The Skies of Arcadia (2000) do not speak louder than my heart

First gaming session for ‘Skies of Arcadia’

I kicked off this series of articles, to document my play-throughs of classic Dreamcast games that I’d never experienced, by explaining how I’d first purchased the console during a personal crisis. (At the tail-end of a weekend from hell in Edinburgh, as my first relationship spectacularly unravelled) And as I write this article today, history is sadly repeating – and once again, I find myself leaning on the plucky old Dreamcast as a source of solace. The Dreamcast is my friend.  The Dreamcast doesn’t hurt my feelings. Well, except when it does that weird glitch of rapidly resetting itself as dust builds up inside the console – a hardware issue that was never fully resolved due to the console’s commercial failure. Alas, I digress.

I find another relationship ending and I’d like to think I’m more mature and emotionally stable to deal with it this time. However this time it’s not a 6 month relationship at stake but a long marriage involving wonderful children, so the impact is of course much more significant. Since this unfortunate development I’ve been continuing to have amazing times with my kids, the most important and best part of my life. And I’ve been fortunate to receive great support from my friends. But yes, when things become tricky and I’m on my own then video games are of course a helpful and fun distraction.

When planning this article and thinking through my experiences it occurred to me that, rather grotesquely, my relationship troubles strangely seem to coincide with me connecting (or reconnecting) with the Dreamcast. If it was a Twilight Zone episode then the twist would be that the console was the villain the entire time, pulling the strings behind the scenes, like the adorable but duplicitous dog from Silent Hill 2. But when I look at the console’s fun, sweet exterior, giving me the puppy-dog eyes, I just know in my gut that it cannot be true.

So yes, the Dreamcast has been great for me except, well, I need to confess something here: despite everything I’ve written so far, my main video gaming crux (and a big reason for the delay in completing this article) has actually been the PS5 release Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. This has nothing to do with the Dreamcast (“honestly it’s not you, it’s me!”) and more my obsession with the FFVII series – I even completed the Crisis Core prequel game to learn just a teensy bit more about the characters’ backstories. I had been desperately waiting for Rebirth’s release, so it was always going to dominate my gaming schedule.         

130 hours play-time later, with that behemoth finally done and dusted, I found myself available again to enjoy other gaming experiences. I initially needed something much shorter as a detox – which led to me completing the Monkey Island series with a friend (the third one weirdly being my favourite) and taking on the interesting fmv-game ‘Immortality’. However I found myself ready again for a longer experience with a more immersive story to get lost in – god knows, I need it – and the Dreamcast managed to edge out Jedi: Survivor to become the main source of my attention for the next several months.

Step forward Skies of Arcadia!

I knew little of the game beforehand except a few limited bits of info. I knew the game involved some kind of sky pirates, was generally well-regarded and considered less ‘moody’ than other RPGs of its era, that the development crew included alumni from other well-regarded titles like Panzer Dragoon Saga, that there had been a Gamecube re-release featuring some minor modifications but otherwise the game was unavailable. And yeah, that was pretty much it. So I was going in very fresh with few preconceptions.

I load up the game’s pre-titles cutscene and yup, it seems pretty jaunty with a quick and colourful guide to the title’s outlandish swashbuckling characters. However when starting the game proper we are thrown into a dramatic night-time scene in the clouds, with a large overbearing enemy ship chasing down a small underdog vessel which seems to be piloted by a classic princess-style character (at least based on my stereotypical first impressions) – Star Wars: A New Hope, anyone? Although the general vibe seems more reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

All hope seems lost for the mysterious girl, whose name we learn is Fina, as she’s captured by a scenery-chewing (in the best way) villain, Alfonso. But then there’s a warning siren! A third ship has snuck in to stage a raid, and here we are introduced to our two main pirate characters, Vyse and Aika.

First impressions here are very strong – in an echo of the other classic RPG I mentioned, Final Fantasy VII, the game starts quickly – throwing you into an exciting mission immediately, the best way to start this type of epic tale in my opinion. And while the pirates ziplining into battle and the OTT villain replete with an evil laugh are of course a lot of fun, there is some drama and a nice sense of atmosphere conjured through the pacey, well-directed cinematics and evocative, isolated aerial setting. 

It’s worth emphasising as well just how brilliant the music is throughout my playthrough. Yes, there are some upbeat stirring themes as expected, but the game also has some lovely quieter and melancholic piano numbers (as did so many RPGs from this golden era for the genre).

So we play through this initial action set-piece which is pretty fun and doesn’t outstay its welcome. The game at this point has not yet offered an in-game battle tutorial which sends me rifling through the game manual – remember when games had cool, excessively long manuals? When you later reach the pirate hideout you can encounter an NPC who’ll give you more detail, but the battle system is a relatively straightforward turn-based affair with your standard actions of ‘attack’, ‘use item’, etc – so you can kind of work it out, at least if you’re less OCD than me in wanting to know everything straight off the bat. 

While overall the battling seems straightforward, there does seem to be an interesting rock-paper-scissor mechanic regarding what type of attacks you select, powered by a range of crystals (of course) that I honestly don’t really understand so far – as well as a ‘focus’ move that lets you regenerate your ability to use special attacks and magic, but at the expense of being able to damage the enemy during that turn. So there does appear to be some depths to the battle system that hopefully will be fun to explore over the course of the game. There’s a hilarious and shocking piece of treachery during an enemy cutscene before you dive into the first boss battle against a weird robot rhino (of course). In classic bad guy style, Alfonso wanders off assuming his minion will finish the job, although if I had a robot rhino (here’s hoping, some day) I’d likely adopt the same approach.  

In classic RPG style, the boss is not too daunting but engaging enough to warrant a couple of potions and special moves to finish the job. Shortly after we enjoy a rather adorable and amusing cutscene where our two pirate leads explain to the princess, once she recovers from her ordeal, about their way of life – they’re the good kind of Robin Hood-style pirates. The main trio are very endearing so far and make a great first impression. We learn that their crew only steals from the evil military overlords, the Valuan Empire, but that there’s another rival pirate crew which has no qualms about robbing civilian and merchant vessels – which I think is good world-building and a nice way to bring in some moral ambiguity to prevent the story becoming overly cutesy.

We then see a little insight into the tension between Vyse and the pirate crew’s captain, who we find out is also his dad. Even worse he keeps calling the captain “Dad” in front of the other crew members – I don’t know how he copes, I’d be mortified. So far I get the feeling that the daddy issues will be a lot less melodramatic than the norm for Japanese RPGs – here’s looking at you Final Fantasy X – although it’s still a nice added dimension to the story.

We are then fairly quickly given the chance to directly control and fly our pirate ship. The level of interactivity and freedom with this gameplay mechanic seems pretty limited at this early stage, but I can definitely imagine this aspect becoming a lot of fun later on once the game’s world opens up more to the player. The ship flying is broken up by the occasional turn-based battle and we make it to our pirate hideout and base – which, in rather cool fashion, is hidden within the innards of an innocent-looking village island floating in the sky.              

Let me just point out: everything so far has happened within the first hour of the game. It’s an enjoyably blistering start that compares favourably to the sleepier intros I’ve experienced of other titles (e.g. Grandia, Dark Chronicle, Final Fantasy VIII). The game has fully thrown me into its world and is lining up to be a really fun experience so far.

Thanks for reading and please check out the next instalment where I’ll be settling into the game proper with all the intro stuff (and my self-therapy session) out of the way. 

The sky’s the limit.    

Joe Millar‘s Archive – Skies of Arcadia

Joe can also be heard on our animation podcast, The Dreaming Machine