Skies of Arcadia

[+Cafeman]

I devoted much of June to playing through SOA for the first time, the DC original version. Over 40 hours of game later, I finished it today.  Now I remember why I'm not an RPG fan! These games are too long!

 

SOA has great characters and a long epic story about the Air Pirates and various nations of Arcadia.  Great colors and art, good music,  and I see why some people fondly remember it.

 

I'd rate it 8 out of 10. I'm glad I finally got to experience it, but I will never play it through again! Some of it is near perfect, but 2 things really came to annoy me and bring the experience down.  First, the oft-mentioned frequency of random battles is enough to drive me batty!  I had more than usual free time this month so I came to accept it, and I did select the RUN option more and more frequently towards the end to avoid some battles. 

 

The other negative is the game makes you go through some long stretches between save points. The final battle is actually 3 back to back boss battles. I really didn't want to play 3 hours straight, but I had to, to finish it.  This happened a couple of times in the game, it was getting late but I had to keep playing so as not to waste my progress and save the game! 

 

The fighting role playing strategies/gameplay seemed to have some flaws. In the end I came to ignore many otherwise cool powers and attacks, because it so much more effective to use a certain 2 or 3 moves repeatedly among the characters. At first the boss battles seemed impossible and daunting to me, such as the 1st Gigas battle .  But once my party and ship got leveled up enough all the challenge was gone, until the final bosses. 

 

 But I don't want to speak of only negatives, much of the game was fun, exciting , filled with surprises, and with an unusually optimistic tone. 

 

Post your thoughts of Skies of Arcadia in this post! 

[Hakogame 箱亀]

Great game. I've played through it twice.  

The main issue I had with it was the amount of random battles, but I think they were supposed to have fixed that in the Gamecube port.

[youki]

i have loved that game.  I'm not a RPG Fan as well , i think it is the only RPG i have completed!.

 

But did not completed it with 100% ,  i think it was around 70%  , so there is lot of place i did not see.

 

What i don't like too much is this kind of game are boss Battle...    I like the stories ,  exploring .... but battle are boring, IMHO.

[+atari2600land]

Don't like RPGs, but if the eBay prices were sane, I would think about getting it. $200 for a game is too much IMHO.

[moycon]

I LOVE RPGs and the Dreamcast and I know this game get high praise, but I've never played it. Not once.

Graphic wise, it really doesn't look that impressive to me for some reason. Every time I see videos of the game, I just think it looks kinda...bleh.

What exactly makes this RPG stand out?

[Intymike]

On 7/18/2020 at 3:49 AM, moycon said:

I LOVE RPGs and the Dreamcast and I know this game get high praise, but I've never played it. Not once.

Graphic wise, it really doesn't look that impressive to me for some reason. Every time I see videos of the game, I just think it looks kinda...bleh.

What exactly makes this RPG stand out?

 

The characters, the story, it's funny...

 

It's one of my most favorite games!

[Mikebloke]

I recently started up the gamecube version. The claim is that the random encounter rate is reduced, but even on the world map view it can boot a random encounter as early as every 2 seconds. Someone playing the game for the first time on gamecube wouldn't know that it's reduced, which just means the dreamcast version is even more ridiculous. 

 

I suppose really thinking about the nostalgia, the last major rpg on a sega console was probably Panzer Dragoon Saga. Skies of Arcadia doesn't have true voice overs (annoying sound tidbits similar to navi in zelda), but it's a much larger game. It has various side quests too and some secrets, so I think it's worth playing once if people can find/afford it. The soundtrack isn't too bad either, but the battle tunes will drone as it goes on as they are so frequent. 

 

Grandia 2 bat's it out the water later on in the dreamcast cycle, but that too got ported (and now has a slightly fixed steam version). Vyse has been used regularly in sega material since, perhaps one day we'll see a pc port too. 

[Mikebloke]

So I took a look last night and it turns out Grandia 2 came out before Skies of Arcadia, I learnt something new! 

[jdollatari]

Solid game-needs a remake on PS4/5 and switch.

[Steven Pendleton]

On 7/29/2020 at 5:06 PM, Mikebloke said:

the last major rpg on a sega console was probably Panzer Dragoon Saga

Sakura Taisen 4?

[Mikebloke]

1 minute ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Sakura Taisen 4?

sorry I meant before Skies of Arcadia, and you know, released worldwide.

[Steven Pendleton]

11 minutes ago, Mikebloke said:

sorry I meant before Skies of Arcadia, and you know, released worldwide.

Oh, okay. That changes things quite a bit if you meant before this game.

[BydoEmpire]

I remember playing through on DC and really enjoyed it.  I don't recall much, other than it had a good setting, it had "airship battles," and I thought it was a great game.  I liked it a bit more than Grandia 2.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I played both Grandia 2 and SOA and hand down my favorite between the two was SOA. I thought the airship battle mechanic was quite cool and unique for the time. I also really liked the characters in the game. I do remember that the amount of random encounters was crazy, but I seem to remember that being more of an issue when inside structures or (dungeons) more than on the overworld? But I also recall that like was mentioned, it meant that I was leveled up pretty quickly and I seem to recall that the second half of the game was a cakewalk because of this. 

 

The Gamecube version was supposedly tweaked so the random encounters are fewer, and I believe they added some extra content as well but I've never owned that version much less played it so I can't comment on that directly. But to me I had a blast playing it back in the day on the DC and was very happy to get mine used around 2004 for about $35 as I recall?

 

[Nall3k]

On 7/17/2020 at 9:49 PM, moycon said:

I LOVE RPGs and the Dreamcast and I know this game get high praise, but I've never played it. Not once.

Graphic wise, it really doesn't look that impressive to me for some reason. Every time I see videos of the game, I just think it looks kinda...bleh.

What exactly makes this RPG stand out?

It and Grandia 2 are probably the best Dreamcast RPGs to have. Both have phenomenal settings, heartfelt stories, and memorable characters. If you haven't played it, I would urge you to reconsider. It's hard to articulate fully as to why it stands out, but the ending is still with me even after years of last playing it.

[StuOhQ]

Just started playing this myself. Too early to tell how highly I would rank it, but I'm really enjoying it so far.