Moons, give me a sequel!

If you're a fan of SEGA, you've probably heard the name Team Shinobi a time or two. Streets of Rage, Revenge of the Shinobi, Golden Axe, Altered Beast... but the most notable accomplish of Team Shinobi involves their creation of the Phantasy Star franchise. Trailblazers of the JRPG genre, the first Phantasy Star introduced the combination of a graphically-astounding, story-driven adventure with random battles, a traversable overworld map, dungeons, and towns... two days after Final Fantasy did it! Yeah, I know, but they did feature a female protagonist, which was not a common sight in the gaming industry of the 80s, and Alis was able to chit-chat with a few of the monsters she came across. All FF did was allow four men to beat the shit out of everything that foolishly stood to the left side of them. Wait, was the White Mage a female?

While later iterations feature a more feminine appearance, the build and jawline of the 1987 White Mage after his promotion to a Wizard means Garland was either beaten by the Sausagefest of Light or Chyna and her bukakke squad.

Despite being late to the RP partay, Phantasy Star is considered one of the forefathers to the gaming genre, mostly because the current generation of gamers couldn't care less about the CRPGs of the '70s.

What's not to love? Everyone was white back then.

Actually, many of them didn't care about the genre at all until 1997 when the greatest RPG of all time hit the shelves: Betrayal in Antara!

Graphically superior to anything ported to the Etch A Sketch, this lush forest guarded by a pair of land seahorses is just one of many breathtaking sights Sierra brought to the PC. 

There was also Final Fantasy 7 at that time, but, honestly, the game's only real contribution to the industry is in popularizing the most effective strategy used in Multiplayer PvP: Take the healer out first.

In a failed attempt to deceive Sephiroth, Aerith pretended to be a crab. On the plus side, the cooked roe afterwards was delicious.

Many from Team Shinobi moved on to become Overworks, a short-lived developer known for a crummy sequel to Shinobi, the grossly popular Strategy Dating Sim RPG series Sakura Wars, and, the focus of this entry, Skies of Arcadia.

Also known as Eternal Arcadia, this Dreamcast title about Air Pirates plays out like a 24-episode anime following the formulaic storyline of a typical Shonen series.

The game centers around a planet that is conveniently color-coded based upon six moons (none of whom are related to Mac Tonight) that represent different types of magic. At the height of technological development, mankind began to wage war upon itself, utilizing this moon magic to create super weapons known as the Gigas. At some point during this time, stones from these six moons came crashing into the planet, wiping out nearly all of humanity along with most of its technology. Thousands of years later, after new civilizations have formed,  the empress of the largest empire, Valua, believes that everyone should bow before her and the Valuan armada. Basically, history is going to repeat itself, which is why we meet Fina, a 17-year-old piloting a very small ship.

She left her crossbow at home.

Fina is on a mission to collect all of the Moon Crystals before anyone can use them to reawaken the Gigas. Not sure how she's going to do that alone. I guess she's planning to heal it out of their grasps. From here on out, SoA associates itself with nearly every trope commonly seen in an RPG. Normally, I'd get irritated and call this lazy development, but Overworks utilizes these trends effectively. It's kinda like the storyline of a CLAMP manga.

A ronin wishes for a girlfriend and a persocom. He finds both in a pile of garbage and names her Chi. As the story progresses, they learn more about each other and eventually fall in love. Chi then becomes GLaDOS. 

Even if the player knows what's going to happen, it's obvious that a lot of love went into creating this thing. 

For starters, many of the NPCs, not just the recruitable ones, have unique models. This includes the shopkeepers, wandering villagers, and even the town guards. Some enemies are recycled, but, even then, a few of these can be justified. Names are given as part of various themes, such as types of currency and of the constellations, though others are just boring translations from different languages. For example, Raja is a stingray you battle in the Vortex. Raja is the Latin word for stingray. Clever girl. Overworks also hired a few rather well-known voice actors to help bring some of these characters to life, including Charles Martinet (Mario and Luigi), Julissa Aguirre (NiGHTS), and Grey DeLisle (Amanda Valenciano Libre and Carmelita Fox).

While my appreciation of SoA suffers a little due to the inclusion of random encounters, there are still plenty of details worth noting about them:

~ Battles seem more realistic, because everyone is moving around and exchanging blows, rather than standing still in a straight line and take turns attacking one another.
~ There are three pieces of music that can play during battle that change depending upon which side has the upper hand.
~ Everyone gains spell experience chosen through the colors of the all weapons, allowing the player to teach everyone every spell in any order they desire. Select four different colors to level up four types of magic with each victory, or have them all carrying weapons of the same color and learn that particular type of magic four times faster.
~ Special moves are fun to watch, but there's still an option to skip over them.
~ Everyone has multiple victory poses, usually changing in response to the amount of health each one has remaining.
~ Status effects vanish after a battle, so a player doesn't have to stop and cure everyone of everything repeatedly.
~ Instakill abilities are still worthless against bosses, but the most powerful ones, Eternum and Drachma's Hand of Fate, will deal damage if either fails. On the other hand (not of fate), some enemies will also utilize the Eterni chain of spells, including two of the most obnoxious bosses in the game. Just be prepared to have Aika cast Delta Shield over and over again to protect yourself. 
~ Some battles occur with the ship, which is a nice change, but the turns are slow and most of the "action" is just seeing the craft fly around in circles. Still, if nothing else, the idea deserves an A- for effort. Better than an escort mission. ALWAYS better than an escort mission. 

For once, the blue one isn't the weakest of the bunch.

Loopers are the slimes of Arcadia. For those who enjoy maxing out their characters' levels, Loopers are the fastest way to reach that goal. Overworks, again, helps the player out by creating a nesting area full of them for farming. Once the player has reached the end, there's an optional boss battle against the Black Looper within the Dark Rift.

Finally, as an added courtesy, random battles don't occur while the player is trying to solve a puzzle. Most of you probably wouldn't care either way, but I certainly appreciate the gesture.

While you make your way across the map, a side-quest of sorts involves locating landmarks. This adds a bit of personality to the world itself, allows the player to score some much needed funding by selling the information to the Sailor's Guild, and encourages exploration. Usually, I would recommend a player's guide just to avoid wasting time with blindly searching for something (remember my entry about Robowarrior?), but I didn't do that the first time I played this game. Making the discovery by chance, or through figuring out the clues provided by NPCs, made it feel much more rewarding. It also allowed for a legitimate competition with Domingo. 

Vyse's decisions determine his Swashbuckler rating and the titles that come with it. While nothing you choose will alter the story, his rating will change the way certain NPCs address him and unlock a few bonus features as it increases, such as being able to recruit another crew member for the ship and unlocking a few more discoveries and optional bosses. Special ranks can be obtained through silly tasks, like excessively fishing or running away several times, while others are earned through completing beneficial side-quest objectives, like recruiting all 22 crew members.

 If one so chooses, picking the wrong answer every time will make Aika come out looking like the real captain. She won't be, of course, but it's certainly entertaining to watch as everyone comes together under the leadership of a complete idiot.

Crew members can provide stat boosts for the ship or abilities to use in battle. They also add to your home base by opening shops, fetching animals, redesigning buildings, creating art, and combining forces for the Blue Rogues super move. It's not as powerful as Prophecy, but it compensates with healing.

Crew members are represented with incredible artwork, but this doesn't always translate well into the graphics.

Pow's adorable either way.

Even if a person owns the original Dreamcast version, the re-release offers plenty of reasons to purchase another copy. In Skies of Arcadia Legends for the GCN, Overworks continued to build upon many aspects of the game by adding new discoveries and bounties, changing the Swashbuckling ratings, replacing the Pinta mini-game with a linked pair of side-quests, working all of the downloadable Dreamcast content into the port, and lowering the encounter rate of the random battles. Last, but not least, it looks better, too.

... or, at least, Evil Aika does.

Feel free to think of Skies of Arcadia as the Dreamcast/GCN variation of Chrono Trigger. It really is that well made. If there was ever a major shortcoming to address in the comparison, it would be the OST. The music isn't bad by any means, but how does one compete with Yasunori Mitsuda, a guy who worked himself into a hospital bed trying to make Trigger's music absolutely perfect, and Nobuo Uematsu, the one who picked up where Mitsuda left off and added ten more phenomenal tracks to the playlist?

All in all, I bored myself with a JRPG remake after somewhat enjoying a JRPG remake, and now I've followed those two up with yet another JRPG remake. Yes, for the moment, I think I've helped enough idealistic teenagers save the world from villains who thought they might be more successful if they tried the same thing on newer consoles. Perhaps I need to try something from a different genre.

That's not really much different from...

Well, maybe...

Seriously, Josh?!