Wild Arms 3

The character design is excellent and the cel-shading is initially quite striking. The cels are textured as well as coloured and while at first it's a subtle and beautiful effect, it's flat (the textures do not move behind the cel-contours gliding over them) and can start to look a bit thin.

The gameplay is a nice compromise between Zelda and Final Fantasy. Puzzles are frequent but not frustrating. Random battles knock often but as you play you can earn limited opportunities to refuse these. The four playable characters are fairly deep and interesting at times, but parts of them have been seen over and over in Japanese games and anime. It's nice that you play each singly as a back-story at the start of the game and then they all meet as a party for a long quest with many optional side-quests. This gives good replay value.

The battle system is solid. Your party packs various firearms and spell abilities. Battles can tend to alternate between too easy and too hard. For example, you can play with auto-combat on so that you don't have to do a thing and your characters will soundly defeat most enemies on their own AI. On the other hand, when you encounter bad guys you can't beat, you are stuck in a loop of fighting them to your death over and over until frustration sends you to quit and reload from the last save. All told, this RPG-cum-Japanime Western will please fans of the genre, who'll find it easy to overlook the game's shortfalls. --Ashley Pond V

The game follows a team of 4 who you control through some of the hardest temples ever! The game features a turn-based battle system which works really well as you can fight both on ground and on horseback. Your weapons (known as ARMs) are upgradable and the map is enormous with plenty of locations to go to. The storyline is always there, but could be criticised for not seperating wild arms 3 from the other RPG's on the market, (basically it is GOOD VS EVIL.)

This is a really overlooked game and one of the best on the PS2. This game will look even better next to Grandia 2, Legaia 2 and emperial phantasia. If you have 60 hours spare, i would highly recommend getting this game, it wont be a waste of time!


This Wild West Fantasy is an epic game.   March 26, 2004
A. Griffiths (London)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Wild Arms 3 is one of the better PS2 RPGs. It does have a few flaws, btu it makes up for them with plenty of good features. The story is set in a futuristic "Wild West" world where saloon bars and horse-riding mix with space craft and magical monsters...sounds odd, but it works. Our heroes are four drifters who find themselves on a quest to save the world from a crazed super-power, whilst unearthing secrets and/or discovering personal fulfillment along the way, yadda yadda...all very safe RPG territory. One thing to note first off is that there are only four charcaters to play for the whole of the game, so there are no worries about characters not getting levelled up evenly. To make up for any possible lack of variety, the equipment/skill system for the game is entertainingly complex, with many options for assigning fighting abilities, stat boosters and magical attributes to your four characters. In addition to this, the game throws more into the mix with a unique opening chapter in which you play 4 prologues, one for each character alone. Still more fun (or hardship) is ensured by the random battles in which an ambush occurs, and you will find just one of your band surrounded and left to fight alone for a predetermined number of rounds before the other 3 appear. On this note, the random battle sytem is set slightly on the frequent side, but this is tempered with an "encounter-meter" that gives you the option of avoiding fights if you wish, however, the number of "passes" you are allowed is limited and continually skipping battles will eventually leave you are unable skip any battles at all, so usage of this needs to be carefully monitered in very dangerous areas. The encounter meter is yet another stat that can be boosted by rare items, adding further variety to the quest.
Another credit to the game is the highly engaging World Map, equal to those of the Final Fantasy games (apart from FFX!), in my opinion. Starting off on foot, the player is limited to only a few parts of the world, but gradual upgrading leads to riding horses, piloting a sand-cruiser (the "seas" of this world are all made of moving sand), and finally to boarding a flying dragon with which you can soar past inaccessible crevasses and mountain ranges. All 4 modes have their own specific type of fighting style, with the latter two very reminiscent of the ship battles in "Skies Of Arcadia". The dungeons themselves are loaded with assorted monsters and puzzles, and there are plenty of side missions and secrets to uncover. It's not an easy game by any means, despite the bright-coloured cel shaded graphics (which do work surpisingly well), so prepare for a few tough boss battles and some mind-bending logic puzzles that have to be solved to make progress through some of the later dungeons.
The game has a possible huge lifespan, so if you have the stamina there's a lot of fun on offer here, in my opinion. The learning curve is gradual, and fans of RPG's will find probably find the early chapters far too easy, but things become quite challenging later on, so while its easy to get stuck into Wild Arms 3, it may prove a real achievement to finish. Try doing so, and I think you'l be glad you did.


One awsome RPG   February 13, 2004
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

I'm a huge fan of RPG's and i'd have to say that my favourite series is the Final Fantasy series (VII being the best). But wild arms 3 equals ANY final fantasy game in graphics, sound, story, enjoyment and replayability.

I love the cel shaded graphics in this game, i much prefer them to the style used in final fantasy VIII and X. I don't know why but the small characters draw me in, probably memories of Final Fantasy VII.

This game features everything that an RPG needs to be perfect and yes it has a world map, and an absolutely brilliant one at that, including all sorts of vehicles to travel including horses, trains, a sandcraft and your own kinda big mechanical dragon thing that switches between being a dragon and a jet like a transformer or something (seriously cool transport and it can shoot missiles to blow up rocks on the world map, opening up new areas or just finding treasures etc). Infact, now that i think about it, isn't it the only RPG with a proper world map on the PS2 to date?

Wild Arms 3 also has a really nice story and manages to make you really care about the characters, envolving you even more with the game. It's no short story either, this game took me a good few weeks to finish and this was over the summer holidays playing it for hours and hours every day. Overall, i think it took me about 60 hours in the end because i wanted to do all the side missions and level up all my characters/weapons to max etc. Then i played through it all again :). Once you finish the game you can save a file and use EX-file keys that u collected during the game to view different versions of the game intro and some other small extras like that, but most importantly, if you collect enough EX-file keys you can play through the whole game again using the characters you finished it with last time, keeping your level and if i remember correctly, your money as well but i'm not sure.

I did get a little bit frustrated with this game at times trying to find things that seemed impossible to find but it wasn't all that bad, and after all, how many games have you played without some frustrating parts?

If you are an RPG fan then deffinatley buy this game without hesitaion. You won't be dissapointed


Wild west   February 8, 2004
After 2 impresive wild arms games on the PSOne, we should expect some marvelous RPG that keeps you playing for endless hours of enjoyable, sustainable adventuring. But, although it still has its moments of magic this game can be a real bore to play. It doesn't grab you and keep you going for weeks on end, and quite simply is snorearama. Graphics is Wild Arms 3 strongest point. The cell-shaded chraracters are really cool especially when they move and the colurs all blend in and the black outline dissappears. But again the characters are boring, unloveable and you really dont care if they live or die.

The story is appalling. Four people from different corners of the globe go in search of adventure... and (gasp) find it (sigh).
What a dissapointment. The one thing that Final Fantasy X didn't have was a world map. And Wild Arms has one, and a pretty good one at that. You need to find different areas by using youre search radio waves, which can keep you going for hours. Although you may get frustrated at the amount of time it will take you just to find a sign.

And this all ads up to a very average RPG with little enjoyment. Some of you hardcore RPGers may just find a glimpse of magic in there but its doubtfull.