Skies of Arcadia
Alternate Titles - Eternal Arcadia (Japan)
Developer - Overworks (formerly SEGA AM7)
Publisher - SEGA
Directors - Atsushi Seimiya ; Shuntaro Tanaka
Producer - Reiko Kodama
Writer - Shuntaro Tanaka
Composers - Yutaka Minobe ; Tatsuyuki Maeda
Genre - Single-player RPG / JRPG with turn-based battle system
Release Dates - October 5, 2000 (Japan), November 13, 2000 (North America), April 27, 2001 (Europe)
Additional Releases - Nintendo Gamecube (2002)
Current Average Price - $120
Skies of Arcadia is often counted among the best Dreamcast games, and for good reason. While it didn’t necessarily revolutionize the Japanese RPG or significantly alter the genre’s formula, it is significant for the many ways in which it refined and perfected many key elements of the traditional JRPG.
In contrast to the most popular RPGs of the day (Final Fantasy VII and FFVIII, for example), which featured overtly serious and occasionally dark themes, Skies of Arcadia featured a consciously lighthearted and optimistic tone. This element is one of the things which players most fondly recall of the game today. This infectiously happy tone combines with exceptional graphics, earnest characters, an engaging battle system, and a beautiful soundtrack to create one of the best and most memorable RPGs of its era.
Story
The story concerns the world of Arcadia, where the tyrannical and militaristic Valuan Empire is searching for legendary artifacts called Moon Stones, which will allow the empire to control mythical machines of destruction known as Gigas. The Silver Civilization (who sealed the Gigas away after a nearly cataclysmic war thousands of years earlier) have sent a lone girl to find and retrieve the Moon Stones before the Valuan Empire does.
The player assumes the role of Vyse, a young member of the Blue Rogues, a faction of beneficent air pirates whose aims are to redistribute wealth, protect the innocent, and resist the Valuan Empire. While raiding a Valuan Empire ship, The Blue Rogues, including Vyse and his best friend Aika, encounter a ship fleeing attack. The Blue Rogues repel the attack and save the sole inhabitant of the fleeing ship, a girl named Fina, who we quickly learn is the seeker of the Moon Stones sent by the Silver Civilization.
After a brief and relentlessly optimistic discussion, it’s decided that Vyse and Aika will help Fina find all of the Moon Stones and rid Arcadia of the evil Valuan Empire. The trio is formed and the adventure begins.
Gameplay
Skies of Arcadia focuses on world exploration on a massive scale. The player pilots an airship through a large 3D overworld, exploring islands in the sky, encountering lost civilizations and visiting a variety of vastly different floating nations. The player can dock at most landmasses, where he or she is then able to explore towns, cities, ruins, and temples, to find artifacts and treasures, and to engage in turn-based battles with the game’s many enemy characters.
As the game begins, the overworld is an unexplored map which the player can chart by sailing through the skies and exploring. Airship battles can occur randomly in the sky, taking place on the deck of the player’s ship or in air-to-air combat with other ships. When docked on land, exploration of cities and traversal of dungeons is done on foot. Dungeons are made up of a sort of maze, throughout which the player explores and engages in random battles, earning experience points to level up, and utilizing physical attacks, magic, and special Moon Stone abilities. At the end of each dungeon there typically exists a boss which must be defeated.
The player is able to recruit numerous crew characters and position them within their island base, or on their own pirate ship. It’s also possible to find and develop weaponry and tech for the player’s ship. These crew characters and ship upgrades change the capability of the ship in ways which impact air combat and exploration.
In addition to the three main characters and the supplementary crew, there are three additional characters which may join the players party at various times throughout the story.
Development and Innovations
Development of Skies of Arcadia began in 1999 under the code name Project Ares. The dev team was largely comprised of veterans of the Phantasy Star series and former members of Team Andromeda (who had famously developed the Panzer Dragoon real shooters, and the legendary RPG Panzer Dragoon Saga). The game’s producer, Reiko Kodama, had worked on some of SEGA’s best-received RPGS, including Phantasy Star I, II, and III, as well as working on Sonic the Hedgehog. With such a dream team of approximately twenty veteran game-makers, expectations for Skies within SEGA was high.
Development proceeded smoothly, and when the final GD-ROM landed in’ Dreamcasts around the world, gamers were treated to some technical innovations that they’d not known before.
In Skies, the dev team was able to totally eliminate load times when exploring towns and other environments. This allowed the player to enter and exit buildings seamlessly, and lent a feeling of scale and contiguity to the game’s overworld. Another innovation, Skies was one of the first games to feature in-game character models with contextually reactive facial animation. It was also the first game to have contextually reactive music - when a battle starts we hear the standard battle music, but the music can change at any time. For example, if the player does poorly and comes close to losing a battle, the music will shift to a more chaotic and stressful score. Conversely if the player does well, the music will change to a more victorious and lighthearted score.
A less technical (yet more impactful) innovation for the day, the developers made sure to portray Aika and Fina (the player character’s female companions) as equals to the male player character Vyse, rather than fall on the damsels-in-distress or love-interest tropes so popular then (and today) among RPGs.
Legacy
Skies of Arcadia underperformed commercially, and though characters from the game have appeared in small roles in subsequent SEGA games (Valkyria Chronicles and Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed) a true sequel has never materialized. Despite this sad fact, Skies is widely regarded as one of the best RPGs of its generation, and fan requests for a sequel or remaster are omnipresent on SEGA’s social media channels even today.
Contemporary reviews praised Skies of Arcadia unanimously. Review aggregator Metacritic rates Skies at 93/100 based on 21 reviews, and in 2006 it was ranked #58 on IGN’s Top 100 Games of All Time.