I found a treasure! Skies of Arcadia! true masterpiece
It is a role playing games for Sega Dreamcast. It's one of the greatest role playing games I ever played. Later on it was also released on the Nintendo Game Cube as Skies of Arcadia Legends. Note: this review is based on the Gamecube version.
Okay. I start with telling you a LITTLE bit about the story. Pirate croup called Blue Rogues one day attacked Valuan Admiral Alfons's ship in order to rob it, they found out that Alfonso had kidnapped a girl named Fina. Blue Rogues rescued Fina and took her to their home island. But it didn't take much when Valuan empire attacked the island and rekidnapped Fina. So Vyse (the main character of the game) and his friend Aika decided to rescue her.
The graphics are Dreamcast level, they didn't made major chances to the Gamecube version, some textures are chanced, loading times are smaller and stuff like that. They also added some new content to game which is great. Music in this game is just great. there is many many good songs in the game. I especially love the boss theme, it gives you a feeling that can't be described in words. But I got admit that I got bored to the random encounter battle theme. When you play the game you know why it's so boring.
I liked the voice acting in this game...well there is only few sentences voice acting but even there was so little of it, this game has couple of the most memorial comments like "I found a treasure" and "Hmm...a fine blade" that I will remember the rest of my life. :p
Sailing in the sky!, exploring new worlds and dungeons and having lot of battles. What else can you wish for? :p I would have never thought that sailing could be this much fun as it is in skies of arcadia, sometimes I just flied around the world couple of times just for fun. The only thing that really bothers me is how often the random encounters come! if you have played Final Fantasy II you know what I'm talking about. Random encounters are ass especially in the beginning of the game, I mean you have just won a battle then you sail about 3 seconds and boom! random encounter!. This won't be so tedious later on in the so don't worry. Of course every ship has a crew so you might want to create your own, I was fun for a while, but sometimes it's tedious. (I really recommend collecting them) There is a bunch of side quests like moonfish guest for example so you don't have to always worry about the moon crystals. Also here is a Wanted list, where you can check is anyone having a bounty on his head, (if you defeat any of these foes you receive nice amount of cold.) Then there are these discoveries, they are things that are hidden in the map, they can islands, rocks or whatever. Discoveries were another thing that drove me insane! most of them were so well hidden that even I had to rely on Gamefaqs, I know i's shameful
Battle system is very similar to other role playing games, you choose attack, special attack, defend, magic, focus, run and item, also later on you can choose special moves Blue Rogues attack (crew attack) and The Tempest Dance .Blue Rogues attack I think is one of the best things in this game maybe even the best, It's an attack where all your crew members participate and that I tell ya is awesome. Now you might think how one attack can be so awesome? Well play the game and see.
There is also ship battles. It requires some tactical thinking, how to use your cannons and stuff. Most part of the ship battles are easy to handle but some of them you can't just shoot all the time. Overally Skies of Arcadia is a masterpiece, I really enjoyed playing it it didn't have so good looking graphics for a Gamecube game but since it's but the story and characters were awesome (well almost all the characters). The difficulty level should have been higher though. Well, I hoped you liked my review, My apologies if there was major spoilers. I was trying to avoid them so I didn't tell about the characters. this is my second review so don't give me hard critics :p Thanks for reading.