It took about 10 hours, but I’m finally starting to enjoy Wild Arms 5
I’m enjoying the battles, at least I thought I’d get sick of hexes pretty quickly, but instead I’m finding them more interesting because I’ve gotten a few new skills and attacks that let me attack various hexes, and I’m just having fun experimenting with those right now.The encounter rate isn’t too high and I like being able to turn encounters off in dungeons (after jumping through a few hoops) in order to explore more thoroughly.
I haven’t bothered to change my standard party of Dean, Avril and Rebecca, though given Avril’s importance to the story she’ll probably leave my party at some point. But then again everyone gets EXP even if they don’t participate, so there’s no real need to switch anyone new in. It’s not like the enemies put up that much of a fight anyway. Their sissiness would be a problem if combat was slow, but since everything dies so quickly I guess I can give them a break. But at least drop more EXP, you stingy creatures!
I quit Wild Arms 2 and more recently Tales of Legendia because the dungeon puzzles really pissed me off, but WA5 has been good so far. Fans of the series might be annoyed at how easy everything is, but it’s just right for me. Most rooms have one, simple puzzle with a very obvious solution which takes all of 30 seconds or so to do – just push this block onto this switch, or freeze this platform so you can walk across, that sort of thing. I mean they’re so easy they might as well not exist, but if they have to exist then straightforward puzzles like this are my kind of thing. The latest dungeon (Baskars Shrine) has me a bit annoyed though, because of this room with moving platforms I have to freeze and unfreeze… *pip* I turned the PS2 off because I was annoyed, but I’ll get back to it later today.
I hope Wild Arms 5 doesn’t drag on too much longer though. It’s fun but not that much fun. About 25-30 hours would be ideal. Any longer than that and I just might toss it.
