Developer: OverWorks
Platform: Dreamcast
Released: 2000
Played from: 2001-2004, occasionally since
Skies was the second RPG I ever finished, and maintains a special place in my heart to this day. On its surface, it seems like a relatively unremarkable turn-based RPG with too damn many random encounters, but the game has many visual and storytelling moments that simply leave a lasting impression.
Background and Story
---------------------------------------------
Arcadia is a world comprised of nothing but floating islands suspended in an endless sky. Six moons are present in the sky, each of which shape the landscape below it by periodically loosing a large meteor to plummet to the world below, which the inhabitants of Arcadia call "Moonstones" and use to power their airships and homes. Each moon corresponds to an element that dominates the nation situated below it. Red corresponds to fire, and the nation of Nasr is a vast desert. Yellow corresponds to lightning, and the nation of Valua is a charred, industrial wasteland. Green corresponds to nature, and the nation of Ixa'Taka is a dense rainforest. Blue corresponds to water and wind, and the kingdom of Yafutoma is a nation of adept sailors and beautiful waterscapes. Purple corresponds to ice, and is an unexplored, uninhabited icy wasteland. Silver corresponds to life, death, and power, and the kingdom of Soltis was banished to the Deep Sky and left only Shrine Island behind with its mechanical guardians as a testament of its greatness.
(Here be spoilers, so skip this if you want to experience the story first hand)
Thousands of years ago, great civilizations flourished under all six moons. They eventually gathered enough technology to create six refined Moon Crystals, which would serve as reservoirs of infinite energy for their nations. However, they became envious of one another, and used the crystals to create giant robotic war machines, called Gigas. As a war was beginning to break out across the entire globe, all six moons began to rain down moonstones of such size and frequency that the whole world was destroyed.
In the present, the world has just entered the age of exploration, with Valua emerging from a war with Nasr as the dominant world power. This world has strong parallels with our own world circa 1500-1900. In a nutshell, Valua is Spain at the height of its power (about 1550), Nasr is the Ottoman empire of northern Africa right after its peak influence (late 1400s), Ixa'Taka is the combined Aztec and Inca empires right before their total collapse and enslavement (1520-1550), and Yafutoma is Japan right before opening its borders to the Western world (1850s). In opposition to the forces of Valua are two pirate factions: Black Pirates who are ruthless plunderers of merchant vessels, and Blue Rogues, who are chivalrous and attack only Valuan warships in a fair fight.
You are Vyse, a 17-year old Blue Rogue accompanied by his childhood friend Aika. In a raid on a Valuan ship, you find an unconscious 16-year old girl and bring her back to your family's headquarters. After winning her trust, she reveals herself to be Fina, but you leave soon after with Aika to recover a fallen moonstone on the nearby Shrine Island. On your return, you discover that your base has been sacked by the Valuan navy, and Fina, your father, and nearly everyone else has been taken back to Valua to be executed. Right after setting off to save them, your ship is destroyed by the arcwhale Rhaknam and you are narrowly rescued by Drachma, the one-armed old man who has been tirelessly hunting the whale (a clear nod to Moby Dick). After some initial struggles, Drachma helps you into the Valuan capital under the guise of merchant fishers, and you stage a daring rescue with the help of Valua's scorned lower class citizens. Back at Pirate Isle, Fina reveals that she is one of the last two mortal Silivites, who escaped the destruction of the ancient world in a space station. She tells you the world's history, and that her old friend Ramirez was sent to prevent the world from re-discovering the secret of the moon crystals, but fell to the temptation of power and allied with the Valuan general Galcian to recover them in Valua's name.
Fina joins your party, and you travel the world in search of the moon crystals. Every land you visit has a sub-plot, and the character's history folds out in a remarkably well-told way. After discovering the moon crystal in almost every instance, you are tricked, betrayed, or forced to surrender it to one of the generals of Valua, who unleash the often-uncontrollable Gigas which you must defeat.
After a chance encounter with Rhaknam, Drachma pursues it with reckless abandon to avenge his dead son, but forces Vyse, Aika, and Fina off his ship after it is critically damaged, preferring to die rather than miss his chance at revenge. The group is temporarily split, where Vyse is rescued from an uninhabited island by smooth-talking ladies' man and fellow Blue Rogue, Guilder. Aika and Fina are rescued by a female pirate who has been chasing Guilder, seeking to win him over and marry him. The party reuinites after discovering that they had both been seeking the same legendary pirate treasure, which turned out to be only a single coin.
After breaking back into the Valuan capital to steal a ship, they encounter the Valuan prince Enrique, who is disgusted with his mother's leadership decisions and the corruption stemming from Galcian's leadership of the armada. He offers them his personal ship the Delphinius in exchange for being able to sail with them. After battling through the Armada to escape, Guilder makes a hasty getaway after being discovered by his admirer. The crew resumes their quest, with Vyse becoming captain of the ship and establishing a base at his uninhabited island and building a crew during the course of his travels.
The crew eventually discovers that Rhaknam is the Purple Gigas, and Drachma has come to the painful realization that the whale was nothing more than a victim of an ancient war. The whale saved his life by taking him to its ancient home, and he spent several months trying to nurse him back to health, to no avail. Eventually, Enrique decides to head back to Valua to attempt to reason with his mother, but when the crew returns to their base, they discover it has been burned to the ground by Ramirez, who beats the party in battle and siezes all of the crystals from them. After recovering Fina's ship, the crew heads to the Silivite space station, where they learn that the Silivites built the most powerful Gigas of all, which they used to destroy the world in ancient times, and had planned to do it again to prevent Valua's rise to power. Ramirez arrives and kills one of the elder Silivites, taking a piece of the Silver Crystal from his body. He and Galcian use all six crystals to raise Soltis from the deep sky, and betray Valua, calling the Rains of Destruction until the whole nation is destroyed. Vyse forms an alliance with all the pirates he met previously (friendly and hostile) to take on Galcian's armada, and the Silivite elders sacrifice themselves to weaken Soltis and the silver Gigas. Galcian is killed by a suicide attack from one of his generals sympathetic to Vyse's cause, and the party forces their way into Soltis to face Ramirez, driven mad by Galcian's death. He sacrifices himself to fully resurrect the Silver Gigas, but is eventually defeated. The game ends as the characters begin to rebuild the world.
Gameplay
--------------------------------------
Skies is a truly turn-based RPG at its heart. You select moves for all of your characters at the beginning of a round, and then watch how the battle plays out, round by round. The main strategic element for random battles is the moon stones that you equip to your weapons. Each moon stone governs the character's effectiveness against a certain enemy. Every color is either strong, weak, or neutral against another color--for example, purple and red are very strong against each other (lower defense and higher damage) whereas yellow is strong against green, but green is weak against yellow. The party also shares a "spirit gague" which is depleted when a character uses a special move or casts magic, and replenished when a character uses a "focus" command or at the end of a round. Other than that, there is really no more strategy in most battles than "Kill everything."
Ship battles are a bit different. The battle is set out on a 4x4 grid, and you select the order in which the characters attack. The squares in the grid are either red, yellow, or green, indicating the likelihood that an enemy will use a strong attack. In every round, the characters can man either a main gun (hits once for big damage), a secondary cannon (hits for 1-4 rounds for small damage), a magic cannon (casts a spell and never misses, but may not do much damage), or a torpedo (hits for big damage, with low accuracy and must strike in a later round). The main strategy is that by synchronizing your hits, it is possible to "stagger" an enemy ship and make them miss. Doing so can affect the outcome of the next round, giving you the opportunity to land a critical hit at certain points, or even use your s. cannon (either a harpoon or the moonstone cannon). There are a few dozen ship battles in the game, ranging from respawning Valuan patrols or Black Pirate raiders to unique battles against Gigas or some of Arcadia's nastier sky monsters.
When you are not battling monsters, you can explore the skies in your airship (you get to pilot 8 ships over the course of the game, but spend more than 95% of your time in either the Little Jack or Delphinius) or on foot in various towns and dungeons. You will periodically be faced with some simple puzzles, but for the most part you just run from beginning to end, fighting monsters in random encounters as you go.
Graphics and Sound
----------------------------------------------
Skies is visually one of the slickest games that ever came out during the Dreamcast's short life. The world is crisp and vivid, and moving from one land to the other ensures that the visuals will always stay fresh. The flatness of some parts of the world (Skies pre-dates bump mapping and the character faces are 2D images wrapped onto a 3D head) show the age of this game, but by no means is it outdated yet. Furthermore, the attention to detail is amazing. When flying over the towns and dungeons, you can see individual buildings and structures, all to appropriate scale. Furthermore, you can enter first person mode at any time by pressing the Y button to see things in the world you might not otherwise see. Battles are also fully 3D and rendered in real-time, although moves are not as visually impressive as games like Final Fantasy or Grandia II as a result.
In terms of sound, Skies is mostly rock solid. The music is crisp, memorable, and fits every location flawlessly. As a sort of hidden blessing, the voice acting is almost entiely absent. All of the characters speak only through text, with an occasional "Argh!" or "Yay!" thrown in to add to the character of the conversation. This was done because the game without voice files already had to be put on two gigabyte-sized discs, and adding voice would require a third or even fourth. Although I was disappointed at the time, a valuable lesson I learned from other Japanese RPG's is that Japanese RPG's do not translate well into English voice acting, period. This is reinforced by the battle sequences, where full voice acting was left intact, leaving us with such gems as "Your trial will be swift and just! NOW FACE YOUR PUNISHMENT!" and "Where there is light, there is darkness. SWORD OF THE DARK MOON!" Thankfully, you can skip your own super moves, and battles with speaking opponents are rare enough that it never becomes bothersome.
Replay Value
----------------------------------------
I played through Skies of Arcadia twice, once just to experience the story, and a second time to get 100% completion. The first game took about 60 hours (40-50 if I didn't grind at certain points to over-level) and the second took about 120 hours. There are a few things outside the main quest to do, which is unfortunate. Beyond the main quest, there are numerous discoveries around the world which, when activated or "found" bring up a neat little informational card about the discovery, and can be sold to a special vendor in each town for a specific amount of gold (some discoveries will be found by other sailors or a rival explorer, which decreases their value if you don't find them first.) Additionally, there are some side-quests (most include hunting down a rare item for a merchant or helping someone reunite with a "lost" family member in another town) which seldom take more than 20 minutes to complete, and carry minimal reward. Also, for the obsessive among you, some monsters carry a 1-2% chance of dropping an exceedingly rare item, armor, or weapon that cannot be found elsewhere in the game. And finally, you will need a crew for many parts in the game. Some crew members have to join in order to progress through the story, and some are optional and must be hunted down and be convinced to join your crew. These people populate your base (some are merchants, while others do nothing) and boost your ship's stats during battle.
Although it is probably irrelevant at this point, the first disc allows you to go online and download three add-ons: one that adds two weapons--Vyse's tuna cutlass and Aika's swirlmerang (giant lollipop); one that adds an optional ship boss of a giant Looper (a persistent enemy in the game notorious for its ability to resist most magic, dodge most physical attacks, and run from battle); and one that adds Hamachou Island, which adds the final Cham needed to upgrade Fina's weapon (Cupil) to its final form, as well as an old man who will tell you your game stats and make snide comments.
Skies was ported to the Gamecube in 2003 as Skies of Arcadia Legends. I never had a Gamecube, so I was not able to play it, but it adds new discoveries, more battles against notorious pirates (bounties that can be traded in for substantial money), some enhanced back story, and a quest to gather invisible "moonfish" for a young girl and her Hamachou in exchange for rare equipment that previously could only be acquired as random battle loot. It also features enhanced graphics and lower quality sound (the DC uses uncompressed sound files, and the GC compressed the sound files to make the game fit onto the mini DVD) and allows the game's enemies to level with you, which will maintain the challenge even at level 99.
Closing Remarks
------------------------------------------
First off, Skies of Arcadia (and Legends) is one of those games that falls into the category of "Japanese RPG that was critically acclaimed but never sold well and is consequently rare with a dedicated cult following." It was only stocked by retail stores for about a year until the Dreamcast went down the bankruptcy drain, and a used copy will run you $30-75 on eBay, with new copies going for $75-100+. You might get incredibly lucky and find a copy of Legends in a Gamestop or similar store (I heard of one Gamestop 50 miles from my house that had a copy a couple years ago), but again, expect to pay at least $30 for it. Not that I'm advocating piracy, but there are free emulators for both the DC and GC floating around on the internet...
That said, I would place Skies of Arcadia in my top 10 games of all time. True, the story is largely cookie cutter, the characters are mostly static and one-dimensional, and the frequency of random encounters artificially inflates the game's length. But there is a certain charm to this game that few others are able to match. The world feels vibrant and full of life and history. Vyse doesn't need to grow up because he doesn't start out as a sullen, over-dramatic, self-absorbed late adolescent, but rather an energetic, optimistic natural-born leader.
If you can find it, Skies of Arcadia is a must-play for any RPG fan, and I would strongly recommend it even to those new to the RPG.
Platform: Dreamcast
Released: 2000
Played from: 2001-2004, occasionally since
Skies was the second RPG I ever finished, and maintains a special place in my heart to this day. On its surface, it seems like a relatively unremarkable turn-based RPG with too damn many random encounters, but the game has many visual and storytelling moments that simply leave a lasting impression.
Background and Story
---------------------------------------------
Arcadia is a world comprised of nothing but floating islands suspended in an endless sky. Six moons are present in the sky, each of which shape the landscape below it by periodically loosing a large meteor to plummet to the world below, which the inhabitants of Arcadia call "Moonstones" and use to power their airships and homes. Each moon corresponds to an element that dominates the nation situated below it. Red corresponds to fire, and the nation of Nasr is a vast desert. Yellow corresponds to lightning, and the nation of Valua is a charred, industrial wasteland. Green corresponds to nature, and the nation of Ixa'Taka is a dense rainforest. Blue corresponds to water and wind, and the kingdom of Yafutoma is a nation of adept sailors and beautiful waterscapes. Purple corresponds to ice, and is an unexplored, uninhabited icy wasteland. Silver corresponds to life, death, and power, and the kingdom of Soltis was banished to the Deep Sky and left only Shrine Island behind with its mechanical guardians as a testament of its greatness.
(Here be spoilers, so skip this if you want to experience the story first hand)
Thousands of years ago, great civilizations flourished under all six moons. They eventually gathered enough technology to create six refined Moon Crystals, which would serve as reservoirs of infinite energy for their nations. However, they became envious of one another, and used the crystals to create giant robotic war machines, called Gigas. As a war was beginning to break out across the entire globe, all six moons began to rain down moonstones of such size and frequency that the whole world was destroyed.
In the present, the world has just entered the age of exploration, with Valua emerging from a war with Nasr as the dominant world power. This world has strong parallels with our own world circa 1500-1900. In a nutshell, Valua is Spain at the height of its power (about 1550), Nasr is the Ottoman empire of northern Africa right after its peak influence (late 1400s), Ixa'Taka is the combined Aztec and Inca empires right before their total collapse and enslavement (1520-1550), and Yafutoma is Japan right before opening its borders to the Western world (1850s). In opposition to the forces of Valua are two pirate factions: Black Pirates who are ruthless plunderers of merchant vessels, and Blue Rogues, who are chivalrous and attack only Valuan warships in a fair fight.
You are Vyse, a 17-year old Blue Rogue accompanied by his childhood friend Aika. In a raid on a Valuan ship, you find an unconscious 16-year old girl and bring her back to your family's headquarters. After winning her trust, she reveals herself to be Fina, but you leave soon after with Aika to recover a fallen moonstone on the nearby Shrine Island. On your return, you discover that your base has been sacked by the Valuan navy, and Fina, your father, and nearly everyone else has been taken back to Valua to be executed. Right after setting off to save them, your ship is destroyed by the arcwhale Rhaknam and you are narrowly rescued by Drachma, the one-armed old man who has been tirelessly hunting the whale (a clear nod to Moby Dick). After some initial struggles, Drachma helps you into the Valuan capital under the guise of merchant fishers, and you stage a daring rescue with the help of Valua's scorned lower class citizens. Back at Pirate Isle, Fina reveals that she is one of the last two mortal Silivites, who escaped the destruction of the ancient world in a space station. She tells you the world's history, and that her old friend Ramirez was sent to prevent the world from re-discovering the secret of the moon crystals, but fell to the temptation of power and allied with the Valuan general Galcian to recover them in Valua's name.
Fina joins your party, and you travel the world in search of the moon crystals. Every land you visit has a sub-plot, and the character's history folds out in a remarkably well-told way. After discovering the moon crystal in almost every instance, you are tricked, betrayed, or forced to surrender it to one of the generals of Valua, who unleash the often-uncontrollable Gigas which you must defeat.
After a chance encounter with Rhaknam, Drachma pursues it with reckless abandon to avenge his dead son, but forces Vyse, Aika, and Fina off his ship after it is critically damaged, preferring to die rather than miss his chance at revenge. The group is temporarily split, where Vyse is rescued from an uninhabited island by smooth-talking ladies' man and fellow Blue Rogue, Guilder. Aika and Fina are rescued by a female pirate who has been chasing Guilder, seeking to win him over and marry him. The party reuinites after discovering that they had both been seeking the same legendary pirate treasure, which turned out to be only a single coin.
After breaking back into the Valuan capital to steal a ship, they encounter the Valuan prince Enrique, who is disgusted with his mother's leadership decisions and the corruption stemming from Galcian's leadership of the armada. He offers them his personal ship the Delphinius in exchange for being able to sail with them. After battling through the Armada to escape, Guilder makes a hasty getaway after being discovered by his admirer. The crew resumes their quest, with Vyse becoming captain of the ship and establishing a base at his uninhabited island and building a crew during the course of his travels.
The crew eventually discovers that Rhaknam is the Purple Gigas, and Drachma has come to the painful realization that the whale was nothing more than a victim of an ancient war. The whale saved his life by taking him to its ancient home, and he spent several months trying to nurse him back to health, to no avail. Eventually, Enrique decides to head back to Valua to attempt to reason with his mother, but when the crew returns to their base, they discover it has been burned to the ground by Ramirez, who beats the party in battle and siezes all of the crystals from them. After recovering Fina's ship, the crew heads to the Silivite space station, where they learn that the Silivites built the most powerful Gigas of all, which they used to destroy the world in ancient times, and had planned to do it again to prevent Valua's rise to power. Ramirez arrives and kills one of the elder Silivites, taking a piece of the Silver Crystal from his body. He and Galcian use all six crystals to raise Soltis from the deep sky, and betray Valua, calling the Rains of Destruction until the whole nation is destroyed. Vyse forms an alliance with all the pirates he met previously (friendly and hostile) to take on Galcian's armada, and the Silivite elders sacrifice themselves to weaken Soltis and the silver Gigas. Galcian is killed by a suicide attack from one of his generals sympathetic to Vyse's cause, and the party forces their way into Soltis to face Ramirez, driven mad by Galcian's death. He sacrifices himself to fully resurrect the Silver Gigas, but is eventually defeated. The game ends as the characters begin to rebuild the world.
Gameplay
--------------------------------------
Skies is a truly turn-based RPG at its heart. You select moves for all of your characters at the beginning of a round, and then watch how the battle plays out, round by round. The main strategic element for random battles is the moon stones that you equip to your weapons. Each moon stone governs the character's effectiveness against a certain enemy. Every color is either strong, weak, or neutral against another color--for example, purple and red are very strong against each other (lower defense and higher damage) whereas yellow is strong against green, but green is weak against yellow. The party also shares a "spirit gague" which is depleted when a character uses a special move or casts magic, and replenished when a character uses a "focus" command or at the end of a round. Other than that, there is really no more strategy in most battles than "Kill everything."
Ship battles are a bit different. The battle is set out on a 4x4 grid, and you select the order in which the characters attack. The squares in the grid are either red, yellow, or green, indicating the likelihood that an enemy will use a strong attack. In every round, the characters can man either a main gun (hits once for big damage), a secondary cannon (hits for 1-4 rounds for small damage), a magic cannon (casts a spell and never misses, but may not do much damage), or a torpedo (hits for big damage, with low accuracy and must strike in a later round). The main strategy is that by synchronizing your hits, it is possible to "stagger" an enemy ship and make them miss. Doing so can affect the outcome of the next round, giving you the opportunity to land a critical hit at certain points, or even use your s. cannon (either a harpoon or the moonstone cannon). There are a few dozen ship battles in the game, ranging from respawning Valuan patrols or Black Pirate raiders to unique battles against Gigas or some of Arcadia's nastier sky monsters.
When you are not battling monsters, you can explore the skies in your airship (you get to pilot 8 ships over the course of the game, but spend more than 95% of your time in either the Little Jack or Delphinius) or on foot in various towns and dungeons. You will periodically be faced with some simple puzzles, but for the most part you just run from beginning to end, fighting monsters in random encounters as you go.
Graphics and Sound
----------------------------------------------
Skies is visually one of the slickest games that ever came out during the Dreamcast's short life. The world is crisp and vivid, and moving from one land to the other ensures that the visuals will always stay fresh. The flatness of some parts of the world (Skies pre-dates bump mapping and the character faces are 2D images wrapped onto a 3D head) show the age of this game, but by no means is it outdated yet. Furthermore, the attention to detail is amazing. When flying over the towns and dungeons, you can see individual buildings and structures, all to appropriate scale. Furthermore, you can enter first person mode at any time by pressing the Y button to see things in the world you might not otherwise see. Battles are also fully 3D and rendered in real-time, although moves are not as visually impressive as games like Final Fantasy or Grandia II as a result.
In terms of sound, Skies is mostly rock solid. The music is crisp, memorable, and fits every location flawlessly. As a sort of hidden blessing, the voice acting is almost entiely absent. All of the characters speak only through text, with an occasional "Argh!" or "Yay!" thrown in to add to the character of the conversation. This was done because the game without voice files already had to be put on two gigabyte-sized discs, and adding voice would require a third or even fourth. Although I was disappointed at the time, a valuable lesson I learned from other Japanese RPG's is that Japanese RPG's do not translate well into English voice acting, period. This is reinforced by the battle sequences, where full voice acting was left intact, leaving us with such gems as "Your trial will be swift and just! NOW FACE YOUR PUNISHMENT!" and "Where there is light, there is darkness. SWORD OF THE DARK MOON!" Thankfully, you can skip your own super moves, and battles with speaking opponents are rare enough that it never becomes bothersome.
Replay Value
----------------------------------------
I played through Skies of Arcadia twice, once just to experience the story, and a second time to get 100% completion. The first game took about 60 hours (40-50 if I didn't grind at certain points to over-level) and the second took about 120 hours. There are a few things outside the main quest to do, which is unfortunate. Beyond the main quest, there are numerous discoveries around the world which, when activated or "found" bring up a neat little informational card about the discovery, and can be sold to a special vendor in each town for a specific amount of gold (some discoveries will be found by other sailors or a rival explorer, which decreases their value if you don't find them first.) Additionally, there are some side-quests (most include hunting down a rare item for a merchant or helping someone reunite with a "lost" family member in another town) which seldom take more than 20 minutes to complete, and carry minimal reward. Also, for the obsessive among you, some monsters carry a 1-2% chance of dropping an exceedingly rare item, armor, or weapon that cannot be found elsewhere in the game. And finally, you will need a crew for many parts in the game. Some crew members have to join in order to progress through the story, and some are optional and must be hunted down and be convinced to join your crew. These people populate your base (some are merchants, while others do nothing) and boost your ship's stats during battle.
Although it is probably irrelevant at this point, the first disc allows you to go online and download three add-ons: one that adds two weapons--Vyse's tuna cutlass and Aika's swirlmerang (giant lollipop); one that adds an optional ship boss of a giant Looper (a persistent enemy in the game notorious for its ability to resist most magic, dodge most physical attacks, and run from battle); and one that adds Hamachou Island, which adds the final Cham needed to upgrade Fina's weapon (Cupil) to its final form, as well as an old man who will tell you your game stats and make snide comments.
Skies was ported to the Gamecube in 2003 as Skies of Arcadia Legends. I never had a Gamecube, so I was not able to play it, but it adds new discoveries, more battles against notorious pirates (bounties that can be traded in for substantial money), some enhanced back story, and a quest to gather invisible "moonfish" for a young girl and her Hamachou in exchange for rare equipment that previously could only be acquired as random battle loot. It also features enhanced graphics and lower quality sound (the DC uses uncompressed sound files, and the GC compressed the sound files to make the game fit onto the mini DVD) and allows the game's enemies to level with you, which will maintain the challenge even at level 99.
Closing Remarks
------------------------------------------
First off, Skies of Arcadia (and Legends) is one of those games that falls into the category of "Japanese RPG that was critically acclaimed but never sold well and is consequently rare with a dedicated cult following." It was only stocked by retail stores for about a year until the Dreamcast went down the bankruptcy drain, and a used copy will run you $30-75 on eBay, with new copies going for $75-100+. You might get incredibly lucky and find a copy of Legends in a Gamestop or similar store (I heard of one Gamestop 50 miles from my house that had a copy a couple years ago), but again, expect to pay at least $30 for it. Not that I'm advocating piracy, but there are free emulators for both the DC and GC floating around on the internet...
That said, I would place Skies of Arcadia in my top 10 games of all time. True, the story is largely cookie cutter, the characters are mostly static and one-dimensional, and the frequency of random encounters artificially inflates the game's length. But there is a certain charm to this game that few others are able to match. The world feels vibrant and full of life and history. Vyse doesn't need to grow up because he doesn't start out as a sullen, over-dramatic, self-absorbed late adolescent, but rather an energetic, optimistic natural-born leader.
If you can find it, Skies of Arcadia is a must-play for any RPG fan, and I would strongly recommend it even to those new to the RPG.
