The Tundra: Skies of Arcadia

Okay, so the Scurvy post is getting shelved for the time being. I really can't seem to write it in a way that's not just a rehash of what you could go find on Wikipedia, so it's gonna gather dust for a bit until I can make it more gooder. (If this disappoints you, please feel free to yell at me in that there pretty little comments section, and I may go ahead and post it anyway.)

So instead of your regularly scheduled scurvy post, we bring you an exciting episode of The Tundra!

This time, I'm here to talk about Skies of Arcadia, one of the most underrated and unknown RPGs I have ever had the pleasure of playing. Actually, its more than just an RPG. Skies of Arcadia combines many, MANY unique (at the time, at least) ideas into one stock pot of awesome, creating some kind of delicious stew of entertainment. Just like mom used to make, only with combat mechanics instead of potatoes.

Now, since I can't seem to think of a topic to start discussing that doesn't lead right into a tirade of why I think this game is so amazing, I'm gonna let this flow a little organically: I'll start discussing the basic plot, and we'll go from there. Afterwards, I'll talk about some of the unique gameplay mechanics present in the game, and then I'll wrap up with a general overview of my feelings of the game. So lets get started!

Skies of Arcadia is set, amazingly enough, in the land of Arcadia, a fantastical world comprised of multiple islands and continents floating in the sky, high above the clouds. It bears several familiarities to Earth in general geography, with a lush forest land, a continent covered in deserts, and even a completely frozen land, completely inhospitable to human life. However, unlike Earth, Arcadia has six moons, each of a different color and possessing strong magical properties, affecting the lands below them. There is the Red Moon, whose strong affinity to fire has rendered its lands a barren desert, the Yellow Moon, which possesses the powers of electricity, granting those living under it the ability to create electrically powered devices, the Green Moon, which uses its gifts of healing and life to bless its lands with thick jungles, the Blue Moon, bearing the powers of wind and water, and presiding over an as-of-yet unexplored land, the Purple Moon, which freezes its lands with unrelenting ice, and the Silver Moon, controlling death and void, which reigns supreme over a conspicuously empty region of sky. These six moons are incredibly important to the people of Arcadia, as their magical powers are harnessed as forms of energy and used to fuel, among other things, the one viable mode of transportation in this world: Airships. Flying ships are used to sail from land to land. Everyone uses them, especially the stars of this show...

Pirates. The world of Arcadia is crawling with pirates. They are divided into two factions: Black Pirates, who burn and pillage everything they can, and the Blue Rogues, who are not unlike a band of Robin Hoods. They steal stuff, yeah, but only from those who can stand to lose a few things, and they then proceed to use their "liberated goods" to help those in need.

Guess which ones our protagonists are!

And here is where I begin vomiting praise all over the game. The basic plot is that Valua, the empire under the Yellow Moon, is, of course, trying to take over the world. Valua is more or less at war with the desert kingdom, Nasr, and currently has its sights set on taking Ixa'Taka, the jungle lands under the Green Moon. If you think this sounds familiar, then I guess you did a good job of paying attention in History class! The entire game is very loosely set in our very own age of exploration. Valua, with its hopes of conquest, highly developed technology, and population with names like Ramirez and Teodora, is an obvious mirror image of Europe. Nasr, with its deserts and ruling Sultan, is our India stand-in, and Ixa'Taka will play the part of the Americas. But the game is very discrete about this. It never beats you over the head with the parallels, and it is actually incredibly easy to not even notice that this is going on until you beat the game and really think about it. I guess the fantasy setting does a good job of masking it, but its still an awesome revelation once you start connecting the dots, and yet it has absolutely no bearing on the actual plot whatsoever. It's more like an amazing little easter egg you find after draining the game of all of its other tidbits of fantasticness.

Most JRPGs are fond of including underlying messages, and Skies is no different. Here, it's a theme of friendship and trust. Our heroes are Vyse, the Blue Rogue, Aika, his childhood friend and part-time scarecrow, and Fina, a mysterious stranger with a secret mission to complete (walking Japanese cliche). Over the course of the adventure, the three of them build a very deep, very profound friendship, and even create unbreakable ties to a huge cast of characters who they often trust their lives to. Sure, character development isn't anything new or exciting, but Skies does it so very well. You really do get attached to these kids, and you really do feel their friendship slowly growing as the game goes on. Most games have everyone acting all buddy-buddy the instant the "you got a new party member!" fanfare dies down, but here, you really feel that they earn their companionship. They go through some deep stuff together, and after every crisis, it is very clear that they have become closer than ever before. I have no problems admitting that I am a huge pussy for stuff like this.

Anyway, enough of that. Lets get into the technical reasons why I love this game, divided for your pleasure.

The Battle System
Might as well start with the most obvious thing for an RPG. Skies uses the very basic what I call "round system," where you pick your team's actions all at once, and then a full round of combat carries out, proceeding to the next after everyone on both sides have performed their actions. The first twist to this is the element system. Nearly everything in the game is aligned to one of the six moons, even your weapons. However, you can change what element each character's weapon is at any time. This serves two very important functions; being able to hit enemy weaknesses and avoid enemy resistances, and teaching magic.

At the end of each fight, your party gains magic experience depending on what color their weapons were at the end of the fight. One character being aligned to, say, Green, will give the whole party Green experience. However, the one holding the Green weapon gains an additional boost. Each color has six spells aligned to it. The fun thing is that every single spell uses a single MP. BUT, if used in battle, these spells also consume SP.

What is SP? It's kind of like a secondary MP gauge, except this one is shared by the entire party. At the start of each turn, each healthy and alive party member contributes some SP to the gauge, which everyone can draw from to perform magic and special attacks. Magic is the same for everyone, but each character also gets their own unique set of special attacks, which are things as simple as an extra powerful attack, to things as unique and useful as removing buffs from all enemies or reflecting all magic aimed at your party. It takes a little time to get used to this idea and stop drawing out all your SP and wondering why you can't use a certain spell, but its not that bad.

Magic and specials have multiple targeting systems, too. You have single targets, all targets in a radius from the central target, all targets in a line, and all targets on the field. This sounds kinda odd until you realize that everyone participating in a fight moves around the battle field as the fight goes on, kinda like Chrono Trigger, but more so. So not only do you need to pay attention to all of the above, but you also need to think about how enemies are lined up when you go to use a certain skill. It sounds annoying, but it does a great job of adding strategy to the fight.

On top of all that, fights even have neat little entertaining flourishes. Characters not actively doing something will "fight" in the background and move around the board of their own will. This is very nice to see, especially after playing tons of games where everyone just stands around doing nothing for the bulk of the time. Also, during boss fights, the music changes depending on how the fight is going. If you're pretty beat up, the music turns dire, but when you've almost got the boss defeated, the music gets triumphant and energetic. Its the little things like this that really spice up things.

But basic fights get old after a while. And that is why we have...

Ship Battles
This is one of the big attractions to Skies of Arcadia. Sometimes your foe is just too big to fight hand to hand. At times like these, you just gotta retreat to your ship and blast the living hell out of 'em with your cannons. Ship battles ditch the standard RPG turn-taking approach and instead focus on a pure strategic mindset. At the start of a round, each character can choose to do something, be it cast a spell, repair some damage, evade an attack, or fire a cannon. But good strategy needs to be employed, as you may not have a clear shot at certain points in the round. Also, throughout the fights, you'll be asked to make quick decisions on what you should be doing next. Here, the goal is to think about the best course of action to take, or maybe even try to outsmart your opponent. This is actually a time where characterization plays an important part in gameplay, as you'll often need to think about how your opponent would act and counteract accordingly. If you're fighting someone well known for their battle strategy and trickery, you'll obviously want to be fighting on the defensive.

You even get to customize your ship. There are three different types of cannons; main cannons, secondary guns, and torpedoes. Each behave differently in battle and consume differing amounts of energy, and you get four slots to install weapons into. You also get three slots for defensive items, which come in three flavors; decks for defense, engines for agility, and figurines for magic defense. The wise thing to do is to use a balance, but in certain situations, you may find it beneficial to sacrifice some speed so you can use three decks instead. These fairly simple mechanics do wonders for incorporating even more strategy into the ship battles.

Crew System
You spend the better part of the first half of the game borrowing others' ships. But once you get your own ship, you'll need a crew to manage it. This is where the Crew system comes into play. You can recruit different people from around the world to help run your ship. Each crew member you have provides benefits in ship battles, depending on their job. Your Gunners will make your cannons more powerful, while your Cooks can replenish your ship's HP or SP. Your crew can even assist in hand-to-hand combat! Completely filling your SP gauge allows you to summon your crew to attack your foes and heal your party, but how effective they are at doing either of these things depends on who is acting at the moment.

You'll also get to build your own secret base. Your Builders will build you houses, and you can choose from a variety of decorations and such, depending on who you have recruited so far. Some of your crew members will even open up shops and sell you rare items! While its not terribly important, it's still super cool to personalize your own island base.

Exploration
This is the age of exploration, after all! As you explore new lands, you may find things called Discoveries. These may be things as simple as old temple ruins, or odd things like natural phenomenon or exotic locations, or they could even be revolutionary discoveries, like the fact that the world is round! Reporting these Discoveries to the Sailor's Guild nets you a good amount of money, so its always in your best interest to find them all. You can also stop by the Guild to buy information on rumors concerning some Discoveries, or talk to the townspeople for hints or legends regarding these Discoveries. But of course, you aren't the only adventurer in the world. If you wait too long to find a Discovery, someone else will find it first! If this happens, your reward money for reporting it will be significantly diminished. This really encourages you to explore as much as you can, and sometimes you really do run into some neat things!

Well, I guess I'm running out of stuff to say, so I'll start wrapping things up. Skies of Arcadia truly is a fantastic game, packed full of whimsy, discovery, adventure, and friendship. The journey you take when you play this game feels as real as any game can. There is a point near the middle-end of the game where a character talks with Vyse and discusses all he has accomplished throughout the game, and unlike most games where it just feels like a plot synopsis, it really makes you think back to the beginnings of your journey, and how far you have come. When you think about it, it really does feel like oh so long ago when you left home to explore the world. Every major event feels like its own little story by itself, full of epic fights, conflict, resolution, and even stronger bonds of friendship. The characters you meet throughout the game are amazingly colorful, and play off each other incredibly well. You grow attached to some characters, and you feel a deep personal hatred for the enemies you find that bring harm to your new friends. The plot is a little cliche, but its still fun, and manages to add in a good amount of twists to keep you on your toes. I HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone that has even a remote, passing interest in RPGs. You can find it on the Dreamcast, but I recommend the enhanced Gamecube port, with added quests, items, and background information for some of the main characters.

Fun fact: This started off as a Video Game Deconstruction, but I kinda went a little fanboy on it and decided to make it a Tundra.