I'm thankful to have this game in my possession and grateful with the delivery service of Amazon.com

Wild Arms 2 is a nice addition to the famous Wild West fantasy series, but many may not find this as western as the other two. The lack of wild west aspect (save for the wild west music and towns) makes it seem somewhat stale in comparison to the first one and doesn't even compete with the third one. The game's battle system is easy to follow, but the monsters are a step up from the previous game's creatures. More than not, many monsters are faster than your group and abuse that advantage to no avail. The equipping of Guardians to boost parameters and gain an extra ability in battle is a welcome addition to combat and the use of ARMS (special artillery like the ones Rudy used in WA1) makes for some nice gunmetal action. Crest magic is back and comes with more features, including special rare crests that can cut the FP cost for magic or increase the power by 1.5 times. That and the fact you have six members makes this a more engrossing WA than the other two. Each character develops nicely even though one might expect more considering the game's length. If you want to do EVERYTHING in this WA, you're looking to clock in over 70 hours of gameplay.

However, this game is not without its one major flaw: the translation. Practically every line uttered by Ashley and Co. sounds very strange. Why? The game was translated word for word from Japanese which many who know the language know it's going to come out sounding very unusual in English. This has been this game's biggest gripe for everyone and discourages some from even playing it. I admit it was bizarre at first, but that didn't stop me from beating the game. If you can get around this problem, the game is fine.

The music is top notch, full of the usual wild west you demand from this series along with sad, happy, goofy, mysterious, serious and dark themes. It's all in here.

If the translation won't bug you, I would recommend getting this WA highly, especially if you haven't touched it yet. You might miss out on one of the better PSX RPGs of its time.

Wild Arms 2, like most sequels, would have the incredibly hard task of following the series dynamite debut back in 1997. While many think that sequels never attain the level of the original (thus the theory of diminishing returns) Wild Arms 2 holds up pretty well overall, but doesn't really break any new ground for the series.

Graphically, Wild Arms 2 pretty much follows in the path of its predecessor in that the game has it high and lows. Environments such as towns, dungeons and world map are now completely 3D, unlike the first game, and are very well done with lots of detail - as one would expect a last generation PSX title. Unfortunately, like the original, the graphics in the battle scenes are still behind the times (that's somewhat of an understatement). While they are better than first game's, you can tell that this element of the game probably recieved the least attention from the development team. While they're not horrible, it leaves you wondering what could have been.

Story-wise, Wild Arms 2 delivers another interesting and engrosing tale as the original did, even though this time it does take a little but longer for things to get rolling, but not to the point as in Star Ocean: The 2nd Story. However, once the story gets going, their is no turning back (the story is the main reason I like this game the way I do - it has some great twists).

Character development is strong as well, but not as strong as in the first installment. This is probably due to the fact you get 6 characters (1 is hidden) in this game in contrast to having just three characters in the first game. Having more characters means having less time to spend developing each one, but is a VERY welcome change from the first game and is a trade-off that works in favor of the game. I only wish that they empolyed this in Wild Arms 3.

As for battle system, Wild Arms 2 ditches magic points in exchange for the force point system. Overall, this works pretty well, but they're are more than a few occasions where you wish your abilties used MP instead FP. This is especially apparent when fighting the optional foes. Due to the fact a character loses all their FP when knocked out, their are points you'll find you can't defend or cast anything upon revival until you build up more FP. More often than not against the optional foes, they'll knock you into subbmission before you can build your FP back up. This isn't as big of problem with fighters as it is with mage-type characters, who rely on thier FP to cast spells.

Wild Arms 2 is also the hardest out of the three Wild Arms games. There is no duplication trick like the first game and you CANNOT buy Goat Dolls (an automatic revive upon knock-out item) as in Wild Arms. This and the situaution with the force points system makes the extra boss battles in Wild Arms 2 much harder than anything found in Wild Arms and Wild Arms 3. Basically, there is no easy solutions to some of the optional battles in WA2, you just gotta use pure skill, or dumb luck.

While not an amazing game or sequel, Wild Arms 2 is well crafted game worthy of any RPG freak or gamer's playing hours.

wow..i played this game from my friend, its really neat..but that was a long time ago. i kinda forgot some of it..but i rememberd they had good graphics

(i kinda forgot some of it, but i still give it a rating 6 out of 10)

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