Wild Arms 4 combines the deep customization and enjoyable atmosphere of other RPGs with a few innovations.
Story/Characters: In Wild Arms 4, you play as a stubborn, righteous teenage boy named Jude Maverick who is living on a hovering island, sealed off from the rest of Filgaia, a good portion of which is in ruin. Jude then gets an ARM which becomes bound to him and basically destroys the hovering island protecting him from the horrors of the outside world. Without giving away too much more of the story, I'll say that it is pretty well done, and the narrative is well told. There are two political groups that are important to the story, but thankfully it's not a "good vs evil" deal. There is some contrast in the maturity level of the games story, though. One the one hand, there are many politically charged rants and overtones that fuel the game story, and you even get to learn about the theory of evolution (O__O)! On the other hand, some of it is very heavy handed and clichéd, such as when villains magically see the error of their ways, or when your party simply forgives them. Jude also has the typical "I won't give up!" attitude that has become so common in games. Aside from Jude, you'll meet Yulie, a shy, traumatized girl with the ability to heal and other powers I can't explain with out spoiling the story, Arnaud, who is basically the brains of the group, and Raquel, a very strong woman who wants to find what's left Filgaia's beauty. The characters motives (more specifically Raquel's) are revealed throughout the story, so worry not if you think the whole sightseeing in a destroyed world thing is weird. The non-player characters that are important to the story have a good amount of variety and depth, but the characters on the whole aren't anything to write home about. A fun feature available to players is the ability to chat with members of your party at certain save points. You can talk to them individually or as a group, which makes the characters more engaging and likable. There's a good amount of humor in the game too, thankfully.
Graphics: The visuals in Wild Arms 4 are excellent, despite the game being almost 2 years old. You might be thinking that the graphics must be sort of gray and unexciting due to Filgaia being war-torn, but there are many beautiful areas you'll visit during your journey. Just about ALL of the environments are filled with detailed objects and/or lighting effects. My personal favorite is the Autumn River, in which the sunset is beautiful, the trees actually look good, and the water sparkles. The effects in battle are detailed and colorful, especially Finest Arts, character combination attacks, and Summons. There are some nice touches in stronger abilities, such as being able to see a reflection of Jude when he uses Silver Launcher. The summons are shown in what I'm pretty sure is FMV, and there are a good amount of them. Character combination attacks are done using the same in game engine as story events, which is basically what you see normally, but zoomed in and with a much higher polygon count. The characters definitely have an anime art style to them, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your taste. Also worth mentioning is that your weapon's appearance will change when you equip a different one, which adds to the feeling of getting stronger. Granted, none of the weapons look all that impressive, but it's still a welcome addition. The towns have quite a bit of variety to them, and they're all enjoyable to be in.
Sound: The music in Wild Arms 4 lives up to the soundtracks of past games. It's upbeat, extremely catchy, and varied. You have the western style music of one of the obviously western-influenced towns, the awkward but excellent tunes in Guara Bobelo, the fitting dungeon music, etc. You can even hear a bird chirping part of the game's theme music in the final town. The soundtrack is excellent, really. Sound effects are appropriate and often satisfying. The voice acting is quite good too, and the points where it's bad is more due to the dialog itself being bad rather than the voice acting itself.
Gameplay---The Hex Battle System and its strengths --- The combat in Wild Arms 4 is a departure from past installments in the series. This time, instead of the traditional turn-based system, battles are done through the Hex Battle System. Encounters are still random, though. When you get into battle, there are 7 hexagons in which both you and your enemies will appear. Both you and your enemy cannot be in the same hex, though. All of your party members can be in one hex, and the number of enemies that can be in the same hex varies depending on their size. The Hex system definitely adds a good amount of strategy into the game. You can choose to have all of your characters in one hex, which would allow you to heal all of your characters with one spell or power them up, but then when an enemy attacks, they will hit all of your characters. One can also enhance or place detrimental effects on hexes. For example, you could lock an enemy hex when several enemies are in it and then poison it, or seal off abilities. There are tons of abilities in this game, which adds more to the strategy aspect of it. The variety of the abilities that you gain is especially a strong point. Adding to the strategy, there are Hexes which have Ley Points, whose elemental power can be harnessed with certain abilities, such as Arnaud's Energy Blast. Ley Points are identifiable by the color of the hex (i.e. a red hex means it's a fire Ley Point) and their use varies with abilities. Arnaud's Energy Blast simply changes elemental attribute based on the element of the Ley Point, but Jude's Ley Boost increases his Attack Power when used in a fire Ley Point, but restores MP when used on a normal hex. Some attacks naturally work better on enemies than others, but if you use something like a fire-powered Energy Blast on an enemy who is standing on a water hex, then you'll do immense damage. Opposing elements are super effective against each other, to clarify. During battle, you have HP and MP obviously, but there's also a third bar, FP. When you use an attack or activate a skill, you will gain FP. Each character has special abilities can only be used by consuming FP, such as Arnaud's Jump, which allows you to jump to any other hex, taking whichever party members are in the same hex with you. FP is shared, so you have to manage it well. The other important use of FP is combination attacks, which are collaborative special attacks with cut-in movies which require 2 or more party members in the same hex. Summons also use FP and vary depending on the elemental attribute of the hex that Yulie is in. Gameplay ---The Flaws of the Battle System--- Despite battles being strategic, fun, and varied, there are a few issues with them. The first issue is that when a party member kills an enemy, they get an experience multiplier. If I recall, they get 70% more for killing an enemy, 90% more if the enemy is killed with a special attack, etc. The problem arises here because it means party members are going level up unevenly. This wouldn't be an issue if the characters were more balanced, but they're not. Raquel is extremely overpowered and will most likely kill the most enemies and thus be considerably higher level than everyone else unless you try very hard to not let that happen. At times, battles can also seem like they start to drag sometimes, while other times they're over in a flash. Essentially, the lack of balance in the combat can make battles frustratingly long, you're not likely to be complaining about them being too short , though. Also, if you want to balance your party level, you'll probably need to just guard on Raquel's turn, which will make battles extremely long.
Gameplay---Out of Battle Customization and Progression--- In RPGs, I find that one of the main things that makes them fun is the amount of out of battle customization. Battles are generally repetitive, so it's important that they are rewarding. In Wild Arms 4, this aspect is excellent. The first method of customization is the character growth chart. As you level up, you get growth points, which can be spent in getting new abilities or kept for other use. When you level up, you'll automatically learn more abilities. When you learn an ability through leveling up (the order in which you learn them is from top to bottom in the menu where they're displayed) then you "master" it. You can spend points strategically so that you will master abilities faster. When you master an ability you get whatever points you spent in it back. When you keep them, you can choose whether you want to optimize your MP or your HP and to what exact extent. The more points you have, the more potent the enhancement of HP/MP is. This gives you a little bit of freedom in how your characters are developed. The types of abilities you get are quite varied. For example, you could get Move and Attack with Raquel, which allows Raquel to move from one hex to another and attack (but only attack, nothing else) after moving. Of course, this also FORCES you to attack if an enemy is in range, which you may not want to do. Fortunately you can turn these abilities gained through the character growth chart on or off. The second method of customization will seem a lot more generic and standard for RPGs at first. It's the different armors and weapons you can equip on your characters. You might think it's the same in all games, but that is false. In some RPGs, you're only presented with one new weapon at a shop and you can't really get anything else. In other games you have many options, but all they do is increase your attack power. In Wild Arms 4, weapons have two stats. Number of hits, and their actual power. Why does this matter? Having a weapon with an attack power of 200 that deals out 4 hits will make your normal attack do the equivalent of a weapon with 1 hit and 800 attack power. However, special abilities are considered 1 hit, so having the 4 hit weapon with 200 attack power will make a special ability considerably weaker. Weapons also tend to have some cool effects, like increasing the experience multiplier or increasing your chance to get a critical hit. In shops, you're usually presented with two options: a weapon with decent attack power and 1 hit, or a multi hit weapon with 3 or 4 hits which will do more damage on normal attacks than the single hit one (i.e. a 4 hit weapon with 300 attack power versus a single hit with 800 attack power) but much less with special attacks. What's more there are tons and tons of weapons, a lot of which are randomly dropped by enemies. These weapons tend to be a lot stronger than what you can buy at the store, too. Jude doesn't get new weapons, but rather his ARM is modified with special items of which there are only a few. You choose how his ARM is modified, so you could increase the number of bullets but sacrifice accuracy, or increase the number of hits but sacrifice attack power. Throughout the game you'll also get badges, which have various different upgrades. You can increase the number of badges a character can equip through a few character growth chart abilities. Badges can do things like start your character out in the "explosive" mode for the first turn of battle, which will make you do immense damage on your first turn. There are also badges which increase experience multipliers, critical hit rate, HP, MP, and a variety of other things. Progression is done through the world map, you choose where you want to go and you're taken there. Later in the game you'll get an airship and have the ability to travel anywhere. Earlier though, you cannot go back into some areas due to the story.
Gameplay---Platforming/Puzzles--- In Wild Arms 4, a good portion of the game is doing puzzles. Puzzles involve picking up special items, such as a Wonder Rod, a sword, a pot, etc. and interacting with the environment to alter that item, hit a switch, destroy crates, blow something up, and the like. In many cases you'll have to throw items as well. There's a plethora of different items for these puzzles, with new ones coming in even at the end of the game. This makes puzzles feel fresh. The puzzles are decently designed, but they're nothing too special. Other than the puzzles which involve throwing stuff or hitting switches, there are the platforming sections. In these, you'll need to jump across platforms which might be moving in either 2D or 3D. Early in the game, Jude gets the power of the Accelerator, a device which allows him to move ultra fast. This speed boost is expressed as the rest of time slowing down when you actually use it, though. Coins appear in this mode, and objects such as moving fans are slowed down so you can get through the area. Coins give you money and the more you get consecutively, the higher the multiplier goes. More importantly though, the coins can often guide you to your destination when you're stuck. 3D platforming is the most frustrating, as it just feels clunky sometimes. When you fall off the screen, you start back at the beginning of that screen, which usually isn't too punishing. Platforming sections in 2D are great, but the 3D parts can often be a source of frustration. At least the camera angles never get in the way of the platforming, though.
Gameplay--- Longevity and Side quests --- The story in Wild Arms 4 takes about 25 hours to complete, and it feels like a damn short 25 hours. However, there's a huge amount of content only available the second time through. Towards the end of the game you'll notice that you won't have nearly all of the badges, power up parts for Jude's arm, and a weapon/armor creation shop will open up. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, 80% of what's can be created can only be made on your second play through or later, due to the black market in Guara Bobelo only being available after getting an item well into the final dungeon. There are also a bunch of optional bosses to beat and even a coliseum where you can take part in a multitude of battles. Herein lies the main problem with Wild Arms 4, too much of the content cannot be accessed during the first play through. Thankfully there's a new game plus option of sorts. If the main quest was longer, it would only make going through that much harder, but because it's short, you may feel like you want more content from the game without having to replay it. As a new entry in the Wild Arms series, some might say that Wild Arms 4 was a little bit of a letdown, but as a Japanese RPG irrespective of its namesake, Wild Arms 4 is an excellent game with only a few flaws.