"To the Skies!"

The Gamecube lacks of RPG games; everybody knows that. So when a game of that type comes along, naturally the gamers would get hyped up about it. Skies is an RPG for the Gamecube and seems to have gotten much praise by many other gamers, but does it live up to all of the positive feedback? Well let's grab our massive swords and intricate-named spells and embark on this journey!

**Note** I haven't played the original Skies of Arcadia for the Dreamcast, so I have no knowledge of the changes and will not talk about it.

Story: 7
RPGs MUST have a good story...that's what they basically revolve upon. Skies has...a decent story. The game revolves around much of the cliches other RPGs of the past have set in stone, and plot-twists are near non-existent. You can probably predict what is going to happen in the game and be right 90% of the time. It is that cliched.

To start this off properly, it would be appropriate for you to know that this entire game takes place in the sky. For some reason all of the lands of Arcadia are floating above the ground, and nobody has actually seen the earth's ground. People travel throughout the Skies by airships: some large (such as Battleships), and some small (merchants and such). Basically, if there's a large ship, it sure as Hell has cannons on it, and if it's small, then you have nothing to worry about.

So a quick summary of the beginning? Well of course there's the main character Vyse who is a part of the Blue Rogues. These Blue Rogues are pirates who steal for a good cause (like Robin Hood...sorta), and whose rivals are the Black Pirates who steal like a traditional pirate would. However, while the two pirate groups differ in motives, the Blue Rogues' main adversary is the Valuan Armada. Vyse and his friend Aika soon find a mysterious girl named Fina upon one of their raids of a Valuan ship and that is where the adventure begins folks.

While the game is victim to much cliche, I have to admit that it definitely works. In today's gaming world, many RPGs' main characters are serious teenagers who are depressed through the majority of the game. There is always a sort of "silent coolness" about them in a desperate attempt to make them bad-ass. Skies of Arcadia, differentiates from this. The game throws at you Vyse, who is actually a teenager that is not angst-ridden. He's actually an energetic teen with a "gung-ho" attitude towards adventure.

At first, it's cheesy, I admit. The way the characters are so cliched makes it almost unbearable at first. But then you keep playing, and you start to love these characters because they're so happy. I'm not saying perky and smiling all the time but compared to other RPGs, they just seem...happy. Skies gives you a breath of fresh air with its characters: although they might remind you of other characters you've already seen, the charisma they display makes each and every character lovable. Each character also differs so much from each other that it makes memorizing names easy. Character design in this game is great, and it will just help you travel through the story.

Gameplay: 10
Now this is where it starts getting good. Upon first glance, Skies of Arcadia's battle system may look like your typical turn-based RPG (because, well...it is), but there are some things that make the game stand out from others. The thing that stands out about this game is that there are regular, normal battles when you run into monsters, and ship battles when you run into other ships and flying creatures.

-Normal Battles
These random battles are encountered whilst walking through a dungeon or as you're flying around the skies of Arcadia (hey, I used the game title!). This formate of fighting is where you'll fight the normal monsters of course, and some bosses. Normal battles are basically your run-of-the-mill RPG battle. There are four characters you can use in normal battles: Vyse, Aika, Fina, and a character of your choice (when the option comes).

There's your standard Run, Item, Guard, Attack, S-Move (basically you're uber skillz), Magic, and Focus (will get into this later on) commands you've learned to love so much. The two that I will focus on the most here are S-Moves, Magic, and Focus, staring with Focus to help explain everything. In general, the order of people who attack depends entirely on the speed, so if you have monster A having less speed than Vyse, but more than Fina (Vyse>monster A>Fina), then that will be the order they attack. Okay, now back to SP.

All battles in Skies of Arcadia revolve around SP. SP are points that are shared by the whole squad of fighters and the more levels you gain, the more your max SP increases. SP is displayed at the top of the screen the majority of the time during normal battles as a bar. SP always refills to a specific amount when you enter a new battle, so if you feel you can finish off the opponents by draining all of your SP, then it would be the best idea to do so. The SP also refills after every "round" of battle by a specific amount (which also increases as characters level up).

Now, the two things that take up SP are Magic and S-Moves.

S-Moves are your basic special attacks that require no MP (yes, SP and MP are different). These S-Moves range from doing uber-damage to one opponent, to healing status affects, to attacking all opponents, and more. Each S-Move takes up SP to use and they have a nice cut scene to watch which can be skipped by a simple press of the Z trigger.

Magic are your magic attacks. This is where the game begins to get interesting. During battle, you can change the color of the weapon each person is using by pressing the X button as you select a command for them. Each color represents each color of magic. At the end of the battle, you will get points towards the color of weapon you used. However, even if one person uses a red weapon while the three others use green, the other three will still get red points, but the points each person gets will be much smaller than the points for green points because three people used the green weapon.

Anyways, as you fill up your points for each color you learn new spells. These spells cover different elements and have different effects. Each spell also takes up both SP and MP. The difference here is that a spell ALWAYS drains only one MP, while it mainly takes a hit on the group's SP bar.

This is where the Focus option comes in: focus takes up a turn of the player commanding in order to channel their energy and raise the SP bar by a small amount. While it may not seem like much, it is sometimes desired to stock up on SP in order for a full-fledged S-Move and Magic assault.

The colors I mentioned earlier though are not only to get new spells for each color though. They actually can increase (or decrease) the damage a character does to an opponent. Each color deals extra damage to specific colors and yet, also deals less damage to others. Each monster's picture is surrounded by a specific color, so if you want to deal the best damage, you better switch your weapon to the appropriate color to finish it off faster.

These normal battles sometimes seem slow though, especially when there are an immense number of enemies on screen, and they are of separate colors too. Once you get used to the pace of the game, these battles end up becoming somewhat bland and more of the same; feeling as if they are a chore rather than a game.

-Ship Battles
Here, is where Skies of Arcadia brings something new to the table. During ship battles, you obviously battle with whatever boat you're in at the time. These ship battles can be against other ships (duh) or large creatures that hover too close to your craft.

SP is still a main part of ship battles, but is actually more important than in normal battles. Regular attacking with your cannons consume SP, considering that S-Moves are basically gone. While this may seem like an unfair type of play, it actually makes ship battles somewhat more strategic and fun.

Basically you can have each one of the four players perform one action at any time of the round: speed of characters does not play a role. So if you wanted Fina to fire a cannon before Vyse, you can arrange it so she can. The strategy part that comes into play is that two people cannot perform an action at the same time, and during each of these actions of the round, it differentiates whether it's a good time to attack or not. In-game the way they arrange your commands is by a simple 4x4 grid, but that probably doesn't make much sense right now. The catch here is that some cannons can extend into the following turns, so that the cannon you ordered Fina to fire? It can go into the next turn and attack during the same time Vyse is attacking. This, of course, takes up more SP though.

While I can't really describe the format of these ship battles I can certainly tell you that they are very nice changes of pace. I honestly sit-up in my seat whenever I encounter one of these (which is usually during a plot-driven event), and just love pelting my opponents with three guns at the same time.

Magic can also be used during battle as offensive attacks or defensive upgrades. Like in normal battles though, each spell consumes one MP of that specific character yet eats up the group's SP.

-Dungeons
All except one dungeon in Skies are on-foot, meaning you will be encountered by enemies and puzzles. While the puzzles in each of these dungeons aren't completely hard, they give enough difficulty to feel satisfied with after you're completed. There aren't any totally ground-breaking puzzles here, because frankly, this ain't Zelda.

Traversing dungeons seems to be both boring and rewarding. The down-side of dungeons are that you have to go through the ominously-boring normal battles, but the good-side is that even if you come to a dead-end, you'll either get a new weapon or something else that's good. Nothing like being rewarded for taking a wrong turn!

The only gripe I have with dungeons are that the length between save points is sometimes intimidating. Save points seem to be usually at the very beginning of the dungeon, and also at the end, right before a boss fight, never in the middle. Yes, each dungeon can be completed in probably 30 minutes to an hour, but I would still like some time where I can just save in the middle instead of forcing myself to tread through the dungeon quickly to reach the end, just to save.

Each dungeon does fit the area it is set in, though. So you won't find anything out of place: a mine has various conveyor belts and subterranean machinery, ancient temples have stone walls and ominous fog.

-Sidequests
Battles are the heart of RPGs but there is also one thing that gives them a chance to shine above the others: sidequests. Sidequests are essential to RPGs as they give a chance for the player to relax and deviate themselves from saving the world for awhile. Is that meteor coming straight for the planet? No problem! Just do a couple sidequests and gives you five extra days before it's destined to hit. Jokes aside, Skies doesn't have much sidequests, but the ones that they give you delivers.

I would label the major ones here, but it's hard to reveal them without spoiling the game for you. One very fun and difficult sidequest is the Bounty Hunter sidequest where you do exactly what it says. You can check up on a list of criminals and find them in order to dispatch of them and gain the money. This is not an easy task though: each criminal is a mini-boss, most of the time there's more than one of them in battle at once, and most importantly: they level-up as you do. You know what that means? No matter how long you boringly grind Vyse to level 50, it won't really matter once you realize they're still as tough as before...maybe tougher.

The second main sidequest of Skies is the discovery sidequest which, to this date, I think is the longest and yet one of the funnest sidequests in gaming history. Basically there are landmarks scattered around the whole world of Arcadia for you to look for: some are visible to the eye and some aren't. In order to find one of the invisible ones your compass will go haywire while in the vicinity of one, and in a simple tap of A will reveal them. Doesn't sound too fun now, but it gives a sort of "complete" feel to the game as it feels that Arcadia is more-and-more of a living, thriving, mysterious world.

Each of these sidequests take up a decent amount of your time and is honestly what makes Skies of Arcadia so fun. The funny thing is these two I've mentioned aren't the only ones. There are around two more that take up a lot of your time too, and they vary from these ones also. If not for these sidequests, Skies' gameplay wouldn't have been so high.

The game overall is in almost squarely in the middle of "hard" and "easy" for me. There are times where this game is ridiculously easy, and yet, some boss battles can make you pull your hair out. In terms of completing the regular story, I would call the game easy, but in terms of completing the game 100%, that is definitely hard. You should also take into consideration that there are probably two or three areas of this game where if not leveled correctly or have the right equipment, you might have to restart your game. That's not good.

Graphics: 6
It's a remake of a Dreamcast game, and yet they didn't think of polishing up the graphics. I mean, considering the power of the Gamecube, you would think they would try making the S-Moves look better, or even the characters and everything on a whole; but no, they kept the graphics which are jaggy and sharp as can be. If this game didn't rely so much on the gameplay, I would have considered the graphics a long time ago.

The only reason the graphics didn't score any lower is because of the art design. While many things in this game derives from cliches and stereotypes, some of the Valuan Armada's ships are pretty sweet, and the way certain weapons look is pretty cool. The lands are victim of stereotype, and yet the concepts within them make me sometimes go back and say "wow, that was interesting". The graphics might not be up-to-date, but the art direction definitely is.

Sound: 9
Skies' music is awesome. Simply said. I can't stress how memorable the soundtrack is. While there isn't anything groundbreaking, each tune is very distinct from all the others and can be distinguished fairly easily. I have to admit though that some of the songs are a bit on the cheesy side, but all-in-all the music just adds to the atmosphere of the game.

Skies seems to be all about immersion, and the music helps. When you reach Valuan Facilities there is an urgent song playing, when you set foot in a city where many people have lost hope, there is a quiet, delicate song to soothe everybody's depression. The game certainly knows how to adjust the mood of the game via music, and it's just great.

In terms of voices...there really aren't any. Aside from a few grunts from characters and announcing their S-Moves, your going to be reading instead of hearing voices. This doesn't really bother me though, but it might bother you.

Pros/Cons
That was a lot of information to ingest, so here's a short rundown of what you might have not fully understood:

Pros:
-Happy, energetic characters are a nice change of pace from normal RPGs
-Sidequests will keep the game entertaining
-SP system adds "strategy" to game
-Awesome, memorable soundtrack
-Nice variation of difficulty
-Worlds stand out, creative concepts

Cons:
-SLOW start
-Cliche story
-Stereotypical characters/cities
-Graphics aren't up to date
-Dungeon save points are far from each other
-Random normal battles feel like a chore after awhile
-Couple of areas where you're forced to start over

Judgement: 9
Yes, I know if you punch the scores into a calculator you won't get that number, but in my eyes the positives of the game certainly outweigh the negatives. While there are more negatives on the list, the magnitude of the good things cancel much of those out. As soon as you start getting immersed into the fun characters and the world of Arcadia, you start to forget about everything weighing it down. Skies of Arcadia is a fun game, which means you'll enjoy playing it. Sometimes it feels that it brings together what so many other RPGs have and puts it into one game.

In the end, when it comes down to it, I strongly recommend that you hop onto a ship and set sail for that horizon.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/07