Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Instant classic"

To truly describe Skies of Arcadia Legends is to call it a Director's Cut/Extended Edition of the Dreamcast original. The central story and gameplay is the same, but add in a couple new features and extra story lines to fill in a couple of much needed gaps, and you have Legends.

For those who haven't played the original Dreamcast game, Skies of Arcadia Legends is an rpg set i the world of Arcadia. Arcadia is a world shattered from a cataclysm of sorts from the past. It is a world where all the land is suspended in air, and is traversed by airships. It is also a land of great mystery, as the cataclysm left many civilizations and secrets lost. It is also a land of air pirates. This is where Vyse, the main character comes in. He, and his best friend Aika, are young air pirates who, after saving a strange girl named Fina, are thrust into a plot that may result in another cataclysm. It's up to them, and their crew to save the world. With the story pretty much summed up, as Vyse you fly around the world trying to stop the evil Valuan empire from conquering the world. And with most rpgs, there are a slew of battles, either random or scripted.

The battles are split into two types. You have your regular battles where your characters are on screen battling the minions of evil, typical of almost every rpg out of Japan; and then you have ship battles. For the regular battles, the battle system is rather unique. You have various choices for how you want each character to act. Among them are your typical attack, item, magic, and defend options. But also intermixed is the special power, focus, and (later on in the game) super power options. Now before I get into discussing what the later three options are, the battle system is ruled by spirit points that are garnered at the end of each turn. The spirit points tell you what special powers and/or magic you can use that turn. For magic, you also have to worry about MP, but since every spell in this game costs 1 MP, it's not that much of a worry. To make up for this, the focus ability is a way to add more spirit points to your total instead of waiting for each turn to come around. Now let's get to the special and super powers. Special powers are attacks that are unique to each character, while super powers require the entire spirit gauge to be full to use. Sound fun? It is. The battle system is intricately created to cause some much needed strategy during battles. But what really makes Skies of Arcadia unique is the inclusion of the ship battles.

Ever now and then, you have an option to engage another ship, and sometimes you have no option. Ship battles revolve around a different system of rules. You have to set up a sequence of moves and then watch a nice cinematic unfold depicting your choices. It looks a lot better than it sounds.

With the battle systems out of the way, the creators of the game really stress out the importance of exploring the rich world. To help this cause, they included a series of objects or items to be discovered. Known as discoveries in the game, these are quite fun to search for and fill out. Now for the original Dreamcast version, there were 64 discoveries to find. For the Gamecube edition, that number has been upped to 88.

The creators really went all out for Skies of Arcadia. Since your main character is indeed a pirate, albiet a good pirate, you are given a chance to find your own crew. This is one of the high points of the game. Each character that you find brings their help in battle, especially the ship battles. Also, what the game is probably known for, is the infamous meter. During the course of the game you are given certain choices during key moments. Saying the right thing will help your reputation, while saying the wrong things will hinder it. Why is this important? Well, as you progress through the game, your character is given titles. You start out as Vyse the Blue Rogue, and if you do things right you can get up to Vyse the Cunning and them onto Vyse the Legend. Just another added bonus to keep you occupied during the game.

But that's just the original Skies of Arcadia that I described up there. For Legends, a couple of new and much needed additions have been made. The first of which being the bounty system.

As you make your way through the game, bounties will pop up. With the exception of a couple of them, all of these battles will be fought hand to hand. I have to say, that as someone who played the original Dreamcast version, this is a welcome addition. The battles are difficult enough to offer a much needed challenge to veterans of the old version, and a good challenge for newcomers.

As for the other differences, they revolve around the inclusion of an Angel of Death of sorts who has something out for you, providing yet another series of challenging battles, and you also have to catch numerous moonfish for a doctor. While the catching might not sound terribly fun, you do get some nice items.

But Skies of Arcadia isn't without its flaws. The first being that graphically, it won't win any awards. The game looks like a slightly, and I do stress the word slightly, improved Dreamcast title. Also, some people may be turned off from the high amount of random encounters in the game. This can be avoided at a later stage, but early on, it can get somewhat annoying. But aside from those, Skies of Arcadia Legends is an absolute joy to play.