Exploration, pirates, and role playing all combined into one source.
Skies of Arcadia was initially brought to us on the Sega Dreamcast in the year 2000 by overworks. The Gamecube version got a changes and was released in North America in early 2003. Although the game is basically the same, it is still an old-school RPG with some added elements.
Skies of Arcadia puts you in the role of Vyse, a young air pirate who has larger dreams than anyone could imagine. Along with his childhood friend Aika, they end up rescuing a stranger from a faraway land named Fina. For some reason, Alfonso of the Valuan empire is set out on capturing the young lady. Being part of the Blue Rogues, Vyse and Aika can't let that occur and save the young damsel while fighting against a plethora of guards on the airship.
Later, Vyse and friends will discover that Fina was sent down to collect the six moon crystals that have the power to call powerful beasts called Gigas. The Valuan empire seeks them for this purpose and it is up to you to stop them.
Skies of Arcadia Legends is a standard classical RPG with random battles, buying weapons, and initiating magic spells and special techniques. Your party can consist of a maximum of four party members. As the game progresses, there are three core characters that will be in your party for most of the game while there are three secondary characters who will come in and out depending on where you are in the game.
Vyse is the main muscle in the party and his techniques do the most damage. Aika uses here large boomerang to do medium damage while her casting techniques are slightly better than Vyse's. Fina is the classic healer has most of her techniques cure outrageous amounts of damage and ailments. The secondary characters don't seem to be very good at anyone thing but they do have some interesting techniques but nothing really worth mentioning.
To use techniques in battle, each round, and at the beginning of each battle, you are given a set amount of SP depending on your characters SP levels. To add into the complexity, techniques are based on an entirely different resource system than magic, which uses the conventional TP. Every character has the ability to learn all the spells. Some are more adept and it's easier for them to learn some spells over other characters.
Learning spells involves equipping the different coloured stones and gaining experience to raise up their levels on each specific character. Most of the techniques are fairly useful in the beginning but they begin to severely weaken as time goes on.
Certain spells have an AOE (Area of effect) and can hit multiple enemies while some others can hit everything in a straight line. In battle, although it is turn based, sometimes, your party members and the enemies will move to attack you and in effect, could line up for some defensively prone positions. Although this is neat giving some more strategy as to hit, you don't really control where the enemies go or where your characters go giving this aspect a more shallow feeling. If you've played Grandia II, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Sounds are all fairly basic but the major gripe is that sound quality has generally taken a hit from the original Dreamcast version. To fit everything onto one Gamecube disc, the music files were compressed slightly giving it a softer and more grainy sort of sound. Although it is still acceptable, if you've played the Dreamcast version or the soundtrack of this wonderful game on the CDs, you'll see the difference.
A few quests have also changed in the game and as an explorer, Vyse is set out to find discoveries. Finding discoveries add money to your wallet and it's neat finding secrets throughout the land and it gives the player a feel that they are genuinely finding ancient and lost cities or artifacts. This version has more discoveries so those playing the original won't know everything there is.
The game looks about the same as it did in the Dreamcast version. It's the same circular shadow below your character's feet and the same enemies. Some improvements like added polygons don't improve the look too much and the game looks like a Dreamcast game but it's still nice to see that they made some improvements. The faces are still flat and change all of a sudden without a transition but all the spells look very good and the interface makes it easy to tell how much life your characters have and there's never a doubt how much TP or SP or ailments they have.
In addition to normal random battles on foot, there are also ship battles that are mostly story-based. Depending on the equipment you have, you can take turns to charge up attacks or fire torpedoes hoping to hit the enemy in a few turns when they are more exposed. There is some strategy to it but it isn't too complicated.
Story wise, the game is not going to blow anyone out of the water with excellent writing and story telling but it is adequate. Skies of Arcadia Legends is mostly a port of a Dreamcast game. It was an awesome game then, but it's just a pretty good game now. Barring the music being downsized, and the graphics not improved much, the game is still a very good game on it's own merits and I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants to play a great RPG as long as they didn't get sick of the original.