Worus

This weekend was good. It was nice to have that extra day. Most weekends, I have a set of things that I want to accomplish that never gets done. The list always varies, usually between general home stuff, errands, entertainment, or personal well-being. Usually, I end up relaxing when I’m not hanging out and by the time that I’m ready to do anything else, I either get sucked into whatever game I’m playing or anime I’m watching or it’s too late to do whatever I needed to do. I’m happy to report that I got almost all of the cleaning and errands I wanted to accomplish done this weekend.

All of this productivity was, of course, unmatched by the amount of Wild ARMS 5 that I played this weekend. The game shipped on Tuesday, but I had Ronda’s birthday party on Wednesday and worked on Thursday, so I didn’t get much time with it during its first week out. I’ve been anticipating this game for the better part of a year, so getting my hands on it was a definite priority. I did get to familiarize myself with it and play the prologue on Wednesday night (which I was surprised to have the time for). I played a ton of it this weekend.

So far, the story is alright. I read a review calling it unoriginal. While I won’t debate that the story isn’t the most intricately woven tale ever, I wouldn’t consider it any worse than whatever else is out there. I think that people get hung up when amnesia is used as a plot device. It’s an annoying one because it’s so simple, but amnesia isn’t really the tale that’s being told. Amnesia is used to push the group to do something about another circumstance, which isn’t that old. Besides, it’s a video game story. They all go about the same. The whole thing sort of reminds me of people who complain about English localization of video game songs. Of course it sounds crappy: it sounded just as crappy to players who actually knew Japanese and heard the original version; video game lyrics are generally sappy.

The game’s graphics are pretty good. I’m especially impressed with the character models changing with equipment change and those changes showing up in the voiced cutscenes.

Gameplay’s also pretty good, but there are some issues. Gimel coins were removed for save points, which is a welcome challenge. I always had 99 Gimel coins anyway, so removing them and adding the “Continue” option to all fights regardless makes dungeon crawling more of a commitment. At times, battles get really slow. I think it has to do with high-polygon monsters or something. It’s not an all the time thing, but sometimes the menus take a minute to come up and sometimes the camera moves seem a bit choppy. Also, when a character is in Detonator status, they get this giant blue flame around them. It makes it very difficult to tell what’s around them and HEX they’re on without switching to the top view. They could either be in Detonator status or on a water ley point. I don’t really know at that point, because the battle’s just started. I am unfamiliar with the field layout or the positioning of the various characters.

There were a couple tweaks to the HEX system that I’m not quite as enthusiastic about. Full healing after battle makes me much, much less likely to heal anyone in a random encounter, unless they’re dead. Actually, it compels me not to heal them. I can save resources and I get all sorts of bonuses if if fall into Critical status. If someone falls into Critical status, I might just get two extra turns immediately and the force gauge might rise by 50 points. At that point, I can pretty much own in a random encounter. Also, movement does not use a turn. When I saw a demo of the game, one of the people said that it helped you “strategize.” I’d go for the contrary. Move and Act was a limited ability in Wild ARMS 4, so moving around the field was a serious proposition. Status-inducing magic isn’t as serious a threat anymore, either. If I cast a status on a HEX, the enemy no longer has the constraint to stay in that HEX or lose another turn, but maybe the AI never took that into account in the first place. The bonus is that random battles do go by quicker, and the non-standard arrangment of the HEXes in major battles makes them challenging enough (though the game isn’t all that challenging).

I had wanted to go to Amy’s this weekend, and I’d have even given up the video game time to hang with everyone, but I really, really, really wanted to get some stuff done around the apartment. As fun as it would have been, I’m really, really glad that I got stuff done around home. I know that if I had gone for just Saturday night that I wouldn’t have done anything on Sunday and probably only gone to the grocery store on Monday. I think I’m cleaning the refridgerator tomorrow night. I’m excited to finally get my disaster of a kitchen cleaned so that I can cook a couple of meals around home every now and again.