Recently. Yeah. I haven’t been sleeping well. And I blame one thing, and one thing only:
Wild Arms XF.
This game is pure evil. I swear. I compare it to Chrono Trigger in terms of magnitude, a late but great successor of the strategy game system made popular by an equally great game for the Playstation One called "Final Fantasy Tactics."
What am I talking about?
Well, it’s simple. Back during the mid-90s, Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US) was released. Soon afterwards, Squaresoft came out with Chrono Trigger - these two, as far as the fans were concerned, were the pinnacle of role-play gaming at the time, with Final Fantasy 6 being the prime example of what an RPG should be like in terms of story and gameplay magnitude, and Chrono Trigger expounding on how the gameplay could be improved. So while you had a story that bordered on epic qualities with FF6, you had a streamlined and improved battle system with Chrono Trigger.
It’s pretty much the same thing when you compare Final Fantasy Tactics and Wild Arms XF. The former game set the bar for tactical RPG’s for its day, and while plenty of games tried as hard as they could, they couldn’t even measure up to the fun and overall grandeur of FFT. I’ve played some of them, and while most of the games do have something refreshing to offer, it didn’t do anything to reinvent the system that FFT already established (and I include FFT Advance in the list of games that tried but couldn’t).
Until Wild Arms XF came out. Seriously, this game is addictive. Clear your schedule for a week, because this game will suck you in and swallow you whole with the battle system. The story’s no war of the Lions, but the characters are light-hearted, driven folks thrust in the midst of a revolution in one of the more war-torn countries of Filgaia - again, another parallel to Chrono Trigger’s unrealistically chipper cast of characters (which is a good thing).