Skies of Arcadia Legends

"The game's amazing world and epic scope make up for flaws in the plot and battle system"

I had not played Skies of Arcadia on the Dreamcast. Despite being a huge fan of the system and its games, this one simply passed by me. It was then announced to be on the way for Gamecube, in the form of a Director's Cut. Once again, I hesitated on playing this game. Eventually, I decided to give Skies a try, because as a Sega fan, I've heard nothing but endless praise for the game. And the verdict? While it's definitely got some gaping flaws, it excels in many other areas and provides a surprisingly epic and memorable adventure at its heart.


Visuals; I guess I will start, (as my reviews usually do) with the graphics. Unfortunately, these graphics aren't very good by today's standards. They looked great (although not exactly "amazing") for a Dreamcast game, but as a Gamecube game, things seem a little bit weak. There is a lot of loading when going into the many random battles in this game. Character models for the main cast are well done, but in cities, towns, etc. the NPC's often look horrible. On the other hand, some of the characters' special moves are done with amazing effects, and the huge scope and size of the world is something unparalleled at the time of the game's release. The fact that you can see the worldmap from inside the town (by going to the edge of town and looking out,) is also very impressive for an RPG.

The load times for combat are a little shorter than the DC version's, (although, again, I haven't played much of the DC version, so I'm not entirely sure) but the fact that there are such long load times at all is too upsetting for me to really praise them for "shortening them a little bit." Overall the visuals are definitely nice and stylish, though its Dreamcast roots are evident a bit too much for comfort. Still a nice-looking game.


World; Moving on, I will go to the game's world. The world below is nothing but huge storms and dark clouds, so people live on islands in the sky. There are big towns, cities, and small, deserted, unexplored continents in this sky world. You get around on flying ships. Towns and cities are awesome. They take many different looks, and all are very fun to explore. There are many people; bars, taverns, and other buildings are full of activity, there are many shops to visit, and many sidequests as well, (for those of you who are into them). The city of Valua is divided into a slum, as well as a place where all the rich people hang out. This continent is where the villains in the game are based, and all of your adventures on this continent are as exciting as what you'd expect from a Hollywood movie. When in the slum section, it REALLY looks depressing. They achieved the perfect mood here. This game is very atmospheric, and I managed to be interested in EVERY town or city. Each one also had very interesting backstories. This is something Final Fantasy games are famous for, and it's impressive to see Sega achieving the same thing; A powerful, well developed world. Skies of Arcadia's world is probably the game's best feature. With many different islands, towns, cities, a huge world map to explore, many sidequests, and many important storylines to each town or city, Skies of Arcadia's world is extremely impressive.

Story; Now, on to the story. Unfortunately, the story isn't nearly as well done. It seems like they threw all of their energy into creating such an expansive world that they neglected the story a little. Vyse is an Air Pirate, of which there are two types; Blue Rogues, (which he is,) and Black Pirates. Blue Rogues basically steal from the powerful empires' ships, and give this treasure to the poor. Black Pirates, however, rob any ship and keep the money themselves. Disappointingly, the main characters are Blue Rogues. This, to me, was a big cop-out. When playing a video game about pirates the last thing I expected was a group of Robin Hoods. They make it very clear (numerous times,) that the main characters rarely keep any money from their piracy, so unfortunately, the fact that they're pirates doesn't add much to the plot. A story about a bunch of criminal pirates in this world would be much more entertaining than the whole "find 6 crystals" plot they ended up using. These characters just seem too "good-natured" to be pirates, and it made the whole pirate-angle of this story too uninteresting. To make things a bit more annoying, the game constantly reassures us that these are "good pirates," which was when I actually started to think I was being lectured. Also, interestingly, there is no alcohol use whatsoever in this game. What kind of pirate story is this!? Even Disney World's got drunk pirates!!! (The Pirates of the Caribbean ride.) Look, I am not saying that Sega has to promote piracy or alcohol use, but really...this is a pirate story, and it should be more like a pirate story!

Anyway, back on topic; early in the game, many people are kidnapped from your village (Pirate Island) by the Valuan empire, and you must find a way into Valua to save them. This is the most exciting part of the game because there's plenty of action, adventure, and above all, a fun, character-driven storyline. Unfortunately, after about 6 hours into the game, the plot changes. You learn that there are 6 crystals that can wake up Gigas, which are huge creatures that may destroy the world. Someone may be trying to harness their power, so we must stop them.

Sound familiar? That's because so many RPG's have been using this "collect the crystals" plot as far back as the NES days! (Maybe even further back than that.) RPG plots have advanced much since then, but, unfortunately, Skies of Arcadia's plot feels very old-school, and not in a good way. The game's about 45 hours, but feels much longer because eventually the plot just loses steam.

Characters are also very weak. Vyse, the main character, although presented as a tough and brilliant captain, never really convincingly fits the role. It was hard for me to determine Vyse's personality; sometimes he said funny things, and sometimes he was entirely humorless. I could not figure out exactly what they were trying to do with his character. One thing's for sure, though. He sure as hell didn't act like a person who makes a living by flying the skies and robbing armed ships. It's unfortunate, because when playing a game about air pirates, I expected more tough characters. Similarly, Aika acts more like a cheerleader than an air pirate. Not all is lost, though. Drachma and Gilder are tough characters, and seem to fit in with the "air pirate" career (or, in Drachma's case, "sailor" carear) much more than Vyse or Aika. Drachma, in particular, has a great backstory. And Gilder acts more like I had HOPED all the characters in this game would act. The scenes with these two characters are the closest Skies of Arcadia Legends gets to feeling like a pirate story. I wished I had more of these characters (and more of Belleza, too) and less of Vyse, Aika, Fina, and Enrique. As for character developement...except for Drachma and Belleza, it's basically non-existant. Overall, plot-wise, this game's a disappointment. It's too bad, beceause with this great world they developed, they really could have had an excellent plot. Instead, we get the old "find 6 crystals" plot. Don't get me wrong, it's not completely stale. In fact, for the first half of the game, the plot is great. Yes, it's unoriginal, but it's still an interesting scenario. But the problem is that Skies of Arcadia Legends is too long. It's a 45-hour game with a plot meant for a 20 hour game. As you reach the games 2nd half, it's impossible not to notice a basic formula developing. There is a great plot twist in the 2nd half to keep things interesting, but this doesn't happen until near the end of the game. Skies of Arcadia Legends is too long, and really needed a better plot to keep it interesting.

One other flaw with the plot is the occasional lack of logic. At times the game just doesn't make any sense. For example, early in the game, you cause a HUGE commotion in Valua, the game's evil empire, before escaping back to your island. The Valuan empire, known for publicly executing law-breakers as an example for their people, never goes back to your island to hunt the characters down. Let me see if I understand this; The Valuan empire went through the trouble of sending their Armada to Pirate Island at the beginning of the game, destroying our base, and taking a group of air pirates for public execution....just because we robbed one of their ships. But then why didn't the Valuan empire take similar action when the main characters later illegally sneak into Valua, (twice!) make a complete fool of their government on many occasions, help a huge group of prisoners break free, completely destroy Valuan army ships, rescue a girl essential to Valua's plans, and escape from Valua's "flawless" security system? All with the Valuan public watching! The Valuan leaders, despite knowing the exact location of our hideout, make no effort to return to our island and punish us for those crimes or to re-capture their freed prisoners. WHAT!? What's also stupid is that the idea that the Valuans may return to our base is never thought of by any of the main characters. Even worse? This idea never seems to occur to the Valuans either.The villains know exactly where the criminal pirates are living, yet they never attempt to capture them again. It just doesn't make sense. Things like that bother me to no end in an RPG.

The plot also occasionally seems a little too coincidential. For example, there are very many places in the world where "people have never successfully reached," due to strong currents, or strong winds, etc. Yet the powerful engine or ship parts that the characters need to get past these obstacles always seems to be available to the characters at the perfect time.....

Anyway, that's enough for plot discussion. To sum up, the plot at the heart of Skies of Arcadia is unfortunately decades old, and this hurts, especially since there was the potential for something much better. Still, once you get over the fact that these characters act nothing like pirates, they're all likable and funny, and the game never stops throwing interesting situations and action scenes their way. It's not a horrible plot, and it's got some great twists in there. It's just stale.

Gameplay; The gameplay's great when not in combat. Exploring the world map's cool, dungeons and the puzzles there were challenging, but never TOO tedious, and, as I mentioned earlier, towns and cities are fun to explore. Everything you'd want in a RPG is here, gameplay wise. This is... until you see the screen shatter, and you're in a random battle.

Random battles are a little too frequent on the world map, and when they do show up, it's very annoying. This combat system is turn-based, (Which I have no problem with) but it really takes the turn-based system and makes it boring. First of all, you pick everyone's moves at once, then watch them all happen. Then, you watch the enemies attack. Repeat. Overall, there's a lot of watching and not enough interaction from the player. Sometimes you fight up to 8 enemies at a time in a random battle. So you have to sit and watch your characters go, then watch the 8 enemies attack your characters. Ugh. There's a lot of magic to learn in this game but aside from healing magic, you just won't find much use for it. S-moves, though, are very useful, and implemented into the combat system successfully. It's just too bad that battle is so slow and boring overall. There are various counter-attacks, where the enemy (or you) will counter the attack, but this is random and therefore you can't build any skill around the idea. Airship battles are also boring. There seems like great potential here, but again, it is nothing but selecting all your turns at once, watching them happen, (and watching the enemy attack you) and repeating. As the game goes on, these ship battles get very tedious. When near the end of the game, after I was spending about 2 hours on an airship battle, I knew there was a problem with this battle system. I should also add that near the end of the game, they throw SO MANY long battles at you that it just becomes ridiculous. In the game's last couple of hours, they throw tons of boss battles at you, many of which are very challenging, almost all of them way too long.


Skies of Arcadia's a game that plays very well....until you get into a battle. If they ever do make a sequel to this game, they REALLY need a new battle system. On one hand, the random encounters seem to have been reduced somewhat from the DC version, (in some areas, anyway,) and I think it made some bosses a bit too difficult. On the other side of the coin, though, is the fact that if you don't level up, bosses are challenging. And in some dungeons, where the encounter rate has been noticeably reduced, the bosses following the dungeons are often more difficult than they maybe should be.

Audio; Now, onto the sound. There's no voice acting. Characters will sometimes "Talk" but only 1 or 2 words at a time while you're reading the text on the screen. It seems kind of stupid that Sega brought in the voice talent...only to record a few lines (such as "yes" or "no") to play in the background when you read text boxes. Why not have them just voice the whole game!? It makes no sense to me. (Although the voices that they DID have were definitely a nice touch, it's still a bit of a disappointment not to see them go all out with the voice acting. Especially when the rest of the game is so epic.)

On a brighter note, the music's great. It seems to almost always fit the scene perfectly. Done by Yutaka Minobe, (Panzer Dragoon Orta,) and Tatsuyuki Maeda, the music's one of the more memorable non-FF RPG soundtracks in recent years. Ramirez, the game's villain, has the perfect theme. Other music was equally well done. Towns and cities have perfect music, the world map theme works, most events have great music, the battle theme's great....very little to complain about music-wise.

Replay Value; there are many sidequests to do in this game. Very many. Although I, personally, am not into sidequests, those who are will really like Skies of Arcadia Legends. I usually play through RPG's again, but the last couple hours of this game were so terrible that it makes me not ever want to experience them again.

Overall; Skies of Arcadia Legends was a game that I'm glad I played. You may be puzzled as to how I could dislike the plot, the battle system, and the characters, yet still be glad that I played it. Well, the world was something that truly has to be experienced. The amazing cities, the great setting of floating islands, the cool towns, the fun methods of transportation, (flying ships), life on a pirate ship, the air pirate concept, (despite the fact that this was downplayed,) and the very interactivity of everything all manage to make up for the less-than-satisfactory plot and battle system. This game has not been very successful (Sales wise,) on the DC, or the GC, unfortunately, which means that the sequel, which was originally planned, may never arrive. This game really needs a sequel, (or a prequel, or whatever.) If they fix some of these problems, (and get a better cast of main characters,) then we would have an excellent RPG. Skies is ALMOST there....but the gameplay sinks it. Still, highly recommended to any fans of Japanese RPG's.

Overall score; 7.5
Displayed score; 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/04, Updated 12/17/08

Game Release: Skies of Arcadia Legends (US, 01/27/03)