Saturday, November 3, 2018

Wild Arms 3, Part 4 - Nuclear Winter Salesmen

Many, many, many months later, Wild Arms 3 continues. Last time, I finished the first of the four chapters. Today, chapter 2 begins as our heroes pensively look out from a cliff, the wind billowing under their luxurious skirts.




I forgot about how all of the characters in this game call themselves Drifters. It's been so long since the last Wild Arms 3 post that "The Drifter" Elias Sampson went from being a debuting n00b to being an eighteen-time WWE champion.

At this point in the game our heroes need to start making some money, and fast, because they're basically all just walking the Earth like Jules in Pulp Fiction.

Fun Fact: In the Japanese version, that town is called "Titty Twister". Not a joke. Protect your nipples, Virginia!

A quick refresher: The villains in this game include blue-haired rival Janus, as well as these three mysterious robed characters who are giving him his marching orders (though he doesn't seem too loyal to them...the plot thickens).

The guy in the middle seems to be the leader, and he's got weirdly grey skin. The other two are fairly attractive humans, so I'd be willing to bet money that they turn out to mean well while the guy in the middle is the real bad influence.

Meanwhile, Janus is looking the worse for wear since transforming into this weird half-demon persona. I know he's really powerful now, but is it worth it? IS IT WORTH IT, JANUS?

We join our heroes at the saloon and chapter 2 begins. I like that the timer is right there on the screen, so you'll know exactly how far I am into the game in these posts.

The tough part of getting back into a game after a long absence is figuring out what the heck you were supposed to do next. I usually leave hints for myself, like parking right in front of the next person I'm supposed to talk to. In this case it's even more difficult than usual to find my way due to how the overworld is set up.

Here I spend a little while rummaging around looking for an invisible town that may or may not appear depending on whether or not I talked to the right person...

I figured out how to bring up the world map, which is...not very filled-in at all. I think there's a trophy for filling in all of it. If I could get rid of random encounters, I'd spend more time filling in the blanks. Either way, it's good for telling me where exactly I am on the overworld, after which I refer to THIS map:

Credit to RPGClassics.com for this super in-depth compilation of locations. As of the end of this post I'm a third of the way through the towns and a quarter of the way through the dungeons.

Here's the "seedy little town" where everyone's after your nipples. There isn't really anything seedy about it though, aside from most of the buildings being boarded-up like we're in a Rust Belt state.

Jet has amnesia, in addition to a bad attitude and not caring about anything. If this were a Final Fantasy, he'd totally be the main character. He gives zero fucks.

In any case, it seems there's a barmaid missing from the town, and our heroes figure they can earn some dough if they track her down and rescue her from a nearby dungeon she was seen wandering into. Sounds good to me, what could go wrong?

The next dungeon finally appears for me after talking to everyone in town. What a weird name. Weird names are sorta a hallmark of locations in this game...

Inside the dungeon we find Claudia, the missing beer-wench from the town. Now I see how the town got its name: Those succulent, heaving bosoms won't twist themselves.

Gallows is all about them tigole bitties, and immediately jumps forward to present himself as the hero of the story. Well, who else is going to flirt with the dames? Clive is married, Virginia isn't interested in women, and Jet... gives zero fucks.

Virginia tries to talk some sense into Gallows. He's more than ready to fully "handle" the "mission". I'm actually on his side here. They can probably get some cha-ching out of the deal, and when have they not been able to handle a mission?

Claudia is in no rush to leave, and gets weirder and weirder as the dungeon progresses. She clearly wasn't kidnapped. Matter of fact, she seems possessed.

I'm not sure whether to be frightened or aroused. Right now, it's both.

The jig is up, and the being that has been possessing Claudia finally reveals herself. It's the purple-haired death lady from the Cloaked Trio. Gallows has the most hilarious response to anything in the entire game so far.

For some reason they all start talking about beauty here. Also, I'll have to vehemently disagree with Clive on this one.

What? What are we even talking about anymore?

A boss fight follows, and I dish out the game's scan spell...which tells you very little.

I remember that the key thing to do at the beginning of every boss fight is to debuff the boss with Agility Down and Defense Down moves. Debuffs last for the entire battle in this game.

This battle is incredibly easy because every turn she one-shots Clive. Yes, Clive. Every turn. I just revive him with Jet's revive spell while Virginia and Gallows get what are essentially free attacks every round.

Here's the oddly-Satanic revive spell being cast on Clive for like the 18th time. STOP KILLING JUDAS!

Eventually she loses, then tries to teleport away only to find her Standard Issue Villain Warp Ability isn't working. Maybe she would have won the fight if she had spread around the one-shotting and LEFT POOR CLIVE ALONE.

"GOD AS MY WITNESS THE MAN'S GOT A FAMILY!"

But wait! Dungeons in this game never just *end* after a boss fight, as Janus appears to taunt our heroes. I have a feeling this guy is going to keep showing up for the entire game.

He goes into his Finn Balor Demon Form, and I'm not gonna lie, this is freaky AF. Mainly because of the Merman On Steroids arms.

Janus' signature attack is now Negative Rainbow, a blistering rain of lasers too quick to get a shot of.

Taz: "Wait a minute... Mike, that's... that's Zeikfried's move!"

Tenay: "Zeikfried? He's the villain of the original Wild Arms! What's he doing in the Impact Zone?"

After defeating Janus yet again, it seems that there's definitely some correlation with the original Wild Arms here. At first I thought he was possessed by Zeikfried, but now it seems apparent that Janus is still in full control and using Zeikfried's powers somehow. Like a Venom symbiote or something.

Purple-haired death lady (her name turns out to be Melody, so I'll call her that from here on) pulls rank and orders Janus to retreat, and our heroes head back to town (with the unconscious Claudia, who Virginia had to carry the entire way because her comrades are all awful).

They stop along the way for a bonfire meeting. Claudia is STILL unconscious, which can mean only one thing: Somewhere back there, she took a Pedigree.

He's talking about Republicans isn't he? CAN WE LEAVE THE POLITICS OUT OF OUR GAMES JUST THIS ONCE, GALLOWS? BY GOD, WE PLAY TO ESCAPE THE REAL WORLD!

She's got that right. Bad guys are scheming to do some pretty bad things, and the only thing that can stop them... is... uh... this group. Yeah, these four. Er… good luck, Filgaia.

Claudia is finally returned to town. Gallows is all "hey babah" and even unpossessed she still no-sells it.

I like how mortified Virginia looks at all of Gallows' lame attempts at flirting. She isn't mortified at the lameness, she's mortified that he's flirting at all.

"Get used to it! Can't stop won't stop! Gallows bebeh!"

Jet addresses the elephant in the room. All of that stuff we just went through netted us approximately nothing whatsoever. If this were a modern game that would have entirely been a sidequest that got us faction with the Thieves Guild or something.

Virginia is STILL going off on Gallows for liking Claudia and her sweet pair of tittays.

"NotAllMen" says Clive before sulking away. You liked Claudia too, you bastard! You can pretend to be an upstanding citizen, but you can't hide that cheating heart!

"Hey babah" says Gallows as we stop and say hello to Claudia in town. Working on the Puff-Puff trophy here.

The next dungeon is the Lunatic Garden. It sounds exciting, but it's another really basic dungeon. Jet wants to just get this over with so he can get back up to his shack and get drunk.

The most notable thing about this area is that it gives us our first second-tier tool (which means I had to remember how to access/switch equipped tools). The Steady Doll is another of Gallows' creepy menagerie of dolls and lets you remotely activate switches.

"They're ACTION FIGURES!"

My main problem in this game has been and continues to be status effects. It seems like I can't turn around without having half the party afflicted with something. Chests having a chance of inflicting an ailment on everyone doesn't help, either. If I wanted treasure chests to be the bane of my existence I'd play Ultima: Exodus. There are so many different kinds of status effects in this game, and so many different curative items to fix them, that it becomes a hassle to deal with. On top of all that, the NPC that sells these curative items is that guy who disappears constantly and is inaccessible 99% of the time.

At the end of this dungeon is the second of the X-Hunters. "Slickster" is a pretty weird identifying-name for him (and not his real name, which we haven't been privy to yet).

Behind him is the fifth Esper, the Moon elemental. She gives you spells of both Dark and Gravity elements, I think. In this game Dark and Gravity might simply be the same thing. Hard to say yet. Before I can get said Esper...I have to fight.

At first none of your attacks land on Slickster, but not to worry, it's nothing serious. The solution is simply to cast Decelerate on him to lower his agility, which is something the player should be doing on all of the bosses anyway. That dispels his invincibility, and a not-very-difficult battle follows.

Our heroes chase him off after the fight, with Gallows being the only one who thinks to stay and obtain the Moon Esper.

I'm equipping it on Virginia though, because at this point she's the only character I trust to not A) Betray the party, B) Run off to chase tail, or C) Get impaled by Sephiroth.

Much like the previous dungeon, this one ends with two boss fights in a row. I'm sensing a trend with this game, and it totally explains why it gives you the ability to save anywhere (via a limited quantity of Gimel Coins, so judicious usage is a must).

Angolmois is the most impressive-looking boss yet, and a refugee from the original Wild Arms. As a matter of fact, this guy was the second-strongest uberboss in that game. And if you played Wild Arms, you know that that game had some seriously intense uberbosses.

In this game, he's fairly easy. He has 10,000 (!!!) HP, which absolutely dwarfs every boss up to this point (the last few bosses had around 1,500). However, he's susceptible to Grav, a spell provided by our new Esper. It does exactly what it does in Final Fantasy and takes off a percentage of the enemy's health. 20%, to be exact. For those keeping score, this means it does around 2000 damage (!!!) on this fight. Even better, the effect doesn't seem to dwindle as his HP lowers, which means it's 20% of max health rather than 20% of current health. Presumably this won't work on too many other bosses. I also might be wrong on this, because...

...I finish the battle by summoning the Moon Esper, who unleashes a massive direct-damage hit that does Angolmois in. This is officially the sexiest Esper from any turn-of-the-century RPG, easily replacing Shiva and Siren from Final Fantasy VIII. One word: Dem Hips.

Angolmois explodes in a glorious flash of power, and I've gotta admit...this game is getting pretty fun now. I like how the uberboss from the original game was technically MUCH stronger than any other boss up to this point, yet could be defeated fairly easily via a super-potent new ability. It sends the message that this party is more powerful than the party of the original game.

Meanwhile, back at the evil base (which has a maze on the walls for them to work on during downtime)… the leader of the Trio takes Janus to task for not defeating our heroes yet.

Wait, so...they're like the Advocacy from the War of the Worlds series?

Come to think of it, they were a trio too. I wonder if this reference is on purpose. It's doubtful because that was a very cult series not exactly known for having wide-reaching influence in the game world.

Yep, they're definitely the Advocacy. Except not as creepy.

Brrr.

All we know for sure right now: This trio isn't native to this planet...and they've got The Hulkster on standby. ...My God.

Part 5 soon. In the meantime, revisit the ancient first 3 parts below to enjoy the nostalgia of our youths.




1 comment:

  1. "Slickster" is kind of an amazing name.

    This Gallows fellow is an all right dude.

    I really like the look of this campfire scene.

    "customah"... oh it's like that.

    My biggest takeaway from my impressions of this game for years has been that it's like a PS1 RPG done on the PS2, and these esper models are really doubling down on that.

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