[gamebabble] Skies of Arcadia Legends (GC)
Story
Teenagers Vyse (M) and Aika (F) have been living peacefully with the pirate band "The Blue Rogues" since they were born. One day, they save a young woman, Fina, who's being pursued by the wicked Valuan Empire. Fina's been tasked by her homeland, the Silvite society, to recover the Crystals of Elemental Power from the world below, but the Valuans want those crystals for themselves. When the Valuans discover that Fina is with the Blue Rogues, they attack the Blue Rogues' base.
Vyse and Aika decide to help Fina on her quest, at first because it will thwart the wicked Valuans, but later on, their mission becomes much more serious because the world itself is at stake. If you've watched adventure anime (specifically "Castle in the Sky") or played a JRPG in the last fifteen years, you won't find anything to surprise you in Skies of Arcadia's story. But it's very cute and presented well--about which more in "Look and Feel."
Gameplay
SoA has standard dungeon-crawling with random encounters and bosses, and ship-to-ship battles in the sky. In each case, your party has both MP and SP. Magic uses one MP and a certain amount of SP per cast, and the Special Moves specific to individual characters just use SP. You assign specific elemental properties to each character's weapon, and when your party defeats monsters, they gain magic XP that goes toward their learning new spells of the equipped element.
This is all nice in concept, and would seem to be complex, but what combat amounted to after awhile was...
(1) random encounter: Aika clears the field of weak enemies with an AoE, and Vyse and Enrique (Valuan prince who joins your party) whittle down tougher monsters with single-target SP attacks
(2) boss/ship-to-ship: play defensively until you can break out one of the "kaboom" special attacks.
Straight-up elemental magic was useless, and debuffs (silence, confuse, blind, etc.) almost never worked. The element on your weapon doesn't matter at all once you get good enough weapons, except to help you learn more spells.
So the combat was no great shakes. But there are plenty of side quests you can do!
Look and Feel
This category is the superstar of the game. The main characters are all extremely cute, and have a contagious enthusiasm. When they say they're going to overcome their current problem, and grin broadly as they say it, you believe them. :) Their facial expressions are great, too, and the cut scenes are nicely cinematic, with "panning" and interesting camera angles. The battles are also handled cinematically, which takes a little time, but I thought it was pretty cool. And you can skip the special attack animations if you want.
The dungeons are the usual parade of fire, ice, water, and (trendy in 2002) circuits-and-sterility. Although thematically not all that interesting, the dungeon graphics are good and often have a sense of space and "bigness." Some are straightforward, and some have minor puzzles to solve. All, of course, have treasure for the looting if you peer in all the corners!
The music is very good throughout, well-suited for high-flying adventure. One of the boss themes is running through my head even three days later.
It's hard to slap a number on this game. Many of the good points were undermined by bad ones, but not strongly enough to kill the fun. The battles and bosses, for example, were a strange combination of boring/easy (difficulty) and cool (special attack animations and music). The overall cheery vibe suffers under the 9500th iteration of "collect the crystals and save the world from the power-crazed general" plot. The sky, seemingly limitless and free for exploration, was hemmed in by walls for 90% of the game. And so on.
Enjoyable, but slight. I gave it two stars on Backloggery, which puts it in the "decent" zone. 6/10
Teenagers Vyse (M) and Aika (F) have been living peacefully with the pirate band "The Blue Rogues" since they were born. One day, they save a young woman, Fina, who's being pursued by the wicked Valuan Empire. Fina's been tasked by her homeland, the Silvite society, to recover the Crystals of Elemental Power from the world below, but the Valuans want those crystals for themselves. When the Valuans discover that Fina is with the Blue Rogues, they attack the Blue Rogues' base.
Vyse and Aika decide to help Fina on her quest, at first because it will thwart the wicked Valuans, but later on, their mission becomes much more serious because the world itself is at stake. If you've watched adventure anime (specifically "Castle in the Sky") or played a JRPG in the last fifteen years, you won't find anything to surprise you in Skies of Arcadia's story. But it's very cute and presented well--about which more in "Look and Feel."
Gameplay
SoA has standard dungeon-crawling with random encounters and bosses, and ship-to-ship battles in the sky. In each case, your party has both MP and SP. Magic uses one MP and a certain amount of SP per cast, and the Special Moves specific to individual characters just use SP. You assign specific elemental properties to each character's weapon, and when your party defeats monsters, they gain magic XP that goes toward their learning new spells of the equipped element.
This is all nice in concept, and would seem to be complex, but what combat amounted to after awhile was...
(1) random encounter: Aika clears the field of weak enemies with an AoE, and Vyse and Enrique (Valuan prince who joins your party) whittle down tougher monsters with single-target SP attacks
(2) boss/ship-to-ship: play defensively until you can break out one of the "kaboom" special attacks.
Straight-up elemental magic was useless, and debuffs (silence, confuse, blind, etc.) almost never worked. The element on your weapon doesn't matter at all once you get good enough weapons, except to help you learn more spells.
So the combat was no great shakes. But there are plenty of side quests you can do!
- You can explore the world and make discoveries, racing against another explorer named Domingo.
- Once Vyse gets his own Headquarters, you can gather crew for your ship and remodel your base. It's like a Suikoden castle with less customization.
- You can gather Moonfish in towns and dungeons for prizes and a minor addition to the main storyline.
- You can collect a handful of bounties for an extra challenge. --You can track down a few Named Monsters.
- You can even fish in the sky (sort of), but I never figured out what the big deal was with that.
Look and Feel
This category is the superstar of the game. The main characters are all extremely cute, and have a contagious enthusiasm. When they say they're going to overcome their current problem, and grin broadly as they say it, you believe them. :) Their facial expressions are great, too, and the cut scenes are nicely cinematic, with "panning" and interesting camera angles. The battles are also handled cinematically, which takes a little time, but I thought it was pretty cool. And you can skip the special attack animations if you want.
The dungeons are the usual parade of fire, ice, water, and (trendy in 2002) circuits-and-sterility. Although thematically not all that interesting, the dungeon graphics are good and often have a sense of space and "bigness." Some are straightforward, and some have minor puzzles to solve. All, of course, have treasure for the looting if you peer in all the corners!
The music is very good throughout, well-suited for high-flying adventure. One of the boss themes is running through my head even three days later.
It's hard to slap a number on this game. Many of the good points were undermined by bad ones, but not strongly enough to kill the fun. The battles and bosses, for example, were a strange combination of boring/easy (difficulty) and cool (special attack animations and music). The overall cheery vibe suffers under the 9500th iteration of "collect the crystals and save the world from the power-crazed general" plot. The sky, seemingly limitless and free for exploration, was hemmed in by walls for 90% of the game. And so on.
Enjoyable, but slight. I gave it two stars on Backloggery, which puts it in the "decent" zone. 6/10