Wild Arms 4, the 2005 entry in Sony’s long-running JRPG series, launches later this week on the PS5 and PS4 via PS Plus Premium.
It’s a rare first-party addition to the platform holder’s emulation efforts, as recent releases have leaned heavily on the catalogues of Bandai Namco and Disney.
In fact, the original game wasn’t even published by PlayStation in the west; that accolade was reserved for Xseed in North America and 505 in Europe. In both regions the game was riddled with errors, including a bug which prevented you from getting 100%.
Reviews were particularly brutal upon release as well.
Legendary writer Simon Parkin penned some scathing impressions for Eurogamer back in the day, describing it as “consistently average” and “insipid” in his 4/10 verdict.
He wrote:
“It would be easy to score this game as plain mediocre. After all, it essentially works, displays a misguided and seemingly half-hearted attempt at innovation, looks pleasant enough, passes the time and will likely meet the low expectations of its surprisingly large fanbase. But should such calculating mediocrity be continually excused? Perhaps it's time for the critical honesty this game continually calls for in its awkward and unstoppable meting out of prepubescent morality.”
1Up was similarly scathing, with writer Jeremy Parish describing the title as “uneven, wavering uncertainly between ‘totally offbeat’ and ‘utterly trite’”. Meanwhile, Official PlayStation Magazine said the JRPG was “actively irritating”.
But leave it to IGN to bring a bit of positivity. Editor Jeremy Dunham went against the grain with a largely positive 7.8/10 appraisal.
He noted:
“Developer Media Vision’s cast of characters is overly likeable, the visuals are the best that the franchise has seen so far, and the puzzle-solving and exploration elements are really fun – it's just too bad that the potentially-awesome battle system wasn't hampered by bad enemy balancing and poor AI. Still, Wild ARMs is certainly a good 40-plus hour experience and a nice change of pace from your typical RPG fare.”
Some positivity among the panning, then. It’ll be interesting to see how the title is received in this re-released format.