Back in the year 2000 when the grass was still green, the sky still blue, and Sega still thought the Dreamcast would shake the world, Overworks released a game over here in the US of A called Skies of Arcadia. As it turns out, Skies became the Dreamcast's premier rpg, and the reason I personally bought a Dreamcast. With an extremely fun plot, great characters and well written dialogue, this game managed to pull the Dreamcast out of it's terrible spiral of crap rpgs like, gasp: Grandia 2, Evolution 1 and 2, and of course who could forget about Timestalkers. Lord knows I try to every night. So when Sega gave up on systems, everyone and their uncle's dog asked for Skies to be ported over to Playstation 2 or Gamecube. Not X-Box though, for no one likes X-Box. So Overworks decided this was a good idea, and did so. But they gave up on the Playstation 2 port and focused on GameCube, making the game more of a director's cut, with extra secret bosses and sidequests. Sweet.

The reason Skies sold so well was mainly because of it's characters. With a main character who was living it up as a pirate, and never complaining, it had to have a following. And with two female characters, the perky cool one and quite sucky one, there were characters for all to enjoy (The fun loving personality types and the "sucky" personality types).

So tell me about the actual game, will you? Ok fine. The game has you control Vyse, a Blue Rogue Pirate as he rescues Fina from the evil empire. Then she gets captured again, you break into the prison where no one has ever escaped from before and free her RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME! What a great way to start the game. Then later you break into it again, and escape again, just to spite the evil empire. Along the way you get a sweet ship with a laser cannon, for everyone likes lasers, and explore the world, which is one big sky, hense the name, Skies of Arcadia. The game has two types of combat, hand to hand and ship battles. Hand to hand consists of fighting normal enemies where you build up a meter each turn with attacks or focusing, then unleash specials (which don't cost magic, just your meter). Remember that all your party has only one meter they share though. Standard fare for a game, but still done well. As a plus, characters who are waiting their turn spar with the enemies, never hurting each other but at least swinging their weapons so they look like they are doing something. One weird part of the game is the amount of hit points they give you. At the beginning you start with 500 or so hit points, more than you normally get in rpgs all throughout. So when the first enemy hits you for 75, you get really scared, until you notice your life bar didn't really go down at all. Speaking of life bars, there's another thing I loved. Everyone has a life bar, even bosses, so you always know how close you are to winning.

The ship battles are cool too, but really long. It is set up with a 4X4 grid, and the enemy's attacks (whether slight, medium or hard) are shown above squares 1 through 4. Then your characters are on the left side, and you choose whether to attack, cast magic, focus or use your special, then which turn to use it on. Only one character can go per turn in ship battles. It leads to a lot of stratagy, especially when you need to use your laser cannon and you have to have a certain amount of special points to do so. Basically the way to win every ship battle involves focusing until you can use your laser cannon, and healing when needed. At least that is what I do.

What else about the game? You fly around in your ship on the world map, and can fly up and down too, which leads to fun as you explore and look for new sights, that you can record and sell the rights to for money. This leads to a lot of traveling on the map. Which is still pretty fun.

What liked: Wow, this game is overloaded with fun. Sure it isn't your typical rpg, with a world of towns in the sky and aerial battles, but then again it plays just as fun as a SNES rpg, but with better graphics. The plot feels very simplistic, guy meets girl and helps her find crystals to stop an evil nation. But the characters are oozing with style (well except Fina) and the game has enough humor (and humour) to make up for that. So the story never gets too old, and still has all those great rpg twists and turns.

What disliked: Well for starters there are too many "cute" characters for my taste, but it is a happy game all in all, just look at the bright colors. Enrique is a pansy and annoys me too, but Guilder makes up for him in spades. Probably the worst part of the game is the last ship battle, and ship dungeons. Those suck bot.

What to expect: If you have played Skies of Arcadia for Dreamcast, expect a few more ship and/or boss fights, all optional, as you can hunt down pirates. There's a moonfish mini-hunting game that just feels like the cham hunt for cupil. There's also a few other small things, like each of the main characters now sports individual fingers, but to me it still looks and feels exactly like the dreamcast version, not to say that is a bad thing.

What not to expect: A complete graphic overhaul. Lot's of extras in the way of plot. Sure there are some more sidequests, but while they total about 5-10 hours, it isn't THAT major to the plot.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: The main character is enjoyable and cool.

Ratings on:

Control: 7 - They (Overworks) didn't speed up the camera spin, although it is easier to activate with the c stick. It still spins extremely too slow though. Also, I wish it spun the opposite way, as I always push the wrong way to spin it. Just a minor complaint though.

Graphics: 8 - Not the best on GameCube at all. It still looks like a Dreamcast game. But the graphics have this certain style to them that I dig. Plus, the characters move really nicely (especially the item merchants that look like bunnies).

Sound: 7 - An acceptable score, many have enjoyed it but, as you know, I can't ever really judge soundtracks well. Still no voice acting except for "Ha" "Hey" and "Huh?" at the beginning of the relative character's lines. To find moonfish you have to listen for a beep, which is annoying, for I want to turn the volume off and listen to bands, but it is acceptable for those who like rpg scores.

Style: 9 - Oh my stars this game oodles with style! While everything in this game plot wise has been done before, it still manages to capture your enjoyment fully. The characters are loveable, except for Fina and maybe Enrique (due to his name and his pants) but all in all the game gets full points for style just due to Vyse and Aika's celebration dance. That and Vyse's dual swords, which is a cool bonus.

1st hour: 10 - Ah, brings back memories.

5th hour: 10 - Haven't moved from this position yet, still loving the game, although I haven't seen anything new.

2nd day: 9 - Great googly moogly, this game is a lot more fun than the last time I played it. Probably due to the fact there are less enemy encounters.

1st week: 9 - Yay! Skies rocks my world.

#1 reason why I hate this game: Can I say Fina? No, it's Cupil. No, I hate Fina more. Hmm, probably Cupil. Choices choices...

by Hawke