STORY
The Valuan empire is attempting to awaken an ancient power so that they may conquer the world. Our intrepid Pirate duo intercepts one of the empire's ships and liberates Fina, a survivor of the now departed civilization that created the ancient power. Now Vyse and his old friend Aika are racing against the empire to stop the awakening of the ancient powers.
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| Left to Right: Fina, Vyse, Aika |
Sure its cliche, but its fun. Vyse and Aika have a very believable repartee and are both wonderfully cheerful. Fina is understandably nervous and scared, but warms up as the game goes on. There is also some of Vyse's coming of age story mixed in. What makes it work so well is just how much fun this world is. Vyse is never depressed even when things get bad and Aika is actually really funny. I don't hate the darkness and angst of some of Square Enix's work, but its just so much easier to get into a fun story.
DESIGN
YOU ARE A SKY PIRATE!!!! This was such a cool idea to base a game around. The ships and islands have a really neat design and the 3-D space is fun to fly around in. The weather effects and walls of rock look awesome. Characters have distinctive looks and personalities. The dungeons are ok. Its obvious that they wanted the dungeons to look good, but couldn't be bothered to make them play well. Some of the later dungeons have fun puzzle ideas, but the cut scene interactions and utter lack of platforming controls just makes them feel clunky.
The battles are appropriately showy, with big flashy effects. I also like the multiple camera angles that you get from these battles, giving them a sweeping feel. If there was a weakness to the design, it would be the enemy design. None of it is bad, but it has no cohesive flow. Are these ancient automatons, or actual creatures that roam this world? Its not easy to tell and the enemies don't have any sense of belonging in the environment. This isn't true for all the battles. Human enemies from the empire look good with stylish armor. All the boss encounters are awesome with you getting to fight giant ancient weapon creatures. These fights have the appropriate sense of size and grandeur.
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| The second boss you fight is a robot with lasers. |
GAMEPLAY
Skies of Arcadia plays as a standard, random encounter, turn based RPG. You wander around and interact with the environment while talking to people. Movement out of battle works fine and the ship controls well, if a bit slow. The magic and special attacks work off of a special abilities bar (magic also uses a limited mana supply). The bar can be built from basic attacks or a charge option. Special moves look AWESOME and some are exceptionally useful in combat. One oddity is that a handful of skills and spells are "Directionally Reliant" i.e. attacks all enemies in a line ahead of you. This is strange because there is no way of controlling how your characters position themselves on the field.
Ship to ship combat is a nice change up on the regular battle formula. It's still turn based, but much more reliant on energy bar management and weapons choice. For the most part, you will be trying to charge up your death cannon without getting exploded. Every now and then you will be given a choice of maneuvers, which can have you successfully getting behind enemies or can result in you getting broadsided. These fights can be a fun change of pace. Unfortunately these battles can be very slowly and overstay there welcome. This is alleviated by there relative scarcity in the story and on the open map.
OVERALL
Its just a solid, very fun and inventive RPG. Its bright and cheery, but appropriately tense when the story calls for it. And the cast of great characters just goes on and on. If you own either a dreamcast or a Gamecube and haven't played this game, I would get on that right now.
9/10
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