When I started playing Skies of Arcadia, it was the summer of last
year. I didn't exactly know what to think of it, the booklet really
scared me a bit with the ship battles, pirates, gangs, crew members,
etc.. so I eventually stopped playing it and shelved it for a good
year. Then about 2 months ago I was tired of reading all the Skies of
Arcadia threads and wanted in on that action, so i decided to start it
over and finish it without touching another game. I'm glad I did,
because over that year, my mind has changed on the game. The first ship
battle almost scared me away again, but lucky they're few and far
between, and once you get your final the ship the battles got really
simple. The crew members ended up being an optional sidequest, so there
was no worries of losing anyone or having to strategies anything. I
eventually got hooked on the game and finished it way faster than most
RPG's take me.
I had a ton of fun with this game and I hope you will too.
----------Battle System----------
The battle system is very similar to a traditional Final Fantasy
game, you get an attack, magic, special personalized attacks, defend,
run and items. A fight moves in rounds, so you pick all 4 of your
players commands at one time, then watch the mayhem unfold. That limits
the real time strategy a little bit, but adds an element of pre-emptive
strategy to it. After you pick your commands, your players move around
the field on their own, unlike most RPGs where they stand still across
from an enemy.
The biggest twist from norm is ship battles. This is where they
pit your ship against another ship or giant monster in a long drawn out
fight. The ship battles are very similar to a regular random battle,
but really slow. You pick all of your moves in 4 sets and take turns
hitting each other, whoever has the best speed gets to hit first. There
isn't a whole lot of strategy within this, just hit them, heal yourself
and wait for a power move. This is the only thing that slows this game
down for me.
The random encounters happen alot, so except alot of battles,
luckly the dugeons and world map is relitively small, so you get to
your destination without a problem of to many random battles. You level
up really easily in this game, and the enemies give you plenty of money
aswell, so you'll never have to worry about having enough money or
being on a low level.
Everyone can learn the same magic powers, just some can learn them
faster than others. You level up your magic by equiping your weapons
with that magics color, say you want to learn a green magic, so you
equip your sword with green power. Say you want to learn it even
faster, so you equip everyone with green power and it quadruples the
expierence points for that magic. Everyone has their own abilities
though. The three main characters all have 5 seperate abiblites to
learn, and the other three characters only have 3. The way you learn
your abilies is by collecting moonberries and upgrading. These moves
are the only ones in the game you can skip during battle, because
they're rather long.
There is only one battle within this game that you can't escape or
win. I loathe games that do this all the time and make me waste my
items until i lose. Luckly this game only does it once.
----------Characters / Story----------
All good guys are goody goods, and all the bad guys are evil.
There might be some good guys with bad attitudes and effeniment bad
guys, but theres really only a couple suprises in the character
development. Theres not a whole lot of twists that throws you off, the
story pretty much sticks to a traditional RPG path.
A HUGE plus in this game goes towards the character formation. You
can only have 4 people in your team at one time, and once you get the
main 3 characters in your team, they stay there for the rest of the
game (except for a couple short occasions.) The other 3 people that
eventually join your team all have similar attributes and when they
leave, their equipment stays so you'll never have to worry about losing
an important accessory. You won't be able to switch team members until
the very end of the game though, so when you have a player in your
team, they are there for a reason.
----------Graphics----------
The character and enemy designs are excellent, but the dungeon and
town designs lack alot. The dungeons are blocky, either a room is a
complete square, a narrow path, or a giant square with latter,
platforms or inclines (which are all blocks). The towns are no
different really, just a little more flair in the backgrounds. This is
a Dreamcast port, so I'll give it a little leeway for the bland
graphics.
----------Sound----------
There are very few voice overs in the game, and none of it is
linked dialog. This is one thing that they could of added as a special
feature for the Gamecube version, but they fumbled that ball. Only the
main characters and most bosses within the game have any sort of voice
over. The voice overs generally consist of grunts or one sentence
retorts / catch phrases. Glider is the only one with any sort of
length, but it's also a bit annoying too. Vigoro has a classic Sega
arcade sounding voice, he's the best overall when it comes to voice
overs.
----------World Map----------
Classic style world map with a sort of a new twist. At the start
of the game you start out with a flying ship. Usually in Final Fantasy
or games that rip them off its not until the end of the game until you
get your flying ship / transporter, but in this game the whole purpose
of the game is flying, there is no walking in the world map, but that’s
where they differences stop. The rest of the map is very similar to any
other RPG where you search across a map. There are areas you can
explore because you're not strong enough, or because of story line
conflicts, or because you haven't equipped the right tool to pass an
object. Eventually you'll be able to cross everything with no trouble,
so that’s the similarities.
In this world you can find other ships, some are good (Doc,
merchants), some are bad (Black Pirates, bounties, Valua Ships). You
can also find fish that you can sell, eat or give away as small
sidequests, but the best sidequest in the world map is finding
Discoveries. All discoveries are found in the world map. The outside
world is vast and beautiful, but most discoveries are invisible until
you find them. Once everything is unlocked, it's a treat to just see
everything.
----------Time to Complete Game (first run through, last save before final boss)----------
59:56
I completed all sidequests. No rewards at the end of the game, when its over, its over.
