u/Atom_wolf

Hi everybody

I've been waiting for the Muse / Bullseye pack to be restocked. But in typical Hasbro-fashion it was impossible to get a pre-order in, it was moved back and now they've completely removed it from the EU site before it was even released.

I just wanted to ask if anyone has seen Hasbro re-list products before (compared to just restocking)?

Hello everyone (tldr in the bottom)

I just completed Wild Arms 3 and since I don't have any friends who've touched the franchise I need to get something off my chest. If you love Wild Arms 3 this is not a critique of your taste - we all like different things for different reasons and I would never attack someone for liking something I don't.

Since I really got into jrpgs over 10 years ago I've played both bangers and some 'just okay' ones. My rule with different kind of media is always to finish it - I simply detest people who vehemently bash on something when they themselves never got the 'full experience' (be it a movie or game) because they dropped it. So sometimes it's good to push through and finish a game even if it was only 'good, but not great' because you can (hopefully) at least pull some enjoyment from it.

I decided the other week to clear Wild Arms 3 from my backlog. I've played 1 and 2 and while they won't exactly be in my personal top 20 jrpgs I'm still glad I got around to play them because they each had some cool stuff going on.

And now that I've completed Wild Arms 3 I can finally say that it was one of the worst designed jrpgs I've ever touched. Just to sum up my most biggest complaints:

- Healing items are somewhat limited. Yes, you can get the most basic healing item at the start and yes, you can cultivate infinite healing items by using the Secret Garden. But why, though? Why did they think it was a good idea to make you grow healing items (and therefore potentially adding hours and hours of unnecessary extra time) instead of just making them buyable? And if you went in blind you wouldn't even now about the secret garden unless you stumbled upon it.

- I totally get the idea of the planet being a wasteland on the brink of collapse - the game commits to the western-style more than 1 and 2 which is great! But holy medaroli couldn't they just have had a little more variety in dungeons? There are basically three types: Temple, cave/mine and futuristic/machine-like base. Just a little bit of colour or maybe something outdoors like a gorge? The problem is that when all the dungeons look the same-y your brain just switches off and you forget what you did in them.

- The story/characters are really bland. One problem with the story is how drawn out it feels. You learn the motivations of the villains pretty quickly and the 'twist villain' just feels tagged on (even if you can meet her earlier in the game). Same with the characters: Most of their development is handled early on so for the most part everyone is just constantly repeating their motivations, ideals and problems. But the story progressing is also just such a slog. You are almost always going to a new dungeon to either: a) get a story-item or b) learn something about the villains or the project to save the planet. It means that every time you've completed a dungeon the story just barely moves. You're just walking around and doing stuff while everyone repeats the almost same things.

- The final boss is without a doubt one of the worst designed bosses ever. You go through the final dungeon, beat the boss guarding the final boss and then get a point of no return prompt - perfect, I expect no less. Then you beat the boss and are told that it has moved to another point. A little ridiculous when you can't save in between but it's fine anyway....Then you go through a long cutscene and then you have to fight a boss with 11 phases! Admittedly, even going in with almost no healing items it's somewhat doable. But the problem stems from each phase having some sort of 'gimmick' you need to work around. So it becomes extremely stressful to micromanage item usage, buffs/debuffs turn order and to go into a phase at high health (there is no healing in-between and status persists). The whole battle took me an hour and a half to get through!

- The ending was a complete nut-buster (not in the good way). Instead of just respecting the player's effort by restoring the planet and give everyone a happy ending...the game litteraly >!replicates the ending of 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' and our heroes are now branded as cold-blood killers, hunted by a world that will never know their sacrifice. !<The ending could have worked, mind you, if the party had at any point in the story actually gravitated towards unlawful behaviour. But no: >!Now they can't go back to their families and friends because of them being blamed for a murder the main villain committed.!<

Again: if you like this game, more power to you! My favorite Tales-game is Xillia so I've had to hear a lot of sh!t from random people on the internet myself. I just can't wrap my head around why the developers thought so many horrible gameplay aspects would make for a good experience.

Tl;dr: Wild Arms 3 has numerous messed up gameplay aspects like healing and item manage, story, dungeon design and final boss/ending. And while I've had my share of bad jrpg-experiences, nothing has eroded my mental health such as this.

Hi Everybody!

I'm playing through Wild Arms 3 for the first time and noticed how the animated adds small changes as you encounter more characters. It's truly a neat detail from a glorious bygone era of production quality. Does anyone else have examples of jrpgs where the anime intro changes as you play the game? I only vaguely remember a Tales-game doing it (can't remember which one, though)