My quick thoughts on Wild Arms Million Memories (JP only)
So one of the mobile games I used to play is Wild Arms Million Memories (WAMM), the latest game for the long inactive franchise Wild Arms, a Western theme JRPG. This is based on my experience from its launch in September 2018 - December 2019.
The main gameplay is a dungeon crawler action gameplay, where you control your character with one finger. It’s often compared to Dragalia Lost, so if you like that game, then you will quickly get into this game as well. It’s pretty responsive, and quite tense at times. I enjoy it for what it is.
The energy system is non existence, so you could play til your heart content. The Auto-play AI is fairly competent, so at a decent level and with decent supporter, you can leave your game to do the grinding for you.
The supporter system makes it easy to catch up in the game. There are many players with high level characters set up to help you beat quests that are beyond your current level.
The events usually involves two things: Grinding for event points and tournament. Event points are earned by playing the event levels like normal. Tournament events are really fun, since they are more skill oriented. You are judged based on your skills, such as how much damage you can accumulate without taking hit and losing your combo, and how much damage you’ve taken, and are compared to other players.
The presentation and story seems to be its strongest point. All of the Wild Arms Characters’ design have been updated to a more modern style, while still keeping that distinct Wild Arms art style. The character 3D models are nicely done for a mobile game and are quite expressive, which does play a role for a section in the game’s story. The music is great, just like the music from the other games. It still keeps that western theme, and they are so catchy. I wish I could talk about the story, since there’s look like a lot of effort put into the writing, but I can’t speak Japanese, and the fan translator for the game has long since quit playing the games for reasons I’ll get soon, but it looks far better than what Fire Emblem heroes has offer, especially during its first two years.
While all of this sounds good, there are reasons why I, along with the fan translator, stopped playing this game.
The game’s performance is weaker compared to other games. While my android phone’s RAM is 3GB, it can run Tales of the Rays, which plays like 3D Tales of games, nicely at the lower graphic setting. I haven’t play Dragalia Lost, but in WAMM, it’s resulting performance depends on the levels you are playing. It run nicely in a more empty, plain levels, but it chugs hard on other levels like a factory theme levels, to the point of almost being unplayable. You’ll need at least 5-6 GB RAM just to not have your performance hindered.
The grinding in this game is horrible, like Fate Grand Order level of grinding. It takes a lot of materials just to level up equipments, especially the higher tiers ARMS since they require other ARMS to move up in tier. I’m talking about at least an hour or two just to transform a 3* ARM into a 4*. The lack of an energy system felt like an excuse to not balance the drop rates of the materials. You don’t need a lot of grinding to make progress in the story, but it does makes things much easier.
The game takes a long time to improve life quality. It took them over 6 months to finally group materials together so I wouldn’t have to constantly put all of the materials into the gift section, since the storage was limited and wouldn’t be expanded until after over said 6 months.
The tournaments are pay-to-win focused, especially now. While you can get decent rank, you really need the ARMS and especially the featured character to cut lots of time on those events.
How is the gacha rate? Lower than Fate Grand Order. 4% for getting anything 5*, and 1% for getting the 5* characters, which is equivalent to getting the 5* servant in FGO. Even FGO has a total of 5% for getting anything 5*. The step up pulls are expensive, and even then, it doesn’t guarantee a 5* character, and the earning rate for the game’s main currency is a bit slow. There’s a secondary currency you could use to earn tickets to pull, even a little for free, by using 3* and up ARMS, but that involves quite a bit of pulls and grinding. Lots of grinding.
The gacha is split into 3 categories: ARMS, equipment, and characters, and equipment has its own separate gacha section from the other two. That’s a blessing or a curse, depending on how you see it. What you focused on is up to you, but it does makes getting things much more expensive.
The good news is that you are not heavily depending on getting the higher tiers to make progress in most of the modes, but if you want to really win in tournaments... well... good luck. You can still get half of the rewards just by earning event points on those tournaments, so it’s not all bad.
The hardest thing for me to figure out is its three weakness charts that are played all at once. Elemental types, Attack Types, and a third type I can’t remember the name of. The game used to have two, but after the introduction of Character gacha and the third weakness type, they make it impossible for me to predict if I would land an effective hit.
As much as I want this game to succeed, this has a lot of inconveniences and is currently experience a drought of events as it approaches its one year anniversary. There is passion for this game. I can feel it as if some of the staff are actual WA fans, but it’s being overshadowed by the treatment of this game as a cash-cow, and it stinks. This game is probably the last time the Wild Arms franchise see any light in the modern time.
If you guys want to check it out, you will need to find ways to download it, since it’s available only in Japan. For android, you will need apps like QooApp. Like I said, it’s a fun game, and I wish for it to succeed.
