Wild ARMs 4 Journal, Day 8:
- This is getting damn awesome.
- MOVIE CLIP TIME! I’ve learned a couple more combos. Among them are this very cool attack, usable whenever Arnaud and Yulie are in the same hex and have enough FP.
- I came to a new town called Guara Bobelo, where the is, according to an NPC at the beginning of the place “No night and no day.” She’s right. It’s always dark there. The atmosphere felt like a combination of Lower Valua from Skies of Arcadia and Midgar from Final Fantasy VII. Maybe that’s not helping your mental image. There’s a classy section of town and a pretty ghetto section, complete with lots of homeless people.
- The new town also includes a battle arena, where for an exorbitant price, players can take on various battle challenges. I took on a few on the one-on-one challenges and backed out. The other ones were way to far above my level.
- An Austrailian guy called my house and tried to sell me credit card fraud insurance over the phone while I was playing a random battle. He called me “mate” and this made me really uncomfortable.
- In my play session that followed, I ran into two duels. I won’t spoil anything here–just talk about how the story is delivered–so feel free to keep reading. Now, keep in mind there’s no duel system in the game, I am merely equating them to this concept on my own. You’ll understand why when I tell you that the first was a fight between Jude and a single enemy. Two men, guns drawn, mano-a-mano.
- The next boss I fought helped cap a great example of how Wild ARMs games successfully combine Japanese RPG/anime stuff with Western themes. A particularly powerful enemy showed up and (again, no deep specifics, but I am going to give an outline of events here) revealed his amazing powers. Rather than instantly cut to a battle, a full, freaking awesome CG cutscene kicked in. It reminded me a lot of watching Naruto because of the way the characters would fight, then stop in mid fight to discuss what has happened. They were still fighting, but it was a very calculated battle in which every move was given the highest amount of careful planning and execution. It was incredible to watch…
- …And then there was an actual boss battle. It was great. This boss had special abilities that made me really have to think about how to use the Hex system to my advantage. This game rocks hard.
CURRENT STATS
Death count: 2
Anime-like fight scenes: 1
Levels: Raquel – 24, Jude – 23, Arnaud – 22, Yulie – 22