Review by Jerky64

"Great game to play but annoying at times..."

No doubt its a beautifully made game especially with character model and cinema, but the vastness and smooth world that was laid out before is what really impressed me about this game, its rendered wonderfully and runs smooth, never saw a slow down or glitch in the graphics. The character are smooth, the cinema is wonderful, and the world it self is clean and smooth. 10/10

Story line
Others have said that the story in the game wasn't and good as they had expected, but I myself thought the story was pretty good and I thought it was especially better than GrandiaII as it really made you feel excited just to save the world, stop an Empire, and protect a young girl from devastation all in one game. 10/10

The controls are perfect and easy to handle, nuff said. 10/10

The sound in this game isn't something thats just so good you'll be singing its praises for months on out, but its good and it fits the background of the game. Great classical music and great sound effects with the magic spells and the special skills. 9/10

This game would be the perfect RPG if only there wasn't the annoying random battles in the first cd, dunno if they really wanted you to mass level or what, but it seemed after even touching the analog stick (didn't even have to move sometimes) you hit a random battle. It seemed after a while I began fleeing just because I was tired of the randoms, and that can really hurt your reputation in the game. Speaking of which, in the game you have this rating or reputation score which during the game you'll be known through out the world by how adventurous you are or how ''tough'' you are, if you flee to much you'll be known as the ''Unimpressive'' or if you fight and complete your adventures your reputation will go up to ''Vyse the Impressive'' or whatever. The reputations can vary depending on how many battles you fight or run for, discoverys you make, and how well you do in the dungeons. The second cd has less randoms so its not so bad when you get to the second cd and everything works great, just to many randoms so it gets frustrating. 8/10

Lasting Appeal
There are discoverys and some side quests that might keep you coming back if you like that stuff, but I myself don't plan to go through those randoms again nor did I want to play 66 hours of the game again because its just a type of game that you really want to play but only once or maybe you'll play it later in life depending on how much you liked the game.9/10

SoA is a great game and will probably be known as a classic RPG with the new ideas it presents for RPGs but the randoms I faced in the first cd is the only thing thats keeping this game from a perfect score. Also, I couldn't help but compare some parts of the game to GrandiaII and I tried not to on alot of it because there really different, but also the same on some things. Get both if you have the money, but as for choosing between them, I cant bring myself to do that. If only we could splice the game ideas together, that would be the perfect RPG.


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