We have wrapped up Skies of Arcadia on Even Worse Streams, and I asked super player BEAT to say a few words about his favorite RPG. So without further ado, here is “guest writer” BEAT to talk at you about Skies of Arcadia…
Why do I like Skies of Arcadia so much?
BECAUSE IT’S GOOD NEXT QUESTION
Over the past… holy shit 4 months? I have tried and failed to put together something worth reading about why I feel so strongly about this Clinton-Era RPG (editor’s note: this is accurate. BEAT wanted to have something on the site for the first SoA post). Emphasis on failed, as the fact that I’m currently bashing this out in notepad the day before it gets posted can readily attest.
So Skies of Arcadia is “good” huh? That doesn’t fucking tell anyone anything, least of all why I’ve held it as my pick for best RPG ever for… 26 years? Damn. Perhaps a slightly more in-depth answer is required…
IN WHAT WAYS IS SKIES OF ARCADIA GOOD?
On its face, Skies of Arcadia easily passes all the benchmarks for a console RPG in the year of our lord 2000. The difficulty curve is remarkably well balanced, allowing you to make the game easier with a non-miserable amount of grinding. But it is also perfectly manageable if you dedicatedly make a beeline to each objective with no major diversions. Of course, like a good console RPG, it encourages taking detours by filling its map with fun little side paths and things to discover, ensuring that the game will only become punishingly hard if you determinedly refuse to interact with it. That’s good!
The battle system itself is similarly well designed. While the memory constraints and loading requirements of the day make it slow by today’s standards, the game gives you a variety of combat options that work together to make a very smooth player experience. Every party member has an obvious role that you can intuit just by looking at them, and no character feels like a “waste” of a slot. The Spirit Pool taking the place of where most RPGs use a limited character-specific MP bar also incentivizes using the fun super attacks, as doing big flashy moves are now something you’re encouraged to do any time a battle lasts more than 2 turns. All of that is also good!
The world-building, an important part of any RPG, is among the best in the genre. The game drops you into Arcadia at the start without bothering to explain much of anything, trusting you to intuit the fact that this is a game with suspended sky islands and flying pirate ships by showing you a bunch of suspended sky islands and flying pirate ships. More than that, there is something truly brilliant with the discovery system, which effectively delivers information through a very fun side quest. The game gives you hints of the history and culture of all of its continents simply by letting you find crazy shit on them. The green civilization had a telescope observatory. The red civilization figured out geostationary satellites. The game doesn’t stop dead to give you these fun details unless you seek them out. If you’re truly dedicated (as I was in the playthrough featured on this very website) you find the world of Arcadia is full of cool ideas; all of which you can see as you fly past them, making the world feel full and alive. I’d call that pretty darn good!
The plot of the game, while not groundbreaking, is also worth shouting out as one of the game’s many accomplishments. “Two friends find a weird girl and go on a quest for magic rocks that control big boss monsters” is not the most original RPG setup, but the game manages to add several twists on that basic idea. One of the magic rocks was found years ago and its owner civilization has been keeping it in their back pocket for when they really need it. Another one is implanted in the body of its boss monster (which has been running rampant all over the map for the entire duration of the game). You never fight it because it is already dying. The game uses its very simple framework to create unique and creative episodes: you get 2 weeks of Robinson Caruso, and the follow up “you just missed each other” sitcom. Taking an immediately understandable main thread and using it to create unique and fun setups is, you guessed it, good!
The visual design of Skies of Arcadia is not simply good by 90s-ish Dreamcast standards, it is good today. There was never a point in time when the game wasn’t visibly low poly: even on an ancient CRT TV, you could easily see the flat triangles that made everything. But the game used those admittedly blocky models to great effect. Every character is designed so you can figure out what they’re about just by looking at them. Every landmass feels unique, from the small islands to the large continents. Every ship feels like an accurate reflection of its owner, from Admiral Alfonso’s gaudy, overdesigned luxury warship, to Dyne’s classic pirate galleon, to Centime’s purely utilitarian rust bucket. And when cutscenes or set pieces call for it, the game uses every trick in the book to combine its low-fidelity assets into shots that are pure cinematographic beauty. It does a whole hell of a lot with very little, and that’s damn good.
But if I had to nail down the single best thing about Skies of Arcadia, it would have to be the characters. Vyse and Aika absolutely peg their roles as dual Shonen protagonists, excitedly getting into and out of lethal situations with nothing but big silly grins and near-psychotic determination. Fina perfectly rounds out the main trio as the outsider who is never quite sure if she is onboard with these two’s next big plan, but hey, the last one worked, didn’t it? Enrique, Gilder, and Drachma add side character variety by playing (respectively) the classic roles of the exiled but still noble royal, the hedonist with a heart of gold, and Captain Ahab. They contrast well against the villains who, instead of just being quirky mini-bosses, are all genuine characters themselves with motivations that run alongside or counter to the big boss’s evil plot (which itself makes logical sense). It’s efficient, effective, and damn fun to follow. And that makes it very, very good.
Skies of Arcadia sets itself apart from its contemporaries (and a lot of games made in the following quarter century) mostly just by impeccable craftsmanship. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, or even really have any groundbreaking ideas about how to make that wheel turn. It just does all the things it’s supposed to do really, really well.
And sometimes that’s enough.
My name is BEAT and Skies of Arcadia is my favorite RPG of all time.
FGC #726 Skies of Arcadia
- System: I’m Goggle Bob, and I’m back in the saddle! I am telling you that Skies of Arcadia was released on Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Gamecube. I personally played the Gamecube version, because I thought the original Sega Dreamcast box (jewel case?) art was always too… angular.
- Number of players: BEAT played this single player game with an audience of dozens.
- Anything to add, Goggle Bob? No, I think BEAT got the right of everything in his essay above. My only note is that all the enemy generals are not fleshed out characters, because De Loco exists. That guy is just Dr. Robotnik with a Napoleon complex, and I refuse to admit there is anything more going on in that glass tube of his.
What’s in a name: The Japanese title is “Eternal Arcadia”. I will admit that that sounds more RPG-like, but “Skies of Arcadia” fits the whole air pirate premise better by a factor of approximately a billion. Unfortunately, they did not accept my proposed title, “Baltor the Black Bearded’s Big Day”.- Favorite Character: Reviewing the thumbnails that I created for our series of streams, I noticed that Aika appears the most frequently. I assure you that it was not on purpose. For better or worse, though, it still very much happened.
- Secret Skies of Arcadia Fact: The relationship between Vyse, Fina, and Aika is what people remember as the relationship between Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa in Final Fantasy 7. And these people are wrong. But this trio and their general affiliation vibe is what people think happened in that Squaresoft title from a few years earlier. Or at least that is what got confirmed in Kingdom Hearts…
- Did you know? There is a code to get Vyse to remove his goggle-monocle, and we talk about it during the stream. We never actually remembered to do it, though.
- Would I play again? I last played this game sometime when the Gamecube was new and fresh. Having seen BEAT play through it all, I am inspired to play it again on my own terms… though that would likely take like 40 hours. And the last thing I have right now is 40 hours! So I’ll replay it again… some day…
What’s next? Look, there was a bit of a vacation snafu in my (real) life, and that messed up the site’s usual scheduling (/my own output). FGC and SBC will return to normal service sometime in the next month or so. There are plans! I’m just not 100% certain what’s going to be next. We’ll find out together! Please look forward to it!
