"The night of the seventh day after obtaining the sword - wrapped in a torrent of light, the Magess vanished from Filgaia together with the Blaze of Disaster, leaving behind Argetlahm plunged deep in the earth...

" - Time passed."

Pardon me, but I'm a dead sucker for that sort of thing.

Of all the many videogame genres, RPGs are those that bear the closest resemblance to more widely known and accepted forms of entertainment. If you look at some of your favorites and analyze how they're assembled, you can see a number of the same conventions of design that pop up in things like movies, theatre, and written fiction. All games borrow a little bit from classic story construction, concepts like protagonist and antagonist and conflict and resolution - even if they're just a circle, four ghosts, the quest for dots, and the end of a level. And then there are games from other genres (Metal Gear, say) which are steeped in complex plot development and cinematic presentation.

But games like Metal Gear are sadly rare, that so skillfully blend genuine literary accomplishment with well-implemented action elements. As a rule, if you want a game with engaging characters and an interesting story, it's a role-playing game you're looking for, and it's good luck for us that they're so plentiful today. It's interesting to compare the circumstances surrounding the arrivals of the two Wild Arms games. The original Wild Arms, which is close to four years old now, was only the third RPG to appear on the PlayStation, following Suikoden and the forgotten, unlamented Beyond the Beyond, and preceding the groundbreaking arrival of Final Fantasy VII. Thus, it was a success more or less by default, despite drawing a number of complaints on account of its generally uninspired presentation and slow pace. In contrast, Wild Arms 2 is a face in the crowd - it's not even SCEA's biggest RPG this year, that honor instead going to Legend of Dragoon.

That said, of course, there is undoubtedly room on the market for something that is not backed by tremendous fanfare and the thunder of multi-grillion dollar advertising campaigns, but is carried primarily by well-crafted gameplay and a certain degree of charm. Something, then, like Wild Arms 2.

Actually, I should probably avoid talking smack about Wild Arms, given that I haven't actually played it (note, thus, the careful fashion in which the above comments are delivered). My first PlayStation RPG was FFVII, which occupied my attention until FF Tactics, which drove me up the damn wall for months, and then the fall of 1998 rolled around and we were kinda off to the RPG races. So I approach 2nd Ignition with little cognizance of possible similarities or differences in comparison to its predecessor. Sony, in a fashion which seems peculiarly Japanese (reminds me of G Gundam or Dominion Conflict), states that they are quite different, though, at least as far as their settings are concerned. Both games take place in a land called Filgaia, but the name is evidently almost all that they share. "This Filgaia is a parallel world," they say, where the world has evolved along different lines, and old names have been given to new creations.

But matters of history aren't immediately pertinent to the adventure, which starts out in a fashion very similar to the first Wild Arms. As before, the game's characters begin their story alone, set on their own individual paths. Lilka, an apprentice magician, winds up lost far from home after an accident with a wayward Teleport Gem. Brad (formerly Romanized as Blood, which I prefer, but you can name him whatever you like) is a war hero turned criminal, on the run from his former leaders. And Ashley (well, he's David F now, but never mind...) is simply a soldier, but one whose bravery signals a promising career ahead of him - at least for now.

I am of the ilk who consider character the most important asset of an RPG. I enjoy complex gameplay when it presents itself, hence my spectacularly bloody-minded assault on the formidable walls of Final Fantasy Tactics, but it is illustrative of my point that I will never play Tactics again, whereas the first thing I do after I die/get fired/win the lottery will be to play Final Fantasy VIII again (after which I'll finish Grandia) . The former is a challenge to the left brain (and to some degree the ego), but the latter touches the emotions, which is a rather uncommon occurrence in games, and valuable when you can find it.

Wild Arms 2, then, is possessed of quite an engaging character. Its cast is part of it - Lilka in particular I've grown quite fond of, the bright-natured rookie being one of my favorite types. But the way their quest is presented helps as well. Though this preview version contains an incomplete localization (you can tell by the frequent line-wrap errors), the dialogue still comes off pretty well, with individual voices coming through from even supporting characters. There's an interesting scene in Ashley's sub-quest where a group of orphaned kids enlist him to fetch their cat from off a roof, and their exaggerated politeness is just darling. Anyway, how can I fail to enjoy a game which makes a puzzle out of retrieving a treed kitten?

Simple puzzles like that compose a great deal of the gameplay in between cutscenes and other plot-advancing sequences. The dungeons include a great deal of Zelda-ish switch-finding and block-moving, requiring the acquisition and use of special character-specific tools to manipulate objects. For example, Ashley acquires a throwing knife, which you can toss at switches to activate them; Lilka does the same thing with a fireball-tossing magic wand. This isn't an action-RPG by any stretch of the imagination - the battles still involve traditional turn-based combat - but it has a dash of slightly different gameplay, which helps lighten what might be otherwise boring excursions into walking, fighting, walking some more, and fighting again. The encounter rate is nicely tuned as well, helping players avoid the deadly Tales of Destiny Syndrome (severe cranial trauma as a result of bashing one's head against a wall, in turn the result of attempting to solve complex puzzles while beset by continuous monster encounters).

The dungeons may be fun to navigate, but unfortunately they aren't much to look at. As a rule, Wild Arms 2 isn't much of a graphical stunner. The introductory movie is lovely (memo to SCEA: thou shalt not dub the theme song), but after that, neither the polygon worlds nor the sprite characters can hang with something like Grandia, and the fully-3D battle sequences rather pale after you've played Final Fantasy VIII. When the game switches to hand-drawn backgrounds, which it does every so often during cinema sequences, it looks far better - to those still working with the 32-bit generation of consoles, there is a lesson here.

But they say looks don't mean everything, and the reason they say it, whoever "they" may be, is 'cos it's true. At this point, Wild Arms 2 packs enough character and variety to make up for its appearance, including the odd intriguing innovation. Exploring the world map is interesting, because there aren't any landmarks - you have to do some honest exploration, heading off in the directions you've been sent and sounding out with a sonar-like command to find dungeons and towns. The story, meanwhile, builds a classically epic backstory, as a legendary sword descends down through history in time to save the world from a new cataclysm. Before the big-ticket games start arriving in time for the holidays, multi-grillion dollar ad campaigns in tow, Wild Arms 2 might not be a bad choice, if you need to add a little character to your summer months.

Click here and here for previous looks at Wild Arms 2, including a great many screenshots

Wild Arms 2 Intro MPEG - Part 1 3.8 MB, Part 2 3.7 MB, Part 3 3.7 MB.