Skies of Arcadia Legends

"Read and read 'til your eyeballs bleed. And yes I thoroughly enjoyed the game..."

Introduction

Well my goodness... I just finished putting 85 hours into Eternal Arcadia Legend, the Japanese version of a game called Skies of Arcadia Legends in its US release, and boy are my arms tired. This game was first released for the Dreamcast in 2000 under the title Eternal Arcadia in Japan, and Skies of Arcadia in America.
It is one of but a few traditional RPGs (I will define that more a bit later) available for the Game Cube, and (up until Tales of Symphonia hit in Japan last week) the only one that does the genre and its fans proud. Despite some of the classic flaws that plague many otherwise excellent RPGs, ''Legends,'' scores points with the original world it presents, a few interesting tweaks in its battle system, and a healthy amount of optional side quests and collectibles.

Story

The story of a role playing game is not just the interaction between characters in the form of conversation, or even the cinematic cut scenes we are often treated to. No, it goes deeper than that. The story is the very world where the game's characters reside. It is the kinds of transportation they use, and the clothes they wear. The success of an RPG, its ability to keep you hooked after you pass that critical 15-hour mark, depends at least in part on its story. The world of EAL is unique, original, and uniformly interesting to its core, and this originality does a lot to keep things rolling. Players are dropped into the shoes of Vyse, a confident seventeen year-old who happens to be a member of the Blue Rogues gang of Air Pirates, but we'll get back to Vyse in a minute. ''Hold on, did you say, Air……Pirates? As in pirates of the air?'' Yes, yes I did, and I wasn't even trying to be silly. You see, as the (American) title suggests, the world of EAL is one of air. All of its inhabitants live on islands floating mysteriously in these ''oceans'' of sky. See? Now that's fairly original! ''But how do people get around?!!'' There is no reason to shout sir, I’m on my way. The only logical vehicle for crossing huge expanses of sky is of course, the boat. That's right, for some reason or another, even with the energy supplied by the mysterious moonstones, (chunks of lunar rock that fall occasionally from Arcadia's six moons and are basically glorified batteries) these folks chose boats. So now we have the Blue Air Pirates flying around in boats (just think about that one for a second) that look every bit like old pirate ships, down to their wooden construction, and big canvas sails. Now, the blue rogues are rowdy, and they do like to drink, but they have morals. It is indeed tempting to make the comparison (as many reviewers have) between these guys and a certain fictitious hooded archer (of Locksley) and his band of merry men. The rogues' motto is to battle only those strong enough for a good fight, and when they win, to take only treasure: nobody is forced to walk the air plank to be eaten by air sharks... However, where there is Blue, there is also .... Black, right (as in I’ll beat you black and…)? The black air pirates are the guys who sold their morals to make a quick buck. They have no problem stealing money and lives from defenseless people, either. The other major entity in the world of Arcadia, is the empire of Valua. They pretty much represent well, a typical empire: powerful, corrupt, and hell-bent on world domination at the expense of more innocent lives than you can shake a stick at. They possess the highest level of technology and funnel it mostly into their powerful fleet, the Armada. These boats are apparently a tad further along on the evolutionary scale as they are made of what appears to be titanium alloy and high quality plastics, and more closely resemble modern day air-craft carriers. In addition to our good guys (blue pirates) and not so good guys (Valua and the black pirates) we also have a number of independent nations that will enter the tale as play continues and the world is explored. Now, about these six moons I keep referring to; each occupies the space above a different stretch of Arcadia's sky. They are conveniently color-coded: blue, yellow, red, green, purple, and silver. The area under each moon basically has its own civilization. For example, the empire of Valua, is located under the yellow moon. The moons are endowed with mysterious magical properties and conveniently shower the earth with little fragments called, moonstones. Each moon also corresponds with an elemental power and besides being the origin of that ''color'' of magic, also shapes the area of the world it is in. So, the purple moon being associated as it is with the ice elemental is the source of all ice spells, and hovers over a massive continent of ice. More on moonstones later. As the game opens, a lone girl in a small silver ship is chased down and captured by a much larger Armada flagship. Shortly following this, Vyse, his tomboyish best friend Aika, and the rest of their crew attack the imperial ship in search of treasure. After rescuing Fina, a girl from the myth-shrouded silver civilization, Vyse and Aika learn of Valua's search for the six moon crystals. These crystals, if brought together, will bestow on their holder, an ultimate power. Thus a grand adventure is begun by a band of rebels to stop an evil superpower from getting even more super. And also more evil. This may sound all too familiar to anyone who has played a few RPGs or has ever encountered any story involving any kind of quest. EAL is guilty as charged. This tale of collect the crystals and stop the big bad guy has been done (over and over) in such series as Final Fantasy. I mean hell, there is even a huge dark cloud over the technically advanced Valua, compliments of them raping the land to steal its life-force and achieve supremacy (see- the city of Midgar: FFVII). However, although the story begins and even proceeds in a somewhat clichéd way, it spans a huge world (made up of air) populated by a creative variety of people, it offers a huge cast of original and likable heroes and despicable villains, and is a story that not unlike a massive ball of yarn, becomes increasingly complex and knotted as it unravels. This last trait may be the game's most valuable, for the makers of EAL show that there is nothing wrong in building a story with a tried, true, and recognizable formula, and then fleshing it out with a unique cast and a number of unexpected plot twists and variations...

Gameplay

...especially if said game also offers a healthy dose of the other element that can make or break a role playing game: its gameplay. In fact these two elements of ''story'' and ''gameplay'' go hand in hand like two elementary school kids on a date. An RPG with a creative system for gaining levels and carrying out battles can still fail miserably if it lacks any sort of engaging plot or has unclear objectives, (see- most titles in Square's Saga series). Likewise, with a confusing battle system swamped with sub-menus and statistics, the best story in the world isn't going to mean diddly-poopoo. Any classic title in the genre has an even balance of both. emister will not deny that the lack of these types of games currently available for the Cube as it nears its 2nd birthday is a cause of almost daily distress for him and all his animal friends. The first section of gameplay to be addressed in EAL has to be its play environment. For the duration, players will navigate Vyse, in his freaking weird blue pirate outfit (complete with freaking weird eyepatch), through the 3D setting of a dungeon or a town. When in one of the game's many towns, people are talked to and items investigated with the push of a button, and control is accurate and simple. The camera for these environments is not static, but as in Enix’s Dragon Quest VII, can be rotated easily around the character at anytime with the L and R buttons. The developers played this feature up in creating environments with many nooks, crannies and passageways that require active manipulation of the camera to find. The ''World Map'' is traversed by boats as I mentioned before, and once the player acquires one of these, EAL's strong themes of exploration and discovery begin to emerge. Again the environment is 3D with a mobile camera positioned initially behind the player's ship. An interesting feature of the EAL world is the variety of obstacles encountered in this ''world map'' mode. Impenetrable walls of air, gigantic floating islands, reefs of rock and ice, strong winds will all impede progress and limit the range of accessible areas. Eventually, as more powerful ships are acquired and modified, all of these obstacles can be overcome, but in the game's early stages, they herd the player along a fairly linear path and keep the plot moving. The 3D world map of Arcadia's floating islands means a huge amount of terrain begging to be explored, and in EAL, there are discoveries to be made everywhere. As I will mention later, this ''go anywhere'' nature of the world map lends it an interactive functionality and purpose that extends beyond what is normally found in similar RPGs where the same space is only a piece of decoration between destinations. The next major gameplay element of note (and one key to almost all RPGs) is the system of doing battle. This aspect of EAL happens to contain some of its unique quirks that lend it originality, but also some of its flaws that can make battling a bit of a chore. Enemies and player characters appear on the battle screen roughly on respective sides, but throughout the course of battle will run about to attack their various foes creating a fairly thin illusion of free movement. Characters and enemies will be given turns in order based on their agility, and can perform one action per turn such as ''fight'' or ''item.'' So far, its fairly standard right? Well, the non-standard aspect of EAL's battle system, the factor that saves it from being a task so monotonous as to induce the stabbing out of one’s own eyes in a fit of Oedipal rage, is GUTS. No, I don't mean that there are a lot of explicitly violent graphics of enemies being sliced and diced. Guts are basically a character's drive and stamina, their battle energy, and each character has a number representing how much Guts they have (and again, I'm not talking intestines here). For example if your party consists of four characters who each have 4 Guts points then you are going to have 16 ''party Guts'' which they can spend that round. At the beginning of every round, this number of points is given to the party, so that if the above party used no Guts in their first turn of battle, they would have 32 points available to them in the second round. The two main ways these Guts points are used is in the casting of magic spells and the execution of special moves. Magic spells can be learned by all characters, although some learn faster than others. The magic is elemental, and is tied to the color of the six moons I mentioned earlier. Spells in the green category, the element of ''Life'' consist of healing spells as well as poison spells, where as those in the yellow category of ''Lightning'' are mostly lightning attack spells. Interestingly, each color category contains at least some variety of attack magic and status altering spells. Casting a spell will take away from the party Guts for that round, how much depends on the spell's potency. New spells are learned by receiving Ability Points after every battle. When enough points are earned in a certain color, the player will become able to use the next spell in that category. This means that the most powerful spells are learned last, and will not be available until a ways into the game. The second way Guts points are used is in each character's unique special moves. Regular attacking will not cost any party guts, but using these attacks will. They are learned by using moon berries on characters; regular items that are found in treasure chests or occasionally won in battle. The more powerful specials of course take more moonberries to unlock, and more of the party’s Guts to unleash during battle. It is these special moves that are the show-stoppers of EAL's battles. The more powerful ones far outweigh any spell in usefulness they can deal out, and once the party gets enough Guts to use certain specials on the first turn, pretty much all of the random battles become a simple process of 1.enter battle, 2.use Lambda Burst or Rain of Swords, and 3.watch all enemies disappear instantaneously. After a certain point, all pretense of strategy goes out the window. Besides the relentless normal battles with random enemies, there are three other types of fights in EAL. The first are your good old, unavoidable, RPG plot-advancing boss battles. These can be quite challenging as bosses are often accompanied by a group of support enemies that must be dealt with as well. The bosses of this game are not a cake walk, and going a little overboard on level building isn’t a bad idea. A second type of battle (and one that wasn’t included in the Dream Cast version) is the Bounty fight. As Vyse and Co. make their way through the world they will eventually be able to acquire information about people who are wanted for a bounty. When these vile miscreants are found and then dispatched in battle, a set bounty can be collected. Differing from the regular bosses of the game, these battles are optional, and the strength of these enemies is tied to the strength of the player’s party. Finding and defeating all of the entries on the wanted list is a challenge that gives the game’s battle system a little extra mileage. EAL's boss and bounty fights demand strategy and attention as players struggle to conserve guts points for strong attacks while tearing down the enemy’s status bonuses at the same time as they build their own. The final type of battle in EAL are its most unique and also its most controversial. As Arcadia is a world characterized by its ship-crowded skies, there are bound to be mid-air misunderstandings and disagreements from time to time. And so we find a lot of massive cannons installed on almost anything making its way through the air. The ship battles of EAL are a bit difficult to describe, but quite easy to master once encountered. In each of these, the player’s vessel and its opponent will trade blows over a four-turn round. Each of the four characters in the party is allowed one turn per round and can choose a variety of actions like firing one of the ship’s various weapons or even using an item or a spell to restore damage or boost stats. Each turn in a round is given a color (either green, yellow, or red) to indicate what the enemy is likely to do at that point in the battle. Green represents a safe time to attack while red turns are when the player should expect a pummeling and defend. Many reviewers have shot this aspect of EAL down for seeming tacked on and being total fluff. Others have said that the battles are overly time consuming and present no real challenge. Well emister enjoyed the ship battles, quite a lot. True they can take a while to complete, and sure the system could have been fine tuned, but when it comes down to it, the game is more unique for having them.

Side Dishes

As with any good adventure game, EAL comes with quite a few optional treasure hunts. Some are quite minor and have superfluous payoffs, but others continue throughout the entire game and help shape its overall experience. The activity that fits most into this category is the search for Arcadia’s many discoveries. The blue rogues are explorers at heart, and Vyse in particular has a strong desire to uncover all of the world’s secrets. As the characters travel the world in their big flying boat, the “investigate” button can be pressed in suspicious looking areas. Occasionally this will produce a victorious sound and a screen of information detailing the new discovery that has just been made. Some discoveries are automatic, such as when a previously unknown continent is encountered, but others are fiendishly difficult to find. Once found, the information about each discovery can be sold back to the guild master in each town. The player will be paid according to the discovery’s rarity and how new or old the information is. Other explorers exist in Arcadia, and as time passes and they make discoveries of their own, each piece of information becomes worth less. A second side quest (also missing from the DC version), is the collection of little creatures known as moonfish. These are encountered not on the world map, but in towns and dungeons when the player controls Vyse. Each fish can be traded in for increasingly rare and powerful items, so the more that are found the better. The search for moonfish is also tied to a plot line added into the Game Cube release. The last major element of EAL that is up to player control is the development of the player’s base area and its accompanying town. Acquiring this personal island is a necessary part of the main plot, but the people who inhabit it as well as the shape it takes are under player control. Throughout the world blacksmiths and merchants, carpenters and cooks can be found and brought to the growing town. Each of these support characters will affect the town in some way, for example, which carpenter you choose will affect the look of the buildings in your town, and if you fund the merchants and blacksmiths, they will make more powerful items and weapons available for sale. The presence of the base will lend a gloss of individuality to each game, but the town system is actually quite simple, and its lack of truly varying types (such as in DQ VII or BOF II) gives it a somewhat ornamental feeling. Other, more minor sub quests exist such as trading sequences and the collection of “Chams,” mysterious items that power up an equally mysterious weapon used by one of the characters.

Graphics

As this title is graphically almost a direct port of the 3 years-old Dream Cast version, its graphics won’t be causing any heart attacks or even epileptic seizures. I came off of a 3 month relationship with Wind Waker to play this game, and the first step was a doosy. Polygon counts are not high, backgrounds look quite 2D, and the Game Cube is obviously not working up a sweat at any point. For all this, though, the graphics are very consistent, they are by no means crappy and in the vein of DQ VII, the developers obviously made the choice to have reliable graphics AND a freely movable 360 degree camera to allow for 3D play. Compared to most games of any genre these days, that tend to dazzle the eye with a deluge of CG movies, EALs developers opted to save disc space here as well. The cinematic sequences are all rendered in the same graphical resolution as normal gameplay. gasp… Honey, did you hear what he just said?! Come on dear we’re leaving… Spell animations are pretty standard fare with no one spell being particularly astounding in its intensity. The most graphical work went into the sequence enacted when any character uses a special move. These are all unique, flashy and fun to watch. The most powerful specials in the game have animations of 30 seconds or more (a mere blip compared to some of the 3 or 4 minute summon sequences from the Final Fantasy series), and can be skipped with the push of a button.

Sound

The tunes offered up in the game, like the graphics, won’t be sung through the ages, but are more than enough to get a player through the game. There is perhaps less variation here than in other RPGs, with certain tracks being used as catch-all standards for victorious or crisis situations. There is the “we are down but not out!” track for inspiration. The “hey there are bad guys all around we’d better hurry!” track. EAL does have a rather memorable and soothing orchestral piece which plays on the title screen as a sea of clouds floats by below. Other auditory high points are the music particular to each town. Anyone with a few beers in their system is going to find it hard not to dance to the frantic tribal rhythms played in the jungle town of Horteka. The award for best sound device employed in the game goes to an audio technique that comes into play during boss fights and other tough battles. Upon entering the battle, the normal boss music begins with its somewhat grim tune and jumpy tempo. If something goes wrong however, like the sudden death of one of the characters, the music undergoes a dramatic transition until it arrives at a tune of desperation and chaos that will cause many a palm to start sweating. Battling back, reviving the slain allies, and eventually landing a staggering blow against the enemy will result in another elaborate transformation in the battle theme, the music soars until it reaches a triumphantly upbeat tempo reinforcing the impression that victory is in the bag. It never really gets old, but I remember the first time this happened, it actually took me by surprise, and contributed quite a bit to giving the fight its due importance.

Replayability

(there’s that word again!) To tell the truth, it will be quite a while before I play through EAL again if ever. That is not meant to detract from its quality in any way, but is more of a statement about how I play games. Regardless of how wonderful a game is, if it takes me more than 10 or 15 hours to complete, I’m probably not going to be making a habit of running through it once a month and again on national holidays. Especially with RPGs, I tend to try and grab everything on my first (and usually only) time through, and as a result move at the pace of an excited slug. People are different though, and there is more than one way to cook an omelet. Due to its long list of tasty optional treats (discoveries, moonfish, chams etc.) another strategy would be to play through the game a first time moving quickly along the direct line of plot, and thus experiencing the story of EAL in a very purposeful manner. A second replay could be used to collect everything missed on the story run, at whatever pace the gamer decides. This strategy is basically possible on any long game with a lot of side quests or collectibles, and is almost prerequisite for anyone wishing to have the exhaustive knowledge about a game of this size necessary to write an FAQ. If you are like me though, one thorough trip will be enough.

Length

This category is very subjective, as will always be the case with long, adventure/RPGs. Its important that this is this is the way things are. The reason we enjoy RPGs is that to a degree, they allow us to explore a pre-made world in our own way and at our own speed. For me that speed is really, freaking, slow. As I stated waaay up there at the top, I put 85 hours into this beast. I am like the gamer’s version of the gourmet who spends $200 on a meal and then spends half an hour chewing each and every bite, all the while mumbling orgasmically to himself. If you can identify with this exaggerated imagery at all, EAL will probably rob you of 70 plus hours of your hard-earned life. It’s pretty darn big folks.

Conclusion

The makers of this game should be applauded. As should the people responsible for getting it to the Game Cube. After two years, there just are not enough decent RPGs to speak of on this console, and without EAL, things would be a lot more bleak. From a graphic standpoint it won’t cause anyone to wet themselves in the way of the CG/eye candy laden super productions of Square’s recent history. True enough, elements could have been added to the battle system to make random fights less of a chore. The ship battles could stand to be a tad more dynamic rather than the linear affairs that they are. We are dealing with a product bearing the SEGA name though, the company that fathered such legendary series’ as Phantasy Star, and the “Shining” games. This translates to consistency in product design that will keep pulling at you well into the second half. After 85 hours, it is clear to me that EAL’s creators opted for a massive playing space (you will be alarmed at how large the map gets) with original characters in an original 3D environment in exchange for some of that trendy visual dazzle. It is trade-offs such as these that make games like EAL so much fun three years after their original releases. Those in possession of a Game Cube and desiring a good adventure should make haste. The skies await you.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/03/03