RPG Jamboree: Quality Time: Skies of Arcadia Legends (GameCube)

Lands as far as the eye can see. Oceans with depths you can’t begin to fathom. The infinite reaches of outer space. We are not lacking in places of wonder and mystery to expand into and explore, but there is one vast area with almost nothing of note filling it: the sky. Beyond clouds and birds there’s little to find, the bubble of atmosphere above us sadly more a space to pass through than one worthy of note.

 

At least, that’s the case on Earth.

On Arcadia the lands and oceans are uninhabitable and space remains out of reach, so all life must coexist in the clouds. Thousands of feet above the ground in societies that no longer know much about what life would have been like on the surface, people have found ways to thrive on the stretches of stone that manage to float and pass between them thanks to their flying vessels. In Skies of Arcadia Legends though, the sky isn’t merely just the sea without water. Fly high and your navy can gain an incredible advantage in battle, but lower in the sky are the wrecks and remains of those who fell off the small stretches of land that move through the clouds. Entire civilizations were able to rise and fall on isolated rocks with what little evidence of their existence there to be discovered while modern societies are cut off from each other by swirling vortexes or dangerous cloud walls.

The fantasy skies of Skies of Arcadia Legends are rich with discoveries to be made and unique cultures to interact with, this turn-based role-playing game not just creating this new world to uncover but valuing the connections you make between peoples and the friendships you make throughout its story. Strongly building on what it’s created while also feeding into many traditional pirate fantasies, Skies of Arcadia Legends adapts the ideas of the Age of Exploration and piracy, coats them in optimism, and embodies the idea of adventure, it being the kind of game where you can ride an unusual desert beast of burden called the dhabu for a short bit not because it is important, but because it is part of experiencing a great wide world of opportunity.

 

WHERE THERE IS TREASURE, THERE WILL BE AIR PIRATES

Up in the skies of Arcadia, there are two types of pirates. Black Pirates are the ones we are more accustomed to, the kind who loot and pillage for their own gain. However,  a group of more amicable Air Pirates instead sail as Blue Rogues, their thievery aimed instead at military forces of oppressive regimes like the Valuan empire. A Blue Rogue is more likely to help a passing sailor than rob them blind, and the player finds themselves in the boots of one up-and-coming Blue Rogue named Vyse. Beginning on his father’s crew and sailing with his friend since childhood Aika, the story of his life takes a turn when an attempted raid on a Valuan vessel leads to a greater find than treasure.

 

Fina, a girl from a strange land beneath the Silver Moon, has come to Arcadia seeking to help prevent an ancient tragedy from being repeated. Long ago, Rains of Destruction devastated the planet as punishment for the different civilizations of the world creating terrifying beasts of war called Gigases. Ethereal in their design and so powerful little can touch them, the meteor shower that was used to crush these Gigases left the world rebuilding for ages, but now Valua aims to harness the Gigases to assure their power across the skies. While the empire aimed to further their efforts in finding the crystals needed to operate the Gigases by capturing Fina, the Blue Rogue boarding party ends up rescuing her, Vysa and Aika becoming fast friends with her and swearing to help with her goal of protecting the world from another calamity.

With the stage set, the adventure begins, but the three central heroes are a wonderful bunch to watch interact. Vyse is mostly an energetic hero type, but there are a few resonant moments in the adventure as he travels and finds people at their lowest where he truly shines. Vyse balks at the idea of things being impossible, pushing forth with ambition and trying to quash complacency in people so they can rise up and find a dream worth living. Aika isn’t quite so resolute, unable to hide her emotions and leading to many wonderful reactions as she is the one most likely to get frazzled by something absurd, get worked up over an injustice, or express her joy in moments of triumph. The effusive Aika stands in stark contrast with the calm and kind Fina, but the new addition to the group also leads to an evolving friendship and charming growth for the trio as a whole. When Fina joins she barely understands the world she’s in, so seeing her slowly come to make jokes like one of the gang feels like a great step for her coming into her own and learning what she really wants in life. While other characters come and go throughout the plot, this central core is where the game’s most heartwarming and heart-wrenching moments arise. Whether it’s comedy from Aika or sorrowful moments as Fina comes to understand the world in new and sometimes harsh ways, the trio sticking together through thick and thin is the root of many of the game’s most meaningful moments, and yet, they aren’t alone in doing so.

 

Skies of Arcadia Legends has many excellent characters who will weave in and out of the narrative, and one who best embodies the care put into the supporting cast is the old salt called Drachma. When first met, the old man with a mechanical arm is an imposing presence but he seems to mostly just be Captain Ahab from Moby Dick adapted for the sky. His pursuit of the sky whale Rhaknam seems single-minded and simple, and while it is amusing to see how often he’ll dump the group to go pursue it, when he finally begins to show his greater depths, you learn this man is more than his literary inspiration. He’s a more realized man with a true history and one that helps recontextualize what you’ve seen when sailing with him, and he’s only one of many characters whose lives intersect with yours. One of the main villains, Ramirez, has a slow and gradual reveal on his true nature while side content digs deeper into the motivations for his surprising turn to the Valuan Empire. The admirals of the Valuan empire are all recurring characters, having run-ins with your party that can strengthen their resolve or lead to a shift in opinion. An Admiral like the vindictive tech wiz De Loco will only grow more embittered by your constant meddling and provide a perfect foe to show the scummy behavior that Valua values, but other admirals like the flirtatious Admiral Belleza seem to better see where the lines of morality are and doesn’t always know when she should cross them. You’ll come to know your enemies as well as your allies as you sail the skies, the game able to build things up towards effective climaxes and tearful turns of fate as you are given characters to grow attached to and ones you can’t wait to finally trounce.

Skies of Arcadia Legends feels like a cohesive world, in no small part because its settings are treated with equal importance as the characters. When you first visit a place like Nasr, the desert kingdom, it would be easy for the game to move on from the setting to new climes afterwards. However, future events see you exploring different parts of it and it plays a vital part in world events. Skies of Arcadia Legends features six moons and beneath them six lands, but as you travel between them and grow on your adventure, they too are changed by your interaction and the shifts in the global climate. A place where you helped the locals shake off their xenophobia will begin to take its first steps into engaging with the world at large, cities invigorated by your action will start to trade in earnest, and legends and rumors will start spreading across the skies about the latest events. It is somewhat common to head back to a familiar place like the port of Sailor’s Isle for resupply only to find the shopkeepers now marvel at your exploits, people tell half-true tales of things that happened across the globe, and you might even have a few new foes at your neck yearning to earn clout for taking out such an important pirate.

 

Not only does the world feel alive and rich thanks to these touches, but there are more literal Discoveries to be made as well. As you sail about in your airship you will encounter battles, but you can also scour the skies for the stuff legends are made of. Discoveries take the shape of anything peculiar but meaningful out in the skies, some of them out in the open while others only become apparent if you approach in search of them. Following rumors or simply flying towards something strange can help you unearth these special finds, and while there is a cash reward for reporting their existence, they also give you more reason to explore around the sky. Sometimes that will just boil down to hammering the A button in a stretch of sky looking for something invisible, but beyond clues you acquire and the fact your compass spins wildly when near one, you also can sometimes spot something abnormal to draw your attention. The invisible ones and ones that constantly move can be a bit rough, but in general there are still plenty of Discoveries that add a bit more wonder to the world, and though they are optional in nature, it does help contribute again to the feeling there is more to this world than these specific moments in history you’re witnessing.

 

THE PIRATE FANTASY

Skies of Arcadia Legends’s sailing through the skies begins with you as a plucky young man aboard his father’s ship, but the continuing adventure makes sure to rope in plenty of the concepts one would hope to find in a pirate game. There are ship battles, deserted islands, hidden treasures, and since the hero uses a pair of cutlasses, you can expect a good deal of swashbuckling too. One of the more compelling ideas though is building up your crew, this coming up near the middle of the adventure but a wonderful way to pull together the world-building it has done so far. Many characters you have met along the way can be asked to join your crew, their different specialties allowing them to assist during battle, develop new weapons for you, build up a base, and more. United from across the globe, the crew building again cements together this idea of an interconnected set of societies where people aren’t just left behind and forgotten after you’ve dealt with their troubles.

 

For how battles actually unfold though, it’s actually a lot more like Final Fantasy than battling aboard boats. Whether it’s a random battle or a boss, the player must first pick an action for each of their party members to perform on a turn and then that round will unfold with quicker attackers going first. The main consideration in a skirmish though is going to be the SP system, Spirit Points proving to be an incredibly clever way to design a battle system. On each turn your team is given a set amount of SP, and what you do with it is up to you. Basic attacks and items don’t use it, but you also have magic spells and S. Moves you can pull from. Characters do have a set amount of Magic Power, but casting a spell only costs 1 MP no matter what it is. The SP cost though can vary quite a bit, meaning you may want to heal your party or attack and enemy, but if you don’t have the SP for it, you’ll need to wait a turn or two or find some other means of pulling it off. Items can end up having a huge influence because of this, SP-free healing often a vital tool to get around the SP system, but the SP is thankfully not doled out in small drips. Every turn you get more of it based on your party size and current level, and SP you don’t use carries over so you can build it up gradually for bigger techniques.

S. Moves end up in an incredible spot because of this system. Every character can gradually unlock more powerful abilities that only need the right amount of SP to execute, and so many of them are crucial to continued success and yet easy to utilize constantly. Aika’s Delta Shield can block any incoming magic, meaning that the game doesn’t feel afraid to give even basic enemies instant death spells since you can potentially counter them for barely any SP. At the same time, they block your attempts to heal yourself with magic, but healing and buffing items earn a strategic purpose because they get around Delta Shield. Fina has plenty of healing options that draw from SP so they can be used no matter how depleted your magic points or item reserves get, but naturally their cost is proportional to their effect so you may sometimes try to hold out until she can bolster the group for a renewed push. Later acquired abilities like Justice Shield that halves incoming damaging can end up pigeon-holing the user into only using that much of the time, but not only does the game make you frequently consider defensive options, but the SP, while doled out properly, still isn’t so plentiful that you’re spared tough decisions. Skipping a Justice Shield might be justified if you need to build up your group for a turn or the foe may have moments of weakness you need to exploit, and because SP builds up gradually, sometimes strengthening yourself at the start isn’t the move to make since it might be wiser to focus down certain foes to make the battle easier. Even better though, in the shorter random battles, you often get enough SP from the get-go to hit them all with something powerful, the animation easy to skip with a press of the start button so sometimes you can wipe out whole groups with one opening attack and battle time can be better spent instead on later more challenging fights.

 

The Spirit Point balancing act can add a good deal of tension to most any battle, the resource freely provided and reliable but still a limitation you need to work around to succeed. Later on the game does give you some incredibly powerful actions if you build up your SP to max in a fight, including one that wonderfully integrates the crew you’ve been cultivating elsewhere, but there are also effects like Fatigue that prevent SP regeneration a bit. One additional element added to the battle system but not quite as robust are the moon crystals, the player able to change their weapon type to one of six different elemental affiliations based on their color. It does stand to reason that a fire monster should be hit with the purple crystal active since it embodies ice, and shifting element is quick and easy mid-battle, but it does feel like an underplayed part of the battle system comparatively. It’s more important role though is in building your characters up. Leveling up from battle increases their stats, equipment can be bought or found and there isn’t always an objectively best piece of gear to wear, but the moon crystals determine what kind of magic experience you gain from a fight. Magic is learned through earning that experience, and what you know can be crucial to survival. Reviving is often unreliable early on in Skies of Arcadia Legends, items and spells often only having a chance of bringing a person back to life, so gradually learning more powerful healing, revival, and protective spells definitely will motivate you to have the right moon crystals active when a battle ends.

Regular weapon and magic combat is the most common kind of conflict, the player taking on monsters, soldiers, bounties, machines, and more out on their adventures, but your pirate ship isn’t just there to get you around. There are airship battles in Skies of Arcadia Legends, and they utilize the same SP system but with a new balance when it comes to costs. All attacks with an airship utilize SP and the strength of a cannon often determines how costly it is, so it’s more likely you’ll be using things like the Focus command to build some points up or the Guard command to lessen incoming damage for free. Sky battles are often more strategic than the already thoughtful normal combat, partly because committing your actions for a turn is handled differently in them. There will be 3 to 4 attacks per round in a sky battle, the game presenting you with a table to lay out your intended actions for each turn. Both you and the enemy take one action per turn, meaning sometimes you’ll want to counter them or defend based on the few clues you have about their behavior. The table shows you when the enemy will likely be aggressive or use special attacks with yellow and red squares, but you also have turns where you’ll have an advantage or ones where you can use your costly but powerful special weapon. You’ll inevitably take damage in airship fights quite a bit and need to work to balance the easily expended Spirit Points, but you also have options like calling on Crew for special help as well as versions of your regular spells altered to suit the sky battle.

 

Some ship battles are almost more puzzles than tests of strength, the Gigases especially asking for more than just firepower to deal with, and many times you’ll be asked to make a decision that can potentially put you in jeopardy or earn you an advantage if you guess right on things like whether to press the attack or attempt to fly behind the enemy. Ship battles are less frequent than normal battles which helps to make it easier to forgive a few little problems in their design. One consistent quibble is the ship battles are fairly slow, periods where you just see ships repositioning rather than doing their next attack unfortunately a bit common. You can’t control the position of your ship too much and the same goes for your party in regular battles, and yet your positioning can sometimes impact attacks like magic spells hitting an area or in ship battles whether cannons can even target a foe. The ship battles leaning more on strategy and generally being longer fights by design means they’re not often there just to get in the way or provide chances to level up, but the ship battles do feel like they get stronger the deeper into the adventure you get as your options increase and the enemies start to be more threatening if you don’t plan out your turns right.

 

DISCOVERIES TO BE MADE

A smart battle system and an elaborate world would already make Skies of Arcadia Legends an excellent RPG, but imagination seeps into other parts of the experience as well to ensure they are just as creative and well-realized.

 

There are many dungeons to be found in Skies of Arcadia Legends, and rarely ever are they just places to walk through while fighting monsters. De Loco’s mines have various traps to figure out and avoid, the player even needing to utilize first-person view at parts to plan out when they can make deliberate use of pitfalls to get to treasures and other opportunities. One dungeon splits up the group and you’ll need to keep manipulating the path with one group to help the other. Puzzles ask you to find out how to roll rocks into their holes to properly fill every slot, but in another dungeon you may be dodging rolling rocks. Sometimes your ship can even get involved as you sail through eerie mazes of the unknown, and while the save points are placed well and boss fights even let you retry them as much as you like, the game makes sure there are challenging encounters to be found in these dungeons to support the unique exploration elements.

Around the skies of Arcadia there are also side activities and bonuses to earn, these intersecting with exploration and dungeons as well. Moonfish hide invisibly around the world but a beeping device help you find them, the player able to uncover more details about certain characters by gradually turning them in to a quiet young girl to feed her strange pet bird. To build your reputation, you may need to make the right decision at certain narrative points, but there are also fights with special bounty bosses that can pose some of the toughest fights in the game. There are even little sidequests like helping mend the broken bonds between a mother and daughter who are only known by their job titles, so while helping the tavernkeep and kabab skewer lady get along isn’t a grand voyage with a staggering reward, it also populates the world with even more to be found. There will be times where you sail through an empty patch of sky, but Skies of Arcadia Legends still tries to make good use of its characters and spaces beyond them just being a step along the way, and embracing those extra layers can lead to some of the most fulfilling moments in a story that already had an excellently written narrative.

 

A TRUE LEGEND

A heartfelt journey of excitement and wonder, Skies of Arcadia Legends crafts a compelling interconnected world that’s just as rich as its central cast. The SP battle system necessitates strategy while still allowing for fast action, and in ship battles it especially thrives where the costs are higher but the choice in action more deliberate. It melds together the many fantasies of exploring a new frontier and living a pirate life while having well-defined cultures and characters to make it still feel like a unique tale. Care is put into making sure the dungeons are diverse and there’s plenty to do beyond sailing to your destination, Skies of Arcadia Legends captivating because its world of opportunity had the work put into it to make sure things matter.

 

With little touches like the game’s already well composed music rising as a battle takes the turn towards triumph or plummeting into something more dour when you start flagging, Skies of Arcadia Legends definitely wants to evoke emotion from the player and that is definitely its biggest strength. At times it can be the happy adventure where you’re heading out to fight monsters and find loot, at others you’re witnessing a tragedy tied to someone close to you. You can come across something incredible like the spinning gate of Valua lined with cannons for anyone who dares to challenge the conquering empire, but you can also find moments of simpler humanity like when you and your crew have some light-hearted bickering before entering a dungeon.

 

Skies of Arcadia Legends could have already been the kind of RPG held together more by its atmosphere, character writing, and how the plot pulls from its setting well, but it also has a solid battle system at its base that isn’t impacted too badly by the little squabbles with positioning and some ship battles feeling sluggish. It balances the level of commitment to a battle well, the game making it a breeze to clear the easier random creatures in your path but anything that can stand its ground won’t be afraid to push back hard enough to make you respect them with your tactical choices.

 

When I started the RPG Jamboree it wasn’t really with much intent. I was just playing quite a few role-playing games in a row and wanted to make a review series out of it, and I had initially intended to end it with Final Fantasy XVI merely because it was the most recent release. However, after my good friend Gooper Blooper let me borrow Skies of Arcadia Legends, it ended up being the perfect finale, not just because of its quality, but because of what it represents. Sadly stuck on the Dreamcast and GameCube and more a cult classic than a well-beloved franchise, Skies of Arcadia Legends is itself a wonderful Discovery. There are fantastic games still out there to be uncovered even by someone who has played over 1,300 of them, ones that are not as readily apparent as the kind that always end up on safe lists of important video games. RPGs can often be where wonderful stories and compelling combat collide, and while that hasn’t always lined up well in the RPG Jamboree, it’s easy to say Skies of Arcadia Legends pulls it off with only minor almost inconsequential notes against it.

 

Exploring the skies with Vyse, Aika, and Fina ends up being a cherished treasure, an incredible show of the creativity and craft that can be found within RPGs when they’re at their best.