Skies of Arcadia is still one of my favorite RPGs, and I couldn't resist bringing its "everyone has an airship, they're actually pretty normal" kind of feel to Delyria. It's just fun, and I like the opportunities it gives people to have a small space of their own to customize but that also follows them everywhere. It's like an RV but for somewhat more extreme camping.
@bj We really need to play all the way through that game sometime. We got a copy years ago, but fell off of playing it and haven't picked it back up.
-F
@Felthry
Do - it's great. I won't defend the weirdly high encounter rate, but there's a lot there to like. There's a lot of its spirit in Delyria too (four of its six colors of magic even match up pretty well).
@bj We have the gamecube version, where they fixed the encounter rate
-F
It's better than it was, but I still find it annoyingly high. Getting a White Map to lower it further seems about right.
@Felthry
I have my own answer to this design problem, but Prism of Dreams is far enough away that I don't know if/when I'll get a chance to use it. What if encounters were voluntary? The idea is that you could just rush through a dungeon and face its boss right away, but if you did that you'd probably be vastly underprepared. If you want to be ready for what the game throws at you, you'll need to hunt down monsters, gather materials, and upgrade your skills and equipment to match.