Topic: Does Skies of Arcadia actually get fun?

I'm playing it on my GameCube right now (I'm around 4 hours in), and while I love the story the game moves at an incredibly slow pace, both in battle and out. This is pretty standard for the beginning of most RPGs, but I'm just wondering if it stays this way the whole way through. Right now I feel like I'm wasting my time with it between wandering around aimlessly (which I wouldn't mind if the game wasn't so ugly) and accumulating wasted seconds in the battles, so I'd kinda like to know if there's any point to keep going on.

In other words, does it get mind-blowingly awesome soon or is it just a hard, old-school, super-slow JRPG throughout?

When you get your own ship, it opens up a bit.

On reflection, the first few hours are soul crushingly boring. Up to after you escape from the empire.

spoilers

^{Furthermore, the ship battles are pretty much by a chore (especially the bosses) until you get your own ship, but once you do, the battles are much more satisfying.}

end spoilers.

I gave up on that desert planet and sold the game soon after.

If you're not liking it right away--I don't think you'll like it later on. The battles don't get easier and the game holds its pace. I thought the hardest thing to get over were the random encounters (it's especially disorienting while you're flying). Aside from that there's not much about Skies that I would consider old school, the combat is characteristic of Chrono Trigger or Grandia and it has some of the best writing I've seen in any JRPG.

Spoilers

It definitely has some great moments; watching Drachma obsess over the arcwhale, exposing Bellena, fighting off the Ixa'ness Demons, meeting Gilder and Captain Clara, Aika and Fina searching for survivors, defeating Vize, saving Aika from Vigoro, building your own pirate base, navigating the Dark Rift, and a pretty great ending.

End Spoilers

It gets awesome, but SoA is a 10 year old game and I know the graphics and sound aren't what we're used to now.

Skies of Arcadia is like a cult classic so you're gonna get murdered for not calling it one of the best RPGs ever.

Nah, I think he's safe. I personally never met a fan of Skies that flipped out when I said I thought it was just an alright RPG and that I've played far better. Now certain Final Fantasy games on the other hand...

other than IV and VI those games have enough haters to distract the fans anyway

I make fun of VIII and X all the time but I haven't had any problems for that exact reason.

I played it up until the first ship battle. I couldn't figure out what to do at that point and got bored with it.
Soon after I sold it. I really tried to like it but i just lost interest.