A Nostalgia Review
I will forever be deeply bummed out that Skies of Arcadia never exploded in popularity. How is it I live in a world where, since the release of Skies of Arcadia in 2000, the Ys series has had 9 entries, the Tales series has had 14, and the Atelier series has had … 21?!? Are you kidding me???
My ardent love for Skies of Arcadia is, without a doubt, wrapped up in nostalgia and the inevitable endearment one feels after spending dozens of hours with a game’s characters. But, that being said, SoA still has a strong cult following (at the time of this writing) 22 years after its release, despite there being no sequels or other media supporting it, and that doesn’t happen solely because of rose-tinted glasses (or eye patches).
Even by today’s standards, Skies of Arcadia has an impressive amount of depth and care put into a range of mechanics and narrative elements. One great example being the recruitable crew members you can find throughout the game: Narratively, these characters act as brief windows into the world and history of SoA and, once recruited, they appear in your base and ship and occasionally chime in on your actions and story events. Mechanically, the crew members modify or add to your available skills, ranging from making collectibles easier to find, increasing your ships stats for airship battles, and adding strength to a special attack you can use in regular combat.
Again, that’s a single example of Skies of Arcadia’s layered depth. The game approaches many of its other mechanics and side quests in similarly complex and interesting ways — character battles use different sub-mechanics than airship battles, collectibles act as world building and weapon powerups in addition to quest objectives, and optional boss fights contribute to character titles that feel like a proto-achievement system.
Despite the concession that spending a JRPG’s length of time with the world and characters of Skies of Arcadia makes me a bit biased, I still feel compelled to praise it. At a time where many games were projecting maturity by being grim and cynical, and JRPGs in particular had melancholy antiheroes and reluctant messiahs for their protagonists, SoA and its core heroes of Vyse, Aika, and Fina were unabashedly heroic and optimistic. The closest analogy in current media I can think of would be One Piece and the Strawhat crew. It felt refreshing then and, though we aren’t starved for that kind of energy in games now, I would certainly welcome more of the Blue Rogues hopeful positivity and heroism in the world today.
What I love(d) about Skies of Arcadia
• There are very short voice acting clips during dialog, like laughter and “Yeah!”, and combat, where the characters shout the name of their special attack like a shonen anime, and they’re all SO good. By which I mean they’re perfectly campy. I love them so much.
• SoA maintained a consistent sense of adventure and discovery from start to finish. Areas of its world open up to you steadily and they’re all distinct and feel lived in, and as you travel between destinations there are discoveries to make and airships to be fought.
• I buried the lead here, but, a repeated plot thread of SoA is battling kaiju with your sky pirate airships. If you don’t recognize that sentence as being fundamentally awesome, I don’t understand how you got this far into this review.
• SoA has a top notch soundtrack. Similar to scores by Hans Zimmer, John Williams, and Nobuo Uematsu, the composers for SoA (Yutaka Minobe and Tatsuyuki Maeda) repeatedly tap into ur-orchestrations of heroism and adventure.
• The protagonist trio, Vyse, Aika, and Fina, are just the bees knees. SoA plays at a love triangle, but the characterization never felt like it got further than depicting three friends that care deeply and fiercely for one another. (That said, I can certainly see a reading where the heroes are in a wholesome thruple.)
Why you might want to skip Skies of Arcadia
• The most consistent criticism of SoA in most reviews and retrospectives is its excessive random encounters. The criticism is well deserved, especially in the Dreamcast version, but it certainly doesn’t make either version of the game unplayable.
• SoA hasn’t been rereleased since the Gamecube port. The only way you can play it officially is finding a copy for Dreamcast or Gamecube. I’m not advocating emulation/piracy, but I am saying it’s the only way you can access the game easily.
I will forever be deeply bummed out that Skies of Arcadia never exploded in popularity. How is it I live in a world where, since the release of Skies of Arcadia in 2000, the Ys series has had 9 entries, the Tales series has had 14, and the Atelier series has had … 21?!? Are you kidding me???
My ardent love for Skies of Arcadia is, without a doubt, wrapped up in nostalgia and the inevitable endearment one feels after spending dozens of hours with a game’s characters. But, that being said, SoA still has a strong cult following (at the time of this writing) 22 years after its release, despite there being no sequels or other media supporting it, and that doesn’t happen solely because of rose-tinted glasses (or eye patches).
Even by today’s standards, Skies of Arcadia has an impressive amount of depth and care put into a range of mechanics and narrative elements. One great example being the recruitable crew members you can find throughout the game: Narratively, these characters act as brief windows into the world and history of SoA and, once recruited, they appear in your base and ship and occasionally chime in on your actions and story events. Mechanically, the crew members modify or add to your available skills, ranging from making collectibles easier to find, increasing your ships stats for airship battles, and adding strength to a special attack you can use in regular combat.
Again, that’s a single example of Skies of Arcadia’s layered depth. The game approaches many of its other mechanics and side quests in similarly complex and interesting ways — character battles use different sub-mechanics than airship battles, collectibles act as world building and weapon powerups in addition to quest objectives, and optional boss fights contribute to character titles that feel like a proto-achievement system.
Despite the concession that spending a JRPG’s length of time with the world and characters of Skies of Arcadia makes me a bit biased, I still feel compelled to praise it. At a time where many games were projecting maturity by being grim and cynical, and JRPGs in particular had melancholy antiheroes and reluctant messiahs for their protagonists, SoA and its core heroes of Vyse, Aika, and Fina were unabashedly heroic and optimistic. The closest analogy in current media I can think of would be One Piece and the Strawhat crew. It felt refreshing then and, though we aren’t starved for that kind of energy in games now, I would certainly welcome more of the Blue Rogues hopeful positivity and heroism in the world today.
What I love(d) about Skies of Arcadia
• There are very short voice acting clips during dialog, like laughter and “Yeah!”, and combat, where the characters shout the name of their special attack like a shonen anime, and they’re all SO good. By which I mean they’re perfectly campy. I love them so much.
• SoA maintained a consistent sense of adventure and discovery from start to finish. Areas of its world open up to you steadily and they’re all distinct and feel lived in, and as you travel between destinations there are discoveries to make and airships to be fought.
• I buried the lead here, but, a repeated plot thread of SoA is battling kaiju with your sky pirate airships. If you don’t recognize that sentence as being fundamentally awesome, I don’t understand how you got this far into this review.
• SoA has a top notch soundtrack. Similar to scores by Hans Zimmer, John Williams, and Nobuo Uematsu, the composers for SoA (Yutaka Minobe and Tatsuyuki Maeda) repeatedly tap into ur-orchestrations of heroism and adventure.
• The protagonist trio, Vyse, Aika, and Fina, are just the bees knees. SoA plays at a love triangle, but the characterization never felt like it got further than depicting three friends that care deeply and fiercely for one another. (That said, I can certainly see a reading where the heroes are in a wholesome thruple.)
Why you might want to skip Skies of Arcadia
• The most consistent criticism of SoA in most reviews and retrospectives is its excessive random encounters. The criticism is well deserved, especially in the Dreamcast version, but it certainly doesn’t make either version of the game unplayable.
• SoA hasn’t been rereleased since the Gamecube port. The only way you can play it officially is finding a copy for Dreamcast or Gamecube. I’m not advocating emulation/piracy, but I am saying it’s the only way you can access the game easily.