by Jody - July 23, 2003

If you own a GameCube and have ever enjoyed playing an RPG in the past, this is the game for you! Skies of Arcadia Legends, which was originally made on the Dreamcast, is a definite must have for all of you RPGers in the world. If you own the game for Dreamcast, I bet you are wondering what more is there for this version than what you have. The graphics are very polished - especially with the characters. You will notice that a lot of dungeons will look the same graphical, but since the graphics were good from the stat, it doesn't really matter. Also, new quests and discoveries have been thrown in. I would say that the biggest change would be the new character, Piastol. His side-story explains a lot of unanswered questions in the original installment as well as in this one; such as how Vyse got his scar. While interactions with characters aren't woven in such a smooth way, the side-quest is still a very great addiction to this game.

Very in-dept storyline with a lot to accomplish.

To those that are unfamiliar with the original, Skies of Arcadia Legends follows the exploits of Vyse, an air pirate. Vyse takes the vowel of a "blue rogue" which is more of a friendly-type pirate; not the kind that you usually see on games like Neverwinter Nights and on television shows. The main thing that Vyse does as a pirate is pillage, but he refrains from harming people. Always close behind him is his trusty side-kick, Aika. As the story follows, they are living a great life until they meet up with a girl named Fina. She is a complete change in their lives. The evil Valuan Empire tries to make Fina help them to resurrect an ancient weapon of destruction when Vyse and Aika come in to the rescue. Pretty soon after that, Vyse and Aika set out on a journey to save the world while they are being hunted by the Valuan Empire and some rival pirates from Vyse's past. (I know that was a big jump, but I can't spoil anything, now can I?)

The core of the gameplay is just standard: you go to town, talk to people, buy weapons, buy armor, buy potions, go to some dungeons, kick some ass, and gain experience and gold. Skies of Arcadia Legends tries to innovate each of the elements of the game, but it's nothing too different than any other role playing game. During the game, dialog choices can improve Vyse's reputation. Going around and trash talking towns-people may seem like a fun thing to do, but in the end, it will probably not work out for the best if you try to upgrade some armor. "What do you mean my money's no good here!?"

The battle system of this game has a lot of great ideas, but it seems that a few of them weren't implemented well enough as they should have been. Characters can use close range combat, or long rang combat. During the fight, the combatants will walk to get in a better position, then close in on their target - like any other RPG - but one thing different is that the player has no control over where the characters go. With that, this game has no potential for being a tactical RPG, such as that of Grandia 2 or Legend of Legaia. In Skies of Arcadia Legends, you can really do nothing more than attack, attack, attack, attack, block once of twice, attack, and attack. In games like Grandia 2, you have the option of attacking, blocking, dodging, using magic, using items, switching turns, or fleeing from battle. Even though this game is not Grandia 2, it would have been excellent to have some of it's game elements. An excellent thing about the battle system would be that during the fight, you can actually change the elemental attribute of the weapons so they can actually deal more damage against enemies that are weak against the element. Such as hitting ice giants with a fire attack or hitting an Aqua Goblins with a lightning bolt. (That's actually quite fun) Unfortunately, it's not as easy as you probably think to read enemy's weaknesses. Sometimes I would try to burn some things that I thought were weak to fire, but in the end, it seemed that they had a little bit of the water element in them. Sometimes it tends to get a little hard remembering some non-common elemental weaknesses, but having the instruction manual nearby should cancel out that problem. On occasions, there are ship battles. When I say ship battles, I mean you actually fight with the ships -- two ships firing cannons and torpedoes at each other! To win, you have to score the most shots while preserving as much ammo as you can. And the coup de' grace would be the "big guns". If you select the correct plot choices, Vyse will pull out these enormous guns and blow the shit out of his opponent. This is truly something that has to be experienced first hand. Most of the time, these "big guns" will result in a one-hit kill. So if you actually know how to play the game, using cannons and spells would be useless.

Even though it is a little outdated, they still look pretty.

Skies of Arcadia was one of the best looking games of 2002. However, it's age is quite clear in 2003. Skies of Arcadia Legends is a better looking game than Sega's previous Dreamcast/GameCube game, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, but it's definitely not at the top of it's game - graphically speaking of course. All the same, many games that are created for the GameCube may "look bad" but that's mainly through the eyes of fanboys and RPG-haters. In my honest opinion, I think Skies of Arcadia is a very visual game.

These well composed tracks will stay in your head forever.

There are a large number of well composed tracks in Skies of Arcadia Legends, which will make all of those .midi-2-D RPG fans go crazy. Sound effects really do their job! Most sound effects resemble that of the Dreamcast version though. Major characters will quite often say a few words in a short sound clip - which is somewhat related to Grandia 2. The voice acting at times, can be the major flaw of this game. Some of the text and word combo mixes do not work well. Other than that, the audio section of this game is brilliant and well orchestrated.

Lots of fun mini-games thrown in make this game a lot of fun!

As for mini-games, the player can discover hidden islands and landmarks for some spare gold. There is also food for Fina's weapon/pet that makes it stronger. Also, the first person view can be used to find moonfish, which can be caught and traded for rare items. I personally think that the sub games mean a lot to an RPG, but it seems that Overworks neglects the game some in this area - well, compared to games like that of Final Fantasy. Having some new mini-games does make this game a lot more fun than the Dreamcast version though.

The game deserves to be played rather on Dreamcast or GameCube.

Regarding the fact that Skies of Arcadia is already more than 2 years old, visuals are still not altogether outdated. Of course, since it is more or less a direct port of the Dreamcast version one mustn't expect Final Fantasy aesthetics, which is made quite obvious after taking a closer look at the character models. Although their face�s mimics are rather vivid and varied their overall appearance seems to lack of details, be it either their clothes or their movements. Backgrounds, on the other hand, are very colourful and beautiful to look at and therefore add very much to the general atmosphere of this celestial world � Arcadia is a really nice place, the perfect resort for any RPG explorer. Controls are kept very simple. Moving the Analog stick makes Vyse either walk or run, shoulder buttons, as well as the C-stick make it possible from time to time to take control of the camera angle. Sadly camera-rotation takes rather long compared to for example Zelda Windmaker. Accessing and navigating through the menu is a piece of cake and needs no time to get familiar with. While flying around the world map you will have to steer an entire airship, adjusting height and direction, which is both easily managed by the analog and the c-stick, or L and R buttons.

This game deserves your money.

As I said before, if you have just a slight interest in any RPG and you own a GameCube, this game is a definite must have. Even though I showed more cons than pros of this game, I truly love it more than a lot of other games and I find it very amazing. The main cons would be: a neglect of mini-games, and voice acting. I don't really think that not having better world graphics is much of a problem, because they are already good enough. The pros would basically be the entire game. With that said, this game is looking to be one of the best RPGs this year.