Manages to be both a deeply unique idea, and a great distillation of classic JRPG mechanics. Sailing around the world never gets old and the ship battles are 10/10. I've only played the Legends version, not the Sega original, but the added bounty battles and Piastol subplot feel like they fit right in. It's true that late-game, you end up using the same couple abilities to either wipe out mobs of enemies or beat bosses (and prevent those bosses from just wiping you out in one move), but it's so much fun that I don't really care. The story isn't trying to be super dark and serious, which is honestly a breath of fresh air compared to some of its contemporaries. If they ever made a sequel, I would sell a kidney to own it, so it is sad to know that this series is almost certainly dead.

From a gameplay perspective SoA is excellent, if not ground-breaking. Take a normal JRPG, with its lengthily skill trees, clustered menu options, convoluted inventory system, and complicated battle numbers and distill that into a streamlined interface, you get SoA. The battle system is fun, fluid, and presented in such a simple style you want to master all the moves and tactics. Not to mention when you die in a boss battle in this game you go right back to the beginning of the battle (how has FF not figured this out yet?), there is also a very balanced difficulty curve in this game. The world map escalates way more than you’d think and ship battles are fun, the music in this games is also fantastic! Perhaps the only area where SoA feels empty is surprisingly the story and lore. The story (for the most part) is a straightforward ‘defeat the bad guy’ while the lore feels very copy-pasted for environments and overall underdeveloped, it feels like a lot more could have been done here to make the game feel more iconic. The characters are fun and even develop a little. I think the word I’ve used to describe this game would be FUN, and really at the end of the day that’s why this game is considered a classic.