13th March 2005, 11:25 AM
... ToS has a pretty fun combat system and a very well told story, though... if it's got a flaw it's that perhaps it's a bit overdramatic with too many plot twists. I mean, seriously, how many does one game need? :) But it is well-told and realistic. And anyway, in a console-style RPG, the option to automate battles is welcome (that goes for Lunar as well). They always want you to do more fights than are actually fun... but only a few games actually let you get around that with auto-battle. In Lunar you did have to choose 'auto' once the battle started to autofight it, but in ToS you just set all players to Automatic in the menu system and presto, all battles will auto-fight... well, you still need to do the unison attacks (whenever player 1 is near an enemy and the bar is full), but that's all.
On that 'well told and realistic plot' thing.. in console RPGs, it's so funny... they often get these really good, well told stories, good characters, etc, etc... but then they've got these RPG conventions that are so unrealistic and, to me, somewhat hurt the illusion... I mean stuff like how the overworld is an entire planet -- you wrap around the edges. But it's tiny. Far smaller than any planet. At least PC RPGs usually have the decency to just make it one small PART of a much larger world... and going along with that the overworld aspect of the game is horribly unrealistic... scale, number of towns, everything... so this planet has about eight to ten towns, two or three of which will be destroyed before the game ends? Uhh... I know the plot it tells, and the writing, are great, but then there's stuff like that... at least Skies of Arcadia didn't take itsself as seriously. But it definitely has those same issues.
On that 'well told and realistic plot' thing.. in console RPGs, it's so funny... they often get these really good, well told stories, good characters, etc, etc... but then they've got these RPG conventions that are so unrealistic and, to me, somewhat hurt the illusion... I mean stuff like how the overworld is an entire planet -- you wrap around the edges. But it's tiny. Far smaller than any planet. At least PC RPGs usually have the decency to just make it one small PART of a much larger world... and going along with that the overworld aspect of the game is horribly unrealistic... scale, number of towns, everything... so this planet has about eight to ten towns, two or three of which will be destroyed before the game ends? Uhh... I know the plot it tells, and the writing, are great, but then there's stuff like that... at least Skies of Arcadia didn't take itsself as seriously. But it definitely has those same issues.
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