Welcome back to the wildest of arms on February 6, Inn Day. The word ‘inn’ and ‘in’ sound almost exactly alike. It’s a very easy word to learn and teach, because an inn is a place you go in. Sorry, bad joke…
Previously on Wild Arms 3: After successfully saving the world, our team took a job blowing up a mine lousy with fossils. And, bonus, Virginia is getting a lesson from Clive as we go on the origin of dragons. Maybe next update is going to be a Unicorn Sanctuary!
Any interesting fauna in this place?
Nah, just lizards.
Stop trying to be mythical! You’re a dang lizard!
Guess it is a good idea to keep those poison blockers active from the last dungeon.
Protection against being turned to stone (well, bronze) is recommended, too.
The average level of the “real” party right now is 36. This means you start every battle with at least 25 FP, so you should be able to use either Virginia’s Mystic or Gallows’s Extension to nail an enemy weakness across the board in the first round. This makes random battles go a lot faster, and is super relevant in a dungeon where you know there is going to be a (literal) ticking time bomb.
In other words: Learn all the monsters’ weaknesses now. It will come in handy when you are under the gun.
Though feel free to be exploded by treasure chests at your leisure.
It’s worth it! We’re going to need all the dragon fossils we can get soon enough. … Hey, aren’t we in a dragon fossil mine?
Whatever. Lamium probably already picked this place clean.
It was mentioned that there are “gates” in the mine to keep the monsters contained. This is a flimsy excuse for "find the switch” puzzles. Plot/gameplay synergy is always appreciated.
Let’s move along.
Find the literal switch. Honestly, it took me an unhealthy amount of camera rotating to see this sucker.
That activates a door and a wipe that brings us to…
Siegfried and our favorite robed losers. The big guy is continuing his story from last update about the origins of the demon race.
So “demons” are demons not only because they wreck up the place, but because they’ve also replaced their ethics with super armor. Zangief can do the same thing in Street Fighter.
“Check out this rad, blue shine. That doesn’t just happen by accident.”
And coincidentally, Virginia has something similar on her mind.
This is what happens when you let sci-fi authors near your folklore.
Oh, it’s gonna be imaginable all right…
Virginia currently has “first grader who is reckoning with their kindergarten love of dinosaurs” vibes.
Moving on (in more ways than one).
There is a huge “alternate” path in this dungeon that we are constantly seeing, but are currently unable to reach. Shucks, I wonder how this is going to turn out…
Gah! My kingdom to never see these thieving avians again! No you cannot steal my kingdom, you stupid birds!
This switch hasn’t been pulled yet.
Philosophy activate!
“Hey, Lenny, there are a lot of bones here. You ever think about making a train out of those bones?”
“Oh, good idea, Carl.”
I feel like I could get a lot of mileage out of this screenshot…
“Here’s an interesting fact. From all the fossils excavated, not a single egg or larva was ever discovered.”
“So…Uhhh…What’s that supposed to mean!?”
It means dragons did not burn any of their cash on porn. Or they blew all of their cash on porn. One or the other.
Or that’s another way of looking at it. No need to breed if you are immortal and unstoppable.
“That would ruin so many Dragon Ball Z episodes!”
And another way to interpret it…
Is that no one wanted to have sex with a demon. Too hard to take off that “complete body and spirit” armor.
“I’m not mad you fear me as an unstoppable demon. In fact, I’m laughing right now.”
“However this evolution of power did not continue forever, and eventually came to an end. Realizing their imminent demise, these warriors took their own mother planet down the path of decay..”
“I’m an invincible killing machine!”
“That’s cool. But do you want to recycle?”
“NO!”
Siegfried made it confusing a moment ago, but, to be clear, “the demons” originated on a different planet, Terra. Our current hangout is Filgaia.
Oddly, this is very similar to Final Fantasy 9, where we had “home” planet Gaia and another, “invading” planet named Terra. And, fun fact, FF9 Terra was spearheaded by an armor-clad knight who had appeared in a previous game in the franchise. But! We can let this bit of intellectual thievery slide, as Final Fantasy 9 stole some pretty significant plot beats from Wild Arms 1 in the first place.
On a related note, Cecilia and Dagger should hang out.
But for now, we have a mine to get through.
Watcha doin’, puddin’?
Another fine example of “learn the weakness now”. These suckers are invulnerable to physical attacks, and halve nearly every magical element.
But have a light spell handy, and they are vapor. Remember this for later…
Score! Dark Rings are all but required for a few super bosses, so getting a spare here is ideal. It’s a shame this place won’t exist for farming purposes later.
Don’t have the tool to use it, don’t have the ability to reach it…
Check a few barrels as you go.
A tiny raise in platform height! Every JRPG protagonist’s weakness!
Switch!
Time for talkin’.
This is only true in battle-based universes. Most powerful warriors in reality just retire to making weird posts on Facebook.
Bones and bones. Same answer to both questions.
“Not unlike the noble toddler, they refused nap time.”
“However, the prideful ones did not seek eternal slumber. They abandoned their mother planet, and invaded a world of another dimension, fighting countless battles. There was a time when we battled for control and rulership of ancient Filgaia.”
So there you go: the Demon War way back in Filgaia’s history was when a bunch of demons ruined their own planet, got bored, and flew over to Filgaia to find a new battleground.
Unfortunately, it did not go too well for the “invincible gods”. Probably because Filgaia had its own gods, and the demons were not trained to deal with a giant clam-turtle.
“Look, we were losing, so we decided to leave behind our internet. Figured that was a good way to screw over an entire planet.”
Worked so well the first time!
Let’s toddle on.
If we don’t find a way to get these gems soon…
Ah. Radical.
Jet now has his third and final tool.
We got a jump button! This allows us to “step up” small ledges, and make significant leaps from jump plates. Eventually, we can also use the Radical Sneakers for reaching high climbable surfaces, or use that teensy bit of extra height to activate switches that previously seemed unusable.
Note that these Radical Sneakers are nothing like the Rad Blades of Wild Arms 2, which worked much more like Virginia’s Gale Crest. And Wild Arms 1’s Skates are right out, too.
Of Significant Note: This is the first tool of the new chapter, and it unlocks a lot of previously inaccessible content in the Wild Arms 3 world. We’re not going to do this, but the next update could be all the places that are now available with Radical Sneakers. And, if you really want to do the Legend of Zelda “don’t complete the dungeon, but book it with your new boomerang” thing, you could leave the mine right now, and get some additional god-power on your side before progressing the plot. Mind you, I have no idea why you would do that, but you do have the opportunity for the ten seconds between getting the Radical Sneakers and pulling this plunger.
Also: if you don’t have the presence of mind to use a Gimel Coin before activating a time bomb, repeating this dungeon after exploding is all on you.
Even with the cutscenes, there is no way it took anyone 20 minutes to get this far in this dungeon. The return trip has a generous timer, and…
The way back is even easier than the way forward, because this place was intelligently designed for an optimum escape route.
Remember all those inaccessible areas?
Jump plate activate! You can take the same route back for most of this escape (there are a limited few places where you had to jump down to proceed), but there is literally no reason you would ever do that. All sorts of gems are available for the player that takes the Radical Sneakers-based path.
And since you are constantly jumping and moving through doors, even the monster encounters are limited. And the gems keep you awash in ECN points. You really have little to worry about here.
Huge gaps are no match for the radical.
Arguably, the only drawback here is that there is no new treasure on the alternate routes, so going through a previously unexplored door only yields the “reward” of a slightly different path.
Still fun to jump around like a plumber, though.
And we’re already back to the entryway’s big bridge. We have wasted a whole minute in getting here.
Wild Arms 3’s timer dungeons are jokes. Not that I’m complaining…
That’s it for this timer challenge.
Mostly…
You could watch some Aqua Teen Hunger Force before this bomb goes off…
But it seems we were followed.
Could… could we just walk out of the mine, and let whatever followed us explode inside? Or lure the monster outside where we won’t explode?
Okay! The “twist” for this timer dungeon is that, unlike the last one, we have a final boss with a countdown. The previous explode-a-thon did not contain any required battles.
Just a reminder that the timer only ticks during the “activity” of a battle. You can take your sweet time on any menus.
The good news is that Buer does not have much HP. The bad news is that this is a puzzle battle, and you could potentially run out the clock trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do. But the further good news is that this puzzle battle drops some overtly significant hints as to what you are supposed to do.
Even if the scan info doesn’t provide the same hint.
As an eyeball, Buer will use Evil Gaze, which can paralyze a character.
As you can guess, you do not want to have anyone paralyzed during a timed fight.
Beyond that, just watch out for beams in this form.
So we get the obvious hint that Buer is photosensitive. Nail that jerk with a light spell.
Game Design Fun: There were a number of slime monsters in this dungeon that were exclusively weak to light. As such, you are very likely to have acquired more than a few light gems on your way (items that cast light magic, and are always rewards if you kill a monster with light magic). Thus, even if 75% of your party is paralyzed, you can still have your last remaining party member use a light gem to hit the weakness. Synergy!
Buer turns around and “opens” to reveal a second form after being hit by light.
Its eye (eyespot?) is now facing away from the light-flinging party.
The bad news of this form is that it drops its previous attacks and hits the whole party with a strong ice attack. Be prepared for the cold!
The good news is that this form has dramatically weakened defense, and, even if your party isn’t that strong, it will likely fall to a round or two of ARMsfire.
Bye bye, Buer.
Thanks for the magic key!
And now let’s go back to Seigfried. Not like there is a cool explosion happening or anything.
“So that’s my story. How about you? Got any goals?”
Good plan, Malik. Tell him you are trying to “regain memories”, and not just that you want your mommy.
Are demons big into aesthetics? Signs point to no.
Leehalt, you brownnoser.
Remember the masks from Chapter 1? They’re back!
We covered this back when the masks were first relevant, but Siegfried always seemed to have three underlings back in Wild Arms 1 (they were collectively known as the Quarter Knights after all). There was a little bit of turnover during that adventure, but the masks do not really 1:1 map to any of their depictions here. However, given Wild Arms 1 established that Siegfried was continually cycling in new blood as his demons were defeated, it is entirely possible it is deliberate that these masks/followers are separate from his WA1 contemporary cronies.
(And at least one of the WA1 Quarter Knights was a possessed-by-demonhood human, too.)
So the Prophets are given a choice: die, or wear a demon mask that could potentially revive them, or see them possessed by an ancient demon forever. Technically, you could claim that “this” Siegfried is a Janus that is 100% possessed…
It’s not like these three have any friends anyway…
We now pronounce you losers and demons. You may kiss your asses goodbye.
“Yeah, sure. We’re the best. Whatever.”
And what is the result of the masks syncing to their new hosts?
We’ll find out later.
“Wow, that was some explosion! Really liked seeing it!”
Remember how the screen would go all negative whenever Janus was powering up with the Dark Spear? Well, that’s back.
Okay, so this bugs me: those scenes with Siegfried were presented as happening concurrently with our dungeon journey, but there was nothing that demanded that they be happening in the present. Because that wouldn’t make sense, right? Virginia spent a week recovering, and the Prophets were at death’s door before Virginia even left the tower. If Siegfried was going to sell them on demonhood, he would have had to do that immediately, because those three could barely function well enough to stand up. However, this “disturbance in the Force” establishes that the trio just masked up now, which means… Siegfried took a week to, what, rearrange the furniture in the Yggdrasil, and then decided to address those three weirdos rotting upstairs? Seems like a lot of wasted time, boy blue.
Whatever, at least it gets the party out of the odd job market.
“Why do you think anyone here would have any idea?!”
She is literally the only person on this planet that has a clue what is going on.
And we were having such a nice week.
Thank you, Jet, for remembering that we need money to live.
So that’s it for the boneyard. Dungeon got so exploded, it doesn’t even exist anymore.
Let’s listen to Jet…
And head back to the Ark.
You don’t need to do this to progress the plot, but…
Bro? Our money? Maybe we should check with the woman that technically gave us the job.
But first! Remember that the Ark has rewards for every time we acquire a new tool.
There we go!
And we even have a clue for a future dungeon.
But that is for another day.
Use that autopilot to park at Jolly Roger…
And then it’s a quick trip back to Baskar Colony.
Time to hit up a gramma!
Next time on Wild Arms: Would you care for another dungeon that doubles as a history lesson?