Skies of Arcadia - the epic console rpgs

Vyce, a young sky pirate, encounters a strange girl being kidnapped by the evil Valuan Empire. Rescuing her he sets off on a quest to get his own ship, save the world, build a pirate base and hopefully get some plunder along the way.

Overall the game is an extensive mix of strategic sky battles, empire building and classic RPG action. The graphics are beautifully animated if rather basic, but some of the lighting effects are excellent and the sky battle sequences are gripping. The sound works well with the game and is rarely intrusive, while the background score is excellent.

The standout feature is the air battles, which feature excellent action sequences and a strategy-based mechanic that makes you have to anticipate your opponent and outthink as well as outfight him. However, this is supported by a strong plot, excellent characters and a huge variety of side quests. There are literally enough sidequests to keep a player busy for hours (at one point we abandoned the main quest for ten hours to hunt "Discoveries"). The controls were easy and intuitive, and elements that may have seemed complex were clearly explained before use. The tutorials from older mentors also made sense in the context of the game.

On its downside, I would have liked to have access to more ships, as this version of the game only has two, and more upgrades. The ship upgrades seemed to focus mainly on weapons and armour, understandable as they are pirates. Also, you can run into a great many random encounters getting around the map, and although they can be dodged it can take you far out of your way. Also, there is simply so much to do it can be easy to leave areas wondering if you've got everything you need.

Players of the Dreamcast original will be disappointed to learn that some elements, like buying and selling your ship, and some sidequests, have been dropped. However there is atill enough here to keep a player busy and entertained for hours.

Although the game is 1 player, it is also one of the rare games where, with all the sidequests that involve spotting things, other people can have almost as much fun watching as playing and actually contribute to a player's success.

Overall I would say the game is excellent, with a great plot, characterisation and reasonable replay value due to the subquests. This is definitely one I would place in the top tier of RPGs.

Sega Dreamcast: It's Still Thinking by kurtori
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The original version of Skies of Arcadia was released for the shortlived Dreamcast console. It was reputed to have a number of additional features that are not in the Gamecube version, including ship trading, side-quests for characters and more.

From the lensmaster's point of view? This game was good enough on gamecube that I dropped £20 on a bundle of Dreamcast console and this RPG to find out what I was missing. I was not disappointed.