The gameplay and cutscene presentation are both pretty atrocious. Anyone who says that the earlier Wild ARMs games have good dungeon design probably hasn't actually played them since they came out; while they certainly try to do interesting things, most of the "puzzles" are either braindead easy or just kind of annoying. The Millennium Puzzles in WA3 are a decent idea conceptually (sokoban using the Z axis), but really really suck to actually play due to a complete lack of QOL features. Combat is more interesting than WA2 but really wears out its welcome by the end and rarely demands the player actually use its systems in interesting ways.

All that said, WA3 has one of the best plots of any video game and an incredible soundtrack to accompany it, so even replaying the game in 2021 I came away with positive thoughts about it. I would rate it higher if the characters themselves were more... vibrant. Only Maya really left an impression.

Reviewed on Nov 21, 2021


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