Skies of Arcadia
The Moon Stones Quest

Review by Chi Phan

Skies of Arcadia first came out on the Dreamcast system a few years back. It was one of the few true rpg game for that system. One that was considered good base on word of mouth alone. Unfortunately for me, the game came out at the very end or near the end of the Dreamcast life cycle so I didn't feel the need to buy a system that is or was dying at the time. A couple of years after the release of Skies of Arcadia, Sega decided to re-release the game to the Gamecube. This time a director cut was added with more gameplay time and characters added to the game. As well as a slight modification to use the Gamecube engine. I really can't compare this version to the Dreamcast one since I never played the Dreamcast version. So consider this a clean new review of the game.

Oh Yeah!! The Imperial Fleet Story begins with an Armada Flagship under the command of Commander Alfonso chasing after a small airship driven by a girl named Fina. Just as Fina was about to be captured by Commander Alfonso, Air Pirates by the name of Blue Rogues attacked and boarded the Armada Flagship in hopes of looting the Flagship of it's valueable possessions. The Blue Rogues attackers were led by Vyse and Aika. Upon boarding the Armada Flagship, Vyse and Aika quickly witnessed the capture of Fina first hand and decided to rescue Fina from Alfonso. Having been defeated by the Blue Rogues, Alfonso retreated. Fina then introduced herself to Vyse and Aika. Vyse then ask Fina why the Valuan Empire would send an Armada Flagship to capture a little girl like Fina. Fina quickly revealed to Vyse and Aika where she is from and what her mission is. Fina comes from an ancient world high about the sky before the destruction of the world that happend thousands of years ago. This destruction of the world that took place during ancient times was known as the Rains of Destruction. Fina told Vyse and Aika that the Elders of her world have sent her down to Arcadia to find and retrieve the Moon Stones that are scattered in hidden ruins across the world. The Elders found out that the Valuan Empire plan to resurrect and bring about the Rains of Destruction again due to the fact that the Valuan Empress wishes to use the Rain of Destruction as an instrument to rule the entire world. Inorder to bring forth the Rains of Destruction again, the Valuan Empire need to locate and find the power source of the Rains of Destruction. The power source that fuel the Rains of Destruction are special Moon Stones crystals that are scattered and hidden in ancient ruins across the world of Arcadia. Inorder to prevent the Valuan Empire from finding these power crystals, the Elders sent Fina down to the world of Arcadia to find the Moon Stones first before the Valuan Empire does. Thus avoiding the destruction of the world. Upon hearing Fina story, Vyse and Aika decided to help Fina on her mission. So with Vyse always wanting to travel and explore the Arcadia world, the 3 friends set sail across the world to find hidden ruins and the Moon Stones within these ancient ruins before the Valuan Empire does. With that, the 3 set off on a long journey into the vast unknown and a quest that will take gamers into the world of Arcadia. There you go...a brief description of the story plotline. Now the plot isn't too original. The typical stopping the world from being destroyed by a great power from ancient times. It's the typical plotline that's been used over and over by other rpgs. To be honest, the story is very similar to Grandia 1. You have a young hero that wants to journey around the world looking for adventure and yet at the sametime, fighting an evil, corrupt Empire. Quite similiar to Grandia. The story also starts off very slow in the beginning. In fact duing the first and second quarter of the game, I sort of lost interest in the story. But like with everything else, saving the good stuff for last is what this story is about. By the time you get to the half way point, the story picks up considerably and your interest in the overall story also start to pick up. My only problem here is that a story should grab the gamers at the beginning of the and not wait till the mid-way point. Afterall, not everyone will sit around and wait till the really good exciting part to begin late in the game. Stepping 2 steps back and looking at the overall story, Skies of Arcadia provides a very good solid story for gamers to enjoy. It's not a serious story but if you're looking for an adventure quest storyline then Skies of Arcadia is the one for you.

What are you looking at? Despite the fact that Skies of Arcadia is a pretty big game, it doesn't have that many key characters. You have a total of 6 main characters. 3 real main characters that will be with you at all times while 3 other main characters that rotate in and out of the party. You would think that with such a small cast, it would give the story a good opportunity to really develope the characters. But unfortunately the story doesn't dig deep enough. One of the reason is probably due to the overall story plot. This is afterall a happy adventure quest so it's not like there's alot of tragic sad story behind these characters. Each of these characters however are unique from one another with different personalities. They interact well in a group setting that brings about a cheerful atmosphere. But in terms of individual backdrop story for each character, there's not much there. Don't get me wrong, the story does give you some sort of details on their past to get you by but not enough to my satisfaction. I would've like it if they had spent more time on it. Another problem is the way the voice overs are set up. It actually hurt the characters in my view. This game in my view point has what I like to call voice-over tease. During story scene, the characters' voices would include only one word sound or speak one word instead of an entire sentence. Example of this: "Yeah!", "Hey.", "Huh.", ect...This is disappointing as it's really nice to see these characters come alive when they speak but then to only hear them speak only one word. Oh, the tease. One would really wonder how these characters really sound if the game had these characters actually talk on story scene and not just provide one word sound byte. The characters do have good personalities and everything. But the story fail to go that extra step in developing them. The last problem is that overall, there isn't any real key characters that stand out as cool and unique. Key characters in my view points are the ones that fans would be willing to make a shrine on. You know, the Clouds, the Squalls, the McDohls fans out there. I don't think anyone will be making a shrine on these characters.

Who are you?? The overall graphic is still base on the Dreamcast system but here it is believed that the Gamecube graphic engine has made some improvement, like smoothing out the graphics for the Gamecube. But honestly I wouldn't know cause I never had the game on a Dreamcast. I will however tell you how the game looks on the Gamecube. The entire graphic is base on a 3-D engine. The graphic is rendered very smoothly in 3-D polygon with excellent details to attention from characters to backdrop. Is it anything that's cutting edge and better than any current rpg games? No. It is however still a Dreamcast graphic game that is on par to some of the current rpg games and maybe better than early Playstation 2 games. The graphic is very similiar to that of Dark Cloud but thanks to the smooth rendering of the Gamecube engine, I would say that it's a little better than Dark Cloud. That's not bad considering that this game is an original Dreamcast game. The colors in this game are very good as well. Personnally the things that I think stands out the most is the designs of numerous and different airships featured in this game. I gave Dark Cloud an eight on the graphics so I'll give this an eight here as well.

Wow! A moon stone. This story is an adventure story so the music is geared toward going on an adventure. The theme of the music always reflect how the story is told and the memorable moments in the story. The entire musical theme is a happy adventure trek across the world. On this basis, the theme is very good and done right. Problem is that since there aren't really any strong memorable moment in the story, the music doesn't really get a chance to have an effect on the overall game. Players tend to remember key moments on the game by listening to the music. Here, the music doesn't really remind us of anything special in the game cause there aren't any real special moment. When you play the game, the music is a strong fixture in the game but once you put it down and walk away, you can't recall much of the music afterwards. That's the weak point in terms of the musical aspect in this game. It doesn't have a lasting appeal afterward. A strong musical aspect will have gamers saying, "Hey, I remember this theme. It's from Skies of Arcadia where this and that happened." You won't find any kind like that after finishing the game. Too bad. Still, the overall musical theme is done nicely and perfect for the long quest. You'll enjoy hearing the music while playing this game. Just that it's missing that touching musical main theme that define an rpg game. All truely great rpgs always have that one musical theme that will define them to gamers. This game is missing that. Great music but not excellent.

The Big Bad.. Prophecy Special Attack! Game Information    Genre: Turn Base Rpg    Publisher: Sega    Disc: 1 Disc CD    Memory: 3 Blocks    Players: 1 Player Mode    Vibration: Yes    Dual Analog: Yes    Digital Control: No    Rating: Teen    Release: January 2003 In terms of gameplay, Skies of Arcadia is pretty much your basic traditional rpg gameplay with a couple of added new elements. The main focus of the gameplay is going on the quest to your next destination and explore the dungeon and fight the boss. Once that's done, the story progresses into the next phase and you repeat. Of course some key features are added into the game to help you along the way. The game pretty much is broken down into two elements. Regular party battles that you would normally see and the new introduction of ship to ship battle. Let's look at some of the key features. Discoveries: Discoveries can consists of just regular villages or dungeon area to explore to non useless discoveries that you can't explore. As you travel around the world map, your compass will start to spin on the world map. This mean that a discovery is nearby. Just press the A button and the Discovery would be revealed. You need to find Discoveries to look for the next village or dungeon area. You can also earn money from finding Discoveries as well. None essential Discoveries are to be used as side quests stuff. Villages: Once you discover a village or town you can then enter it and explore that village or town just like any other rpg game. Inside the village is where you can buy equipment for your ship and party members. You can also sleep inside an INN to heal up. Some village/towns will have a Sailor Guild. This is where you can earn some extra cash from uncovering Discoveries and doing bounty hunting. Extra side quest stuff. Magic: Magic is like any other rpg system where it is represented by elements through colors. Each elements has a strong and weak points against an opposite element. You gain magic by finding Moonstones as your magic are deprived from them. Finding Moonstones is part of the storyline so it's not something you need to worry about. Leveling up magic depends on the usage of it. If you don't use your magic then your magic won't be very strong. Special Moves: Special Moves can only be require through using Moonberries. As your character start to level up, they will learn special moves. Unfortunately learning special moves and unlocking special moves are two different things. Just because you learn a special move doesn't mean you can use it. Each special moves require a set number of Moonberries to be unlock. Finding Moonberries is the problem. They are hard to come by so giving Moonberries to certain members to unlock their special moves should be done carefully. You would probably want to unlock Special Moves that are more useful from a certain member than wasting it on another member that you don't use Special Moves too often. Party Battles: This game is base on a traditional rpg system so encounters are done on a random system. You can have up to 4 party members for a battle. It's turn base. The battle menus are as followed: Run, Attack, Item, Guard, Magic, S-Move, and Focus. I think the icon menus are self explanatory. The only thing I will point out is the Focus command. Focus is where you take a turn doing nothing but increase your SP gauge bar. Inorder for Magic or S-Move to be used, you need to have the require SP. At the beginning of each turn, your SP gauge bars goes up a certain percentage. But to get the SP gauge bar to go up even faster, using Focus will do that job without having to actually use a SP item recovery. Finally one thing to point out is that the elemental system is in full play here. As you start to gain magic through finding Moonstones, you can then switch elemental attributes on your weapons before attacking. This way you can make full use of having a stronger attribute attack on an enemy that is weak against a certain element. Other than that, everything is your basic turn base rpg system. Ship Battle: This is the unique thing about this game. You can encounter ship battles as part of a story battle or as a random encounter when traveling around the world. Ship battles are like party battles but you assign each party member a function that they will need to do from the following commands: Run, Items, Guard, Attack, Magic, Focus, S-Cannon, and Crew. Everything is the same but you are applying those commands to the ship and not to a party member. S-Cannon of course is the special attack for the ship. When you apply the Crew command, you can select a crew member and use their special abilities. Each crew has a unique ability that you can take advantage of. Each party member will take a turn applying a command. Once it's done, the ship will implement those commands and the ship turn is over. The enemy ship will then follow. Ship battles are quite long due to the animation of the ships flying around. Ship battle will end depending on whether or not your ship or the enemy ship is shot down. It's a unique system but very simple. The gameplay isn't stunning overall but it serves it's purpose in providing a good basic traditional rpg system for loyal fans of the genre. You can't be totally happy about it but you can't be totally disappointed about it as well.

Score: 7/10

A Happy Ending Extras/Replay Side quests? Extras? This game is littered with them. The amount of time to complete these side quests are time consuming as well. The first of the side quest is the Moonfish one. During the game and throughout the game, gamers can captured Moonfishs and feed them to a creature name Picollo. Picollo will give you items in return after each time you feed her/him. There are 24 Moonfish in the game and trying to find them are quite hard. The Moonfish side quest will also give you a mini story as well as four sub-bosses to fights. That side quest in itself is quite big but there's more. The Bounty Hunter side quest is another major one. Basically there are 6 bosses that have bounties on them. If you're tough enough and want some extra gold, you can fight these bosses and collect the bounties on them. These bosses range from easy to hard. A good challenge for those that like some extra boss fights. In addition to the Bounty Hunter boss fights, you can get 4 extra Ship Boss fights as well. Add it up and you will net some major extra hours just from boss fights alone. Still that's not all. Want to earn some extra cash? The Discoveries side quest is just the thing. Throughout the game, there are locations that need to be discovered. Discover them and you can earn some extra cash. There are a total of an insane 88 discoveries to be made. These discoveries are not easy to find and very time consuming. I'm talking about hours of extra gameplay just to find these discoveries. Even if you had a cheating guide to help you, it would take hours. And finally, the crew members side quest. There are over 20 crew members scattered about that you can try and find and recruit for your ship. Some are easy to get while others are a little bit hard. So as you can see, side quests and extras in this game are huge. The replay value however isn't really there. Point blank, the only reason to play the game again is if you really enjoy it. Other than that, there's no reason to replay at all. No multiple or extra endings. No extra game mode. Nothing at all. A massive 9 points for the side quests and extras alone. Minus one for no replay value.

Overall this is a very good to great rpg game. One of the advantage that this game has is that it's on the Gamecube. Very good rpg games can be found on the Playstation 2 quite frequently. But on the Gamecube where rpgs are rare to begin with, very good rpg game are hard to come by. Heck, even bad rpgs are hard to come by on the Gamecube. That tells you how dry the rpg games are on the Gamecube. So what does that mean? With less rpg competition on the Gamecube as oppose to the Playstation 2, Skies of Arcadia literally becomes the must have rpg game for Gamecube rpg fans. Honestly, if someone were to ask me what rpg games are good to get, the only ones that would come to my mind right away is Skies of Arcadia and Legends of Zelda: Wind Waker. That's the kind of position you want to be in when people recommend you over everyone else. And right now Skies of Arcadia is one of the must have rpg for the Gamecube. Final Score: 8/10 Time to complete: over 50 hours for a complete game. Difficulty: Easy Favorite character: Gilder Best music theme: Intro theme Most useful magic: Sacrum Coolest feature: Airship battles Best S-Move: Pirates Wrath Best advice: Raise your Swashbuckler Rating Also try: Grandia Up next: Ratchet & Clank

STORY A slow story but it starts to pick up pace late in the story where you are quite excited about it. 8 CHARACTERS Good groups of characters but not enough depth developement to some of them. 7 GRAPHICS Nice smooth graphics but nothing too spectacular overall that will excite you. 8 MUSIC/SOUND Good selection of adventure music that fits the environment of the game. 8 GAMEPLAY Strong gameplay that can net you over 50+ hours of gameplay. With a unique but simple battle system. 8 EXTRAS/REPLAY Lots of extra bosses to fight as well as side quests to complete. Excellent value. 9