/vr/ - Retro Games

ITT: Games you want to love but have aged like milk.

Pic related. I always wanted to play it as a kid and finally have a chance to so many years later. While I love the setting, characters, and music, the battles are excrutiating. I've played plenty of RPGs from the SNES and PS eras, and while games like FFIX and Chrono Cross were slow, I was able to adjust to them. For whatever reason I just can't get used to battles in SoA. Magic animations in normal battles take far too long, even though you can skip the super move animations. And the ship battles are like pulling teeth, I can't fucking stand them. You input your command and watch the ships fly around for at least a full minute for each command. It's horrible. Ship battles take 20-30 minutes when they could easily take half that, if not less, if you didn't have to watch the fucking ships do absolutely nothing for minutes on end.

Anyone else feel this way about this game? Or other games?

So I'm playing Skies of Arcadia and I've managed to make it to the half-way point according to my journal and so far it's a mixed bag for me.

I really like the characters and the setting. And it looks beautiful, no complaints about any of those. The battle system is pretty cool too. I really like how magic usage is so much more lenient in contrast to other RPGs. I'm a big fan of SP, it relies more on tactics rather than balanced usage of magic/special skills throughout your journey. I love how you can just fully heal your ship without being set back all that much by doing so and being able to use lambda burst/rain of swords on random encounters and not be hindered at all.

But I've gotta say, I'm seriously disappointed by how much involvement the people you recruit into your crew actually has in the game. They do so little! I just came off of playing Shining force (another sega RPG) and coming into this game I expected to order my crew around in at LEAST ship battles... But their only purpose is either to provide a passive skill or a one-time bonus. Very sad.

Another complaint is that the battles drag on for so long... So very very very long. You're waiting more for animations to finish rather than thinking about what to do next.

But other than that I like the game very much. What are your thoughts on the game, /vr/?