I played Skies of Arcadia Legends!
This is a GameCube game released by Sega in 2003. It is an expanded port of a Dreamcast game from 2000. I played the GameCube version.
The hero of the story is Vyse of the Blue Rogues, a young pirate who journeys around the world with his childhood friend Aika, and a mysterious maiden named Fina, in their quest to obtain the six Moon Crystals before the ruthless Valuan Empire can get their hands on them.
The game is a fairly typical JRPG in terms of gameplay and game structure. You can walk around, examine things, talk to NPCs, and there's an overworld with towns and dungeons to explore.
The world of this game takes place in a series of floating islands in an endless sky, and nobody knows what lies at the bottom of the clouds. Everyone travels around by airships, powered by the magical energy shards that fall down from the six moons.
The six moons sit in the sky above each of the regions of the world, each one influencing the climate down below.
The red moon of fire sits above the desert nation of Nasr.
The green moon of life sits above the jungle nation of Ixa'Taka.
The yellow moon of lighting sits above the power-hungry Valuan Empire, which is bathed in perpetual dark thunderclouds.
The blue moon of wind and water sits above the isolated nation of Yafutoma, located high, high in the sky.
The purple moon of ice sits above the uninhabited Land of Ice, a vast frozen expanse.
And the silver moon of void sits right above.... a mysterious shrine, located near Vyse's hometown? Hmmm...
The story involves Vyse's journey as he explores the world, finds the Moon Crystals, and fights the Valuan Empire. Along the way, Vyse will gain confidence in his abilities as a captain, and will eventually lead his own crew aboard a ship of his very own.
Vyse is the brave, dashing hero. Aika is his rambunctious and energetic childhood friend. And Fina is the soft-spoken, yet determined maiden from another world.
Along the way, the team meet three other heroes, who join and leave the party as the story dictates: Drachma, the old sea captain who is trying to hunt a giant whale. Gilder, the charismatic gunslinger who's always getting himself into trouble. And Enrique, the Valuan prince, who rebels against his family's cruel methods.
The characters and the storytelling in this game are quite well-done. The cutscenes are very well-animated, with plenty of bespoke motions for each scene. The dialogue between the characters is great at showing everyone's personalities and motivations. The faces and animations are also very expressive - Aika has some particularly funny expressions whenever she gets annoyed with someone.
Even though the character models are simple, they are wonderfully animated and expressive.
The story of the game is a sort of action-hero kind of plot, with good guys versus bad guys, and Vyse always jumping in to save the day with his swashbuckling swordplay.
However, it isn't an entirely simplistic plot, and the story does become more serious as the stakes are raised and the heroes become more desperate toward the end.
The story is overall a good and satisfying story. And the cast of fun and likeable characters really makes you care about seeing it through.
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As you explore around the environments, you can examine objects with the A button, and Vyse will comment about them, showing his opinions and giving us information about the area. There's a huge amount of flavour text for the environmental objects in this game, and they even update whenever it's relevant as the story progresses. It gives the world a huge amount of life to see all of this added detail. I like reading it all.
The NPCs in each village are just as detailed. The NPCs in this game all have unique and distinct character designs, which is something I always like to see in RPGs. Though the game does copy the same shopkeeper characters between each town, for some reason.
Each NPC stays in their designated spot the whole game, but their dialogue does update as the story progresses. And they do play with this in silly ways too - one NPC in Sailor's Village is always rolling around on the ground for some reason. And every time the dialogue updates, his reason for rolling around is also different each time. There's a subtle sense of humour here.
When you talk to NPCs, the camera zooms in to show them closer, so you can get a good look at them. And they all have very expressive animations too. There's a shopkeeper who fiddles with his moustache, there's the guild hall keeper who puts away his book when you approach... All sorts of lovely little touches that makes everything feel more alive. It's great stuff.
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The world map is explored by airship - you can sail freely up and down in 3D space as you travel between the floating islands that make up the world. There is no fast-travel system, nor any teleportation magic - all travelling has to be done via the ship in the overworld
At first, your explorable area is quite limited, as there are barrier reefs and walls of wind preventing you from accessing areas too early. As you progress through the game, your ship receives upgrades that allow it to pass through more types of overworld barriers.
The progression of the game starts off unassumingly formulaic at first. It seems like it'll be a straightforward journey of collecting each Moon Crystal from each dungeon in turn. ...but partway through, things become much more complex, and the story strays from the Moon Crystal quest several times. It's always fun to see what is going to happen next.
At one point, there is a moment where you must amass 75000 gold in order to fund the construction of a new base of operations. And this isn't some sidequest, this is mandatory! The prior dungeon did give you a lot of gold for defeating the boss, but if you decided to spend that on weapon and armour upgrades, you'd better be ready to grind for money!
Honestly, I think it's pretty cool. I do like an RPG that isn't afraid to actually make you pay attention to its various systems, including things like how to earn money effectively.
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As you explore the world, you may notice your compass spinning wildly - this indicates that there is a "discovery" nearby. A discovery is a hidden landmark of some kind, which appears in the overworld when you find it. It could be an ancient artifact, a manmade structure, a strange plant, a local delicacy, a natural phenomenon - there are all sorts of things. Every discovery you find has a little description which tells you more about it - the history, the mythologies, the local legends, and anything else that might be interesting.
When you make a discovery, you can sell the information about its whereabouts to the guild hall in town. You can also buy hints about the locations of discoveries that are yet to be found. When you sell a discovery, you get a lot of money if you found it all by yourself. If you bought a hint beforehand, you get less money, but still a decent amount. And if you leave it for too long, then a rival explorer named Domingo will have found it first. If you sell info for any discoveries marked as "Found by Domingo", then you only earn a paltry sum, just a token prize for reconfirming what they already knew.
I think this system is quite fun - this is a pirate game after all, we're supposed to be in an age of exploration, and the game provides that feeling well enough with these discoveries. This is a great way to flesh out the world with more interesting worldbuilding that allows the game world to feel bigger than what is playable. Some of the discoveries are little villages or towns that you don't get to visit... but just seeing that there are more settlements out there helps the world feel more realised. Plus, the system where Domingo can find them before you adds just a touch of urgency to keep you wanting to look for them. It's fun stuff.
Though it has to be said, some of the discoveries can be very difficult to locate without using an online guide. There are 88 discoveries to find in total, and some of them are in some very hidden spots, and several of them move around! There's a particularly annoying discovery for a swarm of butterflies that flies around the whole world, high in the sky, almost out of view. It's difficult to find them even if you already know exactly what you're looking for. ...
Annoyingly, you do have to contend with a barrage of random enemy encounters while roaming the skies in your ship, so searching for discoveries without a guide can be a tiresome affair.
The guild hall also has another function - it has a selection of wanted posters, and you can choose to accept their quests to defeat the opponent and claim the bounty.
These wanted poster fights can actually be quite a lot higher-levelled than your team is at the point where they become available, which may force you to have to come back later. The prizes from these optional fights tend to be really good though.
I do enjoy when a game gives you the opportunity to fight way overpowered foes. Because it gives a particularly tactically-minded player an opportunity to test their knowledge of the combat system.
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Your party members can equip one weapon, one armour, and one accessory each.
Sometimes the armour has specific attributes, such as "strong versus fire", but, to be honest... most of the time, I'm going to be equipping the armour with the best stats, and if the extra attributes ever end up helping, that's just a circumstantial lucky moment, I guess. I wonder if it would be beneficial to plan my equipment with the enemies in mind... but wouldn't that require me to already know what my foe is like before I fight them? 🤔
Well, it is actually possible to swap your equipment mid-battle in this game, which is good. But, I never...remember to. Haha. It's always a fiddly kind of thing to remember to do that.
The fact that there is only one accessory slot for each character is a little bit limiting. Because I found myself settling on a "favourite" accessory I never wanted to take off, which means that, for every new one I acquired, I would look at it, and then immediately disregard it because it wasn't better than my favourite.
For Vyse, I kept the Captain's Hat on him for the majority of the game, an accessory that significantly boosts Attack. For Aika, I eventually settled on an accessory that blocks status conditions, which is super-useful in avoiding being completely devastated when bosses use party-wide status-inflicting attacks.
The game has all sorts of accessories with all sorts of effects, but with the limitation of only one slot per character, I don't think there is much opportunity to make use of them all. Because I'm never going to want to remove the Captain's Hat from Vyse, the strength bonus is just too crazy good to not keep.
Even though it would make the game easier, I think it would actually be more interesting if characters had two accessory slots to work with. They could also make some bosses harder to compensate, right? Oh well.
Thankfully, whenever it's time to say goodbye to a temporary party member, all of their gear goes back in the inventory. It's good that I don't have to worry about them losing my stuff.
In addition to equipping your party members, you can also equip your airship with equipment. Various different cannons and various different armour platings and furnishings. Again, the slots are annoyingly limited, which means that some of the more unique items get left on the wayside in favour of the more practical ones.
The ship's stats are useful for the ship combat, which is a whole thing separate from the regular combat system..
...I guess I should talk about the combat system then!
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The regular combat system is for the most part a typical turn-based JRPG combat system, though it does have a few unique aspects that make it stand out.
Your available commands are:
Attack, Magic, Super Moves, Focus, Defend. ...and Run.
Each party member has their own HP and MP, and there is also a shared party-wide SP gauge.
The SP gauge is always reset to its default value at the beginning of every battle, while HP and MP are persistent. The default SP value increases as your party members' "Spirit" stat increases via level-ups, though it doesn't increase very often.
Regular attacks are interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, you have the ability to select an elemental affinity for your weapon at any time, just by pressing the X and Y buttons to toggle between them. There are six elements, each corresponding to the colours of the six moons.
Unfortunately, it's a little difficult to actually make good decisions about your element, because the game never actually gives you information about the opponent's elements at all.
There is one boss fight against two guardians, one fiery and one icy, where it's pretty obvious, but aside from that, I never found it necessary to particularly care about what element my weapon was.
The elemental chart is shown in the game's instruction booklet, and it's kind of interesting - it's not particularly balanced at all. Fire and Ice are strong versus each other, of course... and Silver weapons don't have any elements that resist them at all. So if you are ever in doubt for which element to use, Silver will at least never be detrimental.
The other thing regular attacks have is that they can be countered. Any time you use a regular attack, there is a chance that the enemy will immediately respond with their own regular attack.
This actually goes both ways too - regular attacks from enemies can be countered by the player's party too. Which is pretty fun.
But this does lead to some interesting strategic decisions - if you are fighting a boss with particularly strong attacks, it might be a problem if they can get too many hits on the same character in a single turn. So it might actually be a good idea to select Defend instead of Attack in these cases, to eliminate the risk of taking a counterattack. It's an interesting little wrinkle in the combat system.
Every magic spell costs 1 MP to use, plus some of the partywide SP gauge. The SP cost is variable depending on the spell, but the MP cost is always 1.
All characters learn the same list of spells, but different characters learn them at different rates. Fina learns spells the quickest, and by the end of the game, it is likely she will have learned every spell in the game. Vyse learns spells at an average rate, and he will probably not have learned every spell by the end, but it could be done if you wanted to grind.
The element of spell you learn depends on which element weapon you finish combat with. If you set your weapon to green, then you will earn some Green Magic EXP. This applies to the whole party, not just the wielder, so you can have your whole team learn four colours at once by making sure everyone has their weapons set to different elements. .... this is the other reason why I never particularly bothered to care about the elemental effectiveness system when choosing my weapon colours - learning spells was a way more important reason to swap elements!
The spells are... honestly, I never felt like using them as much as my other options. At the beginning of the game, MP is quite limited. And towards the end of the game, my SP was FAR better used for doing Super Moves rather than magic.
Magic is useful between battles for healing, though, since the SP cost is irrelevant outside of battle. Even a strong partywide heal still just costs 1 MP. That's pretty good.
The best spells to use are the heals, revives, and party buffs.
The worst spells to use are the enemy debuffs. Because... debuffing basically never works in this game. ... it's a common problem with older RPGs, where trying to cast debuffs on enemies often fails and wastes your turn. And Skies of Arcadia, sorry to say, is one of the worst examples of this problem I have seen. I have basically never gotten a debuff to work against a boss. And for regular enemies, there's no point in trying to debuff them when I could just damage them instead. ...
Another reason why spells aren't so great is because of items. There are items that basically do the same job a spell does. Healing, buffing, and even casting offensive magic, there are items that can do all of these things. And the difference is, it doesn't cost any SP at all to use an item!
Quite often, I wouldn't have enough SP to use both a Super Move and heal on the same turn.... unless I stopped trying to heal with magic, and instead healed with an item. Then it's all good!
The downside of using items is that you have to spend money on buying more of them if you use them a lot... Which is fine for the game-wide balance, but for the in-the-moment balance, items are just plain better than spells. Which is a bit of a shame.
So, the Super Moves, unlike magic, are unique per character. They are learned by finding rare Moonberries, and using them on your party members, which unlocks their super moves. Moonberries are found in chests throughout the game, but they are also rare drops from certain enemies, so they are not a finite resource. (though they aren't good for anything other than unlocking super moves, so farming too many spare moonberries doesn't do you any good).
Super Moves are strong and unique attacks. Most Super Moves focus on dealing high amounts of damage, and they cost large amounts of SP to use. There are also some with unique effects too.
Vyse has the best super moves for dealing with single enemies. Cutlass Fury in the earlygame, and Pirate's Wrath in the endgame. They are Vyse's main heavy damage-dealers, and you always want to go for these moves during bosses.
Vyse also gets an interesting super move, Skull Shield, that makes the team immune to regular attacks and counters, though it doesn't do anything if the enemy chooses to do something other than a regular attack... some strategy may be required to make good use of some of these moves, it seems.
Aika has the best super moves for dealing with groups of enemies. Lambda Burst hits every enemy, and does a lot of damage as long as they aren't resistant to magic. Her lategame move Omega Psyclone is even stronger. She also has a unique skill called Epsilon Mirror, which renders her completely immune to damage for one turn and restores 10 MP.
Because of this MP restoration, I used Aika as my main healer between battles. Whenever she got low on MP mid-dungeon from all the between-battle healing, I'd make sure to get into a battle and use an Epsilon Mirror to get it all back for free. Free healing, no wasted potions. Pretty sweet!
Fina's super moves are interesting, as she has the ability to remove enemy buffs with Lunar Cleansing, cast regeneration on the team with Lunar Blessing, and with her most powerful super move, Lunar Light, she can completely revive all allies to maximum HP, including downed allies. That certainly came pretty handy in the hardest endgame fights.
I would say that, overall, Aika has the most useful super moves. If you keep getting into encounters with groups of enemies, Lambda Burst can very often just kill the majority of them right away. It's super good. Especially when dealing with lower-level enemies who you just want to get rid of. There were definitely entire dungeons I traversed where my strategy for every encounter was to just open with Lambda Burst right away.
Focus is pretty simple - it spends your turn in exchange for adding some SP to the gauge. This is useful when you really need Vyse to use Cutlass Fury next turn. Having a buffer of SP is good.
And Defend will reduce any damage by half. Very useful if you want to keep Fina alive, since she is on the frail side, and her incredibly useful super moves aren't so good if she's dead. :(
.... Overall, I actually really enjoy the mechanics of this battle system. The partywide SP gauge is the main unique element that makes this game stand out. It's quite a strategic system, and some of the tougher bosses can be a real exciting test of endurance!
However...... the biggest problem with this battle system is that everything is really really slow! As a 2000s-era JRPG, the animations, the camera zooms, everything is just.... so.... slow... :(
You really do have to just accept that this is a slow-paced combat system, and just take it as it comes. Otherwise you'll get too frustrated and impatient. Slow down, leave your modern expectations at the door, and learn to enjoy it as it comes. ... ... ... ...Yeah, even then, I still wish it wasn't so slow.
There is a way to skip some of the super move animations, but it requires you to press the Start button at the very beginning of the animation. If you wait too long, the animation becomes unskippable. ... .... I'm not sure why that is. I actually didn't realise you could skip animations until a significant way through the game because the input is so specific. That's no good.
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And as I mentioned, there's also an entirely separate combat system for fighting enemy ships. Ship-to-ship naval combat!
In these types of battles, you see a timeline that shows the enemy ship's status for the next four turns - green means no significant threat, yellow means a strong attack, red means a very strong attack, and if there's a "C" icon, it means they are extra vulnerable that turn. ...you have to then place four commands, one on each turn, in order to make the best of the situation. For example, if the "C" icon is on a red turn, that means you'll have to risk taking heavy damage in order to deal more damage to them. Or you could play it safe and defend on the red turn, and miss out on the bonus damage.
Your options are to shoot your equipped cannons, use magic, focus for SP, or defend.
In this system, even the regular cannonfire costs SP to use, so you do need to manage your SP well.
Occasionally, some turns will be marked with a special cannon icon, which indicates that your super-cannon is possible to use on that turn. It costs a ton of SP to fire, but is also the main way to make a dent in an otherwise heavily-guarded enemy. You always want to be able to hit as many of those special cannon opportunities as possible.
Between rounds, you also get dialogue choices that affect what the next set of four turns will look like. The choices can be things like, "Vyse, should we approach from the top, or should we stay back?"
Depending on your choice, the timeline will look different, though it is not always obvious which choice leads to which outcome.
.....so, these naval combat sequences are honestly my least-favourite part of the game. And the main reason for that is that...... oh man, if you thought the regular combat was slow-paced, these naval combat scenes are GLACIAL. They are ridiculously slow. It's absurd. During one of these battles, you are very often just watching the screen, looking at two ships flying in the sky near each other, with nothing but fancy camera angles going on for an extended period of time. It's ridiculous. Between each turn in a round, there's like 5 to 10 seconds of just NOTHING happening. It's absurdly slow.
I wonder if it was designed like this in order to give the naval battles more gravitas? Since it is a battle between two huge war ships, it should feel grand and heavy, right? ....but I think it is a real detriment to the game, unfortunately. I really do wish there was a way to skip these slow animations and just focus on the strategising, which is the good part.
oh well. anyway. what next.
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The dungeon design in this game starts off very straightforward. In fact, it's not until the third or fourth dungeon before you start seeing any branching paths to any significant degree. The dungeons start off straightforward and easygoing, so all you need to really worry about is making progress and fighting the enemies.
Later dungeons do introduce some more decisions to make about which path to take, but it never really becomes too complicated.
The dungeons are nicely varied in terms of aesthetics and enemy design, which makes each one stand out and feel unique, despite the simple layouts. It works out fine overall. I wouldn't call the dungeon designs one of this game's strengths, but they do their job and are on the whole not a chore to explore.
The most annoying dungeon was the mine with lots of trapdoors, where if you take the wrong trapdoor, it leads back to the beginning. This one is especially annoying because you're not allowed to leave until you get to the end, but there isn't a save point until just before the boss. ..... This means you have to basically solve the whole dungeon just to save. I really wish they just put a save point in the room you land in after taking the wrong trapdoor. It's a bit of a bad oversight in my opinion.
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This game has a hidden "Swashbuckler rating" that determines Vyse's reputation as a pirate.
When you get enough points, your title will upgrade. You get swashbuckler points by selecting the correct dialogue options during the cutscenes. You always want to go for the options that make Vyse sound cool and brave and heroic. If you get the choice between something like "We have to rescue them right away!" versus something like "Maybe we shouldn't go in there just yet...", well, the more heroic option gives you more points.
Your Swashbuckler rank starts off as "Vyse the Unimpressive", and as you continue making the correct dialogue choices in cutscenes, the rating can improve. "Vyse the Determined", "Vyse the Admirable", "Vyse the Valiant", allll the way up to the maximum rank, "Vyse the Legend". I believe Legend rank also has some additional requirements too, such as attaining 100% completion in other areas. I'm not too sure on the specifics.
The rank doesn't affect much - some NPCs will mention it, and shopkeepers will be honoured to greet Vyse with a high ranking, which is a cute detail.
There are a few bonuses you get for managing to reach Legend rank, including Vyse's ultimate weapon, as well as a bonus secret boss fight. These are cool rewards. :D
Other than these, though, it's not all that important.
There is a specific interaction where, if you accept one particular wanted poster quest, Vyse's rank temporarily becomes "Vyse the Fallen Pirate". This is because the wanted poster is for a Vyse imposter, named "Vize", who has been going around stealing and tricking people and sullying Vyse's good name. I think this is a funny detail, I like it when story elements can affect the game systems like this, it's cool. And of course, defeating the imposter restores Vyse's reputation back to where it should be.
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Later in the game, once Vyse properly becomes captain of his own ship, we establish a base on Crescent Isle, and Vyse also can start assembling his crew.
This system actually reminded me quite a lot of Suikoden. It works in a similar way. You can find recruitable crew members all over the world - if they have their own name and a cool character design, it's a good sign that they might be someone you can recruit. Some of them will join right away, but others may require you to meet some sort of criteria before they can join.
There are 22 crew members to find in total. .... not quite the 108 from Suikoden, eh? But still, it's a sizable sidequest to find everyone.
Each crew member has a role, and there are two of each role to find in the game. You can toggle between the two characters for each role, each one providing some kind of mutually-exclusive bonus during ship battles. For example, there are two Engineers: Brabham, or Hans. If you have Brabham active, your ship gets +20 defense. If you have Hans active, then your ship instead gets +20 magic defense.
Some of the crew members are actually usable as commands during a ship battle too. There are two Sailors: Marco, or Robinson. Having Marco active will give you a command that doubles your SP mid-battle. Having Robinson active will give you a command that reduces SP cost instead. ...To be honest, some of these differences don't actually make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things...
Each character will appear aboard your ship somewhere, and they have unique and story-relevant dialogue if you go and talk to them. It can be very fun to see what everyone has to say in between each story beat, but in practice, it's really annoying to actually do this, because they only appear on the ship if they are the currently-active member of their role. The other ones just disappear when you unequip them. So in order to see all the dialogue, you have to do the rounds of your ship, talk to everyone, then toggle all 11 roles to the other option, then do the rounds and talk to the everyone again.
I honestly wish that all 22 members were just always visible and interactable on the ship at all times, without having to fiddle around in the menus to get them to appear. That kind of annoys me to be honest.
But I guess it makes sense, the idea is that you only need one member of each role aboard at a time, that's the whole reason you gotta choose in the first place. ...But I kinda just want to see all the dialogue lol. The actual gameplay differences between each crew member isn't so important.
Each crew member also takes their place in Crescent Isle. Some of them set up shop, while others just hang around and have dialogue. It's really nice just to go around talking to everyone. It's fun to see the island become more lively as you recruit more crew members.
...And this is definitely a rather Suikoden-flavoured aspect of the game, heh. :D
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Overall. ... ... I really really really liked Skies of Arcadia Legends! It has such a fun cast of characters, the story is well-presented and interesting, and the combat system is quite deep despite its slow pace. I'm super happy to have played this lovely RPG that's been in my backlog for an incredibly long time. I do wish that if Sega ever releases this game for modern platforms, they include a battle speed-up button!
