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Wild Arms XF
Publisher: XSEED Games
Developer: Media Vision
Genre: Strategy RPG
Release: March 11, 2008
Platform: Playstation Portable
Reviewer: Eric
 Within
the past year the Playstation Portable has been getting a lot of top notch RPG
games. Square Enix has been releasing game after game on the PSP and other
companies are doing the same. When Wild Arms XF was first announced fans were
excited. However when the game came out it was a whole different story.
The Wild Arms series has gone through a lot of changes. For the most part the
series has kept the same story; the Wild West meets sci-fi aspects. Five Wild
Arms games have come out on the Playstation and Playstation 2. All of these
games had turned based battle systems, but Wild Arms XF is taking the series
into a new aspect.
For starts why do I think this game is below Wild Arms standards? It isn’t the
strategy RPG aspect; I love these kinds of games too. What really ruins this
game for the most part is the difficulty level. Wild Arms XF isn’t just hard
it’s impossible!
Players will remember the games starting point, the desert reign of Filgaia. You
play as the female character Clarissa Arwin and her brother Felius. When the
game starts out you are on the trail to find your mothers stolen sword. The
story takes a turn in another direction as the townspeople think Clarissa is
really a princess that’s just died.
 The games story is told by both words and some spoken dialogue. All of the
spoken dialogue sounds great, but it seems like you are doing more reading than
listening. Reading all this text can start to get annoying since cut scenes can
drag on and on. The games developers also went ahead and added moving boxes into
these scenes. One minute you’ll see a happy character and then the next they’ll
be showing a mean face or even a happy one.
Even though the game may be lacking talking dialogue (for the most part) they
can enjoy the games music. Wild Arms XF shines with its music and I think the
games developers knew this. If you want to listen to Michiko Naruke’s music you
can do so by picking the music option on the main screen. As much as this game
bothered me, my temper was kept to a minimum with the beautiful music.
The gameplay is like ordinary strategy games. Just like the last Wild Arms game
the hex system is in Wild Arms XF. What this means is you can attack your enemy
in any direction you’d please. It doesn’t seem to matter which direction you
attack in, any where you attack seems to do the same amount of damage. I don’t
know if the hex system is the best idea for a strategy RPG, but it is something
new and worth trying. It should also be noted that each character has a set
amount of VP points. Once these run out you’ll start to loose health points.
Battles in this game range from kill all the enemies to unlocking doors.
Missions where you save a certain amount of people can take forever to beat. The
games third or fourth battle, (can’t remember which one) has you saving a group
of villagers. In order to win you need to help the villagers escape and this is
hard. I must have taken three hours to beat this battle. If you want to win you
need to change all your characters into healers, which then cause a problem
because there is one super solider that can kill anybody in two hits.
 A simple solution would be to level up before the battle, but then you run into
another problem. It takes forever just to gain one level in this game! The only
way to win in some of these battles is to learn new abilities in certain
classes. Sure this does add to long hours with the game, but how many people are
willing to do all of this?
Wild Arms XF has twenty or so jobs to pick from for your team. Instead of using
the typical class names like white mage or fighter they went ahead and used
names like secutor and gadgeteer. Unlike most games in this genre whenever you
change to a certain class you get those abilities. You have to learn a few
skills so you can equip them on other characters.
This part of the game is frustrating. Before each battle starts you are given
some tips on how to beat the battle. If you don’t listen to these then you will
most likely fail. Since most people that play these games stick with one class
until it’s over you will find difficulties with this game. You are constantly
switching back and fourth between job classes, it’s annoying.
 To make matters worse you have to equip everything all over again. If you fail
to equip anything you will enter a battle and die. Yes Wild Arms XF doesn’t help
you out, if you change your class you need to re-equip everything all over
again. The same thing goes with your skills too; you better double check and see
if everything is up to your needs.
Final Verdict
Wild Arms has been one of the crown achievements in Sony’s catalog of gaming
series. When the series decided to make the job to the portable world I was
happy, but then I bought the game. Wild Arms XF isn’t necessarily a bad game,
but I don’t think you should run out and buy it.
Try this game first and then make your decision. Just remember that Wild Arms XF
does bring quite a few new aspects to the strategy RPG series.
Rating
6.50 out of 10
Wild Arms XF Trailer
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