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I've been playing quite a bit of Skies of Arcadia Legends lately (14:00 so far). Right now I'm in Ixa'taka, and the game's been pretty good, but something happened to me while crossing the South Ocean that really pissed me off.
Most of what I was fighting for random battles in the South Ocean were these enemies called Gravers. Their normal attacks weren't that strong, even though they had good defense and a decent amount of HP. A Cutlass Fury S.Move from Vyse could take one out, and the other three party members could take one out together with their normal attacks. But it was the magic they used which lowered my respect for the game somewhat: Eternum, a spell which jams a buttload of spikes through a character's body to instantly KO them, and never ever seems to miss.
Now, I could see a boss being able to cast Eternum occasionally -- that's something I'm prepared to deal with. But normal enemies? Especially when you sometimes encounter those enemies in packs of six? No, that's going too far. That's going to the point where you either have to run from battles with that many of them or you die. I know, because I didn't run, and I died.
Basically, the fight was with six Gravers and two other piddly little magic user enemies that didn't really affect the outcome of the fight at all. I'm not stupid; I concentrate my attacks on the things with the instant death spells first. So I start off with a Cutlass Fury S.Move from Vyse, and kill one of the six Gravers. Then all five remaining Gravers get to attack before my next character. First one casts Eternum; I'm down to three party members. Second one casts Eternum; down to half my party. Third one casts Eternum; at this point, I'm just hoping I can run away with my last character. Fourth one ... attacks! Yes, maybe I can still get away! ... But no, the fifth one casts Eternum and I get Game Over.
So is it just me, or does anyone else see something blatantly wrong with that fight? I mean, I only got a single attack off before I was forced to watch as each one of my party members was taken out by an instant KO spell. And all this in a random battle on the overworld. In my opinion, things like that just should not be able to happen in RPGs, considering there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. Normal, overworld enemies should not have instant KO spells that never miss -- there shouldn't be instant KO spells that never miss. Especially when the only revive spell you've got at that point only works half the time. On average, it takes two castings of the spell to revive someone, which means two rounds spent to revive one character, during which time the enemies have the opportunity to take out two more characters.
I mean, damn. ... I was liking the difficulty of the game -- it's harder than most RPGs I've played -- but when enemies can do that to you, I tend to start using phrases like "severely overpowered" to describe them. If I didn't scour every area for discoveries (thereby leveling up with an excuse, heh), I can't even imagine how bad I'd get my low level ass kicked. I barely scraped by against the last boss I fought, that Rockwyrm thing, since it had a tendancy to instantly KO Fina again every time I revived her, before I had a chance to heal her up to full HP.
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