Wild Arms 3 follows a group of four drifters as they meet and end up working towards a common goal. You begin by watching over Virginia Maxwell as she starts her journey on a train. It's in the back on this train that the four characters meet as they are all standing over a chest. Pause. One by one, it's up to you to select each character and play through a prologue that both gives the back story that led them to the train as well as gets you situated with the dungeons and battles.

Once the story starts proper, you'll be able to explore towns, a world map, and numerous dungeons like most classic console RPGs. Enemy encounters are random, but you're given a way to avoid these with the simple press of a button. This adds to your encounter gauge, and if it becomes full, then you will no longer be able to avoid battle. Between this system and the fast load times, you never really feel abstracted from the game.

The dungeons really shine in Wild Arms 3 as they have in previous games in the series. There are a number of logical puzzles that must be solved in order to open doors to treasures and further progress. They are all very well designed and laid out. In order to accomplish many of the tasks, you will need to use character specific tools like boomerangs and bombs (like Zelda). You really get to concentrate on each puzzle too because of the ability to avoid random battles in the middle.

The battle system is also fantastic even though it tends to get a little monotonous as the game progresses. This is hard to avoid in any RPG, so don't put too much weight on that statement. There are a number of good points to make note of though. You give everyone their commands at the beginning of each round and they carry them out based on their speed. You can shoot your arms or guard to reload them. Attacking, evading, and taking damage all help to increase your force gauge. As the force gauge reaches higher levels, you can then perform elemental magic spells or character specific special techniques.

Herein lies the strategy. Magic becomes available at certain levels of the force gauge, but using magic will not make it rise any higher. Special techniques on the other hand, like multi-target magic, may be more useful but actually use up the force gauge. So once the move is done, you can't even use magic any more until you build up the force gauge again by firing your arms. Sometimes you'll find the need to fire multiple shots in a row in order to increase your gauge high enough to make it worthwhile to summon an elemental guardian.

The story moves along at the perfect pace. The dungeons never take too long to complete, yet there are a large number of them. It's short story progression followed by a quick dungeon romp and repeat. There are even a number of in-game sequences told at the end of most dungeons. Various other drifters play a large part in the tale, and there are a number of twists leaving you wondering just who you can and cannot trust.

I can't really put a finger on the graphics. Some may like the look of the cel-shading, but it took me a while to warm up to them. On the bright side, they do a great job of bringing out the personality of all the characters. Facial expressions are well done, and a lot of thought was put into their actions on screen. The other thing the game does is put a colored pencil filter over the whole screen. It's an interesting effect, and I'm curious if consumers will take to it. We'll know if we see other games using it in the future.

Battle and over world music are both impressive. If nothing else they really fit the theme of the game, which is a little bit of the old west. There's no voice acting, but we all know that could be a blessing based on what we've heard from other games. Other than that there's just gunshots and sound effects from spells, but I must say that I was very impressed with the quality of these sounds. They are loaded with bass and can really pound your speakers.

This should be easy enough to sum up. Wild Arms 3 is a no-brainer recommendation. The story moves along nicely, and the battles load quickly and provide you with enough strategy to stay reasonably interesting. Even with the recent outpouring of good RPGs on the PS2, Wild Arms 3 is a necessity in your collection.