that legacy and whether its something she really wants to do; Tim, the shaman of the Guardians deals with being fated to cast away his life to "save the world" as a sacrifice to the Guardians; and Marivel, the last of the Crimson Nobles (vampires), who is well aware of Filgaia's centuries of selfish sacrifices of heroes to save it from one disaster after another. Even the NPCs often tackle the theme in surprising ways. I love the fact the game deals with the theme in a rather philosophical manner as opposed to the more kid friendly "guts and true companions" spiel you get from anime.
The gameplay is no slouch either and mostly builds on the cool ideas from the first game. Each character fulfills a certain "role" in the game and have their own unique play styles. Ashley and Brad utilize guns, which can be taken into shops and upgraded for better accuracy, firepower, and ammo capacity. Lilka uses elemental crests to create spells and unlike most RPGs, you're free to pick and choose from the avilable list meaning you can start her off with Revive and powerful offensive spells if you want. Tim learns new spells based on the Guardians you acquire and he uses (think VI's esper system) Kanon uses her special attacks during her Force ability to randomly learn her higher abilities, and Marivel is a goddamn Blue Mage in everything but name. This makes party builds really fun and interesting... or I would say that if the game had some proper balance. Ashley acquires an early game breaker Force ability due to the story that not only makes him the most overpowered character, but many of the game's bosses are designed with the idea that you will be abusing it. Lilka gets royally screwed over by having her ability ability to group target her magic be placed with the situational force skills, and to make matters worse, Tim doesn't have this issue with his magic and he is required to be in your party to even use summons; so if you want to take advantage of the parties second force skill, Tim has to be in the playable party to do so. So ultimately, you kind of wind up using Ashley, Tim, and most likely Brad or Kanon for most of the game once their available and the rest kind of just become bench-warmers.
With that complaint out of the way, I still appreciate the rest of the cast feeling distinct and you will utilize everyone in the dungeons regardless due to the games Tool system. Each party member gets a special set of tools unique to them that can be used to solve the puzzles in all of the dungeons. For instance, Ashley gets throwing knives that can be used to hit far away switches or occasionally cut an item. Lilka gets elemental rods to deal with ice and fire puzzles, and Brad gets bombs to deal with cracked walls. There is an almost Zelda/Lufia vibe to the dungeons with most of them requiring some brainpower to get through. The puzzles range from being fairly simple to "oh my goodness, what are you even asking me to do?" but in a genre that likes to relegate everything to forty hours of just talking and battling, I absolutely appreciate the fact the game goes to great lengths to make the dungeons much more versatile in their challenge. The game also introduced a mechanic where you're pre-warned about an enemy encounter. If the enmy is higher level than you, the exclamation point appears red and you have to fight, but if its green due to be higher leveled, you can hit a button and ignore the fight altogether. This mechanic is especially useful during the segments where you have to backtrack through earlier areas.
WA2 is also just filled to the brim with secrets and cool optional dungeons and bosses, just like its predecessor. In fact Marivel is an optional character and her tools are required to complete all of the games optional dungeons. The optional bosses stem more from the FFV approach as opposed to later games and thus you need to learn how to deal with them with the meager resources you have as opposed to having special skills and damage breaking gear to stand on even ground and bork the rest of the game difficulty. Hell, many of these bosses are actually designed around punishing players who try to abuse Ashley's game breaking power. Some of them are also interesting conclusions to minor story arcs within the game as well, so they're not all just some randomly powerful monster that simply hangs out in a secluded place.
Also, while the translation is considered to be the worse in the series, they did get one thing right: The game has opening and ending themes that play whenever you start up your game file or choose to end it at a save point, giving the game a TV feel as your playtime is framed around these cool opening and ending themes that change when you get to the second disc. Well the music originally had lyrics to all of them and I guess the translation team and Sony decided to not bother hiring new singers to re-record the songs, but they already chopped the singing segments from the pieces. They did add some awesome horn sections to the opening themes to compensate for the lack of vocals and after listening to both, I feel the Western versions are superior and help emphasize the spaghetti western element that seperates this series from its peers.
If you want to play a game that still heralds to the fun adventuring of 90s JRPGs that also tackles a dificult theme in a mature way, then I highly recommend this gem.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 03-11-2023 at 07:11 AM.
Reply With Quote