I recently played though Wild Arms 2 and man do I still love that game! Sure, the combat is archaic as hell and the battle graphics are balls but man I can't get enough of the characters and story. Easily the best $14.99 I ever spent on a video game.

The original Wild Arms was great as well and I might pop that in here but I was thinking of picking up the Metal Gear box so I might play some of those first since I only ever played MGS1.

Anyway, I really lost interest in the games beyond the two PS1 entries and sold off all those off, even the WA remake as I rather play the original.

Does anyone else have fond memories of Wild Arms?

*Waits for thread to get no responses and quickly slide into obscurity*

Well, my experience with Wild ARMs is limited to the PS2 entries, so we may not have a lot of common ground with the series.  That said, I thought WA3 was pretty okay.  The puzzles were pretty good, but the game definitely wore out its welcome as it dragged ON AND ON AND ON and didn't end.  I was quite sick of it by the end.  But then, it was nothing compared to Alter Code: F, which I thought was about twice as long as it should've been, and dragged more than any RPG I've ever played.  I was also disappointed that the story was even more anime drivel than 3 had been.  Maybe the original is better.  My favorite of the ones I've played, actually, is 4.  While the plot was kind of stupid and the characters were all pretty much giant cliches, the game was actually more FUN than either of the others I played.  I really loved the side scrolling platformer aspects of the dungeons.  The game was also refreshingly short and well paced.

All in all... I'm pretty indifferent to the series.  Maybe I'd like the original PS1 games more.  As it stands, the games are tolerable for a poor man's Lufia, but not completely amazing or anything.

Yeah, that was my problem with WA3 and I'd definately recommend the PS1 entiries despite the lack of eye candy.

I thought WA was pretty entertaining. The rest of the games have been more miss than hit.  WA2 had its moments but the story wasn't coherent, WA3 was boring as all hell (and yet I played through it because there was nothing else out at the time). 4 and 5 I played a few hours of each and didn't bother sticking with.

It's an okay series if you enjoy JRPG cliches, bland plots and one-note characters (and a lot of people do).

About the only one I played through to the end was the first Wild Arms on PSOne.  I got about halfway through WA2, barely touched WA3, and haven't bothered with any other game after that.  I'll always remember the first WA as being that RPG diamond in the PSOne rough - the one that was to tide everyone over until the highly anticipated FFVII.  And when you think about it, Wild Arms really was one of the first Playstation RPGs to hit before the big boom took off.

It was pretty great at the time.  Dug the 2D look, the smooth-looking battles, and the Zelda-like puzzles.  The music was, of course, superb; I had to have the soundtrack to it, so I made no hesitation to order the Original Game Soundtrack immediately upon completion.  Hope, Adelhyde Castle, Courage, Fake Wedding Ceremony On The Sea, To The Brink of Wilderness.... all amazing pieces culminating into a score that clearly placed Michiko Naruke on the map. 

I was so disappointed when I found a good number of my favorite tracks missing, most especially the BGM used for the Guardian Shrine, the U.S. specific ending credits theme, and a good part of the rest of the ending.  It would take another nine years before the Complete Tracks album is released, but I'm grateful that Shawn (MoonRaiser) hooked me up with his own custom recording long before that.  (And poo on the Complete Tracks for STILL not having the U.S. ending credits.)

Wild Arms is, if nothing else, amazing for its music scores.  I love the first three soundtracks, especially Advanced Third's.  I would love to fire up the game someday and see it through just to hear the music in context; but that's likely a far-off pipedream.

You're like the only person I know who actually enjoys the 3rd soundtrack.  There were two or three good town themes and then that was about it.

Absolutely loved the first game's soundtrack, but found the accompanying game itself to be rather bland. Decent, I guess, but back then it had some stiff competition. Had yer FFVII, Breath of Fire III, and Suikoden and all that. Kinda got lost in the haze for me, I guess.

I actually just finished playing Wild Arms last week after I kept hearing Into the Wilderness keep coming up on shuffle while I was at work. I definitely think the first game has aged the most gracefully of the PS1 Wild Arms rpgs.

Only complaint about the first one is it gets heavily unbalanced near the halfway point in the game. I beat all the secret/optional bosses with little effort repeating the same formula.

Equip Rudy with Force Unit
Quick Cecilia and heal Rudy/party entire fight
Hyper Jack and have him use Magnum Fang
Fury Shot w/ Arch Smash

Even Raguragula perished in 4 rounds with only 10 goat dolls.

The others:
I was thinking about playing 2 over again but I really hated the story twist at the end of disc1 (if my memory serves me). I never finished it because of that. I really liked WA3, played to completion. Next to WA1 trio I think I liked its cast best. I never even heard much about 4 so I never got the chance to play it (might have to now). Same with 5.

XSeed should probably never have been given the series by Sony, perhaps we would have heard more Naruke then. Although Agematsu and Kouda's work doesn't rub me the wrong way like others.

Now you know two.  That's my favorite OST of the series.  There might be a third, too... I seem to recall xanadujin mentioning that he really liked that score one of the times we met in Japan.  I might be mixing him up with someone else, though, so if I am, sorry.  x_x

Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention the music in the series... easily one of the best aspects.  The low amount of Naruke in 4 really showed and I felt quite let down by a lot of that soundtrack.  Except the world map... that was bloody awesome.

Wow, we have a lot in common - I think "over the wind" rules. I was dumbfounded when I saw Naruke had no hand in it's composition.

I lost interest in the music with Advanced 3rd and it figures they started giving her scores proper, full-fledged releases at that point. Still would love to see WA2 done right but I'll count my blessings that WA Complete Tracks saw daylight.

Apology accepted...you cur.

WA3's my favorite music of the series, too. As for the games:

Wild Arms 1 is still a lot of fun for me. I played it through again in '04 when I was afflicted with the worst flu of my life, and it was a big help. It's evergreen to me in the way Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, or Breath of Fire 3 is - a familiar book for a rainy day. So much so, that I've avoided the remake simply because it doesn't look or sound right. If that's weird, so be it.

Wild Arms 2 is pretty good, too. My first playthrough was cut short due to my not being able to find the next town (which, in my defense, was ridiculously far away...Quarterly, or something like that?), but I enjoyed myself. I eventually found a strategy guide, restarted and played it to completion. In the end, Disk 1 was great, but once Odessa has withered and gone and only the Impending Doom remained, it became a bit of a chore to see it the rest of the way through. Still, I've played worse.

Wild Arms 3 is a good one. But for some reason, I slowed down the closer I got to the end, and at the moment my file is sitting there, waiting for me to finish the last bitty bit (you know, with the creepy ghostly demi-god girl). I dunno why I've put it off, but you know how that happens.
P.S. I was pretty irritated they misspelled Zeikfried's name, but it was Squaresoft who translated it (really, look in the manual), so maybe they just didn't know better.

Wild Arms 4 awaits me after I'm done tooling with Snake. Fingers crossed.

Aye. The last JRPG I played was Eternal Sonata and I'd rather play WA3 four times in a row than sit through another minute of that piece of trash. Then again, for all its flaws, WA3 did have a lot of great music in it and in general, it never bored me.