Skies of Arcadia is a beautiful RPG, and although I've mentioned in a previous blog that I'm not a fan of RPG's, I consider SoA to be one of the greatest games of all time.
The story is set in a Jules Verne inspired universe where you play as Vyse, a young air-pirate looking to make his mark on the world. His dream is to captain his own ship and search for treasure and adventure, something this game has in spades, unfortunately the only thing standing in the way of Vyse and everyone else being happy is the Valuan Empire.
The Valuan Empire are the evil overlords of the world, they're rich, powerful and seem to have the best ships and weapons, but that doesn't seem to be enough for them. It turns out they're hunting for an ancient weapon that could easily destroy their enemies, or anyone else standing in their way, so it's up to Vyse and his crew to sail the skies and find it before the bad guys do.
Arcadia is a beautifully crafted world and inhabited by a massive population of memorable characters, and finding them all is an adventure in itself. There's so much to explore you really are just spoiled, it's fun just to cruise the skies in your airship and look at the vast world ahead of you. There's tons of side-quests, unlockables, items, powers and heaven knows what else to uncover, I spent 48 hours on my first playthrough and I didn't even find everything. It was time well spent.
The Dreamcast version included Pinta's Quest, a VMU mini-game that allowed you to find rare items and weapons that otherwise couldn't be located. The Gamecube version however, had you catching 'moon-fish' hidden throughout the game that you would feed to a strange bird that would cough up items, since the Gamecube didn't have VMU's like the Dreamcast.
If you were to ask me which version I prefer, I couldn't really answer. While the Gamecube version (Skies of Arcadia Legends) has some great extra/alternative content the audio quality was actually of lower quality than the Dreamcast version, apparently a method used to cram Skies of Arcadia onto one Gamecube disk. It's a bit of a shame really, because the soundtrack is nothing short of incredible.
Skies of Arcadia will hold pride of place as not only one of the finest RPG's ever produced, but also one of Sega's greatest triumphs. Hopefully the possibility of Skies of Arcadia HD becomes a reality, because every gamer should at least have the opportunity to play this one.
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