Wild ARMs 2

The sunset got more room than the characters

Wild ARMs: The 2nd Ignition is the second in the series of roleplaying video games produced by the Sony Company. Released in the year 2000, the game shares stylistic elements (combining the Western genre with both Fantasy and Science Fiction) with the previous game, but no direct story connection.

Like the other Wild ARMs games, the story takes place on the planet Filgaia, which, long ago, was attacked by a powerful demon. A magical sword chose a young woman, known as the Sword Magess, to wield it against the monster, banishing it to another dimension. Centuries later, when a young man is possessed by the demon, he is also granted the sword's powers, which not only returns him to normal but grants him great powers. Because of that, he is chosen to become part of the A.R.M.S., a new international anti-terrorist organization, to combat Odessa, a group that seeks to rule the world. Joining him are various heroes from around the planet.

Most of the playable characters have (noncanonical) cameos in Wild ARMs 5, just like all the other heroes in the series. Marivel also stars in a story that the characters read in Wild ARMs 3.

Tropes used in Wild ARMs 2 include:
  • Adjective Noun Fred: Most bosses are named like this.
  • The Alcatraz: Illsveil Prison.
  • All Your Base Are Belong to Us: At least once.
  • Arc Words: Hero. The entire game seems to be an analysis of what it means to be a hero.
  • Ascended Extra: You'll be surprised to see how much Tony took Marina's screen time in the Drama CD.
  • Badass Long Hair" Brad definitely, Anastasia back in the day and in the Final Boss fight, Ashley when he wields Argetlahm against Lord Blazer.
  • BFS
    • Ashley's weapon isn't actually a sword, but a rather normal rifle...equipped with a ridiculously large bayonet that may as well be a sword.
    • The sword Argetlahm might as well count. While it won't rival some other BFSes, it's as large if not larger than Ashley's bayonet.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Irving and his sister Altaecia both had to die to destroy the Kuiper Belt. And, as always, Filgaia is still a wasteland that is slowly recovering.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: The game script has signs of this throughout and it's jarring when one comes upon them, but overall the translation is actually fairly decent for a PlayStation 1-era Japanese RPG. Not to say it's great, but it's definitely better than both versions of Wild ARMs 1.
  • Block Puzzle
  • Bonus Boss: Lots of them, entrapped within the sealed pyramids you see floating around certain towns and dungeons.
  • Boss Subtitles
  • Child Mage: Tim and Lilka. And Marivel. Sorta...
  • Cognizant Limbs: A lot of bosses, which grant bonus experience at the end of the battle if you destroy the parts before the core.
  • Combined Energy Attack: How the Big Bad is destroyed.
  • Desert Punk
  • Disc One Final Dungeon: Heimdal Gazzo, which leads up to Ashley temporarily being stranded in outer space.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: If you've played Xenogears, many things about Wild Arms 2 will seem oddly familiar.
    • The navigation has extremely similar camera rotation and platform mechanics, but unlike in Xenogears you aren't able to jump up. The sprites on 3D background were in an extremely similar visual style as well.
    • Both games' worlds have extremely violent histories that at least once or twice involved the a planet-wide near-genocide. But the theme of Filgaia being a scorched world is common to the Wild Arms series in general.
    • The Sword Magess was a fairly ordinary girl who became a Hero of extraordinary means and elevated to legendary icon Sacrificial Lion, reminiscent of Sophia's tragic canonization in Xenogears.
    • Though a trend already started in the first Wild ARMs game, Filgaia is a scorched world, having seen the trauma of cataclysms in the past. Similarly, the world of Xenogears has been battered just as badly, with one continent shattered and another continent all but desertified—the latter being similar to Slayheim's utter desertification in Wild Arms 2. There seems to be at least mild cross-pollination of concepts.
      • Ashley holds two conflicting personalities within him, one of which is a veritable Eldritch Abomination, which is very reminiscent of Fei's cataclysmic Id in Xenogears. In both cases, the protagonist gains effective partial control over their dark size and summon it to battle when necessary. But neither have total control over it.
      • Brad and Rico are both tall half-Walking Shirtless Scene Mighty Glacier Badasses wearing an Explosive Leash while sitting in prison for years, slated to become mighty heroes with a potent Fan Yay factor. And considering that Rico's chronic roommate is a smaller Ambiguously Gay guy whom Rico later mourns and frequently reminisces about, it begins to seem like Brad is all but a Race Lift Captain Ersatz of Rico.
      • Valeria Chateau feels very much like the Yggdrasil in Xenogears, being simultaneously a base of operations, a small town of inhabitants, a fairly complex explorable structure, and later actually gains the ability to fly.
      • Marivel is the last of her kind after they were wiped out suddenly by Lord Blazer. In Xenogears, Dominia Yizkor believes herself to be the last of her exotic elf-like race, which was all but wiped out overnight by Id, who as mentioned above also has interesting parallels with Lord Blazer.
    • Tim's friends are apparently Iron Man and Cyclops.
  • Do Not Adjust Your Mirrors, Windows, and Pools of Water: Odessa makes itself known to the world by transmitting Vinsfeld's message across every reflective surface in the world.
  • Doppelganger: Several fashioned in Brad's image.
  • Dreaming of Things to Come: The Dreamseers of the Baskar have this ability, granted by the Guardians.
  • Duel Boss: Trask (the second time), Caina (the last time), Brad's doppelganger, Judecca, Vinsfeld, Grauswein, the Kuiper Belt roots and Lord Blazer. Possibly even more. There are a lot of 'em.
  • Edge Gravity
  • Eldritch Abomination: Lord Blazer, along with other Sealed Evil in a Can like Ragu O'Ragula. And then there's the Kuiper Belt, which is somewhere between this and...
  • Eldritch Location: Encroaching Parallel Universe: Kuiper Belt
  • Evolving Credits: The opening animation changes depending on how far into the game you are. (Actually, when you change game discs.)
  • Evolving Weapon: You can buy upgrades for Ashley's and Brad's guns.
  • Fake Difficulty: You can't buy healing items (though as with later games, this is justified as Filgaia is mostly a barren wasteland). You also can't take back Personal Skill points once you've used them to buy skills. Did you buy a useless skill? Sorry! Put everything into Up HP first and don't ever get the status resistances. However, see the Game Breaker entry on healing items.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The American Old West combined with the Modern World.
  • Free Rotating Camera
  • G-Rated Sex: Ashley and his girlfriend. The scene does a Fade to Black, but the subtitles that stay are pretty much Getting Crap Past the Radar.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: See G-Rated Sex below. Also, [[spoiler:Irving and Altaecia are very strongly implied as being in a relationship}}.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: The Kuiper Belt is not even hinted at for the entire first disc, and is the focus of the second.
    • On a smaller scale, there are also plenty of random giant monsters for the party to fight throughout the story.
    • Played with by Lord Blazer. It was obvious he and Ashley would eventually fight, but not many expected him to be the Final Boss.
  • Guide Dang It: Some of the puzzle solutions, especially on the second disc, are quite obscure and would have required references on The Other Wiki if The Other Wiki had existed back then. Also, if you don't receive recommendations on which Personal Skills to pour your points into (which you can't take back, by the way, unlike the games that followed), it's very easy to have an underpowered party and struggle through the game.
  • Hello, Insert Name Here: To a rather ridiculous extent; you can name not only the party members and Lilka's spells, but almost every single plot-important NPC ally in the game.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: This is a major theme throughout the game. Apparently, it's the job of heroes to sacrifice their happiness and their lives so the common people don't have to fight. The game makes a heavy point of pointing out all the myriad flaws of this idea. In the end a planet-wide Combined Energy Attack is much more effective.
  • Homoerotic Subtext: Caina and Vinsfeld (Caina was male in the Japanese version); definitely also Billy Pilder and Brad Evans, who are more ambiguous but definitely more masculine.
    • Caina is male for the entire first disc of the American version, as well. And part of the second.
  • Honor Before Reason: Kanon is obsessed with her family honor, as is Irving. Not particularly surprising as they are in the same family, after all.
  • Humongous Mecha: Marivel uses these as her summons. Some of the Bosses are Mecha as well.
    • "Dragons" in this game are essentially Humongous Bio-Mecha, but especially Lombardia, who can turn into a jet. He even gets a Gundam-esque "launch sequence" when you first recruit him as your Global Airship.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Lilka (umbrellas) and Marivel (robot-things)
  • Inept Mage: Lika, though not as extreme as the other trope examples: she's still learning some things, but...
  • Insufferable Genius: Marivel, mixed with Proud Warrior Race Girl. And Liz. Especially Liz.
  • Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Duplicators.
  • The Jimmy Hart Version: Liz and Ard's special battle theme sounds like the main theme to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
  • Justified Tutorial: All three characters' introductory chapters, since they can be done in any order.
  • Let's Split Up, Gang!: For the final three sub-boss fights.
  • The Lifestream: Glaive Le Gable.
  • Mythology Gag: You might realize that this game Angol Mois is far stronger than the other games' versions. You know why? Well...this game is released in 1999, yeah...
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Way to go, Irving. You genuinely saved the universe, and all it took was a boatload of Necessary Evil that tore the heroes an emotional new one. Oh, and did I mention that the demon inside of Ashley feeds off of negative feelings? The demon that you put there!?
  • Non Lethal Bottomless Pits
  • Our Demons Are Different: Unlike in the other Wild Arms games, the demons here are not aliens, but actual supernatural beings.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Marivel and the Crimson Nobles. They're still pretty traditional Vampires as far as this trope is concerned (exposure to sunlight is life-threatening, they drink blood, they even have the fancy collars and annoyingly-designed castle).
  • Party in My Pocket
  • Pensieve Flashback: The Memory Maze
  • Percussive Maintenance: Using Brad's kick ability on a malfunctioning computer terminal in the prison level makes it work again, giving you access to a room with a few bonus stat boosters.
  • Plot Tailored to the Party: Some of the dungeons are tailored to the party's skills to a ridiculous extreme.
  • The Power of Friendship: A mild theme throughout the game, exemplified in Ashley's Impulse ability in the final battle.
  • Recurring Boss: You fight almost every major villain three times, including each member of Cocytus, as well as Kanon, Liz and Ard, and Vinsfeld (the third time is his ghost, as a Bonus Boss).
  • Save Point: The Memory Service Ladies who appear in towns and the Amazing Stones that are found in dungeons.
  • The Scapegoat: Brad is in jail for a crime he didn't commit; later, Ashley and company almost get executed but Super-Powered Evil Side Ex Machina happens.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: Lilka's sister is trapped in another dimension; unusually for this trope, she never gets freed from the can and Lilka even has to give up the hope of ever getting her back to save Ashley instead.
  • Shout-Out: The land of Urartu was once the home of the Crimson Nobles, but was genocidally depopulated during the past rampage of Lord Blazer. Urartu is an archaic name for Armenia, where a Real Life genocide in World War I killed 1.5 million Armenians, including nearly the entire Armenian population in most of the former West Armenia.
  • Solemn Ending Theme: "Atomic Arms" and "Zephyr's", the ending themes of Disc 1 and 2 respectively.
  • Sprite Polygon Mix: Overworld sprites, polygon battle screens.
  • Stable Time Loop: Ashley meets the Sword Magess, Lucied, and Marivel during a time travel sequence.
  • Stupid Sacrifice: Luckily averted in Tim's case, and is a major theme throughout the story.
  • That One Puzzle: The first puzzle in the final dungeon confounded players for a decent amount of time. Seems not everyone knows how the days of the weeks got their names or figured out that is what the clues are referencing.
  • Theme Music Power-Up
    • Transforming into Knight Blazer is accompanied by an awesome theme song that lets it be known that you're about to kick some serious ass.
    • The final boss theme is a remix of the game's main theme, "You'll Never Be Alone No Matter Where You Go". Appropriately, Ashley has just transformed into a warrior capable of wielding the Argetlahm and using The Power of Friendship to kick ass.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The final dungeon in this game sees the party heading into the living, mud core of the planet called Glaive Le Gable, where an encroaching parallel universe has been manifested into a physical form. Before this dungeon was a huge, inverted Spiral Tower located conveniently on the center of the world map, and on the highest point to boot.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist
    • Odessa wants to unify the world... with themselves on top, of course, in such a way that they're also Western Terrorists.
    • Kanon starts out as this when you first meet her, but she gets better.
    • And then there's the man behind Odessa, "that man," Irving. See Xanatos Roulette.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: To say Ashley is outraged over Baskar Village's plans for Tim would be a huge understatement. He's also outraged that Irving arranged for him to be sent to Illsveil Prison, risking both his and Lilka's lives, just to recruit Brad.
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