Skies of Arcadia > Tales of Symphonia

Skies has the Delphinus breakout sequence -- anyone who didn't have SB Yamato flashbacks when nuking Valua's gates is a shitty person and I don't want to know them EVER. Symphonia has, uh

what does Symphonia have

hm

shit

the main dude uses two swords, I guess that's cool
 
I think the battle system is a lot more fun in Tales, and there's a lot more variety in them.

Skies is just the same boring random battles over and over with the same boring enemies...but that doesn't include ship battles.

Ship battles were probably the best thing about Skies, and it's better than anything in Tales.
 
The Skies of Arcadia dude was a pirate with a cool eyepatch. There are no eyepatches in Tales of Symphonia. NEXT.

Rutee should have told Stahn to go fuck off and die and become a sky pirate instead. She was definite sky pirate material.

DFS.
 
Are you kidding? Tales of Eternia combat = BUTTON MASHER. RAR. Skies' combat isn't necessarily great either, but at least the rest of the game can actually make up for it.
 
Drinky Crow said:
ToS's ninjas are seriously subpar. On the other hand, Skies's pirates are fucking best in show.

Subpar? More like the lousiest ninjas in videogame history. Kid Niki had better ninjas.

DFS.
 
WarPig said:
The Skies of Arcadia dude was a pirate with a cool eyepatch. There are no eyepatches in Tales of Symphonia. NEXT.
DFS.

Actually, you get a pirate costume for the main sword guy somewhere which not only gives him an eyepatch, but it even has a skull and crossbones on said eyepatch. Can't remember how I earned that costume...but yea, ToS did kinda suck.
 
Skies rocked all kinds of ass! Is Legends different enough that if you played through the DC version you would want to play Legends?
 
+1 for Skies of Arcadia.
The game I bought a Dreamcast for at 150 and 1 of only 2 games I ever have on it. But totally worth it. The entire game taking place on floating islands is such a great idea. Even though the battle was pretty mundane, the sense of adventure greatly outweighs it. Very likable main characters. Really nice graphics too for its time. If only there's a sequel - -;.

I'm only 3 hours into TOS though, so maybe it's too early to judge. All I know is once I started SOA, I couldn't put it down until I'm done. Something that hasn't happened for TOS, yet.
 
The Fina + Aika bed scene in Skies rawked.

I don't understand why everyone thought Fina was the hot one, Aika with her hair down was so much more teh hottar.
 
WarPig said:
The Skies of Arcadia dude was a pirate with a cool eyepatch. There are no eyepatches in Tales of Symphonia. NEXT.

Actually, your main character
can get a pirate costume!

ToS for the win!



I adore both games, though. :)
 
story
SOA>TOS

Battle system
SOA<TOS

therefore SOA=TOS for me anyway.
 
symphonia has an enjoyable actiony battle system. arcadia has...well, i can't be sure what it has, because the unbelievably tedious and frequent battles drove me off within a couple hours. symphonia wins.
 
Skies is one of the most enjoyable RPGs, ever. Forget comparing it to Tales of Symphonia. For me, it is right up there with Final Fantasy 4.
 
Skies is a terrible game.
Bad graphics, bad art, terrible pacing, bland and boring combat, uninteresting dialogue.
Worst purchase ever.
 
olimario said:
Skies is a terrible game.
Bad graphics, bad art, terrible pacing, bland and boring combat, uninteresting dialogue.
Worst purchase ever.

:o
 
The story and characters were great in SOA but the battle system was aweful and boring.

The story and characters were medocre to OK in Tales of Symphonia, but the battle system was intuitive and addictive.

Since you encounter battles much more frequently than the story unfolding or the characters interacting in the story, the battle system wins.

ToS = No random battles

SOA = Suck-ass random battles every 5 seconds

ToS > SOA
 
Drinky Crow said:
We need Overworks to make a One Piece RPG.

I've always been for it. There's an OP RPG-of-sorts for the GBA, but as you can expect, its nothing special. The One Piece universe itself is so huge it truly lends itself to an epic RPG. As far as I can tell, three of the oceans are never even explored. They start off in East Blue and then go to the Grand Line, isn't that right? Anyway, they could make a whole RPG off the Grand Line alone.

I always through an MMORPG would be an even better idea. The character creation system would have to be godly, though. The only problem is managing devil fruits, really. Who gets them? How? Do they make you an uber-character? Should all PCs get them? If so, how do you explain multiple copies of the same fruit?

Anyway, its all pipe dreams. :(
 
I still think the battle system in TOS sucks ass. Sure, its an alternative to turn-based, but that doesn't necessarily make it better. You can effectively button mash your way through most of the game, and that's pretty much what I did for 95% of the battles. Its almost too fast for its own good, so fast that its hard to actually strategize with so many characters to consider. Yeah, you can automate them to a degree, but you still run into all sorts of annoying problems with keeping them alive and doing the things you want them to do. When you preplan their strategies, you're never really sure what you're going to run into next, IMO. So the strategy you have planned may not really be effective. Then it gets annoying to change it around every few battles or so.

Neat idea, clumsy-as-hell execution. SoA's battles are far from great, but ToS doesn't really elate me any moreso.
 
Both excellent games for very different reasons.

ToS had more fun and more engaging gameplay. SoAL had a much better cast of characters and world, and was just much more imaginative and emotional.
 
eh, the only RPG's battle system that made the game better was Grandia 2 (can't speak for Grandia 1 since I never played it) that battle system is the #1 reason played that game to the end and SOA is still better than it. For me RPG's aren't about how exciting the battle system is but how I can use the battle system to my advantage so that I can further the adventure.
 
terrible pacing, in SOA? this i do not understand.
its one of the most action oriented (one event after another) rpgs i've ever played!
 
Cimarron said:
Skies rocked all kinds of ass! Is Legends different enough that if you played through the DC version you would want to play Legends?
Different? No. Some more detail into the story and some bonus boss battles with jokes but worth it for me. :D
 
Cimarron said:
Skies rocked all kinds of ass! Is Legends different enough that if you played through the DC version you would want to play Legends?


hell, I re-played through SOA. The first time I've ever done that with an RPG, I didn't even do it with KOTOR to play the dark side.
 
I agree, skies is the better game. Especially in legends, where some stuff that seems really minor wound up making the combat much faster (like being able to stack element colors on your party and rapidly build up spells). For all the crappy regular battles (which can be ended rather quickly from about 6 hours into the game and onward) it had awesome ship battles, and even some of the boss battles were tough.

It also always had something new to discover in the world, up until the very end of the game. You can argue that the characters are simple and stupid, but so are the characters in TOS, so that's more of a draw.
 
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