Skirting the wild side with Wild Arms 2

Tara‘s been telling me for several months now that I have to play Wild Arms 2 from her side of our games collection, and since there wasn’t much else to deal with today but dog diarrhea and a severe lack of air conditioning in our apartment, I finally said okay and gave the game an hour of my time. Sorry, Greg, but I didn’t take any notes as I played. I did, however, have a serious blast naming the many characters’ names. That’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing in RPGs; for my first and only playthrough of Final Fantasy VII, I gave everybody either a Greek or Roman god’s name.

Here’s what I came up with for our colorful crew of heroes in Wild Arms 2:

Just ignore the stats in the images above. I got nobody past level 3 by quitting time. I also named some boy hostage 12345 and a friendly dog Updog. Yeah, I know. I’m da best at naming dem thingies.

Like all Wild Arms games would go on to do, the adventure begins with picking one of three characters to play as. Don’t worry. You’ll do everyone’s origin story, and then all three timelines will connect with each other. I picked Dimples first, a soldier in Meria Boule’s army, one of the three nations of Filgaia. He walked around some underground place, learned how to hit switches with throwing knives, and then fought a boss monster with creepy hands. Next it was on to Banana’s story, which is a little on the somber side. See, he’s hunted as a criminal, but is actually a “hero.” The use of quotation marks is his doing, not mine. Maybe he doesn’t want people to confuse him with a sandwich. Lastly, there’s Brickface, and boy did I name her correctly. She’s a hapless magician in training, and her introductory story is one giant puzzle of blocks and switches and giant bugs. It’s not fun. In fact, it’s a bit frustrating, and by then I’d had enough, so off went the PlayStation 2’s power button.

Some strange things to note though. Despite being three separate characters who have not yet met each other, they all shared the very same inventory. I had collected 14 Heal Berries with Dimples, and then when it was time to switch over to Banana, he also had access to all those berries. How does something like that work? The battle graphics are atrocious, but otherwise the game is pretty decent looking. Dialogue can be a bit confusing as it’s not always clear who is talking. Evidently, you can also name your own spells; Tara renamed many of hers after ones from Slayers and Magic Knight Rayearth. Go, nerdy wife!

I can’t promise that I’ll go back and play more Wild Arms 2 at this point, but if I do, at least it’ll be worth a few laughs.