The moment you really fell in love with a game.

[retrolinkx]

I have a lot of moments like these, mostly due to having a negative opinion beforehand and then loving it (DMC3) or from general boredom and out of nowhere it kicks up (Wonderful 101) but I'll go through a few.

For Skies of Arcadia, I went in knowing nothing, and when I really started flying around I started to really enjoy it and wonder what could be next in the game.

I came to an island and thought "Damn, how big is this game?" The map felt huge for a game that was already 12 years old when I got around to playing in 2012, and even by late game you haven't explored it all.

The game really felt like an adventure.

For W101, it really clicked for me around here and I was like "HOLY FUCK THIS MUSIC"

It's a shame it took about a week for a slam jam version of that song to come out, I was searching for it for so long after I completed it.

For Devil May Cry 3, I only got into it after the Agni and Runda fight, I disliked 1 and felt nothing for 2, but 3 just felt different and MUCH BETTER, so when I finally started to get into it, it became fun and not frustrating.

So what about you guys, what's that one game that just clicked in your mind and you loved it from there?

[Psychospacecow]

For Valkyria Chronicles (which I'm currently playing through), it would have to be when I came across a bunch of its concept art. http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/Products/...t_art.html Love at first sight.(Would you recommend Skies of Arcadia? I know that 3 of Valkyria Chronicles's character come from it.)

For Bastion, it was when I first set out into the unknown world, and heard the old man's voice. I just had good reason to keep going, find out what happened, maybe undo it.

I really fell in love with Dragon Ball Xenoverse. It reminds me a lot of the Tenkaichi games, but its modern, online, a lot more intuitive, and gives you something to really strive for.

That being said, The Tenkaichi games. They were like the Budokai games (which I later found out aren't actually affiliated apart from the brand, but hey they had Budokai in the title) but in a 3D environment. They played awesome, the battles were intuitive. The rosters are ridiculous, even to this day.

Also since I mentioned it, The Budokai series. You know, I'm starting to think I only really like DBZ for nostalgia and the games... Its just a solid fighting game.

Fallout: New Vegas. I really liked Fallout 3. I did two playthroughs of it, both a good and a bad as is standard for something like that. I was really excited when Fallout: New Vegas was announced. Mods weren't even a factor since this was on Xbox 360 for me at the time. You just walk out into the open world with nothing but a note of who you are, a gun in your hand, and a kind town that needs your help, and it all just gets bigger from there. Really, the biggest disappointment in New Vegas is ironically New Vegas. Everything is so grand scheme, but Vegas is just so tiny. Its the main city in the entire region, and its small, concise, only relevant for the characters in it, not for itself. Mind you, I've played through this game so many times that I've lost count.

Far Cry 3. Big open world, good gun play, tigers, jungle. Annoying protagonist.

Pay Day 2. I won the first one in a giveaway and enjoyed it enough to snag the second when it was on discount. Great game with fun characters and crazy scenarios. I'd recommend it, but the constant dlc kind of burned me out before I got to lvl. 50. Enjoyed my time though.

Civilization series. I like grand scale historical stuff. I got that. Exception is Beyond Earth.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This game hates you. It wants you to fail, to die, to stumble and falter and cringe and keel over, but it doesn't want you to stop. You don't want to either. The tutorial is a great hook, and the sense of saving the world is great.

Kingdom Hearts 2 - I watched my brother play Kingdom Hearts 1, never really played it myself. Hopped on this when I could.

Destroy All Humans 2. Only one I've played admittedly, but I found this game hilarious and it was great for stupid killing sprees. Its still funny, because I got the game maybe a month before they had to put M labels on it instead of T.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 - We had one of the demo discs with the first game on it. See KH2.

Soul Calibur and Tekken. Man, I suck at these games. I love the art and fighting games are great fun, but I suck at these games. My first Tekken was 3, my first Soul was 3. I guess its just my number.

[retrolinkx]

(Would you recommend Skies of Arcadia? I know that 3 of Valkyria Chronicles's character come from it.)

Short Answer: Yes, it's my favourite game of all time for a reason, and if you can endure the long drawn out battles and the encounter rate, you've got yourself a 11/10 game. There are two versions, the Dreamcast and the Gamecube. Dreamcast version has better sound, Pinta's quest (a VMU minigame that can net you more items) and a few nifty VMU tricks that interact with the game in one way or another, while the Gamecube version has worse music, better graphics, an improved encounter rate and more things to do, but all the VMU stuff is gone. It's a great game and you should play it if you get time to. If you're going to emulate, you've got NullDC and Dolphin. I can help you with NullDC if you're going to play it emulated.

Long Answer: If you have the time to read my review of the game (yep, I reviewed it on another website) then it can possibly give you a better insight into the game than if I were to write several paragraphs now.

Spoiler

Originally when people would ask me what my favourite game was. I would say The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. But I never truly felt it to be my favourite game. It took me 16 years to find my favourite game of all time, and when I swear it was destiny to find it for me.

My favourite game of all time is Skies of Arcadia. I discovered it in 2012, tucked away between CD cases in Oxfam. I flicked out the blue case and looked at it for a long while. The case was full of stickers which, sadly, saw it's price going down and down from £40 to £30 to £20. They were all from several different retailers, reminding me of the Dreamcast and it's demise along with the games. Currently it was priced at £10. I didn't have a lot of Dreamcast games and I guess buying it was a more a less just me thinking I need more Dreamcast games.

I had no idea what the game was about, The the front of the case displayed the logo, a ship in the background, some nice sky and three characters that my eye was constantly drawn to whenever I looked at the case. The back was no real help. I got the general gist of the game from the description and pushed the case up to my face to see the small screenshots of the game they gave me.

When I got home I washed the case and when it was clean and sticker free I popped it in the Dreamcast and loaded it up.

I was greeted to a very exciting intro of a ship floating in the sky, an array of characters and beautiful locations that I hoped I would be able to go to. The intro had me pumped for the game and I hadn't even started it yet.



The game started off with a cutscene of a girl dressed in white fleeing from another ship. They soon capture her and are about to get away until Vyse and Aika (the heroes of the game) board them and demand they give up everything on their ship, with a fight of course.

By the first fight I saw it was an Turn Based RPG, similar to Final Fantasy or Pokemon. I had a lot of things I could do to fight. I could slice them up with my sword or hit them with magic. I messed around a bit and eventually the battle was over. I was greeted to another cutscene where Vyse's father and captain told him to search the ship for anything while he takes care of the rest of the guards. I rush off and immediately find this games number one flaw and it's number two flaw. The Encounter Rate and The Slow Battles.

Oh boy, now. If you've ever played Skies of Arcadia you will spend around 20% of the game in these damn high random encounter battles. You cannot stop them, you cannot lower the rate all you can do is grit your teeth and hope that you can walk one step without a fight. It starts with the Dreamcast having to load in all the characters. Spinning around the battle area for 10 seconds before you all load in. You better hope you're fighting one person and not a whole bunch of enemies, since it takes around a minute for all the characters to do their actions and for it to be your turn again, sometimes longer if you both decide you're going to use magic attacks that have 20 second cutscenes to execute.

After what felt like an eternity fighting enemies I finally got around to saving the young girl in white, and had my first boss battle. After spending quite a while beating the boss, I got off the ship and went back to mine. Vyse and Aika discovered the young girl's name being Fina and let her rest. As we approached home, I was given command of the ship. The game allowed you to fly the ship to go from island to island. The encounter rate was still pretty much the same here (but it eventually improves about 65% into the game when you're given improved manoeuvrability and you can fly high into the sky to avoid battles) which wasn't that bad since at this point into the game, the battles hadn't gotten to me yet.

So I flew the ship back home, departed, explored my island and eventually went back to talk to Captain Dad. Fina told him that she had a quest that was given to her that she must complete it, she cannot disclose information about it, Vyse and Aika then said that they'd love to help this quest of hers.

I won't go into a lot more detail about the storyline since I don't really want to type the entire thing out with my mannerisms over it.

Skies of Arcadia is set in a "Jules Verne-inspired fantasy world" detailing the adventures of Blue Rouge's Vyse, Aika and the mysterious Fina. Three 17 year olds on a quest to save the world from destruction. I've already discussed the gameplay, but I'll discuss some more of it later on as well as the other parts of the game in as much detail as I can.

The game, to me, really felt like I was going on adventure. There were several continents that I had to explore, dozens of bosses and dungeons I had to defeat and 6 Moonstones I needed to collect to rid the world of the evil that would've destroyed it. It felt huge, while there were tons of obstacles in my way such as floating rocks and lines of clouds that I couldn't pass through, I still found the game to be huge. When I landed on my first island that wasn't the starting village it felt so different. It felt like going from a small rural town to a large city, and by the time I was going to the storyline islands. I felt like I was in the middle east. The locations of the game ranged from Cities built around Forests to Forgotten ruins encased in Ice. Overall there were probably only 20 islands to explore but it felt like there was a WHOLE WORLD to explore for me.

The characters in the game were you generic hero-like characters. You had Vyse. The head strong but young leader, his childhood "friend" Aika who was a bit more mature and Fina the clueless third wheel who wished to fulfil her quest. Along the way we met Dracma, a grizzled old Sea Capt'n who helps along the way, Gilder the cool cat who's been in the skies for longer than Vyse's been born, and knows everything about everything, and Enrique the young prince of the Valuan Empire, a Totalitarian state that rules over the land. (Also, the main baddies) who grows sick of the way Valua treats the world and joins the Blue Rouges to change it.

I'm not going to lie, I was never good at English or going over whether a character is good or bad, but I never once hated any of the characters in Skies of Arcadia. I did hear arguments that they were all generic shouen characters and had very little value in terms of characters, as well as the fact they hardly developed I had no problem with this. I can't really evaluate them now since it's been a year and half since I've finished the game, but overall I did enjoy the characters and I did not feel like they were badly written or just bad in general.

The music of the game was amazing. I'm listening to the entire OST as I type this out. The game has that adventurous and happy feel to it that I love, as well as depressing, tense and humourous themes to go with it. Some of my favourites include

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKmJ8graeH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62FnIVqGbOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG_Bh4ZlTe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za1KkR8oDxg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHd7y08eXk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gbcHvbirko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjqoi5S7m6A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZxldHzYss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TamVM5MhVU4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzr5g0lcj_4

One of my favourite things about the game is that they really did do a lot to distinguish the different places you could go to by giving them great unique soundtracks for each section.

I also enjoyed the fact the boss battle music changed as you came close to beating them, from a scary depressing tone to a cheerful "we can do this" tone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAGg_2vLeYk

The only complaint I have with the music is that it was butchered on the Gamecube version to fit the whole game on one disc.

Anyhow, time for the look at the gameplay again, which is still the biggest flaw of Skies of Arcadia.

The encounter rate is very very high. I finished Skies of Arcadia in 66 hours I believe. If I removed the scripted battles about 10 of those hours where the random encounters, they were also very very long. Especially if they'd do an insta kill move on one of your members and you'd have to waste time reviving them which made battles EVEN LONGER. The characters moved slow during the fights, and you couldn't speed this up, a lot of the random encounters were just enemies that dodged all your moves and then escaped several turns in wasting a lot of your time, and if you did want to kill them in one turn you'd need to use your big magic move which wasted around 20 seconds anyway since you'd have to watch the damn cutscene play out while you did the move.

Although, my least favourite part of the game was the ship battles. Oh boy, the ship battles. A pirate game wouldn't be complete with ship battles right? Long, confusing, tedious ship battles.



Now, I'm going to assume the video gave you the general gist of the ship battles. I'll give the short version. They were very long, the animations took around a minute to play out, if you died you had to restart FROM THE BEGINNING. So if you needed one more hit to take out the boat and you died, you'd have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN FROM THE BEGINNING. In the end, I found the boss battles to be easier than the ship battle since you'd really need to think in these ship battles, and they always took several tries to get right. I probably spent 10 hours in the damn ship battles.

Moving on from that, I guess I could talk about the story. I believe I've stated it twice but if you didn't hear. Skies of Arcadia is a game about three teenagers who save the world from the Vaula empire. The quest involves finding 6 gems called "Moonstones" and bringing them back with Fina so that they will be safe and won't fall into the hands of Vaula who want to use them for evil.

I can't really say much to the story. It's by no means bad, but it's not winning any awards for it's story. If you're ever going to play this game for it's story (as in, expecting an amazing story) you're not going to like it. I don't personally see the story as something bad or a flaw in the game.

The game looks nice, especially in 1080p if you emulate it. The art style is really well done, and beautiful in some light. Here are some pictures that I took off an emulator a few years back.

Skies of Arcadia

And some in 1080p

Skies of Arcadia 1080p

The game does look old and has that distinct "Dreamcast" look but I never judge games by how they look. (unless it's a game that released today and looks like a game that was released in 2005 and the budget of said game is around a 10 million) I don't have any real complains about the look of the game, my only complaint I do have is that as a PAL user, I can't use VGA cables to get the best look out of the console. Actually, there's a huge flaw.

Skies of Arcadia's PAL release is terrible. It runs at 50hz, which is 17% slower than NTSC. The music is still the same but everything else is slower, and you know how LONG battles can be, well imagine how long they were for me. I had to deal with the SLOWEST version of Skies of Arcadia. I mean, Dreamcast was one of the first consoles to have 60hz option for PAL gamers, and Skies of Arcadia just DIDN'T have that option. I'm not even sure if Skies of Arcadia: Legends had a 60hz option.

In conclusion. Skies of Arcadia is a great game. It has flaws but I can overlook them. The charm this game has always sticks with me. The game truly feels like an adventure, something no other game aside from Pokemon has made me feel. The characters are great and I loved them, the humour between them is also quite entertaining. The gameplay, while very bad is not unplayable. It may feel long but in the end you'll miss playing Skies of Arcadia for those little things like that.

I really hope you read all this man. I spend 2 hours on it.

[RepentantSky]

I have a lot of games I could go through, but for now I'll just go over some of my favorites.

Dot Hack GU: This 3 part game series is my favorite game of all, but when I got to the end of the first game, I was into it that I played through it again just to see it twice. It had an improved battle system, better characters and visuals, and when I saw the end, I knew something incredible was happening and I had to make sure I got everything out of that game.

Dark Cloud series: When I realized I could build the world I traveled in however I wanted to, I was ecstatic and became so enveloped in the idea of playing through a game I had, in a way, help make. It was also my first action RPG on the PS2 and I loved how it felt to beat monsters with the weapons I had built.

Ratchet and Clank series: For this series it didn't really happen until the near the end of the first game, when I actually felt sorry for Clank at one point, and I realized I actually cared more about the characters I was playing as then I had thought.

Jak series: This one came super quick. I loved the idea of seeing a game not unlock crash that looked that good, and music made the levels come alive for me in a way I hadn't experienced since Chrono Trigger. The second game helped a lot as I really liked the new characters and added drama of the game. The stakes felt so much higher even though they really weren't and it was just so much fun to mess with all the new stuff.

Persona series: Honestly, this one was also pretty quick. I got into it just this last November and only started playing it's games seriously this year, but the music, the characters, the settings, everything was perfect. I could probably go on for hours about what has made me like the games so much, but suffice it to say, a lot of it has to do with having seen a bit of gameplay before buying any of the games and thinking how much I wanted to play what I was watching.

Sly Cooper series: This was a game that was always just about fun for me until near the very end when you have to save Carmelita from a trap set to kill her. Using all of your skills that you had acquired up until that point to get to her was just fun and felt great. I think that was the first time I really felt like a bad ass in a game.

[CosmykTheDolfyn]

I remember getting my brand new N64 and the box it came in. Looking at the back of the box, I remember seeing a game advertised that looked wholly different than anything else I had ever see: F-Zero X. It looked FANTASTIC. Racing against 29 other space ships? Dude, count me in.
Then, I actually got the game. And it destroyed me. It was so fast, and I had to push myself to near death to even keep up. The ramps and sheer speed, the atmosphere, the aliens and that freaking amazing heavy guitar soundtrack... Even if I was rarely finishing races, I was in love because it was so much COOLER than any other racing game I'd ever seen. Goodbye Mario Kart, I was a man now. Over time, I actually did get good at the game.

[CLXcool]

I'll just name the few that come to my mind right now.

Epic Mickey- Yeah, there were other Mickey mouse games(some of them good, some of them bad like every other game) but what really made me love this game a lot was the fact that the people behind this game loved Disney. Warren Spector even admitted being a fan of the golden age of Disney and was a fan of the days of Walt Disney. Every aspect of this game has a nod to the golden age of Disney. Whats makes this even more awesome for a game is that it reintroduced Oswald the lucky rabbit for the first time in a video game from Disney(I knew about Oswald before Epic Mickey, but it was cool that oswald got a chance to come back into the light). Its  a shame Disney had to shoot themselves in the foot when it came to the sequel, I would have loved a part 3 with Pete being the bad guy for this purposed title(since some of the early mickey mouse cartoons had Pete had the bad guy). 


Bioshock- While First Person Shooter games aren't my usual cup of tea. Bioshock was a completely different experience for me for the first person shooter genre. It gave me a choice of being good or evil and it had a story that made me interested. It wasn't a genetic shooter game where you just had to run around and shoot the hell out of things. Not to mention the fact that this game uses/reintroduces old music from the past for the game's atmosphere. If you look at the art on the development for this game, they were heavily influenced by art deco for the game's buildings. Including vintage things in particular for this game's timeline that it takes place in. I cannot comment about the other two games on having the same love as the first one(second haven't played, Infinite left me with a weird taste in my mouth that made me think it was supposed to be something else instead of being reworked into a Bioshock title).

Sly Cooper- A game that felt like I was watching a cartoon, but had me playing on an adventure. A thief being a good guy(thats a twist). I really need to catch up on the series. 

Ducktales remastered- Similar to Epic Mickey. Wayforward is filled with fans of people who grew up with Ducktales. Not only did they manage to succeed to making this an awesome remake of the NES game. Bonus points that they went through and got Disney artists who worked on the original show to help take part of the development of the game. Even going through to give the game voice acting to make it 'feel' like your watching an episode of Ducktales. Wayforward handled this game with care. I do hope that they can make Darkwing Duck, or even a sequel to Remastered based off of the second Ducktales game for the NES.
 

[BumblebeeCody*]

There's so many games(but I'm too tired to list them all right now).

But one that comes to mind right away is
RULES OF NATURE!

[gamemaster1991]

I never liked the first Sly Cooper before the third came out. The first game was SOOOOOOOO hard and Mz. Ruby was the one place I gave up on the game. When the second game was coming out, I wanted it so badly just becuse it looked better then the first. After I got it, I loved it and would play it for hours befor and after school. The same thing happened when I got the third game. It got to the point that I would 100% marathon the three games just to get an over all expariance with the games.

The more I played them, the more I got to know the first game. I would find find new tricks for the game and I would find nice speedrun tactics for the Master Thef Sprints. I would start quoting the game and find new ways of getting though each of the levels. To this day, it's the only game that I can say is near perfect.

[Jumpco]

I remember the time I played Link to the Past on VC for the wii. I wasn't expecting much when I bought it, but man that game blew me away.

[BumblebeeCody*]

So a couple of games I can list


1) (One that I'm currently playing through):
Xenoblade Chronicles 3DS

I originally bought this for the Wii but only played it for around 10 hours. Many years later, I'm now playing with the new3DS version (and also preparing myself for the Xenoblade Chronicles X)

It's a bit hard to explain but they very second i saw the title screen I knew I was in for something special. Something that'll stick with me for a long time. 
Stick the game in, get past the splash screens and you're greeted by this. 


There have been some incredible title screens in games such as: Ocarina of Time(Zelda games in general), Sonic Aventure 2: Battle, Marvel vs Capcom but Xenoblade Chronicles has an amazing first impression.

2) Anything by Platinum games
Cheating I guess. But they always surprise me with how good they make the game fun and interesting from the start. All the way back to games like Viewitful Joe which, to this day, still makes me feel like I'm 12 at my friends house on a GameCube playing through a fun action packed "power rangers" game to the insanity sexiness of Bayonetta fighting angels on a fighter jet. Platinum games always deliver on best first impression/games that stick.

3) The Wind Waker
A strange choice considering how much I love Majoras Mask. But after beating the Wind Waker and reflecting upon it many many years later, I realised that the Wind Waker is a really special game that I do truly cherish. The kind of game I'm grateful for even existing.It stands out from the other(also brilliant) Zelda titles with it's up beat chart, graphic style, characters, setting, gameplay and more that it took me a while to realise how good that game actually is. It felt like a grand adventure that I think had been missing from gaming for such a long time. The Wind Waker is a game that feels good to play.

4) Marvel vs Capcom 3
Marvel comics and Capcom coming together for a fighting game. My team of Nemesis, Wesker and Dante vs my friends team of Dr.Strange, Magneto and (Dark)Phoenix. Such a huge nerdgasm. 
Howabout a team of Viewtiful Joe, Dr. Doom and Ryu vs Chris Redfield, Iron Man and Ghost Rider. 
Being a Marvel comic book fan and a fan of Capcom on general really makes the Street Fighter versus series really stick out to me. Hype as shit to watch, play and will never get old. 
It's MARVEL BABY!

[Lazlo Falconi]

You know, for most games, when I think about it, I don't know when I fell in love with them. It was just some sort of gradual process, I think. Recently, though, I absolutely fell head-over-heels for A Link Between Worlds, when I first went to Lorule. The music there just blew me away, how closely it felt to a Link to the Past, yet with all the subtle differences that made it a wonderful game... Yeah, that was a good one.

[Psychospacecow]

Here's one. For Starcraft, when I desicovered the map editor.