Boss Fight At High Noon

Or,y'know, not.


The Wild ARMs 2 campaign is going quite smoothly again.  This game is something else; I find so much that I like, then it remembers its a PS1-era RPG and finds a way to remind me.  A list of examples:


The Setting


We have a combination of Post-apocalypse rebuilding and Wild West aesthetics, giving us crazy awesome stuff like Texas Rangers that ride around in troop trucks and carry rifles that have huge, permanently attached bayonets, Rambo-esque desperados that use the kind of artillery rarely seen outside of bullet hells, and dusty clapboard mining towns that revolve around psycho-sensitive ore.  We even get crazy awesome stuff like sentient transforming dragon mecha from another dimension.  The primary threat?  It's a damn world-eating alternate universe, as in an actual universe that devours worlds.  Eat your heart out, Galactus.


Unfortunately, the whole Wild West thing takes a back seat to the usual legion of RPG stuff, like the standard wizard types that need care and feeding, the standard rival-but-not-really 'mysterious wanderer' party member, the standard loads of ancient ruins, and the gobs of Magitek goodies that the bad guys get.  This game heads straight into the usual formulas way too often.  But even then, its does it very well, and we have plenty of unique concepts and crazy awesome to play with.


The Gameplay


Holy crap, an RPG with good dungeon puzzles!  Even the cliché puzzles are done interestingly, and sticking in Zelda-like tools like bombs and grappling hooks and wands is a stroke of genius.  The combat portions are done very well.  Its a little too easy for veteran RPG players, but giving us turn based combat that gives you sword-and-sorcery goodness and gun-toting explosive death at the same time is something special.  The "Force Point" system is a very good take on the old mana meter.  In short, this is fun stuff.


Unfortunately, there are minor but very annoying flaws.  The game opted for both "stop at the edge" and "fall right off like a moron" when it comes to being at the edge of platforms.  This makes some of the timing-centered puzzles infuriating, especially with the wonky old-school controls.  The game's puzzles have garnered an somewhat evil reputation, but mostly undeserved.  There are, however, a bit too many of the old "what the hell do I do to get to the next town/dungeon" problems.  I don't need linear, spoon-fed questing, but leaving the player high and dry because you forgot about an incidental part of a dungeon you conquered twenty or more hours ago is unacceptable. 


Well, that was a bit of a mouthful.  I haven't reached a verdict just yet, though as it stands the campaign will be concluded in a week or two (hopefully sooner) and I'll likely fall on the positive side of the spectrum.  I've already decided to put Wild ARMs 3 on my watch list, since it seems to be the closest we'll get to the Good, The Bad, and The Random Encounter RPG the series is known for.  The Harvest Never Rests!