in kingdom hearts chain of memories, sora is looking for riku and king mickey. he climbs a tower and while he does it, he starts to lose his memories. we learn, then, how memory is perhaps the most important thing that we, as human beings, have. to be honest, the sickness that scares me the most is alzheimer. the fact that someone can totally forget who i am or that i can forget everyone else is just... terrible.

wild arms 3 is a videogame all about memories. your party is made of a girl haunted by memories of her missing dad, carried by the feeling of, one day, finding him; a guy from a lineage of ancient people, who does not want to accept his 'fate' and follow what the memory of his people say is right, but rather, create new memories by himself; a boy that hasn't any memory from before he becomes a drifter (wild arms' mercenary), and is edgy because, huh, he is not really sure of who he is; and a middle age man, historian, looking for the past memories from the planet. while the game has every single aspect that a jrpg story has (criticizes colonialism, goes full kill-a-god mode, anime tropes (not the criminal ones!), learning how to be friends with strangers you just met, etc.), it never loses focus and, in the end, concludes every character arc and its message.

it can be rough around the edges sometimes, yeah. while it does have a lot of interesting stuff, the way it is presented is kind of archaic and can be a little difficult to fully understand everything. the dungeons are very creative and have some kind of zelda progression, in the way that you almost always have some kind of puzzle to progress and a new item or gimmick to utilize. it plays very well with the camera and perspective too. at the end, tho, it gets a little tiring. the game is very "anime" in a sense that not only is, in fact, directed by an anime director and screenwriter (which give the scenes very cool framings!) but also that is paced in a very episodic way. it gives vibes from a 2000s anime that you would probably love as a teenager but can be tiring if you play this very straightforwardly.

however! it was a very special game to me. it bothered me sometimes but made me think a lot about how i see games and if i am really positive about almost everything i consume or just don't have good taste -- in the end, this critical-existencial-crisis does not matter! what i love about living is having great memories about everything i do and learning how to take care of the bad ones, and this goes for gaming, too. wild arms 3 will forever be a good memory for me, just as this adventure will be for virginia, gallows, jet and clive.