I thought it was a pretty decent strategy game, play kinda like a cross between tactics ogres and fft, with hex based combat, though it was largely puzzled based. All i remember from the story is a chick pretends to be a princess to start a rebellion against a corrupt government, its been awhile since i played and i never actually beat it.

I bought this game day one and I sort of regret it.  If it is on sale or something it might be worth getting though?

One thing to keep in mind about this game is that it is a puzzle game and not really a strategy RPG.  The stage designs have extremely specific solutions to all scenarios, and you usually have to change your party's jobs around before every fight to exactly the jobs that the situation calls for.  You are not really free to build whatever party you please.  While the jobs are all well-balanced in terms of combat, the game scenarios call for such specific configurations (mission briefings give you hints) that, usually, fighting is kind of secondary to puzzle-solving.

Given that it's a pretty interesting game and it's pretty cool to see something with such intricate design.  It certainly does feel like other Wild Arms games in that it is extremely heavy on puzzle-solving and I've never seen a turn-based RPG really focus on puzzles in this way.

The writing is probably on the better side of most Japanese RPGs, but it isn't great literature or anything.  It does add to the game instead of detracting to it.

The series was going downhill the moment they made those damn hex stuff, it was a neat idea at first; but it gets boring, this game was just plain boring, there is nothing very exciting to it. Sad to say the series started to drop after Alter Code. I highly recommend you don't play this. It'll save you time, and money, though I do recommend you play Wild Arms 1 to 3, plus Alter Code. :P

Man what, I liked Wild Arms 5. The 4th is pretty terrible from what I've seen, though.

I bought this game day one and I sort of regret it.  If it is on sale or something it might be worth getting though?

One thing to keep in mind about this game is that it is a puzzle game and not really a strategy RPG.  The stage designs have extremely specific solutions to all scenarios, and you usually have to change your party's jobs around before every fight to exactly the jobs that the situation calls for.  You are not really free to build whatever party you please.  While the jobs are all well-balanced in terms of combat, the game scenarios call for such specific configurations (mission briefings give you hints) that, usually, fighting is kind of secondary to puzzle-solving.

Given that it's a pretty interesting game and it's pretty cool to see something with such intricate design.  It certainly does feel like other Wild Arms games in that it is extremely heavy on puzzle-solving and I've never seen a turn-based RPG really focus on puzzles in this way.

The writing is probably on the better side of most Japanese RPGs, but it isn't great literature or anything.  It does add to the game instead of detracting to it.

This is pretty much dead on. It's sad, because the battle system is really really good, but the game focuses too much on the puzzle solving(despite how good it's integrated into a battle system like this). I would say it's even better than FFT in terms of classes.

The one thing I don't like is how cutscenes are played out. Not only is the voice acting terrible, but I dislike character portraits over a panorama with text showing. It's hard to get any sort of emotion out of the player when a game plays like this, and it makes me not interested in the story at all. I only played through a couple of hours of this game, and the only thing that really kept me going was the music.

wa2 is pretty nice as well, but the last place is kind of gay (to the point where my friend just stopped playing at that point (and I would've too if I weren';t on an emulator with savestates)

Off-topic but go back to the store and get a refund on Crisis Core immediately (POST-HASTE).

Yeah, it's more of a rental. One playthrough is enough.

What Wild Arms does it resemble the most?

None of them.

Well I guess Wild Arms 4, because of the really bad cutscenes. It's definitely nothing like the first few.

I never got into Wild Arms, it seemed so cliche and slow. I did like the anime intro to Wild Arms 1 though.

I actually enjoy the series more than most of the jrpgs that came out since the PS1 days. The first one especially. The game is pretty slow, but the redeeming factor was how well the dungeons were designed. I guess if you're not a fan of turn based combat, you won't like any of them.

aaaaactually one playthrough is more than enough.  it is one too many, to be exact

I actually really enjoyed Crisis Core for awhile. It was like "Wow, this brings me back to the better bits of why I ever liked FF7." They really recreated the world very well... until about halfway or so and the game just got... meh. The ending was pretty great though.