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XSeed is no stranger to bringing RPG weirdness to the US. The last Shadowhearts game was bizarre, filled to the brim with innuendo, and an excellent RPG to boot. Their latest, Wild ARMS 5, is done in a similar style. Celebrating ten years of non-Square role-playing, this series has been a mainstay for diehard fans of Asian RPGs, although this time around they’ll definitely feel the age.

A Wild and Armed Guy

Wild ARMS 5 tells the story of a young lad named Dean and his underage, short shorts wearing, cute heart-endowed friend, Rebecca. Dean yearns for adventure and a life in the big city, far away from his one horse little town, while Rebecca yearns for Dean to realize he’s young, stupid, and incompetent. Or something like that. The story begins to move after they end up finding a meteor that crashed into a cavern. The meteor turns out to be a giant robot arm and along with it a young, only slightly more dressed girl named Avril. Murmuring the words “Johnny Appleseed,” and holding tightly to her dual ARMS (read: guns), this mystery girl soon sets our young adventurers into the motions of proper Japanese RPG heroes.

Although Wild ARMS 5 tries to tackle a variety of themes, it tends to keep its storytelling and dialogue grounded in the land of the crazy and simplistic. The dialogue is usually so bizarre, it’s as if the writers knew they were covering old ground yet again, so they just went for the “Huh?” effect. Ironically, their choice might have been for the best. There’s so much innuendo, strangeness, and goofy stuff to run across here that the journey is worth taking, despite the painfully old design clichés and technology.

Story aside, Wild ARMS 5 is almost completely unimaginative. Like most RPGs, it follows a rigid dungeon crawling template. You get missions from townsfolk, troll through dungeons to find items, and kill boss creatures—all while enduring endless random battles. When out of the dungeons, you can shop for better equipment and potions, sell stuff, and talk to weird denizens of the realm before going back to the dungeons again.

Hexing Combat

The one distinctive element of all that dungeoneering is the oddly named Sol Niger. These magic devices actually turn off the random battles in the dungeon. The catch is that you must first defeat the evil spirit inhabiting the device. Lewd talking parrots are around to help save your game as well, which is funny and uncomfortable at the same time. Another interesting element is the regularity of major monsters, as most dungeons house multiple boss creatures.

The hex combat system will be familiar to fans of the series. The battle arenas contain elemental-based hexes that affect spells, and you’ll have to be aware of a monster’s particular elemental weakness to earn the upper hand. Admittedly, the enemy AI is noticeably lacking, though some of the major boss battles can be semi-challenging.

Even casual fans of role-playing might have some fun with the game despite the flaws and lack of innovation, if the presentation doesn’t send them running. Wild ARMS 5 is, in a word, ugly. The graphics are middling at best. Characters are blocky and primitive looking, the landscapes are bland, and overall the game is just visually underwhelming. The audio is a mixed bag. The soundtrack is quite good, but the questionable voice work feels awful, thanks to the cringe-worthy dialogue.

Fan Fiction

Wild ARMS 5 will be a tough sell for non-fans of the series. It has plenty of strange personality, but is otherwise unremarkable. The graphics are poor and there are plenty of flaws to complain about. Yet, for someone looking around for a new dungeon crawl, there’s a certain charm to the abject goofiness. Also, with about 30 hours worth of game time, it’s hard to say this peculiar romp doesn’t give a gamer their money’s worth.

Review by: Jason D'Aprile
Video Produced by: Mark Fahey