Skies of Arcadia : Legends

Following the basic guidelines set by the beloved Final Fantasy series, Skies of Arcadia starts with Vyse, a young Blue Rouge sky pirate. Over the course of his adventures he will meet new people, gain new powers, and kill entire populations of random beasts. What makes Skies so much more than a FF rip off is the setting, a world of floating continents and powerful flying warships. Few games place the importance of exploring like Skies. You will literally need to fly into every corner of the map if yu expect to win the game.

Combat is a slight twist on the standard fare. Both ship and personal combat revolves around the idea of placing in commands then letting the move play itself out. Fastest charaters go first and slowest last. Its fun and useful and if you want to go get a drink, the action can continue without you. Ship battles are only slightly different but even more fun to watch.

The story in and of itself is a great one and will keep you well interested throughout. Although Vyse is placed on a very set path, at any time a player can leave it and go off in search of battles and "discoveries" which can be found by searching the skys. The new Wanted Battles also allow a bit more variety in movement and a new set of powerful foe. Although the ending is not nearly so twisted as FFVII, it is plenty interesting.

The only real problem with Skies is the high level of random encounters and their monotony. Though lower than the Dreamcast title, you still only have about 15-20 seconds to fly around before you are attacked by another dozen enemies. If you are trying to find discoveries or treasure chests, this can quickly become annoying. Fortunetly the new "moonfish" quest will give you a way out of this fairly early, if you should want.

Overall, this is the best RPG for the Gamecube to date. This is not suprising because Skies was the best RPG on the Dreamcast to date(minus Grandia II). If you like RPG's or even like a bit of flying around and exploring, I highly recommend this game for purchase. Like it, Live it, Love it.

The first impression was "huh? Air Pirates? A bit corny then". But then I read so many good reviews on different gaming magazines that I eventually got a copy of it myself. I imported it from States for I have a Jap+States Cube (and an Australian Cube - but this game is a hard to find gem in Aust.) and tried it out.

The starting part was like typical RPG stories, hero got involved in an evil plot while looking for his dreams. However, the story gets better and better and you got some good tricks and twists from time to time.

For the battle system, it is like a mix of Final Fantasy and Wild Arms. It is turn based which you go through different commands for different characters and you have different elements and class of magic. So you would expect to see Fire Fira and Firaga but in a different term. Also it adopts a SP system which is similar to the FP system in Wild Arms 3. You accumulate SP every turn and when certain amount of SP is accumulated, then you would be able to perform a super move. The difference between Skies and Wild Arms is the SP in Skies is shared among all 4 characters, so you have to plan ahead strategically as super-moves could cause devastating attacks or protect your parties from enemies attacks. Nonetheless, you could speed up your SP accumulation by using your turn to Focus, which could be helpful under certain occasions.

On top of regular battles, the introduction of ship battles gave you an alternative in game play. Nonetheless, since most of the ship battles are story driven, they are mostly boss battles that could take up a lot of time. You really need to plan strategically to win these battles and it could take you a whole hour to finish one if planned badly. The crew system in the ship battle nonetheless is very unique and despite you might not be usuing the crew in the battle a lot, when you use them, they DO contribute to the whole battle.

In terms of story, Skies of Arcadia is very clever in a way that some of the side quests are actually stories that you could weave into the main story. The side quests also integrate into the game world very well. For example the Bounty Hunting side quests make you feel like you are really a good pirate going around the world ridding the evil, no matter big or small. The dialogues are actually less corny than expected. The Final Fantasy series sometimes is annoying because of really bad dialogues and extremely stupid characters. However in Skies, the characters are well balanced and they have the kind of subtle humour that you would share their laughter. I think in terms of character building Skies of Arcadia is much better the most of the Final Fantasy series.

Another strong part of Skies of Arcadia is the vast world they was built in the game. Each world has their own distinct culture and by upgrading your ship, you would be able to reach areas that are not opened to you before and there would be new discoveries for you to earn a good fortune from. The dungeons in the world of Skies of Arcadia are also cleverly built. I particularly like the one that you need to wear the underwater suit from time to time to solve the puzzle. They are really well designed, and at the same time integrated to the particular culture of that dungeon world. You would be able to find cultures similar to the Maya, Arabians, Westerners and the Orientals, and these are just a few of them.

There are heaps to do and play with in Skies of Arcadia and it could take you a considerable amount of time to finish it if you want to do everything. The only down side of the game is the random battles are like stars in the skies. It could get really annoying at the beginning for your weak characters. However, running from battles are not recommended in a way that it could affect certain course of the story and character development in the later part. I heard that Sega actually reduced the encounter rate in the GameCube version. If so, I feel sorry for the players of the original one then.

All in all, Skies of Arcadia is a very well developed game with brilliant ideas. So far, everyone I know who had played this game love it and as I said the game is a rare commodity in Aust. and the price at ebay for a second hand copy is staggering. This could tell how good this game is considering it has been out for so long already. I heard the sequel is in development for GameCube, just couldn't wait at all now.

If you want to know about this game I recomend reading up on the Dreamcast version. By now you should know a bit about this game but if you don't, let me just give you a hint to the kind of enjoyment you will get from this game. Picture commanding your own flying battleship with up to 22 crewmates and preparing to engage in a massive air battle with an enemy ship - awesome background music ensues and you spend the next 20 minutes simply partacking in perhaps the most fun turn-based battle ever. Trust me, there is nothing more fun that Skies of Arcadia ship battles (the ships fight with cannons and stuff) - the only thing I wish this game had was more of them. The majority of the battles are very Final Fantasy-ish.

The Gamecube version, by the way, will be significantly improved. In fact, the lead director said herself (yes, one of the few major Japanese RPG's to be developed by a woman) that this is the "definate" version of Skies of Arcadia. Thus, I have listed the additional features that the Gamecube version will have...

BETTER GRAPHICS
Better draw distance, less load times, higher resolution textures, and higher polygon counts and more detail on many of the characters.

BETTER GAMEPLAY
Enhanced and tweaked battle engine over the previous one and much less random encounters (the original had so much it was extremely annoying) and the EXP-gaining system has been tweaked. Also, loading times have been significantly reduced. In fact, the battle engine and random encounter system was the only flaw in the original version of the game and the creators have listened to their critics and have fixed it - thus making the Gamecube verson of Skies a flawless masterpiece.

NEW EXTRAS
5-10 hours of new playable backstory so that you can learn more about the characters, new wanted quests that let you hunt down fugitives for fame and fortune, and plenty of new sidequests, fish to catch, islands to discover, weapons/items to find, and EVEN NEW CHARACTERS including a new female bounty hunter that will play a major role in the game.

Anyways, please do not be fooled by the kiddy image of this game or the strange art style. This is in no way a kids game. There is lots of liquor drinking in the game (they call it liqoa though) and in fact, the US version of the game was censored because in the Japanese Dreamcast version there was a scene which implied the rape of a girl. Please do not mind the censorship however, it was more of a culture change than censorship (in Japanese culture rape isn't as serious an issue as it is here) ..they just changed the scene a bit but basically the final product is still the same. I'm just saying, this game has an incredibly great story and although it's visual style appeals to kids it is in no way a kids game.