BoneSnapDeez wrote:but Skies of Arcadia is the one huge epic 50+ hour adventure that just does everything right.
Exhuminator wrote:Congrats on beating one of the best JRPGs out there. The Legends version has enough extra content that I put 65 hours into it to finish everything. I hope someday you play the Legends version to experience the differences. But the Dreamcast version is of course still excellent.
Sarge wrote:Skies of Arcadia shows what happens when you take a well-worn formula, and execute it to near perfection. Many of the elements in the game are done better elsewhere, but there are so many above-average and good elements that the whole is far better than each individual part. My only gripe is the slowness of combat until you start getting the screen-clearing moves (generally Aika's stuff).
My friend and I played the game together for the past several months. He was playing the GameCube version while I was playing the Dreamcast version.
And I know one of the main gripes is the large random encounter rate and I did not see that at all. Maybe one area while I was searching for discoveries was getting annoying, but it wasn't too bad. Maybe I am used to 8 & 16 Bit RPG's with a large amount of battles to slog through.
But, I will be picking up the Legends port sometime in the future. There is enough distinction and what my friend mentioned in differences made me want to play that port as well. I just wanted to play the Dreamcast version first as a base before I go and play the enhanced port. Plus, I would say that the sound and graphics seem to be a little better on the DC version anyway.
I would very much agree in that Aika is the linchpin. Once you start using the screen clearing attacks of her, the game becomes much easier. It does take a bit to get going, but once it does, you are going full bore the entire way.
I have a HUGE soft spot for Square/Enix JRPG's as those are some of my favorite JRPG's. But, I would say Skies goes right up there with Lufia II and Suikoden II as some of my favorite Not Square/Enix JRPG's.