Skies of Arcadia: Legends

Skies of Arcadia Legends is a port of the Dreamcast’s Skies of Arcadia with enhanced graphics and additional side quests. The game is mediocre, with a forgettable storyline, a cast of one-dimensional characters and has a broken item system. The game’s high points are the cinematic air battles and the traversable 3D environment, but everything else about the game is as generic as JRPGs get. Skies of Arcadia Legends is only recommended for fans of the genre.

You play as Vyse, a young Blue Pirate raiding a Valuan airship. Blue Pirates are essentially Robin Hood-like figures who steal from the evil Valuans and give to the poor. During the raid, Vyse is accompanied by his childhood friend Aika and the two eventually meet a mysteriously dressed captive named Fina. The two rescue Fina, only to discover that she is the most wanted person by the Valuans. Subsequently, while Vyse and Aika go on an exploratory mission, their hometown gets destroyed and the Valuans capture most of the Blue Pirates as well as Fina. It is up to Vyse and Aika to rescue their fellow pirates as well as Fina. Eventually the story boils down to Vyse’s crew collecting six different colored Moonstones, that when combined, are capable of destroying the world and they must do this before the Valuans do.

If you’re expecting an epic tale of drama, love and bravery, prepare to be disappointed. There is no richness or complexity behind the story. Vyse never grows as a character and all he does is spout cliché lines like “I’ll never give up” and “I’ll try my hardest”. There is no character development and you’ll never learn the background of our heroes, with the exception of Fina. The only reason she has a backstory to begin with is to progress the story. When the plot is at a standstill, Fina will suddenly remember something and reminisce to the party. The story is kept simple and any attempt to logically think about the plot will make you sigh with disappointment.

No one behaves like you’d expect them to. Aika and Fina who are clearly attracted to Vyse, don’t seem to mind that they both like the same guy. You’d expect some sort of lover’s triangle to arise among the three characters, but nothing happens. In fact, everyone seems to gravitate towards Vyse without any hesitation (only exception is Drachma, an old sailor you meet early on), in order to move the story along.

Lastly you have a main villain who wants to rule the world because he despises everyone. His plan is to rid the world of inhabitants using the Moonstones. That’s about all the game tells you about this guy and it doesn't make for a satisfying final confrontation. Nothing about the story or the characters resonated with me.

The gameplay is split into regular battles and air battles. Regular battles are encountered randomly while piloting your ship or exploring a dungeon. A regular battle plays like a typical turned based battle, you select the actions of your characters and the order of execution is based on the speed stat of the characters and enemies. There are magic attacks and special skill moves. Magic attacks all cost 1 MP to use, but vary in SP. SP is a special pool which is shared among your characters. SP starts relatively low and increases as the battle progresses. SP can be increased by using the Focus command. The quantity of SP resets after each battle. Special skill moves use varying amounts of SP and can be used as many times as possible as long as you have enough SP. Special skills are learned from using Moonberries found in treasure chests and as rare drops. Lastly, you can change the elemental property of a character’s weapon while in battle. By changing the elemental property you can deal bonus damage to enemies weak against that particular element. Also your characters learn magic spells based on which elemental property they have equipped. If all your characters die in battle, you can reset the battle to the beginning with no penalty.

The main issue with the regular battles is that most magic spells are completely useless. Recovery and offensive spells are easily replaced with the use of items which give the same effect without spending MP and SP. These items are available mid-game and are affordable making the task of learning spells a joke. The only spells worth getting are the buffs and debuffs. The ability to change elemental properties of your weapons on the fly isn’t a great as it sounds. To determine the element of your enemy, you have to look at the background of the enemy’s portrait; there is no alternative way. This process is time consuming and not worth the effort.

Another issue is the seemly lengthy battles. There are awkward delays when attacking or using magic. The game appears to have trouble processing these animations quickly. This problem is most noticeable when removing debuffs. Battles with fodder enemies feel like they take 10-20 seconds longer than other JRPGs. Fortunately special attack animations can be skipped.

Air battles are the best feature about this game. Air battles are 1v1 ship duels and play like a turned based battle with a twist. Air battles are often scripted events littered throughout the story, however there are a few enemy ships you can encounter while traversing in your ship. Each of your characters grants a command to the ship. Offensive commands use SP similarly to regular battles. The characters can order an attack depending on which weapons are equipped on the ship such as Main Cannons, Sub-Cannons and Torpedoes. Once that character orders a specific weapon to be used, other characters are not allowed to use that weapon. Characters can also command the ship to use magic spells (consuming 1 MP each), use the special weapon such as the Harpoon Cannon and order the crew to give special buffs to the ship.

The battle grid, often a 5x8 grid, is your battle screen. Each command takes up one column. On the top row of the grid, various indicators show whether your ship will have an advantage or disadvantage. A special pointer indicates that you have a high chance of hitting a target, while a red marker informs you that the enemy is preparing a lethal attack on that column. At some points during an air battle, Vyse will be asked how to maneuver the ship (usually whether to close in or stay afar). If the correct answer is chosen, you’re often able to unleash your special weapon. Choose the incorrect answer and the ship will be put in a disadvantageous position. Similarly to regular battles, if your ship is destroyed you can reset back to the beginning and try again.

The air battles have a cinematic quality to them with multiple camera angles and large battle arenas. They are very impressive to play as well as watch, but are fairly lengthy. Air battles during the mid to late game are often a series of battles that can last up to an hour. The length of these air battles are due to the time delay issues similarly to those found in regular battles. The time required for your ship and the enemy ship to perform one command is excessively long.

The animations are so severe that after I issued all my commands, I had to wait around 2-3 minutes for the next course of action. In addition, similar to the regular battles, recovery spells are completely useless. Items can be used to heal your ship at no cost of SP and MP and are readily available. The Focus command is also obsolete as there is an affordable item (Gear Grease) that recovers more SP than using the Focus command.

When you’re not battling, you are either piloting a ship in a 3D world map or exploring towns and dungeons. Piloting a ship in 3D adds a layer of depth that most other JRPGs lack. Towns and dungeons are only accessible at certain heights and you must ascend or descend your ship to reach them. It’s a great system and promotes the player to explore the whole world. Traversing through towns and dungeons are standard affair, involving talking to NPCs or flipping switches respectfully.

The rest of the gameplay involves collecting Chams, Moonfish, hunting people on the wanted list and finding discoveries (Moonfish and the wanted list are new features added to Skies of Arcadia Legends). Chams are collectable items used to power-up Fina’s weapon, named Cupil. Fina is the only character capable of evolving her weapon in this manner. Chams are invisible and can only be found by listening to Cupil squeak when you’re near a Cham. Moonfish are collectable items used to trade for special items and equipment. Similarly to collecting Chams, to obtain a Moonfish, a specific noise will sound when you are near one. You then go into a first person view and track the Moonfish down. The wanted list is a set of special optional bosses. These optional bosses are hidden and you must use the clues described in the wanted list to track them down. Beating them grants you experience and gold. Lastly, discoveries are special landmarks found while piloting your ship. Finding discoveries will let you learn more about the world. In addition the information of these discoveries can be sold at a Sailor’s Guild.

The optional quests for the most part aren’t enjoyable to pursue. Finding Chams and Moonfish is a boring and tedious task. Without a walkthrough, the only way to find them is to venture everywhere throughout a town/dungeon and listen for a sound queue. The bosses on the wanted list are difficult in an unfair manner. They often use one hit kill moves or area of effect attacks that debilitate your party. The only way I could beat them is to repeatedly use the same special skills (Delta Shield for Aika and Skull Shield for Vyse). These optional bosses become a test of monotony rather than strategy. Discoveries are a great incentive to explore the world, but I didn’t really bother with finding them because obtaining gold is easy. Also going out of my way to find discoveries just means more annoying random encounters.

It’s hard to judge Skies of Arcadia Legends graphically since it was first published more than ten years ago. Reading past reviews, the graphical prowess of this game was impressive at the time. This game still looks amazing, with detailed ships, towns and characters. However the games visual standards are inconsistent with a lack of artistic detail in the dungeons. Most dungeons don’t have any decals or doodads. They’re mostly hedge trap mazes with a graphical template pasted on the walls. Overall, the game’s visual appearance has aged fairly well. The music is okay, nothing memorable about it other than the battle music.

Skies of Arcadia Legends is a competently made game, but not worthy of the hype it has garnered. With great exception to the air battles and exploration elements, the game doesn't do anything extraordinarily special. There were much better JRPGs made when Skies of Arcadia was first released, with better constructed stories, memorable characters with backstories and solid gameplay mechanics (FFIX, Chrono Cross, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment). In Skies of Arcadia Legends, you have a straight to the point plot, a cast of characters that are as flat as a sheet of paper and a broken gameplay mechanic revolving around the use of abundantly cheap items. I haven’t stressed this enough, but Skies of Arcadia Legends is still a great game for JRPG fans. There is a fun air battle mechanic to be had and a large 3D world map to explore. But for those who want to play the best that the genre can offer, I would recommend something else.