The Shrine

<div style='font: 9pt Modern; text-align: left; '>I beat it in about 38 hours, although many reviews said that it took them 20-25 hours... I must just be a slow player..

Anyway, for the most part I enjoyed this game a lot more than I did the first Grandia. IMO, The voice acting still sucked. (Zera was the only voice I liked) But the music was very well done, and the game also had one of the most enjoyable battle/experience systems I've played in a while. One little thing that bothered me in the original Grandia was that the music was almost muted out whenever a spell is cast. Unfortunately, this is also carried over in the sequel, and you can't really enjoy some good battle music. The voice acting in battles, for the most part, was awful. The story didn't really draw me in much till the second half of the game, then things started to pick up. The story and translation especially was much better than Grandia 1.

Anyway, Now I'm off to start on Skies of Arcadia... To those of you here who have beaten it: How long did it take you?</div>

<div style='font: 9pt arial, Modern; text-align: left; '>41 hours. Or was it 51? I forget.</div>

<div style='font: bold 11pt Modern; text-align: left; '>took me 31 hours.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Garamond, Modern; text-align: left; '>Around 50 hours, but I levelled up ridiculously.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Well, I played about 2 hours of Skies of Arcadia, and two hours of Grandia II said "SCREW THIS" and went back to Skies, Skies of Arcadia is THE best RPG I have EVER played, I've been playing it for the last month and a half or so, probably about half way through</div>

<div style='font: 11pt Modern; text-align: left; '>James, shut up. Your praise of any type of videogame just makes my nervers bad for some reason. :)</div>

<div style='font: 12pt Modern; text-align: left; '>Well, I just reached Yafutoma I'm not sure how far it is through the game only that I'm still on Disk 1 and I can say that if I was reaching the final dungeon now I would still consider this the best RPG I have ever played.

The Plotline is very orriginal, I can't really compare it to any other game at this point. I have yet to finish the game, but so far I'd say the Story is extremely well done. The game translates extremely well.

The setting is the age of Exploration, but in this world, everyone travels by Airship, and the continents and Islands all float. Every single Town and City in the game is amazingly well done, and they only get bigger and bigger as you go on. The diversity among the Cities is very well noted, although towns all have some sort of inn, Docking facilities, weapon, armor, and item shops, etc... No two towns are very much alike, aside from towns that are in the same Kingdom or Empire. Of course, there is a lot of exploration to do, on your path, you will make many discoveries, and people will actually pay you for information on these discoveries, and will sell you information on others. The World in this game is so huge that of course, exploration is a major part of it.

Of the 3D adventure related games I've played so far, only Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask along with Vagrant Story have Dungeons that excede the Dungeons within Skies of Arcadia.

Music and Graphics are excellent, probably the best seen in an RPG yet, they really help to convey the atmosphere of the game.

Character Battles are turn based, the difference here is your party has a power guage to share between them, Super moves and magic both draw from this guage, and each turn you gain more points. You can also focus to gain more points onto your power guage. Magic also takes up MP from your character. There are also ship battles in the game, they are more strategic than any non-tactic/strategy RPG ever made.

The game is very easy to move around in, you feel as if you have much more freedom than most other RPG's made in recent times.

Characters are all done extremely well, party members, crew members, enemies, etc...


All in all, if you have a Dreamcast, or are planning to buy a Dreamcast and you at all like Adventure games or RPG's, you MUST buy this game.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt Papyrus, Modern; text-align: left; padding: 0% 15% 0% 15%; '>There's nothing worse than "bad nervers"!</div>