June Retro Game of the Month - Wild ARMs (PS1)

As I mentioned in even the differences in their anime openings - the main characters party and the world itself often fails - cities are destroyed and often it is because of your actions opening up the path and the metal demons are just fucking ruthless and a step ahead of you the entire time. I think the orig some of this is lost because of "animation" and cartoonyness - while the improved visuals in the remake can better enforce this some.

The world is barren and what pockets of life there are need protecting yet they keep getting destroyed effortlessly by your seemingly unkillable opponents.

In most RPGs, FF etc. you meet your primary antagonists and they beat you up and lol let u live, then you spend the game getting stronger and then fight them at the end in a big epic showdown where you show humanity is truly strong and yay.

In WildARMs the metal demons constantly beat your shit, laugh about it tell you "eh you have gotten stronger, but well..*flick* your done" all this while killing and destroying shit all around. It is akin to Kefka from FF6 ACTUALLY destroying shit, if he didn't literally destroy the world, I would give the villans from WildARMs on par with FF9 bad guys for actually being world level bad dudes fucking shit up.

The remake approaches Jacks backstory more directly and sooner in the game - in the orig - spoiler - you have to leave your game sit at the title screen and are treated with a cut scene from many years ago that show - spoiler again---- jacks backstory - He is a very well done character, he is a Indiana Jones, Han Solo type arcitype adventurer loner that has a haunted past- yet it feels fresh and well placed into the WildARMs game and story.

Your main character is developed very well steadily throughout the game, I do not know how well is is done on the remake or if its accelerated or improved upon - I need to put my OG Disc up and find the remake and continue.

The princess is okay in terms of character, the time you get with her solo at the start helps - FF9 must have used WA as a emotional cue hit, cutting hair etc. but it still is well done (in both titles)

She constantly throughout the story is the one that most outwardly shows emotion. She is the one that resonates the dramatic and gravity of what is going on, while Jack is dull and your main character is somewhat stunned and still trying to catch up to everything that is going on.

I really like the very "generic" three character types - I think we have had decades of games trying to eschew this that we get total convoluted crap in plot and in characters.

I do not know how adding in the 3 or so side characters from the orig into the playable cast effect this in the remake as I did not really get past the "intro" - I also do not like adding in a playable character for 1 or 2 story beats and then they leave... again I have not gotten there on the remake so I do not know - and some of this is personal pref. But with the story and feel of this game being so well crafted around Rudy, Jack and Cecelia that I would feel tossing one out for a bit then bringing them back would be disruptive - its not FF6 and an ensamb big cast game.

The game to me has a long start, it can be argued it is drawn out and tosses many things at you at once and some of those wont creep up until later in the story, and you have to remember. The Elw, Guardians, Golems, Metal Demons etc etc. - But it has a great final act that builds up nicely and resolves nicely - spoiler- you get hit with an additional "end" segment after the main apparent ending target, but no one complains about the moon stuff in FF4 right? while cliche and the standard ha ha! big bad is really me! it is imo still actually done well and technically speaking done better than Golbez and the lunar surface to Zeromus stuff in FF4, that bad guy good guy flip switch was what, 5 lines of text. "sorry bro, love u"