Skies of Arcadia: Legends

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.