Product Description

Return to the world of Filgaia, where you'll follow the rich story of three protagonists: Ashley, Liluka, and Brad. Ashley is a gun fighter with intimate knowledge of ancient technology. Liluka, a sorceress, is sweet and innocent but packs a powerful parasol that easily dispatches enemies. Brad, a pensive ex-soldier, roams Filgaia with a rifle and a rocket launcher.

Wild Arms: Second Ignition is a sequel, but you needn't have played the first to understand it. This role-playing game features all new characters and is packed with quests, side quests, and plenty of battles. The world of Filgaia is rendered in 3-D, and you can rotate the field map to help find traps and treasures hidden within the landscape. Also, the game allows you to avoid fights whenever you want, so you'll have the strategic benefit of picking your battles.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5985 in Video Games
• Brand: Sony
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: PlayStation, Windows 98

Features

• 1 Player
• RPG
• 2 Discs
• Stunning 3D Graphics with manual camera control
• Intelligent, clever puzzles

Editorial Review
The forces of evil are at work again, and it's up to a boy, a sorceress, and a rebel to turn the tide in Wild Arms 2, Sony's latest role-playing game.

Each character starts out alone and must fight bosses and enemies as well as develop his or her own personal set of special moves. Aside from the traditional turn-based fighting, Wild Arms 2 throws in a bit of action, and characters get weapons that they can use to solve puzzles.

The graphics in this game are fully 3-D with huge bosses, but the story is a little thin. It's your typical "beat the megalomaniac before he takes over the world" plot, which players familiar with the genre have seen far too often in games past. Still, there's a large cast of characters, with the playable characters eventually joining forces, and it's fun getting them there. For fans of action role-playing games, this one shouldn't be missed. --Robb Guido

Pros:

• Action blended into traditional turn-based fighting gameplay
• Three characters, each playable separately

• Doesn't emphasize story as much as gameplay

GameSpot Review
Released during the "Great RPG Drought of 1997," the original Wild Arms was an oasis of adventure in a world almost completely without alternatives. While it was a pretty generic RPG overall, players' standards were low and the title was welcomed. Wild Arms 2 is equal in caliber to the original title, and it suffers the burden of comparison in a market flooded with better alternatives. Welcome back to the world of Filgaia... sort of. While the world retains the same name and other similarities, Wild Arms 2 is not really a sequel but rather a separate story set in the same universe. A new army recruit, Ashley, is transformed into a hideous demon in a dimensional experiment conducted by unknown foes. As the experiment's only survivor, Ashley joins the war-hero-turned-criminal Brad and the bumbling magician Lilka in the newly formed ARMs special forces. Determined to uncover the evil that twisted Ashley's body and soul and prevent further experimentation with the dark parallel universe, the group finds a far greater conspiracy, which, of course, threatens the entire world. Ashley, Brad, and Lilka will be joined by other adventurers on their journey, and each will have unique powers and perspectives on the coming disaster. Like the original Wild Arms, Wild Arms 2 combines standard random-encounter-based RPG gameplay with Zelda-like dungeons and puzzle solving. Each character in the three-person party has a handful of tools and skills at his or her disposal for manipulating the environment and solving the plethora of simple puzzles. Dungeons are viewed from a 3D rotatable three-quarter view, and manipulation of the camera is required to find exits, chests, and puzzle elements alike. Beginning with the most blaring and over-the-top fanfare to grace an RPG, Wild Arms 2's combat system is, ironically, slow and unexciting, not to mention strategically nontaxing. The characters have a variety of attacks at their disposal, such as magic and the use of ARMs weapons. Magic and ARMs attacks require the use of force points (FP), built up by giving and receiving damage. Throw in the concept of magic as a virtually unlimited resource, and you've got an easy game. In a nod to the Final Fantasy series, Wild Arms 2 features a variety of interesting character-customization options. "Guardians," similar to Final Fantasy VIII's Guardian Forces, can be equipped to modify your stats and grant additional powers, including the ability to summon great beasts into battle. As in the first game, magic spells are scribed onto crests found throughout the game, and they let you fully customize a relatively small spell library. New to Wild Arms 2 are personal skills, which are status-enhancing abilities that can be purchased with a pool of skill points accrued throughout the course of the game. Personal skills include resistance to status effects and decreased FP usage. While character customization is always welcome, Wild Arms 2 just isn't difficult enough to really warrant this level of tweaking, so the point is fairly moot. Wild Arms 2 also features a logically questionable overworld map system, implemented to keep you on the straight and narrow. Locations on the map are not visible until two events have occurred: you've been told about the location by a nonplayer character and you "sonar ping" near its actual location. Why a giant castle is invisible is unknown, and searching for the locations is an exercise in pointlessness. Completely removing the motivation to explore removes any nonlinearity the game might have. Wild Arms 2's gameplay suffers from comparison to other, more original, modern-day RPGs, and its technology is completely destroyed by the same comparisons. While the 3D towns and dungeons look good enough, the battle engine doesn't seem to have changed one lick since the first game's 1997 release. While the character models are less "superdeformed," they are low in polygons, heavily jointed, and poorly textured. In addition to having the worst monster designs since Crave's miserable Shadow Madness, Wild Arms 2 also features terrible animation and spell effects. While it's unrealistic to expect Final Fantasy-style production values in every RPG, Wild Arms 2's technology is subpar and reminiscent of yesteryear's low-budget RPGs. The only thing helping the game's visuals are the impressively high-budget anime cutscenes, featuring smooth animation and far more appealing renditions of the game's characters. Obnoxious battle fanfare aside, Wild Arms 2's music is probably the game's highest point. From soothing town anthems to sinister bad-guy themes, Wild Arms 2 is, aurally, much better off than its predecessor. Wild Arms 2 isn't bad, but it doesn't begin to approach today's standard of good, either. While a number of RPG players have fond memories of the original Wild Arms, they'll most likely be surprised and dismayed by its dinosaur of a sequel. While this doesn't bode well for Wild Arms 2, it is pleasing to note how far the genre has advanced since the original game's release.--Peter Bartholow--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

WILD ARMS 2nd Ignition Review
Wild Arms 2 in my opinion was an overall great role playing game that I really enjoyed. I've played lots of other RPG's but this one is one the best i"ve plyed in a while. Its battle system is easy to catch on to just like any other RPG such as Final Fantasy 8 or the first WILD ARMS game. This game also has some great characters the each have some cool special abilities that seperate them from each other. WILD ARMS 2 also has a great story line to compete with all the other well known RPG's out these days. And thats my review of WILD ARMS 2.

The Next Final Fantasy
Wild Arms 2: 2nd Ignition is one of my favorite game after the Final Fantasy series. I've played half of the game ( japanese version ) and from what I saw everything look great, although I don't understand the language but I can tell you that WA2:2I has a great storyline and they also feature lots of new additions, Like you can name all the characters that are involved in this game, that's crazy with over 20 characters and you get to name them one by one. This RPG also improves a lot from the first Wild Arms. Everything is in 3D now except for the characters.This is also one of the game that you have to twist your brain to solve the puzzle aside from the Alundra series. By far this is the most beautiful RPG I've played after final Fantasy series and Chrono Trigger. I recommend this game to all those hardcore RPG gamer & get ready to solve all those great puzzles.

A good game, with a few flaws
Wild Arms 2, for the most part, is a good game. Anyone who has played the original Wild Arms will note serveral differences, but some of the differences make this a rather frustrating game.

The game starts off the same way as the original one - three seperate people with seperate quests. Atfer going through the intro, there isn't any indication that anything is wrong. Lilka's choice of weapon is a little odd and Ashley and Brad both use ARMS. OK, but I prefer the combo of Rudy Cecelia and Jack from WA. Another problem is that you have to wait to use the ARMS and magic until you reach a certain force point. Although this eliminates MP, it gets really annoying having to wait to cast Ice on a fire creature when the same thing blasts me with a fire attack. Same problem with the ARMS - have to wait until the FP is high enough. This creates problems when you get into a tough battle and have to wait a few turns to use the big guns - and the critter hits you with confusion, sleep, et al while waiting.

The idea of personal skills is great - get immune to all kinds of stuff, and power up your character at the same time.

The force skills attained by the characters are OK, but some of them are a waste. Ashley's Access is a powerful force, but you have to be at condition green to use it, and I'm usually too busy pounding away with the ARMS to really use it. Tim's FP shift is another more or less useless force skill.

Searching for items it OK, but searching for cities and dungeons seems to be more annoying than anything else.

There aren't as many magic spells for Lilka in WA 2 that there is for Celilia in the Orginial WA. The powered up versions of the simple magic in WA 2 aren't really worth the effort to find them

The graphics in WA 2 are better than the orginal one, but I don't worry about graphics too much, preferring gameplay and fun over graphics.

Don't get me wrong - this is a good game overall There are a lot of little things that make this a good, as opposed to great, game. I do recommend it, but rent it first! =)