Skies of Arcadia Legends

"The only game where pirates get drunk off fruit juice."

After the Sega Genesis had reached the end of it's life cycle, it seemed that one of their flagship series, Phantasy Star, would unfortunately go down with it.

Phantasy Star IV was touted as the final game in the series, and many feared that we might never get the chance to play another rpg quite like it. However, Phantasy Star creator Reiko Kodama had different plans. And after the launch of the dreamcast, her spirit lived on in an all new rpg. However, Kodama's return wasn't as grand as the adventure she hoped to create.

First Impressions:

Alright! A new rpg, by the creator of Phantasy Star! It can't get much better than this! I remember how excited I was when I first heard about this game. As if Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure weren't enough of a reason to get a dreamcast, then this definitely had to be it. Or so I thought.

I decided to look into it a bit more, and found that maybe this game isn't as good as I thought. Then, after finally playing it on dreamcast, it turned out that Skies really wasn't that good, and my worries were well founded. However, once they announced a remake of sorts for the gamecube, I decided to give it another shot. After all, people rant and rave about this game like no tomorrow. It's only fair to see what it's all about, no?

Storyline:

I've played a lot of games lately that have had some seriously simple story lines. But once the game was done and over with, I didn't mind. I was still able to enjoy myself. However, those games were quite shorter than Skies is, which is why I can't be as lenient.

The premise is simple: The main character Vyse, an energetic 17 year old youth with a strong sense of justice, and his equal of age spunky female companion Aika, both belong to a group of air pirates (yep, these ones are aerial) known as the Blue Rogues.

And just like any typical anime inspired game, you've gotta be the good guys. I never knew there were pirates that were good guys.. wouldn't they just be plain sailors, and the bad guys known as pirates? Anywho.. these pirates roam the skies of a land chock full of the unknown and intrigue. Rather than sailing on the open sea, the world of Arcadia is set amidst the clouds, where turbulent clouds fill the oceans, instead of more typical seas.

Now, these happy Air Pirates are on a Robin hood-esque mission to steal from the rich and give to the poor, and along the way find the mandatory mysterious damsel in distress, Fina, who is also 17 years old, and eventually embark on a quest to gain X amount of crystals and save the world. Hooray.

So aside from the whole “world in the sky” theme, the story tends to fall flat on it's face on more than one occasion, and the end result is the equivalent of a broken neck - pretty much useless. Stories are supposed to carry rpgs, but in this case, you can pretty much predict what's going to happen hours in advance. So if the story really doesn't carry itself well, what's the point? I know we can't have all our games with deep plots and constant twists, but in Skies case, it's just ridiculous.

You have the main baddies, the evil Valuan empire. So evil, in fact, that it just so happens their spot on the map is surrounded by ominous clouds and roaring thunder. Ooh, how imposing. And you've got your desert people, ice land, jungle area, futuristic place, and mandatory “we're made by a japanese company, so there has to be an island based on japan” spot on the map. And as one can imagine, the plot stereotypically fits into each of the areas. The jungle area is filled with tribal people, who don't like foreigners, and mumble like apes about their god coming to save them. The japanese like area just so happens to dislike westerners (I was seriously expecting Commodore Perry to come floating over on a ship during this part and start demanding trade), and your future people are watching over the world in omnipotence. It's been done before. Like 20 thousand frikkin' times already.. but eh, some people seem to like this simplicity. I don't, personally, because it's just so expected.

The characters are boring as heck, too. Imagine ending up in a strange new place, where you're not exactly wanted or trusted. You ask about their sacred treasure, and hope to gain their trust in order to get it. What does your teammate do? Why, jump up and down saying, “YAY! We have to find it in a city of GOLD! Yay! Gold!”. Christ. It really seems like some rejected script for a kids cartoon or something.

However, Vyse fits the role of main character well. He says things that I really didn't expect at times, which is very welcome. But for the rest of the cast, it's pretty much as straightforward as it comes. And expect the villains to be very maniacal and evil. Constantly. Without much reason, either. All in all, this was a bland storyline for the majority of the game... but! I will admit, there were a few times we I couldn't help but laugh, or feel the emotional impact they were trying to convey. If maybe they would have put a little more effort into diversifying the story just a bit, the story would have been much better. As it stands, it's almost as if it wanted to be cliche from the start... however, that's not my cup of tea, and I expect more in my rpgs.

Gameplay:

Wow, I thought nothing could be worse than Skies' story. Guess I was wrong. Just like the story, the game play is just as simple and uninspired, with very few unique twists to it. First of all, you have your basic attack, magic, item and special moves in a turn based environment. Ok, that's pretty much standard. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you, but the way that Skies pulls it off, is. The best thing about this game however, is the use of the spirit meter, which is a little gauge that accumulates SP (spirit points), which allows the character to cast magic spells or use special moves. It really helps to simulate momentum, as one minute you may have a lot of SP, and go nuts with the special moves, only to not have enough next turn to do some quick healing, thusly changing the tide of a battle.Very nice touch.

In battle, your character has two basic attacks. One long range, one close range. However, you can't choose to move your character, and the computer will almost always choose the one that takes the most time to execute. (Speaking of which, this is by far THE slowest battle system i've ever played.) While the difference between these two attacks is merely cosmetic, it would have been nice to have movement similar to the Lunar games, just to have a bit more depth in the system.

Moving along, the magic system consists of six elements which are divided into 6 colors, which consists of your healing, fire, wind/water, lightning, ice, and life magic. Once again, pretty standard. The way you go about learning spells though, is a bit unique. Each character can change the element of their weapon (and thus change their attack properties) with a mere switch of a button. Once the battle concludes, you'll gain magic experience towards the element you had last equipped upon winning the battles. So if you want to learn a lot of fire magic, make your weapon red, but, it won't be as effective if you're fighting monsters strong against fire. Or so it should have worked. The bad thing about this system, is that it's easy enough where you don't have to pay much attention to opposing elements. It's a lot easier to just set the weapon to the type of magic that you wanna learn, and voila. It doesnt matter what their immunities are, since you'll kill them just as quick anyways. But, just like everything else in Skies, there has to be another flaw to this system. There are six spells in each category (for a total of 36 spells for those not so math savvy people). Unfortunately, everyone learns the same spells. And to top it off, most of the spells are simply upgrades of a previous spell, rendering the old spells useless.

As mentioned earlier, there is a spirit point system, which changes the use of spells up a bit. Each spell will only consume 1 magic point in order to be cast. However, the amount of SP varies. So a basic spell might take 1 or 2 sp, and an advanced level spell could take up to 10. Yet another thing bad about this system.. spells are pretty much useless, aside from the healing or stat increasing ones, due to some horrid imbalance. Your best spellcaster might do a spell for 600 damage on a 10 SP spell. However, Vyse can use a special move for 7 SP and end up doing 3000 damage. So really, what's the point? So in the end, the magic system fails because attack magic is practically useless, and the spells lack decent variety.

The special move system is just as limited. The main characters will get five special moves apiece, and secondary characters only 3. Now, you'd figure with that small amount of moves, that at least they would be original, right? Nope. Even with five, you'll start to see repeated effects. Vyse, for example, starts off with a special move that does a lot of damage. (you'll be using this a LOT) then, he gets moves which allow him to counterattack when attacked, attack multiple enemies, counterattack and defend for all allies, and attack one enemy for a lot of damage.

So, your first move ends up useless by end game, since his strongest move does a tremendous amount of damage, and the difference in SP isn't much compared to the difference in damage you'll be doing. In other words, in the time it takes to pull off your strongest move once, you'd have to do your weakest attack about five times to equal the damage. Then, his counterattack move becomes pointless, because for a mere 4 SP more, his team takes ZERO damage from physical attacks, AND counterattacks. So pretty much, there is no reason or excuse to use his old move. Aika suffers from a similar fate, where most of her moves are just “hit a lot of enemies for moderate damage” fare. Fina, however, gets five completely unique moves. Why couldn't every one else get the same treatment? It just makes the game feel incomplete, which is pretty poor for a game that lasts 40+ hours.

To sum up the battle system, i'll say this. It's a very slow system which favors special attacks over everything else. It's slow. Magic is useless, and it's about as basic as you can get. It's slow. It's a good rpg if you're a beginner looking for a good entry into rpgs. It's slow. But, for rpg veterans, this game offers pretty much nothing worthwhile. Oh, did I mention it was slow? Sometimes it takes about 5 seconds for an attack to come off, and another 5 seconds for it to die.. so expect about 3 minutes for each fight to last, even though it would have only taken about 20 seconds in any other rpg. While it sounds like i'm just nitpicking, you really have no clue how much time this adds up to. Oh, lets not forget that the battles are all random encounters which happen VERY frequently, and save points are VERY few and far apart. If you don't mind playing for two or so hours at a time without a save point, or dont mind lots of encounters, this shouldn't bug you. But for those who want a game to play for a quick half hour at a time or so, this isn't your game. It's definitely not well spent quick leisure time. This is the kinda game you sit down and play for many, many hours on end in one sitting.

But thankfully, there is more to this game that just the horrid turn based battles. In a world revolving around pirates and their ships, we have: Ship Battles! These fun fights (albeit slow) are probably the best part of the game. Your ships will cinematically fly around one another automatically, as you fill in a 4 turn grid with actions. Depending on the speed of your ship, you'll be able to man your cannons, fire your secondaries, torpedoes, or eventually cast magic from your cannons. I loved ship battles the best, as they were pretty unique. Even though they were a tad bit slow, it was acceptable. I mean, how fast do you think boats move? It's only fair.

One thing that bugged me though, is that it seems like at one point in development, you had the ability to customize your ship, and even sell it. You'd figure that in a directors cut, which is what legends is, you'd finally have the time to add those features, no? Nope. So once again, it feels incomplete. There's no reason to show your ships value if it affects nothing... so again, what's the point?

Now, moving on the world map is done completely with your ship, and since it's a game based on the age of discovery, you can imagine there's a lot of exploring to be done. There are 89 hidden discoveries for you to find in the game, right in the open, or tucked away in some pretty tough to find areas. So if you like hunting for stuff, there's definitely a lot of searching to be done. With each discovery, you earn money and bit more fame, which is nice to have when walking around town. A lot of kiss ass pedestrians and shop owners will be happy to see you.

Along with discoveries, there are bounties to hunt down for some extra cash, experience, and rare items (although a few a story based), and there is a ton of treasure (and thankfully, a huge variety in weapons, armor, and accessories which give you freedom to customize your character a little bit to your liking), and a crew of people that you can assemble to help you with your ships, increasing stats or allowing special benefits. If only the turn based battles offered features like this! It'd be one great game, that's for sure. And there also a lot of rewarding sidequests, such as the moonfish quest where you have to hunt down food for one picky bird, which rewards you with a lot of rare items (white map, how I love thee...) and an interesting new storyline with pirate hunter Piastol, who is new to this version of the game.

All in all, the biggest flaw with the game play is the battles... and unfortunately, those take up the majority of the game, making it feel more like a chore than anything else when searching for a discovery, only to be interrupted every few seconds to battle. It's just something I think they should've taken more consideration into. And that's making sure a game is fun, and not work.

Graphics:

Despite being an older game, the graphics are definitely one of this game's strong points. When you walk into a new dungeon and take a look around, you can't help but feel wowed by the impressively tall ceilings and vastness that these places encompass. That's one thing that I feel the developers went all out in, and that's presentation. You really do feel like an explorer who wound up in a new place, seeing it for the very first time, writing history as they know it.

In a way, the visuals help to create part of the story, by letting the player get a feel for the world in a different way. Colors are bright, and are good despite it's age. The 3 main characters got a visual update, which looks very odd compared to the rest of the cast. Townsfolk faces look pixelated, and they're downright blocky. Oh well, at least the graphics are good where it counts. And that's what matters.

And the menus are all well done and easy to navigate, so it's pleasant to the eyes. It also has a bit of charm, as it looks like the menu was made on a map, fitting with the whole sailor/pirate theme.

Sound/Music:

Along with the graphics, here's another thing the game pulls off very well. The music is outstanding. Especially the boss battle theme. It starts out with a heavy, bass filled sound, and changes according to whoever has the upper hand in battle. If you're starting to lose, the music will change into a more desperate pace, and if you get back on your feet, the music hops back into it's old rhythm. And once you take the lead, the battle music goes into this dramatic theme that lets you know victory is just around the corner.

Not only is the music good, but there is a LOT of variety in it. All in all, the music is probably the best part of the game, along with the graphics/presentation.

But.. not all is happy in the sound department. I will say that this game has hands down, THE WORST VOICE ACTING EVER HEARD. It makes me want to hug the people who did the voices for Star Ocean 2, and ask them to be my best friends. It's just that bad. And worst of all, it's random! You'll be reading a text bubble that says, “We've got to save them!” and your character will say, “Let's go!”. Um, right. It's just weird. And whenever Aika talks, it's annoying. I hope you like feeling like a little kid who just ate 3 boxes of cinnamon toast crunch before your parents got up, because you'll be hearing her spout off “YAY!!!!” every few minutes. Maybe she thought she was auditioning for a role on a board game commercial... you know the ones where everyone wins at the end? Yeah. It's that kind of fake enthusiasm which these voice actors use. I must say though, Vyse's little yell before he does the Rain of Swords is just plain cool.

Closing Thoughts:

This game had a lot of potential. Not just Skies for the Dreamcast, but this gamecube remake. They had the chance to change things up a bit, and make up for the fact that they couldn't finish everything within the time constraints. Instead, they added a lot of minor additions which don't really make it feel like a new game. No extra playable characters, no new attacks, no balance to the gameplay... it just ends up being nothing more than an average game.

Thankfully though, due to the stellar music and presentation, the game is able to be just a touch above average, and with such, I award the game with a 6. While at the time, this may have been the best rpg for the gamecube, it's not really saying a lot considering how few there are. But if you're looking for an rpg that's a complete package, stay far away from this one, and look towards Tales of Symphonia for a good experience all around. Let's hope this game gets a sequel though, and addresses all the bad points of the first. It really had a lot of potential, and I leave this game disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/27/04