WILD ARMS 3 GETS ITS FIRST EVER RERELEASE ON PSN THIS TUESDAY

Is it any good? I tried the first Wild Arms game, but it was kinda boring.

It's my personal favorite in the series, along with WA2, though I really like the series on the whole. 1-3 are generally pretty well regarded, but I will admit that the first game doesn't have quite as much oomph to it in the story as later ones. Still, points to WA1 for giving the Quarter Knights actual personalities; stuff like Zeikfried "teaming up" with the protagonists to off his mother over their little disagreement about what to do with the planet, Zed being a dorky nutcase that wants respect he'll never get, and Boomerang having a past of killing both man and demon and having no true loyalties even to his own kind all help them to stand out.

WA3 is also the first case in the series for having an all around great localization. That's not to say that WA1 and 2 aren't understandable, but they have some issues (namely the fact that WA2 seems to be lacking in editing to make the script flow better in English; some lines you have to reread). Meanwhile with WA3 the translation work seems really good, and while there's no direct voice acting for the characters, the opening, closing, and credits themes are sung really well in English. Sony brought Square in to handle it out here if memory serves, rather than use an internal team (XSEED also wasn't around yet; WA4's localization was their first game).

I suppose I might want to add that I meant that about WA3.

They wouldn't make it past the Guardian bosses.

On topic, I came buckets of cum.

i never finished this game
but its my favorite wild arms game just because guns
no swords, staffs, spears or wands
just guns

Waiting for payday, and I'll be getting this. Easy enough.

I don't even care because I still have my PS2 copy and it emulates fine, but the more people that can play my all time favorite JRPG the better.

The stars really aligned with this one. Top notch game, top notch writing, top notch music, top notch localization, no censorship bullshit, no nasty bugs, nothing. One in a million.

wasn't the 1 and 3 connection later confirmed by the devs? i swear i remember some magazine back in '02 -back when gaming magazines were still relevant- and there was some big thing about one of the towers or something being a massive easter egg and the devs said 'its not an easter egg, its the same Filgaia a long time after WA1'

I still love how down to earth Gallows was.
>Come across minor villain making multiple meat suits of his own mother.

I'm not clear on it. All that I know is that Media.Vision's been a bit wishy-washy on whether each game has it's own separate Filgaia with the occasional recurring places or the same one at different points in time.

It's certainly a great game, but if you have a PS2, I'd double check as to how much a physical copy winds up comparing to the PS2 classic one in terms of prices. I got my copy for about $10 a few years back and I'd anticipate the PSN version to likely be $15-20, which might be a bit more expensive. Granted, I'm not sure how much WA3 physical copies might have risen in price since then, but I wouldn't expect it to be too much; it's pretty much the most common game in the series from what I've seen, hence having such a low price, at least in the past (meanwhile, ACF can be a good $45-60 where I live, and WA5 seems to fluctuate between $35 and $60 as well from what I've seen, particularly if you want a copy with the artbook and anniversary box).

so far the ps2 releases in this run have all been £11 so even if scabs are pushing the price up like any game made before 2005 it might crash again because of this.

Who doesnt remember the delicious tears of collectorfags when persona 1 and 2 got psn versions. No more $300 gouging for these merchants.

Already have a PS2 copy. Got it used way before Wild ARMs became a rare commodity. Playing it again without having to drag out or dig up the box & disc is a boon.

I'm still waiting for a Wild Arms 1 remake. That game was fucking fantastic, but it's so hard to go back and play it nowadays because it's so archaic in the slow-and-busted sense.

...

I like having some shelves of games I actually enjoy, but I certainly don't mind rereleases or reprints much myself when it means more people get to play some great games they either couldn't find or couldn't afford, and aren't forced to fell like they have to emulate to play it (not that I find anything wrong with emulation, but I know some people refuse to since it's not the "legitimate" way to play games). Wish Namco would do something like that for .hack and fuck over the scalpers there.

I'm not sure what actual sales figures for the series have been like out here, but either they still sold reasonably well for the most part (ACF and 5 being exceptions), or demand has remained pretty low for the ones that did sell better. WA1 and 2 have been on the lower end of spectrum as far as prices for PS1 JRPGs have gone where I live, and 3 and 4 have been pretty cheap as well when I've seen them.

I will say that for a while, back when I was looking for WA3 a few years ago (had been playing WA1 for the first time then and really enjoying it, and decided to track down the PS2 games in advance of playing them), there was something of a drought of available copies of WA3, and I think it took me a few months looking locally for it before I found a cheap complete one. Oddly though, shortly afterward, local availability exploded and I started seeing them all over the fucking place. No clue what happened to cause so many people to trade their copies in at around the same time; speculation of a PSN version was a good year or more away at the time (think the first hint at it was a few months back).

There is one on the PS2 called Wild Arms Alter Code F (if you don't just mean waiting for it to get on the PSN, in which case, ask Agetec if they can try to get it up). Fans are a bit split on whether it's better than the original or not, as it has a few bugs and the localization isn't exactly superb (not that the original game didn't have translation issues either, but how does "cocoon" wind up being translated as "arch"? Makes it sound like the demons wanted to steal masonry); personally I'd say it's on par with the original, which while perhaps not the best thing for a remake to be (if you consider the idea being to replace the original), but still a good game. Combat also handles as a mixture of elements from Wild Arms 1, 2, and 3: The MP from WA1, character switching from WA2 (when you unlock the bonus characters), and a more refined version of Wild Arms 3's Personal Skill system.

Also have to say I really like the music in ACF. Not that the original was bad in that department by any means, but hearing Naruke able to do new takes on classic songs with better audio output is really nice, and even the original songs (G's Roar comes to mind; embed related) for ACF are great.

I like having the collections, but i also like having the entire main metal gear series on my ps3's HDD to load up any time i want.

Plus it avoids the collectors issue so the rare underage that choose to investigate older games rather than settle for the modern shit get a much easier way to experience the games we loved growing up that in some cases are only available as an emulator on pc or a monumentally overpriced old copy from a 'retro' store.

Yeah, I certainly don't mind people having a more readily available option for stuff. Especially with (beyond the pricing issue some older games face) physical backwards compatibility being a bit of an issue now since the PS4 doesn't have any of it, even with PS1 discs (something both the PS2 and PS3 were capable of, even after the latter got stripped of PS2 backwards compatibility).

Wish Namco would toss Tales of Destiny and Eternia on the PSN so more people could give those a try (since at current prices for both emulation is a much better option and Namco would likely make easy money on putting both up for $10 or so), but they've been content to ignore doing so. Even fucking Konami, for all their problems, has seen fit to put Suikoden II up there.

Dragon Warrior Monsters never.

I now realise how little fan art she has. What a shame she was top tier.

I'm thinking that might be more of an issue on Square-Enix's end of things than Nintendo's (not that Nintendo doesn't have their own issues). I mean, they've been find tossing stuff like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Xenogears, Threads of Fate, and various other old Squaresoft games on the VC/PSN (though some like SaGa Frontier 1 and 2, as well as Brave Fencer Musashi, have had their PSN version remain Japan only), but I don't think any of the old Enix published/localized games have made it up on either service. Not Dragon Quest, not Tri-Ace's stuff, and certainly not Quintet's Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia (also Terranigma for PAL players) either.

She actually gets a good bit, and recently, with the 14th anniversary of WA3 in Japan, she got a good bump of it. Either that or someone on the various booru sites decided to play catch up with crossposting them from pixiv. Annoyed me a bit that for a day or two after the anniversary the only new images were a hentai set someone made in commemoration. Since then it's been a steady flow of new uploads of a variety of fan art for the series on the whole (as well as some new official art and sketches from the guy that did Wild Arms 5 and XF's art), which is nice when it used to be maybe one or two new images uploaded a month.

Wild Arms 2 certainly seems to be the most popular with artists though, at least in Japan, while Wild Arms 4 and 5 don't see a huge amount of focus from them. I suppose they're lucky they get the original script for WA2 there, rather than dealing with translation issues/poor flow for the text.

Virginia is without a doubt one if the best heroines in vidya.

If SJWs played games(or were genuine), she'd have been latched on to as one of their idols immediately. She actually has a character, and kicks ass dual wielding pistols in the mystic Wild West.

and yet sjws love lightning. people are strange.

Because Lightning is "strong" in the way they like. No personality, abrasive attitude, and punching men. At least in the first game, anyway.

Thank fuck this culture wasnt around when i was growing up.
If i never ran into Quistis in FF8 i probably wouldnt have /ara/ bookmarked to begin with.

Imagine the kids that grew up on 'the decade of lightning'. What monsters that must have made.

Reminds me, I still need to get a frame for a Wild Arms 3 poster I found still in an old guidebook at a local store.

I suppose one might say that Lightning is still somewhat current considering Square and Toriyama pushed her on series fans for three fucking games (probably two more than anyone really wanted about her). Meanwhile, Wild Arms has been dormant (the devs refuse to consider it dead; I suppose it's revival is more dependent on Sony than them though, since SCEJ owns the series) for close to a decade.

I do hope something comes of Kaneko wanting to do something nice for the series 20th anniversary this year (Wild Arms 6 collaboration between Media.Vision and Witchcraft, maybe?). I know he's already apparently met back up with some of the former dev team like Naruke.

Now you make me want a wild arms with witches in it. Like filgaia, lousiana edition.

that and a wild arms design works book. i loved the art in the guide, my second favourite game guide only to crystal chronicles maximum comfy loredumps and caravan notes in it.

Since you anons are really happy about this development(so am I), celebrate it while listening to this song!

Sonys been on about needing a new rpg franchise to push lately, i hope WA3 sells enough on psn to make them push some ideas around.

Could you imagine some anime/cel shading wild arms on the level of valkyria chronicles or atelier?

Riding around a wildwest open world for the first time since red dead, but with magic and shit?

AND FUCKING MAGIC STEAM TRAINS

muh dik.

Too bad, seems like a good game.

Now you make me want a wild arms with witches in it. Like filgaia, lousiana edition.
Witchcraft is a company Kaneko founded after leaving Media.Vision. I'm not sure what all they've developed, but I know they worked on a pair of Nanoha games for the PSP, with the second one having a number of elements leaving it reminiscent of Wild Arms.

The only one the west has seen was the one bundled with the 10th Anniversary Edition of Wild Arms 5, courtesy of XSEED, and contains artwork from all the games up to that point in 80 full color pages, and also features text for the character art pages in English as well (since WA5 has a lot of cameos of prior characters, it likely helped newer fans to know where they were from).

Japan's seen more art books out there to my knowledge: one of Wild Arms 5, a 10th anniversary artbook of their own (which i assume was much bigger in size and likely hardcover compared to what we got here), as well as the Fargaia Chronicle. Also, if memory serves, they even got a special boxed edition release of WA3 with a figure of Virginia.

Depends on how much money they'd be willing to pump into Media.Vision and/or Witchcraft for it. Lately Media.Vision's been busy doing third party development for Namco and Sega (most recently Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth and Valkyrie Azure Revolution), and Kaneko's been pretty tied down with Symphogear for a while.

You could always pick it up for the PS2 itself or emulate. And yeah, it's a good game if you enjoy JRPGs.

I like to support the releases that I can support.

I imagine cyber slueths success in the west has some suits talking.

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT

We'll find out in a few years. They've grown up being told femininity is a bad thing and to be men.

Gods, we need a counter revolution. I miss having good characters. Virginia is one of the few characters who had a good "tempered idealism" character arc, in my opinion. She learned and grew, while still maintaining her sense of self and goals.

Right now the only hope for kids is P5.

Deep down you know theres a point the library of shit on the bb box will make you cave.
It happened with NOGAEMS it will happen again.

No I'm a human being. I will never be a cave.

Dont give up, look at goatse, follow your dreams. Be the cave you were meant to be.

Nogaems ended up having games.

So far the BBbox doesn't.

And frankly a PS2 game I can run on my softmodded PS2 isn't likely to swing the balance.

So far this console generation has been a big "nope" for anyone with a brain.

You're right. I already plan to get one eventually since there are exclusives coming out I'll want to get within the next year. Keeping a digital rerelease of a ps2 game as a ps4 exclusive is pretty shitty though.

I've never wanted t obe a cave either.

Fair point. Still, if you have a Vita, it might be worth looking into whether you'll be able to remote play it on there, though admittedly I'm not sure if it's possible to download a PS4 game, even if it's just a PS2 classic, straight to the Vita without needing the PS4 itself to do so.

Maybe. Wouldn't surprise me if Namco decides to send Next Order west, but as far as I know Media.Vision's had no input on its development (especially since they're busy with helping Sega right now).

Still, while not exactly popular, I wouldn't say they're not reasonably well known, at least out in Japan. While most famous for Wild Arms, they'd also been brought in for various Sega, Namco, and Square-Enix games, as well as doing a few stand alone games here and there as well (like that Wizard of Oz JRPG for the DS), and overall they seem to have a decent track record.

On a related note, I wonder, would XSEED still be the go-to for localizing a possible Wild Arms 6? They handled WA4, 5, and XF for them in the past, as well as The Wizard of Oz; makes me wonder if they have had some agreement in the past with them the way they do for Falcom these days. Would certainly rather see them localize than somebody like NISA snatching the rights up.

The party in WA3 was so good in general.
>Virginia going from naive to more experienced with the aid of the rest of the party, while retaining her optimism.
>Gallows being a down-to-earth shaman on the run from what he feels is a fate he doesn't want, and having to weigh what he can do for the world against his sense of freedom.
>Clive being incredibly warm and friendly for a sniper, who works to put food on the table for his wife and young daughter while searching for the truth of their world.
>Jet being an amnesiac jerk who eventually finds what it is he wants to protect, even if he doesn't feel he has a past to fall back on and protect.

I agree, but as of now that hasn't happened yet, at least for me personally. And I am especially annoyed at how so many companies have been opting to ignore how various games were PS3, PS4, and/or Vita multiplat in Japan, but are treated as PS4 exclusives in the west (I'd much rather the system have a library of its own to stand on rather than fucking owners of the prior systems out of games to bolster its own). Maybe in a year or two I'll find enough of interest on it to pick one up.

Do you not remember it was equally shitty with the ps3?
Even worse to begin with as things like lost planet were objectively fucked up compared to the 360 versions.
Then around 2008 it became the weeb console of choice and never stopped.
It will happen again, its all about the dev turnover cycle, the most expensive games get the longer it takes unfortunately.

Denial isn't healthy cave user, you need to be true to yourself.

Tell your parents about your cavesona. Its time to start living.

As far as I'm aware, it was pretty hard for various groups to get PS2 games running right digitally on the PS3, causing delays with various ones being put up (I recall that being the case for Digital Devil Saga), as well as other companies that outright had to give up on trying to do so and move on to other games. Granted, I'm not sure how different the PS4 hardware is to the PS3's Cell or whatever it was (though I suspect there's a fair difference since the PS4 doesn't have PS3 backwards compatibility, even with the original models), but given the push for more of a PS2 Classics library with it, maybe it's easier to get them working with the PS4 than it was with the PS3.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Right now all you're basing this off of is what happened before, and I don't know how to tell you this, but: The past isn't the future.

It's still up in the air how this generation will turn out, and with more and more developers jumping ship to PC, including key Japanese developers, frankly I don't see Sony recovering this time around.

I agree. Even Gallows, who at times could grate on me, I could still say was a great character with some seriously badass moments.

Wow, can't hit the return key, can't post pic. It really is Friday the 13th.

I didn't even notice.

Shame that while the west did see all of the Wild Arms games (thankfully, albeit PAL fans are still missing WA2 and ACF; bit funny how the smaller, less popular series can manage top see every game localized but bigger ones like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Tales either missed various entries until later ports/remake, or are still missing entirely), we're still missing some other games Naruke's done music for. At least Nora to Toki has a fan translation in progress though (not sure why Atlus opted to not bring it over; game was apparently a collaboration between them and Gust, with the character designer from Etrian Odyssey and Naruke as composer); same can't be said for Tenshi no Uta 1 and 2 (do TurboGrafx 16 games get much in the way of fan translation efforts anyhow?).

She's an actual human bean with character development who learns from and owns up to her mistakes; all while not being afraid to rely on her allies, who are men that she treats as equals. Instead of crying or begging for people to fix her problems, she tries her best to do it herself, stopping to help others wherever she can. Not only that, she's a qt.

SJWs would fucking despise Virginia, because she is the antithesis of their beliefs.

No. Please let Wild Arms stay in its grave. I don't want to see what the modern hacks and SJWs would do to rape its corpse.

It pains me that Lilka is best waifu of WA2 but doesn't get Ashley cause the Devs/Gods demanded 1 character in the game suffers like no other
Last one is just running away from reality.

Fan artists seem somewhat fond of pairing her with Tim. Though to be fair, Tim seems to wind up with Colette, and fan art shouldn't be taken as canon. And to be fair to Ashley, he's a solid five years older than Lilka is.

I suppose if banners could still be added another "Not all of us can be winners" one with Lilka could be made.

Just because translation teams do it (never trust anything with 'trans' in it i guess) doesnt mean the pure nippon original will be tainted.

Considering XSEED handled the later games out here, even managing to get quality out of 8-4 and nothing being cut from Wild Arms 5 (including child abuse and Rebecca jealously speculating that Dean has a thing for little girls), I would hope that any new game that got released in the series would be picked up and localized well by them.

Still, he does have a bit of a point, since Tri-Ace, either at their own doing or Square-Enix's behest, changed shit even with the Japanese version of Star Ocean 5 in an effort to try to try to not have a shitstorm on their hands when it came west. What they did get was a shitstorm in Japan over said changes, if I'm remembering correctly.

It is not really a PS4 problem.

The market in Japan shifted to mobile, console jrpgs have taken a huge hit in general.

PC isn't going to save Japanese games either- sales numbers of JPN games on Steam aren't stellar.
Besides jrpgs always made their money in the home market. No jrpg has ever sold much outside Japan excluding final fantasy.

This upsets me.

Well I've played some Japanese smartphone games and they are all crap designed as a slot machine. Mobage is what it's called iirc.

Don't expect fleshed out deep jrpgs on your phone unless it is running an emulator.

FF record keeper is the only good one i've ever tried and even then its casual tier.

user. There is a manlet in Lilkas home town that is tsundere for her. Yeah he was that important that you forgot about him. He was the one i was talking about.

Manlets. Not even once.

I'm pretty sure mobage is a company that sells mobile games or something and it's only coincidence that it's made up of mobile and garbage.

Yeah, I guess I forgot him. Admittedly it's been a while, but I don't recall there being much to hint at romance between those two, more that he was just asspained that Lilka wasn't in class anymore or something, or whatever the issue was. Hell, even in the credits which show Ashley cooking together with Marina, and Colette bringing Tim the mail while he packs some bales of hay, Lilka's just passed out alone at a desk in some room somewhere after falling asleep studying.

Companies like Square-Enix seem to have been more keen on fucking up the sprite work of existing classic games for phone ports. The DS at least had a number of games with nice low poly 3D models, but the qualities of the DS screens themselves placed some limitation on how good they could look natively on the system. Apparently theres some emulator settings that really let the modeling shine.

It aint right.

Square seems to have opted for avoiding making as many more or less stand alone games (I think Vagrant Story might have been part of the Ivalice universe FFT and FFXII are in, but I honestly still need to give it a go sometime myself), compared to what all they used to have back in the day. And even with the DS, the only one they bothered with bringing west was TWEWY (at least Sigma Harmonics had the excuse that the game using vertical text wouldn't work well in western languages).

Still can't believe Square-Enix thought a phone port of TWEWY was worthy of a countdown and teaser site.

Its set in a sunken ghost town city under the ivalice countryside. Tonally and in some cases gameplay wise its like demon souls but with some turn based stuff. Different weapon types effect different enemies eg skele and blunt weapons, but you dont attack real time but pause, select a body part and an action then move around like parasite eve.

Its aged a bit but its a fantastic game, nice to see FFXIV is giving it some love soon its its endless floor deep dungeon update.

Should I be excited about going full autism next week and getting the WA3 platinum trophy, even though I didn't do most of the side quests when I first played through the game 15 years ago?

ill be honest i got a little turned on when she shook her skirt and a minigun fell out

Gaystation Bore only or can I get it on the Vita

i think you can get it on your disowned vita liam sempai.

Maya was my waifu for a while. I found her so incredibly endearing when it was revealed that she was really a book-loving nerdy girl with self esteem issues and was using her favorite books to literally transform herself into the person that she wished she could be.

I'll have to give it a go sometime, thanks. That said, given that I suppose it is set somewhere in the Ivalice chronology, would I need to play something like FFT beforehand to make sense of certain things?

I suppose Square's felt safer cranking out remakes of stuff they knew would sell, like FFIII and IV, various Dragon Quest games, SaGa 2 and 3 (in Japan anyhow, Square couldn't care less about bringing those ones west), and now FFVII, compared to their more-or-less stand-alone ones.

I remember showing my friend the game as I was playing through it, and him just laughing at the fact she'd managed to turn autism and cosplay into an actual power.

I really liked how they tied in Calamity Jane to her as well, with that style being her go-to for her normal look and combat style.

Also, Todd Dukakis is pretty much a mixture of Magdalen and Jack from WA1/ACF, not so much in appearance but in combat style and character. Also love how you can apparently use a fire spell/gem/materialize and set his afro on fire as a DoT.

You have to buy a PS4. The Vita can only play PS2 games that are ported to it. This is just running off of the PS2 emulator they made for PS4.

If memory serves its loosely mentioned as a location in tactics but thats it, you can jump in, its the most self contained FF spin off there is.

Cool, thanks again. The idea of it taking place entirely in one location (that city) reminds me of how Koudelka took place entirely inside a monastery and the grounds in and under it. Bit odd to see a JRPG do that, but certainly not bad if kept interesting enough.

Just to double check in case someone asks in the future, you have to buy it through the PS4 and then transfer it to the Vita? No natively buying them as remote play on the Vita or online storefronts?

Oh if you liked koudelka its just koudelka in the final fantasy world.

Cool. And yeah, I loved Koudelka. It certainly has a few issues here and there (both of the opinion and outright kind; load times being a good example of the latter), but was a really neat game if you ask me. Seems a shame it was panned heavily.

Does Vagrant Story strike you as something that would work really well on the PSP (since I can easily download an eboot if there's one around), or does it use the L2, R2, or right analog stick a lot?

its been a while since i played but i think its one of those super early barebones controls games, right down to O being confirm and X being cancel so it should be fine, i know its on psn for play on psp.

What? I don't remember this, or maybe I never knew. I haven't been this hyped to play a game in a while. Which is kind of sad considering it's a port of a 15 year old game, that I've already completed and still own.

There's some little things you might not think to do. For example, I'd previously avoided using fire spells there since Shady is either resistant or immune to them (and summoning Maur Gault or however it's spelled would be a waste compared to a summon they're all at the very least neutral to), but next time I play I'm going to give it a try myself. Just something I'd read up on Wild Arms wiki after the fact.

Vita release? please be a vita release

I haven't been on the Vita's store in awhile, but I really doubt they added anything like that. I would think you could probably access PS4's store during remoteplay and buy it. I haven't tried it myself, but as far as I know only bluray playback and video stuff is blocked, due to some copyright shit or something. Otherwise, you should be able to buy it on their website, download to your PS4 and play it though remoteplay if you don't have your PS4 hooked up to a TV or something and accessing the PS4 store via remoteplay doesn't work.

As much as I'd love a portable version of one best games of all time, I'm pretty sure all of the "PS2 on PS4" games are PS4 only.

But hey, you can always play it on Vita via Remote Play!

I wish the Vita had more of a "Portable PS2" sort of functionality, the way the PSP has native PS1 capabilities. Instead, barring remote play of digital rereleases for the PS4, you've only got a handful of HD collections of varying quality.

Hell, even on the PS3 there were only four HD collections for JRPGs (two for Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, one for FFX/X-2, and Tales of Symphonia Chronicles). Strikes me a real missed opportunity for some of the lesser known ones to have been given another chance, but I suppose others not being all that popular in comparison might be the reason for why collections of them never happened.

Dude, it's Squares fault, especially since they didn't even bother with the remakes while at best only porting mainline to cellphones. They don't wanna try and their head of localization is making it even harder for them to bother.

Well they did warn everyone with that title.
"We'll finish it but we'll be damned if you won't be pissed about the results"

Yep.

How rampant is hiding machine guns up your skirt in Japanese media?

...

I've played and enjoyed WA1,3 and AF. Is WA2 worth it? Has it aged well?

It's good if you ask me; WA3 borrowed gameplay mechanics from it, like the replacing of MP entirely with FP, as well as Personal Skills, so if you liked those in WA3, you'll probably enjoy how WA2 uses them as well. The latter is slightly unrefined though: Personal Skills are permanently learned once chosen, and a fair amount of them work on a "% increase pre level up" fashion, so you need to choose what to prioritize and pick up first, if at all on a given character (IE: a Physical attacker like Brad benefits a lot from picking up the +Physical attack skill set early on since he'll gain more and more permanent boosts as he continues to level up).

The translation also has some issues, namely with the readability; either the team was rushed or simply too lazy to do much in the way of editing so it flows better. It's still for the most part understandable, but some lines might take a few passes to get what's being said. One character called Liz also sounds like a complete nutcase in English (similar to Zed from WA1/ACF), though I hear that his manner of speech uses some really Japanese specific double speak in the original script that really doesn't lend itself that well to English, thus he comes off as being a non-sequiter spouting lunatic (and since Ashley responds in proper kind in the Japanese version, his dialogue takes a slight hit as well when interacting with Liz, which isn't too often).

The 3D graphics are also a step up from WA1, though I do miss the spriting for the overworld, dungeons, and towns, as all of those are 3D as well.

Meant "upon level up." Not sure what happened there.