Skies of Arcadia

IIRC Legends reduced the encounter rate while improving the EXP gain, on top of adding in new sidequests and boss battles.

Yep. The encounter rate in the Dreamcast version is easily the worst part of the game, it's absurdly high.

Here's a complete list of everything exclusive to Legends:

• A "Wanted List" system that includes six Bonus Bosses, for which you can collect bounties after defeating. Bounties are also now rewarded after two story bosses.
• The aforementioned two new sidequests, one that involves hidden collectibles, and the other which involves a recurring, increasingly difficult Bonus Boss. These two sidequests also reveal new backstory for Vyse, Aika, and Ramirez.
• 24 new discoveries.
• Dreamcast DLC content (Bonus ship battle, two new weapons for Vyse and Aika, and a new island to check your stats) is now included.
• Eight special Swashbuckler Ratings, plus tweaked requirements for the best rating.
• Three unlockable secrets: Vyse's best weapon, one more discovery (in addition to the 24 already mentioned), and one final Bonus Boss.

Other changes:

• Better balanced encounter rate, as mentioned above.
• Cham Indicator is now on-screen.
• Characters' 3D models are more detailed.
• Loading times are faster, and framerate is more consistent.
• Pinta's Quest minigame is gone, making a few special items meaningless now.
• Textures and audio are lower-quality, especially audio.
• Minor weapon stat changes.

Edited by Primis on Dec 31st 2018 at 2:08:18 AM

Who here had to use guides to find all the discoveries? To this day, I still have no idea how they expected you to find the random moving discoveries except by pure accident. Like the moving ghost train I think was one where you either had to know the spawn point or randomly come across it in your travels.

Me, every time. There's a handful that I can remember the locations of, but most of the ones that I find without a guide I just happen to stumble upon. The ghost train is actually one that I always seem to be able to find on my own, for some reason. The tricyclone is pretty easy for me too, since the area it's in is so empty.

I remember that butterflies one being especially difficult to find, even with a guide.

Doesn't the guy at the Sailor's Guild give you vague hints?

But yeah, I've always used guides myself.

I really like how all the flavor text is done through Vyse's point of view, it adds a lot of little detail to the world. It's also nice that the chests tell you what was in them, it counteracts the problem of following guides early and forgetting how to tell where you are by chest.

I also didn't expect that for how much the game gleefully uses RPG tropes, it has a very polished script. A few hours in and it already has an infectious sense of confidence with what it does I've rarely seen in other games.

What did you think of Shrine Island?

That sequence of the game was where my opinion of the game flipped over to "I'm definitely finishing this game."

I think my opinion flipped right around the point of Recumen. Beating the first official dungeon after the first escape from Valua and realizing there was a huge world out there, huge Gigas to discover and challenging ship battles. It was at this point where I was like: Oh yeah, this game I'm gonna play to the finish. Good thing too, because the next part: Moon Crystal Mines in the green kingdom is abhorrent and badly designed. So good thing I made that commitment before then! ;)

After meeting Drachma, I decided to just emulate Legends instead.Music and some of the textures suffer, but the bump to frame rate is definitely noticeable. Especially with S-Moves, they move at a faster clip.

So far it seems like Aika's the best choice to dump a bunch of Moonberries first because of her shield and Alpha Storm. Vyse seems great as single hit damage, but Aika seems to be the go to girl for cleaning out lots of mobs. in one sweep.

Getting Aika to Lambda Burst, her third S Move is a pretty solid move for making mobs easy to clear for a long while. Then investing steadily in Vyse and Fina and Drachma to get their stuff is pretty useful as well. Aika's fourth and fifth S Moves aren't as impressive as everyone elses, so after Lambda Burst she can wait on more supers for a while.

IIRC I also went for Aika early.

Then I focused on Fina, because I liked the look of her skills. Halfway though I maxed Vyse though to make bosses easier.

Lambda Burst is good early on, but once you unlock Rain of Swords (Vyse's third S-Move), you'll almost never use Lambda Burst again. Aika's S-Moves are all magic-based and eventually enemies' magic resistance just gets too high for them to be very useful, but Vyse's S-Moves are all power-based so they never lose their effectiveness, in fact they actually get more useful as you progress.

Delta Shield is always useful, though. Right to the very end.

Edited by Primis on Jan 14th 2019 at 8:50:53 AM

What is it, the mix of Delta Shield and Justice Shield and you're nigh impenetrable.

From what I recall, that sounds about right.

However, you let up on even ONE of those shields, the game's AI will know immediately and capitalize on it 100% of the time! For example: Piastol - She's not casting Eternum for the last 10 turns? Guess it's safe to forget a Delta Shield for a single turn to lay in some extra damage. TOO BAD! AI recognizes your shield is down: ETERNUM. TPK. FML.

Edited by Darkflamewolf on Jan 14th 2019 at 1:17:03 PM

Makes me think of SMT. I kind of like that, the AI will be smart enough to capitalize on an advantage.

Just saved the Blue Rogues and Fina. The Coliseum sequence was fucking awesome. "By the way, name's Vyse." Cue boss battle.

Delta shield is almost required for some of the cheese some later bosses throw at you.

I think none of the characters are outright bad, but I remember drachma's last s. move being lame. You think something called Hand Of Fate would be epic, but it's so...not lol.

I played the original dreamcast version and only watched a playthrough of the gamecube version. Cupil would beep loudly on the vmu when you were near a moon cham. Then there were moon choms which would make him regurgitate them haha. I don't remember being bothered by the encounter rate that much and the soundtrack is too good to settle for a gimped version, though Legends definitely seems preferable for its overall package. I wish we'd get like a remasterd legends with a fixed soundtrack lol.

I freakin love the special moves for this game. They're so flashy and hype, except for drachma's with the awkwardly named tackle(which at least looks kinda cool for such a mundane attack), plus the voice clips during them are cool.

You mess with me? YOU MESS WITH CLAUDIA!!!

No lie being younger I would totally say the lines alongside them. This game is what turned me on to RP Gs aside from pokemon.

Rieko Kodama, Skies of Arcadia's producer, will receive the Pioneer Award at GDC 2019.

I'm glad she's getting recognition for all the work she's done. Magic Knight Rayearth, Phantasy Star 4, and Skies are all fantastic games.

So question, where can I find Doc's ship? I've checked next and around Sailors Island several times.

I've read he'll not show up if you can fight Piastol, but I don't have the Black Spot and I've talked to the Sailors Island Guild.

For reference, just finished Temple of Pyryn.

He's never anywhere other than around Sailor's Island, and I don't think he ever vanishes at any point.

Your first encounter with him is scripted, you literally can't miss him at that point. If that didn't happen, then your game might've glitched.

First encounter did happen. Also found him one other time, but it's been a while and I have about 5 Moonfish on me.

That's weird, he should be there. Maybe just progress a little further in the game and try again later? There's no real cutoff point, or anything like that.

Interview between Kotaku's Heather Alexandria and Skies of Arcadia producer Reiko Kodama.