The Wild ARMs series is a bit like the 14th President of the United States. Allow me to explain: unless you're an American history buff, the name Franklin Pierce probably doesn't ring any Presidential bells and, likewise, unless you're an RPG buff, the Wild ARMs series may sound like some waste-of-time YouTube clip (aren't they all?) But, whereas Pierce is noted as one of the least enduring Presidents, Wild ARMs spans three formats with XF being the seventh game in the series. Okay, okay, fairly loose analogy there - what I'm saying is that just because it isn't a well-known series doesn't mean it's not worthy of some distinction. But, while we're on the subject of history...

Beginning with one of the first RPGs released on the original PlayStation, the Wild ARMs series has always been rooted in a world that combines fantasy magic and monsters with a Wild West theme. Four of the games are traditional turn-based RPGs, while Wild ARMs 4 & Wild ARMs 5 diverge from the path with a unique battle system that revolves around a hexagon-based map for each encounter. The series has never really achieved critical acclaim, but nonetheless, each entry has been solid enough to keep the sequels coming and to amass a cult following similar to that of the criminally underrated Suikoden series. So, being a fan, I was eagerly anticipating this latest installment and hoping that it might shed some limelight on the Wild ARMs brand. Unfortunately, instead of a breakout, must have game, we get a slightly above average experience - but hey, at least it's a step in the right direction.

As with every game in the series, Wild ARMs XF follows new characters and a new storyline but still takes place in the series' world of Filgia. Enter Clarissa Arwin and her companion Felius as they venture to the battered country of Elesius, which they must help liberate from an evil council that has taken control since the death of the country's beloved princess. Or, in other words, blah, blah, blah, whatever. The plot of XF is easily the most contrived of the series and sadly it also leans away from the Wild West theme - one of the more distinguishing elements of previous titles - in favor of more traditional fantasy designs, which is a bummer, because it invites unwanted competition from other stellar PSP strategy RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions and Jeanne d'Arc. And in the face of these two genre giants, XF has a lot of catching up to do.

The greatest strength of XF comes in the form of its hex-based battle maps, which feel much more at home in the SRPG format than in the traditional formula of Wild ARMs 4 & 5. Replacing the genre's common square-based grids with a hexagonal system allows for a much wider potential of strategic gameplay, but unfortunately it doesn't quite reach that potential. The game's maps are generally very large and the terrain features quite a range of height. When scanning a map in pre-battle the strategies seem endless, but more often then not there aren't enough enemies to utilize even half of the map. What's more frustrating is that in virtually all of the storyline battles, there are awful, mandatory objectives that prohibit you from accomplishing the goal as you see fit. In one battle you have to simply get each of your characters from one end of the map to the other in ninety-nine turns but you only face a handful of enemies, so it's merely a tedious exercise in selecting and moving your troops. Other maps have you using only two of your characters in stealth missions where you can't stop in an enemy's line of sight. Yes, it may be different - an attempt to think outside the box as far as SRPGs go - but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's fun. Outside of the storyline you can engage in a random battle map whenever you choose and these battles, in which your only objective is to eliminate the enemy, are entertaining to a large degree. When you're lucky enough to get five or six enemies on a map (they're randomly generated and always lean towards less though), setting up choke points with up to six of your own fighters, the game shines in all its hexagonal glory.

One of the biggest draws for an SRPG is job classes; leveling your characters while learning tons of skills to create your own unique band of warriors is good fun however you look at it, unless the job classes just don't do it for you. Sadly, XF's didn't do it for me. They are unique and well balanced, but the class abilities are mostly passive, only triggered through specific occurrences, and even then some abilities only increase the chances of actions, like a counter attack, by a small margin. For the majority of the game, the better part of my army used the standard "fight" command as opposed to any specials they learned through a class - and it seemed that my troops missed an awful lot of their attacks. Toss in the fact that you can't choose which class abilities you learn - you simply learn them in the order they're listed after gaining the necessary amount of CSP (Class Skill Points) - and the customization of your army is borderline non-existent. This means that if you want to learn a high level ability of the Geomancer class, you've got to keep a character in that class for a long time. With that being said, in theory you've got to have at least one character master at least one class, just so you can sample the different abilities to configure your best class skill options. As a result, I didn't change any of my characters' classes until halfway through the game, which made it a bit on the boring side. It also means that you'll have to put in a lot more time outside the main quest to learn all the skills in each class. If you do devote enough time to learning the different class abilities then you can have quite the powerhouse if you use haste and boost spells efficiently, but with the main quest paling in comparison to random encounters, it sort of borders on pointless.

On the more auxiliary side of things, there is an item creation mode. While not engaged in storyline battles you have the option to send a number of troops to any location on the map. After you fight a few battles they return with a number of different items that serve as raw materials for item synthesis. Oddly, the item creation doesn't become an option until some eight to ten hours into the game, but once you gain access to it, it's extremely lame. You can only craft items and weapons that are already available in town stores and while they're a bit cheaper, it's just not an efficient use of your time to get items this way, especially since you'll be fighting a lot of battles and consequently receiving large sums of cash. The item synthesis feels tacked on to make the gameplay seem a little less thin.

XF is undeniably polished in the graphics department; the colors are rich and the character designs, though undeniably Japanese, are solid, while the hand-drawn over-world map is a thing of beauty and the spell effects are vibrant if a little generic. But the graphics are a double-edged sword as far as presentation is concerned. You know that really hot sorority chick on campus? You know how she's really hot, until she "like" starts "like" talking and then your I.Q. plummets like a rock in water? Well, that's exactly what happens when the cut scenes unfold in XF; the dialogue was so ludicrous at times that I moaned out loud just to drown it out. Sure, it's easier to turn the sound off, but I didn't think of that until just now. More than once I was pondering whether adults actually penned this script; it's one terrible motivational speech after another and only gets worse before the end.

While this is the worst aspect of the sound, the music and sound effects aren't great. The music is generally grating on the ears, although the new version of the original Wild ARMs theme song, the one with the whistle, is worth the price of admission - at least for a nostalgic fan. The sound effects of battle can quickly become repetitive, especially when you're faced with four of the same enemy who each use the same spell one after another, and those motivational speeches also carry over to encounters as battle cries, which, if heard in real battle, would only make soldiers ashamed to follow anyone capable of such moronic declarations.

Despite the many problems with Wild ARMs XF, I'm impressed by what X-Seed has produced, from a gameplay standpoint at least. Strategy RPGs and the balance they require are not the easiest of games to produce, but Wild ARMs XF, though a bit weak in customization, has its merits. The hex-grid is not only the star of this game, but it furthers the genre and hopefully future SRPG developers will take note. Ever an underdog series in the face of Final Fantasy and its triple-A ilk, Wild ARMs has always come back swinging. Although this latest game is only one rung above average, with some tweaks to the classes, a deeper, more fleshed out story and a journey back to its Wild West roots, a sequel to XF could be quite the contender.

Reviewed by Scott R. Schmidt for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).