The thought of coming home pervades many of the remakes that have recently sprung up on the shelves. Gamers find themselves returning to worlds they've experienced before-- perhaps in a diminished capacity, or perhaps with a new story to be told. But the concept of a homecoming is usually a bittersweet one; a gamer's primary interest is novelty, and a remake tends to not provide this. Wild ARMs: Alter Code F breaks this stereotype.
Released in Japan in 2004, the game is a total re-write of the first game in the venerable Wild ARMs series. From the ground up, the game has been re-designed and re-imagined, even though the plot and many of the locations are similar to the original. The fully 3-D scenery is very nice if just a little dated (compared to titles since then, such as Musashi Samurai Legend and even Shadow Hearts: Covenant). The game follows three main characters-- a silent protagonist, a wiseacre swordsman, and an insecure princess-- as they venture forth to protect the land of Filgaia from the invading Metal Demon army.
Fans of the series will be delighted to know that the game borrows many of its newer elements from the previous titles in the series. Puzzles play out in 3-D now, using tools culled from WA2 and 3 as well as the original. The battle system received the biggest boost, however; it has been upgraded to a combat engine similar to WA3's, featuring the 'crossfire sequence' flow of battle for most encounters. The magic system, which was dependent on Force points in WA3, has been restored to the original game's scenario (with Rudy being the only character incapable of using magic at all). Additionally, Cecilia's magic has been scaled back and she is now the only character capable of summoning the Guardians. Characters don't feel overpowered until later in the game, when you can afford some of Rudy's ARM upgrades and creatively abuse the Gatling Raid move. Since most battles can still be skipped as in the previous two outings, combat remains fresh for a little bit longer than in most RPGs (but the encounter rate is higher as a matter of course). Five other playable characters join you; three of these can be recruited for the final battle through various endgame subquests.
For better or worse, the gameplay remains standard Wild ARMs. Players traipse around the overworld map using the search system to find landmarks such as towns or dungeons. Within, the dungeons feature cunning puzzles and powerful monsters which must be overcome to complete an objective. The gameplay remains somewhat linear until the vehicles become available, putting the game firmly in the trenches of old-school Final Fantasy-style games. This also implies a heavy emphasis on leveling; players may become stymied by a boss if their levels are too low (usually due to abuse of the ability to skip random battles), or if they have failed to assign a specific spell to their magic slots. This is somewhat offset by the fact that the random encounters are absurdly easy, once you've figured out the trick to each enemy. Still, easy leveling becomes boring while hard leveling becomes frustrating; it's a precarious balance and it's never been quite figured out right.
Players expecting a note-for-note transcription of the original score will be enthralled and somewhat disappointed by the newly-mastered soundtrack. Some of the most memorable music from the original is missing, probably because it didn't quite fit the theme; however, what would be considered the most egregious omission is in the game, eventually. Also, the US release strips out most of the vocals from the game-- not just the battle speech, but the music vocals as well on two tracks (some choral pieces, such as the overworld theme, still have vocals, though). The title's visual style borrows heavily from Wild ARMs 3; while models have improved quite a bit from the chunkiness evidenced in the last game, they're still not perfect. When the female lead doesn't have a feminine-looking face outside of the status screen, that might be a clue that you need to tweak the character design just a little bit. Environments are relatively sparse compared to the original, and the game has the extremely annoying tendency to not show you all of the exits to the room, making dungeons that much more frustrating; the 'challenge' here comes from to stop every ten yards and rotate the camera like a crack-addled paranoiac videographer looking for the itty-bitty door you missed.
Agetec outdid themselves with the translation, which is also another spot of contention for series purists. Many of the original names for some elements, such as Stoldark (the water guardian), have been restored to either a new translation or to fit later canonical translations; Stoldark thus becomes Schturdark. However, classic and game-defining elements such as Jack and Zed's names were left in. The game even makes a nod to past translations of the characters' jobs (here they are known as Drifters, but Dream Chasers and Migrants were also used). The localization has few obvious flaws, mostly after the halfway mark, and captures the spirit of the original game as well as the original Japanese nearly perfectly.
The game offers a fair chunk of replay in its use of a New Game Plus mechanism, as well as optional bosses and a dozen or so other subquests. However, the game is a bit too long and linear to consider going all the way through a second time, especially with Wild ARMs 4 on its way (actually, released by the time you read this) and newer games vying for attention. On the whole, the game is a welcome addition to any library and serves well as a comfort-food type game. You know what you're getting, you know how to do it, and it makes you feel good doing it again; but ultimately, you've done this before, and dressing it up in new clothes doesn't quite make up for the lack of new story elements. It is hard to complain, what with more Wild ARMs on the way, but it's a valid point.
