hey gamers its me dwarme whats up its 2/22/2021 and this is my written review of skies of arcadia for the sega dreamcast

if youve never played skies of arcadia before prepare for a large dose of enlightenment from which you may never recover from because im about to spit some hot truths about this old ass video game from 20 years ago

skies of arcadia is a jrpg and if you dont know what jrpg means shame on you but ill let you in on a little secret it stands for japanese role-playing game and these are usually lengthy endeavors in which you control one or more people over the course of anywhere from like 20 to 120 hours!! yeah!!!! some jrpgs are 120 hours long ITS FUCKED!!!

this jrpg probably averages around 40-50 hours for an uninitiated person's (such as myself) first playthrough which is not too shabby for a jrpg theres a heaping helping of content and story and character development and things happen and you go from one place to another until eventually you win

thats the skinny of it but of course this review doesnt end there because that would be a pretty shitty review and below even the dumbass likes of me theres a lot going on with this game than meets the eye and id really like to start getting a bit deeper into it

so the main heros name is vyse and hes a young inexperienced sky pirate who lives on an island with other sky pirates and his dad is a sky pirate who leads the army of sky pirates on the island and pretty much his entire life revolves around being a sky pirate which is very much reflected in his character design from the fact he dual wields cutlasses to his fancy blue clothes to the goggles that only covers one eye

if goggles only cover one eye is that just a goggle? up to you i guess

vyses childhood bestie is a girl named aika and shes kind of cool i guess despite her hair looking really fucking stupid but over time it kind of grew on me and i like her hair now? kind of fits the dumb bitch that she is so it works out

while vyse and aika are out and about they get attacked by The Evil Empire which is not actually called The Evil Empire but instead is called the valuan empire which is similar enough to the trope that it doesnt matter which you call it and the valuan empire is trying to kidnap this girl and vyse is all like hell no and rescues her and its kiiiind of epic

her name is fina and shes the next character you meet shes beautiful demure and would probably carry a child pretty easily if given half a chance so vyse of course devotes himself to her and her quest and oh yeah she has a quest which is to collect all of this worlds chaos emeralds(moon crystals) and bring them back to the land that she hails from to prevent the world from getting destroyed by giant murder robots

now this is a review and not a plot synopsis but i wanted to give some insight into my minimal examination of the story and where it is going and of course there are some twists and turns that keep things interesting and overall the story is actually kind of strong! not all jrpgs have strong stories sometimes they suck shit and theyre filled to the brim with anime cliches and are otherwise generic as can be whereas this game is kind of generic (collect crystals WOO ADVENTURE ON TEH OPEN SEAZ) but is given some added spiciness by some quality of life wrenches that are thrown into the plot to mix things up a little

you meet other characters too because like most jrpgs you often have a party of four you adventure with and sometimes people stay in the party and other times they leave so i wouldnt get too attached to anybody but the main character and aika really the others sometimes dip in and out when the plot demands it

these other characters are a moby dick chasing old man captain ahab sort named drachma who is all like MAN THE HARPOONS IM GOING IN DRY for a giant purple whale a royal prince dubbed enrique who betrays the valuan empire and joins you in your fight to kill his family and friends back home and theres also a suave debonair pick up artist piece of shit named glider who is seen the least in the game and for good reason hes kind of boring and doesnt add too much hes just that small round sunglasses ladies man whos always flirting with women and its one of those anime cliches that i dont like and he doesnt really develop much as a character fuck him

theres other key players in this too but ill leave it to you to actually play the game to find out about them instead of reading a review online and pretending that you can consider having completed the game vicariously through me its worth playing and now that ive gotten the story and characters out of the way i can actually start sinking my teeth into the good stuff

GAME PLAY

the game is a turn based jrpg and if you want to bitch out now and never pick up this game i cant blame you because some people love them and other people hate them and this game does have some flaws that are prevalent in the genre

you either walk around on land or you sail around the world map in your ship(this is one of the cooler parts of the game) and as you travel about sometimes the game will take your head in its large hand and slam you up against the wall with a RANDOM ENCOUNTER these are when you go into battle and have to fight enemies

these enemies arent really much to look at theyre doing the best they can with the limitations of the dreamcasts hardware but a lot of them are just kind of unremarkable and theres not a huge variety of enemies you often find a few unique ones but theres even more that end up just being recolors you see time and time again throughout your journey

you can do a few things in combat though that make this a tad different than the usual "attack spell item run" combat of most jrpgs because not only do you have mp you also have SPIRIT!!! which is another resource that you have to manage throughout the fight that adds a little complexity although if you think things out strategically you end up finding some pretty easy ways to abuse it

so in this game all spells cost 1 mp no matter how strong they are which seems a little broken right i mean theres a spell that always instantly kills an enemy and if its a boss thats immune to it itll do a shit-ton of damage and it only costs 1 mp kind of fucked but thats where spirit comes into play every turn you automatically regenerate a set amount of spirit points and not only do spells cost mp they also require some spirit too so while every spell only costs 1 mp they can also cost anywhere from 1 spirit to like 15 spirit! you can also use a thing called "focus" which essentially makes you sit there undefended and you cant attack but you generate additional spirit for the next turn

spirit is shared between all your characters too so if you want to blow your greasy little load all on that aforementioned instant kill spell with its 15 spirit requirement thatll be one character who can do a spell on your turn and then the rest of your party has to sit there with their thumbs up their asses which means they either have to be spirit bitchboys who use focus or they have to defend or do their measly normal attack not a super effective way to play especially later on!

so its neat to have this thing you have to balance called spirit and it makes you really evaluate the flow of a battle and when you should be defending or focusing or when you should be going all out with your spells and special abilities

oh yeah special abilities

they dont cost any mp! but they have high spirit requirements typically too the instant kill spell costs 15 spirit but vyses ultimate special ability costs 21 so thats quite an investment to make but the attack is devastating

ive personally found though that special abilities are almost universally better than using spells besides using a buff(a spell that increases the stats of a character) or maybe a heal if youre low on items and on top of that they also look way cooler than the spells

theyre fucking spectacular sights to see and grandiose and fun to watch but if you end up relying too much on them and you dont want to watch a 30 second cutscene every time you use them this game is super chill about that and lets you skip them so thats a nice little bonus because apparently in the original japanese version of this game you couldnt skip them and goddamn that mustve sucked for those poor eastern asia people

if theres one thing id suggest though if youre going up against a boss try to skip those ability cutscenes as least as possible or if you do skip them ALWAYS watch the finishing blow unfold its worth it to see that fucker who was beating your ass get sent into space torn to shreds by the sonic blows of your weapon attacking at high speeds and then blown up into a thousand little pieces as the jolly roger looks down at your masterful sword play

you unlock the special moves by using moonberries and while you can find them as random drops from the enemy at the end of a battle theyre quite rare and the easiest way to find them is to EXPLORE and TALK TO PEOPLE DO QUESTS HAVE FUN this is a jrpg and the devs put a lot of effort into the world building and giving you a lot of nooks and crannies to explore and they almost always reward you for going out of your way to explore and it really pays off to do it so FUCKING DO IT EXPLORE EXPLORE EXPLORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :_)

i mentioned a few paragraphs back that bosses will beat your ass and i wasnt joking about that at all but one of the nice things about this game is if your party gets wiped and you get a game over you have the option to continue the fight which starts you at the beginning of the battle with all the items and such that you had to start with so as long as you keep trying you can beat them i personally didnt game over too much at all although i did do a few boneheaded things and got killed from time to time but the game is challenging but fair which is nice for a jrpg because they usually dont handle difficulty too well its either too hard or too easy but with skies of arcadia its juuuust right

one thing i dont like about the random encounters though is the simple fact that theres so fucking many of them in this game sometimes youll walk a few steps and get into a battle beat it then take two more steps and be in another battle rinse repeat and its so goddamn frustrating and turns some of the more labyrinthine maps into an absolute slog to get through and while i always explored each dungeon as much as possible sometimes it was really painful to go off the beaten path to explore because i knew that would add like 5 more battles than i really needed to go through but thank fuck this game is good about rewarding you for exploring so its not too often that i was left empty-handed for all the effort i put in

the game also punishes you by lowering your swashbuckling rating if you run from battles which is a rating system that gives you a title depending on how "brave" you act either with your story choices or how many battles you run from so id really suggest not running even though youll be wishing you did after the millionth random encounter plays out this game i can tell you already is not for the impatient or faint of heart

the swashbuckling rating is kind of stupid too because it going up or down in rank is the only consequence of making story choices in cutscenes but theres no benefit at all for having a low ranking so you end up having to pick the most generically "bravest" choices making the point of having choices in the first place kind of moot i sort of fucked up for half of the game for picking the asshole story choices just for the fun of it before i realized i wasnt seeing any benefit at all for my troubles and swashbuckler ranking is important because it allows you to recruit crew members for your ship who want to have a captain with an esteemed reputation

oh by the way you do have a ship in skies of arcadia the sky pirate video game and you get to fly around the world map and its pretty dope there are "discoveries" you can encounter throughout your journey by pressing the examine button on landmarks and then you get a popup that tells you a little bit of the lore about the place you discovered and then you can go back to a sailors guild and sell the information on the discovery for money its just another neat way the devs encourage you to explore

as i said earlier you can also recruit people and this is really fun because at any time on the world map you can actually go into the cabin of your ship and talk to the people you recruited and depending where you are in the game theyll say different things and its neat to see peoples different takes

on top of that you also get special airship battles at certain points throughout the game where you go into a one on one battle with either a boss or an enemy space pirate and you have to shoot the enemy down with your cannons while taking opportune moments to do evasive action or use your crew members to give you special abilities or recover your hp/spirit or fire spell bombs or torpedoes or whatever the fuck you want theyre pretty fun to do and add even more variety to the game to keep it interesting

also later in the game you get your own sky pirate base where all the people you recruit hang out when theyre not swabbing your poop deck and you can upgrade it and customize it to a degree thats pretty goddamn radical i really really love little details like this like being able to change your fountain from some bare-bones bullshit to a giant space alien that spins around and barfs water out of its mouth into the fountain below if theres one thing i wish for this game its that it had more customization options and more ways to spend your money because you end up having a lot of dosh near the end and not a lot to spend it on

now that ive written all this down i think the review is nearing its end and theres a few more kind of generic things i want to say that still hold some meaning to me but usually exist in reviews as fluff but i really do like the graphics of this game one of the nicer things about it is that all the characters emote very well and their facial expressions change between scenes without relying on a character portrait near the text box to do that the spell effects and special abilities especially of the enemy are also really great too the final boss has some particularly silly but amazing ones that i dont want to spoil for you but they make me crack the fuck up every time i see them its so good trust me the music of this game also pwns pretty hard and a big reason i chose the dreamcast version of this game to play when theres also a gamecube one is because the gamecube version REALLY fucks up the music of this game and makes me not be able to recommend it over the original despite the extra content it provides

overall i really liked this game a lot it has its flaws such as the absolutely obnoxious encounter rate but it has way more positive aspects to make up for that to the point while i wont call it my favorite jrpg ever made its definitely high up on my list and at the moment probably could be a contender for a top 10 list here are now some numerical ratings if that sort of thing appeals to you ill do my best to weigh them carefully for your consideration

SKIES OF ARCADIA REVIEW SCORE
gameplay: 8/10
music: 9/10
graphics: 8/10
controls: 9.5/10
story: 8/10

total: 8.5/10 (GREAT!)