WA4 is strange. There are actually a lot of things about its presentation that I like - for starters, more games should have the inter-party chats constantly during the middle of dungeons a la Tales skits that WA4 has. This is actually amazingly huge for me liking the cast. That said... WA4 definitely functions better as a whole and in groups than alone. As in, a lot of characters kind of fail individually, but work well in their roles, so I can't complain too much.
Wild ARMs 4
Jude - 5/10 - The weakest link of the cast. Much as I'd like to hate on him, I can't deny that, given that we are having a 13-year-old with superpowers in the cast (probably a bad idea), they did in fact write him like a 13-year-old. Which fits. His extreme innocence is a fair enough perspective to include for dialogue, and it also sets up the plot's theme quite well, even if that theme is totally wrong (young people are awesome, old people ruined the world - in order of age, Jude / Yulie are innocent, Arnaud / Raquel know the horrible truth but are still basically good hearted, Brionac blew up the world, and the Congressional Knights are just super evil.)
Yulie - 6/10. Yulie is basically a giant plot device. I actually do respect the choice to make the first half of the game be just running away and trying to get Yulie to safety / obscurity, with everyone else's plot secondary - the cast doesn't start out as world-savers and more games should do that. Anyway, the CONCEPT of Yulie is actually pretty dumb, but her dialogue once again saves a character who I would by default dislike. Her plot doesn't exactly add up from the timeframe given in the game, but oh well.
Arnaud - 7/10. His quotes are a bit repetitive, but I liked Arnaud, especially the way he tried to act more grown-up than he was. The cowardice note was also well-handled, I thought. Otherwise, enjoyable dialogue, and he worked.
Raquel - 9/10. And this isn't really particularly from swordgirl fandom or anything, to be clear. Raquel nails what very few games even bother to try: someone who's honest, not cynical, knows what she wants, and goes about getting it. The anti-Yuri, if you will (much as I love Yuri, too). Raquel wants to experience beauty and enjoy the world in the time she has left, so she's not going to sulk around - her refreshing directness about "Hey, I like you guys, let's join up" actually made sense. It wasn't the usual "Blargh I want vengeance against villain X" motive that so many choose, even though Raquel could actually have taken that as her motive! But it wasn't. She didn't really seem to care at all about Hauser. And she doesn't join up for no reason at all than sheer do-gooderism, either. The way Raquel's disease is treated was also quite tasteful, and her stoic acceptance but determination to do something while she could - like protect her friend Yulie - stood out. Yeah, for someone who has, ultimately, fairly little plot, the game nailed Raquel.
Kresnik - 4/10. Uh. I liked what they were TRYING to do with Kresnik. I think. I absolutely love the plotline in the sense of "I'm a slightly above normal dude, but I'm going to hang with super-powered types through sheer determination (and drugs)." Fit with Raquel & Arnaud being more interesting than the super-powered Yulie/Jude, too. Shame they couldn't make up their mind about what the heck Kresnik was supposed to be up to. His relationship toward Yulie goes back and forth too much - after he joins up to rescue her, that should have been the end of that arc. His ending is also super-lame, and more generally it's not really clear what his stake is in the Prison sequence, as that seemed to focus more on his !rivalry with Jude. There are a lot of ways that Kresnik could have been cool, but it never quite gelled.
Ethelda (Jude's Mother) - DNR. Vessel of the Plot, that's it. Though I will note with her that the timeline doesn't seem to line up exactly right - I think that the Global Union was supposed to have been defeated 10 years ago or so, but it seemed like Yulie was old enough to be at the White Orphanage a lot less time than that, and moreover it's weird that the Knights took so long to bother trying to track down a fairly interesting GU experiment that they seem to have known all about. Did Kresnik only inform them recently or something? And wasn't *Augst* behind the satellite nanomachines thing? Did the Knights run the facility after the GU, but then close it down, but then change their mind and run after the released experiments after all? What huh?
Brionac in general - One thing I found odd about Brionac's motives. The game sets up a perfect excuse for them to dislike Yulie and Jude - basically, that Yulie and Jude are after-effects of the old war and inherently a danger to society, since with their powers they could restart the settled fight, and they need to be wiped out for the old war to truly go away. Instead, we end up with weird comments like Jeremy's "the war never ended!" that seem to imply Brionac just doesn't know how to stop fighting, which kind of goes against the attempts to make 'em sympathetic.
Tony - 5/10. He worked. While I dislike the "kids rule, adults drool" plotline, Tony sure helped drill it in.
Jeremy - 6/10. Worked as a foil for Kresnik.
Scythe - 6/10. Worked as a plot device to set up Belial.
Belial - 7/10. It was a short arc, but I really liked the idea here. Not nearly enough games show that the people Our Heroes kill have wives, girlfriends, children, etc. (The Deception series is a strong exception!) This was a chance for reasonably justified vengeance against the heroes.
Hugo - DNR. Name to stick on a superpower + fight.
Fiore - DNR. Name on a boss.
Asia - DNR.
Balgaine - DNR. Name on a boss.
Enil - 4/10. What exactly was the plan here? I'd have liked her to try something more subtle than doing one trick and blatantly suspiciously at the end of a dungeon.
Augst - 6/10. Amusing enough. "We need data on nanomachines" was kind of random but oh well.
Gawn - 4/10. They had a chance to do something interesting with Gawn - it'd have been brave and chancy, but to drive in the idea that "war criminals are always on the side that lost." Since Hauser basically isn't in the game, if they wanted to give that message, Gawn was the man. As is, uh. Also, how could Gawn possibly be a secret? Wasn't he fighting in the war? I also don't buy why he decides to side with Jude. I mean, "because Lambda's plan is batshit insane" would work, but he acts more like he's convinced by Jude's unerring determination or something.
Farmel DNR / 3/10. Mostly a DNR, but meh if she is ranked. Didn't really exist in the villain-cam, but felt like she should have.
Lambda - 4/10. Lambda's high point: killing the Knights after, very very belatedly, figuring out that they're totally not actual democrats. This shows that Lambda actually cares about ideology and principles, which is a good thing. Lambda's low point: immediately afterward. Just to reiterate: The Knights, the BAD GUYS, say something along the lines of "do you really think humanity can evolve to be nice?" Lambda comes to the conclusion that only by starting an unimaginable catastrophe will humanity evolve. And we are supposed to take this as some kind of sympathetic plot by a mastermind. Um. OBJECTION.
Hauser - 4/10. Why does Hauser help his enemies, again? He seemed at least semi-sane before. Because True Peace is Built on a Pile of Corpses, but let me help Jude with his dog? ...sigh. Plot before the end was okay at least.
The Congressional Knights - 6/10. I liked the in-game explanation for a series of boss fights - "Brionac is getting too big for its britches. Let's order them to fight one at a time to thin 'em out." Anyway, as for the "parliamentary democracy" faction actually being the bad guys vs. the fascist Global Union, and by democracy we mean "a secret cabal of 6 people who really rule everything," um, JAPAAAAAAAAAAN. No, really, we know your democracy was weird in the 50s, but even YOUR democracy isn't that bad anymore.
