So I completed Wild Arms 3, though I abandoned my plans to 100% it because the 100 floor Abyss dungeon seemed far too tedious just doing the mandatory 10 or so floors. And knowing it could take like 3+ hours and you can't save during it... I definitely wouldn't have the patience to lose that much time if I died halfway through that and had to redo it all over again.
I still did most of the optional content, and had a blast with the game in general. It's definitely the most "wild west" feeling game of the series I've played so far (1-3), and I enjoyed the simple but sometimes difficult puzzles the dungeons had - I feel like many of the more recent JRPGs I've played either don't really have puzzles or they aren't too enjoyable, which is a shame because puzzles have always been something I really enjoy about JRPG dungeons.
The story was also pretty engaging, and I appreciated how the game kinda felt a bit like a shounen anime, but with a female main character. The characters themselves were all pretty lovable as well. I hear this is one of those games that has a bit of foreshadowing that's very apparent on a subsequent playthrough, but my backlog is far too large to even consider that any time soon (if ever).
It did have some issues though, like sometimes not even giving you any real hints on what to do next to proceed, though I mostly used a walkthrough with it. Also the movement controls were a little floaty and I found myself falling off edges in dungeons a lot (which thankfully doesn't do anything other put you back at the entrance of the room). It was especially annoying doing the millennium puzzles where you're mostly moving blocks around, and have to press X to grab them, but X is also to run/charge, and I found myself sometimes not standing quite close enough to the blocks and charging them instead which sent my character flying back over the edge, resetting the puzzle. It's pretty much the exact same movement system from the PS1 games, for better and worse, and I ended up finding it easier to just control my characters with the D-pad than the control stick most of the time.
I played the game on PS4 (I'm never attempting to play any PS2 classics on PS5), and it ran mostly fine though occasionally the game would have random micro freezes/stutters, and the audio sometimes got a bit choppy during some cutscenes where there were several characters on screen at once, so the emulation wasn't perfect but I never had crashes or anything (something I hear was an issue back when it first released on PS4 before getting patched).
Overall, I had a great time with the game and it's definitely entered my top 20 PS2 JRPGs. I hear the series went in a bit of a different direction after this game, but I'm interested in checking out Wild Arms 4 and 5 eventually, as well as Alter Code F, and I'm looking forward to see how Armed Fantasia turns out.
