We were talking about this yesterday... I don't remember exactly what was said, but I said something like how I was surprised how much I liked Skies of Arcadia despite its annoying random combat... but that even so, if it'd used Chrono Trigger's system of showing enemies it would have been even better.
Oh, and could someone explain why they think that Golden Sun has more random battles than FF6?
I really didn't mind Golden Sun's random battles. But I still haven't beaten it though, perhaps because of the boring plot.
Golden Sun has a boring plot? Don't spoil it or anything, because I'm thinking about buying it to satisfy my GBA lusts. I don't know of any other RPGs on the system, but if anyone cares to point me towards a few, it'd be appreciated.
Lunar Legend has gotten some good reviews, so has Breath of Fire II. Golden Sun is a pretty cool handheld RPG, but the plot is pretty generic. But if care more about graphics, sound, and a fast and fun battle system, I'm sure you'd love GS.
Hmm. Well, you seem to have hit me pretty well. I DO like fun gameplay more than story, and even more than graphics. But what I want, what I really really want, is Secret of Mana on GBA. That'd be worth my cash. Mmm...
Or Magical Vaction, damnit. Stupid Nintendo.
Before you get Golden Sun, you should know one thing: there is a flaw in the battle system. This isn't some small nitpicking thing, it truly becomes annoying. When you select an attack for a character, you must select the enemy to attack. If this enemy dies/runs away/gets killed by another character BEFORE the chosen character gets to attack, the chosen character WILL NOT attack any of the other monsters on the field, as would a character in practically every other RPG. For example, let's say there is a bat and a lion on the field, and you have two characters, Garret and Mia. You choose Garret to attack the lion and Mia to cast frost. Mia is faster, so she'll cast frost first, and it kills the lion and damages the bat, but the bat is still on the field. Instead of attacking the bat, Garret will defend this turn. It's annoying, but it can be gotten used to after a while.
Another thing, less grave, but still annoying, is the needless amount of "A" presses in the battle. Here's an excerpt (made up) from a battle:
"Mia casts frost"
Press A
"Bat1 got 20 damage"
Press A
"You felled Bat1"
Press A
"Bat2 got 21 damage"
Press A
"You felled Bat2"
Press A
"Bear got 23 damage"
Press A
"You felled Bear"
Press A
"You felled Bat1's party"
Press A
"You get 20 experience points"
Press A
"Mia becomes a level 5 Water Seer"
Press A
"Mia's Attack increased to 50"
Press A
"Mia's Defense increased to 30"
Press A
"Mia's Luck increased to 3"
...
You get my point. After a while, you just mash B.
But you can just hold A instead of pressing it each time a little message comes up. If I remember correctly, you can just hold A during entire battles if you want to.
Would either of you recommend GS? Or are there other GBA games that I MUST HAVE beforehand?
I only have Advance Wars and Metroid Fusion, but at least they're both highly acclaimed!
There are pleny of other GBA games that you must have. Here's a list of titles, off the top of my head:
Good ports:
-Mario World
-Yoshi's Island
-Zelda: ALttP
Original titles:
-Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (plays a lot like Super Metroid, and it's the best GBA game next to Metroid Fusion)
-Super Monkey Ball Jr.
-Mario Kart
-Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (not as good as HoD, but still good)
How about Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis?
Never played it, but I've heard good things. I should buy that game...
I heard it's really pricey, though. I've looked at it for a little bit, and it's more than most GBA games, but I don't remember how much. Is it $45?
It should be $30 at EB games or wherever.
Nah, I've seen Tactics Ogre for over $40 at Babbages in the Springs and an EB in south Denver. But they do overprice everything they can at these local stores.
I didn't finish Golden Sun either. Sometimes the game was relaly fun, and others it got really boring. Oh, and maybe it's just me lacking skills, but it seemed to me that most of the game would be easy, and then there would be a boss that was flat out impossible. Did anybody else notice that?
Anyway, Skies of Arcadia is fantasmastic! the battles are too frequent and too long (although you can get through them pretty fast when you learn a couple special moves), but it's the only flaw in the game. I've played through twice and I would buy this new version if I could afford it. The story is good and involving, the gameplay is always fun and exciting, even after 60 hours, and the graphics are still good. The normal melee battles are not very fun, but the ship battles are a blast and even include a good amount of strategy. The characters aren't anything special or new, there isn't a ton of character development, and the voices were flat out bad, but I loved them all, in the same way you love Link, Mario, or Samus. Most of all, the game was just special. You know the feeling: you can't really explain why it's better than anything else, you just know it is. This is really the only non-Nintendo developed/produced/involved game I've ever played that felt like a Nintendo game. I think that's the best thing I can say about it.
Skies of Arcadia was very good... the 6 1/2 hours I got through in the 2 days I played it were fun, and the random battles were annoying but not annoying enough to make me stop playing... unlike pretty much any Final Fantasy game I've played. I will almost certainly get the NGC version... I want to see more of the story! I don't know exactly why I liked it.. but I did.
Sure, I wish it (any any RPG with them) didn't have random battles... they are SO ANNOYING! Games with random battles become really irritating.. you walk along, hoping you don't run into anther battle... but eventually you ineveitablly do, and have to fight another easily won (in most games) battle... bah.
Take Lost Kingdoms on NGC... I mention it because I rented it recently. Its a OK game, IMO. Fun, mostly... the battle system when in battles is overall pretty good. Action-oriented, but thats the point so its good. The only problem? Battles are random! Argh.. it really get irritating... especally because you often want to conserve cards for boss battles and you know the levels (because of the other bad design decision-- no way to save while in a mission!), but fight many pointless (they dont level you up or anything as far as I can tell... cards get experience, but i dont know if that actually does much) random battles that drain your card strength. Stupid game design!
Golden Sun. It was fun... the random battles were annoying, but they went fast and were relatively fun... also they didn't seem to happen as often as some other RPGs, like many of the ones on SNES for example. But yeah, I didn't finish. The story seemed alright. Not a really great story like some RPGs, but decent.
Oh, and anyone remember I said that I'd never finished a menubased RPG? It isn't true. I had forgotten about Paper Mario (very good game, btw. No random battles helps a lot...).
Edit: One more thing. I recently (last week) got the full version of Septerra Core (borrowed from my cousin). It's a pretty good PC Japanese-style RPG... I'd played the demo a couple of years ago and liked it, overall, so its nice to have the full version. We'll see how far I get... I often don't finish games. Though it is more likely here because Septerra Core doesn't have random battles. It has Chrono Trigger-style 'see enemies on map' style of how you get into battles. Nice.
i've played through golden sun twice...once to beat it...and once to beat it with all the djinni...and with going to the secret island. it's fantastic. the story isn't great, but it's not particularly terrible...it's cliché...just a "save the world" thing...but you get to like the characters, at least i did, which helps.
Knight of Lodis is brillantly designed...it's an ingenious game...very deep...i don't really know how to describe it, but it's very well thought out. but one thing that bugs me is how long it takes to unlock new character classes. i'm over 20 battles in (including random encounters) and have characters around lvl 15 but only have the same 7 or so classes available to you from the start. i'm bored of my ninja's, knights and wizards...i want blademasters, dragoons, and mages.
Best game ever has to go to Chrono Cross. That game is just so amazing...graphics are excellent for a PS1 game, storyline hasn't been beaten in a single game...battles never get old (and if you dont' like them, you can go through the whole game having more boss battles then regular battles). And the characters. And the towns (Termina I liked especially). One of my favorite parts of the game was when you were on the cruise ship...it can't be described how much I like and how good this game is. If you don't play this game you are seriously missing out on the best game ever made! (Blows Skies away...even though I've never played it).
I could never get into Chrono Cross... I was expecting Chrono Trigger, and CC is quite different. Great musical score though, of course. Yasunori Mitsuda's a genius, and I can never stress that enough.
Skies of Arcadia is one of my top three favourite games ever (along with Zelda: OoT and some form of Mario). The other thing that I love about it, besides what Laser Link already mentioned, is that the world is nice and big, but not big enough that you can't fly around and find virtually everything in it. It feels like a huge place, but it's not overwhelming. It's one of the few games that I've played that's been able to achieve that for me.
As far as Dreamcast games went, it was by far the best. Especially compared to that Shenmue, eh OB1 dude?!?!
Thanks guys for your recommendations on Skies of Arcadia Legends. It'll be a good game to eat up time in between Jan. 28 and March 24.
A Black Falcon- I agree with you on the Lost Kingdoms thing. For some reason, it wasn't quite as annoying because the battles weren't repetative. The whole card system ensured that each battle had to be fought differently. It was indeed a flaw that there were barriers to break, but you had to run around them a while to initiate a random battle so that you could use a monster to break them. The game would have been much more fluid had each level been one big "battle," where monsters can be activated at any time, and the enemies are always on the field. I think From is fixing thes problems for RUNE 2. I've heard that the enemies are always on the field and that you can activate monsters whenever you want. In addition, levels are replayable, so if you missed that awesome card in the random pick-a-card game, you can go back and try again to get a better grade. Because it's scheduled for Q1 2003, I'll probably rent it during the time in between Skies and Zelda.
Hmm... that would improve Lost Kingdoms a lot. Since its already action-oriented, I see no reason that it can't be a game where you have no seperate 'battle mode' and you fight the monsters in the map... you already fight them in a piece of the overworld map anyway... and the random factor makes it irritating. They could have at least given some reason why you should fight these battles... as it is there is none because getting experience for your cards seems useless. Anyway, it would be great if they did that. Plenty of great (read: almost all American RPGs) RPGs do it that way...
Oh, and, as I've said before, the best RPG ever is Planescape: Torment, by Black Isle (Fallout, Icewind Dale). Absolutely incredible game... best, most expansive story ever in a game. It has more text to read than any game I have ever seen... and, IMO, that is a good thing because it really gets interesting.
Of course if you want games to be hard and more action-focused, its the wrong game because it really isn't either of those. What it is is just amazingly good.. if you like the style. It is very hard to explain... except to say it even beats out Baldur's Gate, otherwise probably my favorite RPG. Its great story and plot stuff beats out Baldur's Gate's much longer and harder game.
edit: Oh, and I'm only about 5 hours into Lost Kingdoms, and haven't run into barriers like that yet... the rental runs out next Monday, so we'll see how far I get by then. Right now i'm in a level in a mine... after the non-level in the third castle.
The barriers I was talking about are like the barrels that surround a treasure chest, or the cacti that cover switches in the desert. Really early in the game. You just want to whip out the flying bird and destroy the barrels that're blocking the treasure chest, but you have to wait for a battle to occur and hope that the barrels are within the battlefield range (so you can destroy them).
Oh... that would work, wouldn'tr it? I never thought of destroying those barriers that way... so I guess I just didn't get those things. Huh, that is kind of annoying.
I might get Skies for the GC once the price drops to around $30 or so. I already played through half of the DC game, so I'm in no rush. Plus I'm too busy with Splinter Cell and soon-to-be-released Devil May Cry 2.