Alright, so you've seen me praise this as one of my favorite games, and to this day it still is. Though after the passing of time and more recent playthroughs, it's more of a favorite guilty pleasure game these days, as opposed to a favorite because it's some magnificent feat of gaming. In other words, this game has some pretty obvious flaws that make it look pretty bad, and I'm here to put them on blast today so that you know just how awful this game can be.
So let's talk about the story, aka the game's worst defining trait: You star as the male protagonist Vyse, tasked with basically saving the world after unintentionally saving the damsel in distress and learning of what the big bad Empire is planning to do. You go on an adventure around the world, meet a whole bunch of "quirky" characters while spewing out bad metaphors, and basically you accomplish that while living your dream of being a sailor that goes around the world and sees the sights.
Wow, how original, right? I mean, playing as the strong male lead who gets the ladies and is constantly saving them...I just can't believe how this has never been done before. /s
Yeah, you've heard it once (Mario games), you've heard it twice (Zelda games), you've heard it 3,4, 5 times (recent Sonic games, many Final Fantasy titles, basically any old superhero movie/game). A super strong, ambitious male lead known for his chivalry in saving the babes and being all around likeable is hardly anything ground breaking, and was a tired cliche long before this game was even thought of.
But Vyse is so different because he's got that almost edgy style and uses swords (well cutlasses) as a weapon, and always has some quirky Sailor jargon to get people inspired. Feeling down? Well let Vyse tell you some absolutely nonsense story about some sailors and how they never give up to give you some pep! Honestly, when you hear it enough times you find yourself looking for something less garbage to forget the cliche being on overload.
But hey, there's other characters out there too! I mean you have Aika who has some great traits on her own. I mean, remember that time when her and her friends were blown out of the sky, and while Vyse was stranded and trying to get off a deserted island to find his friends, her and Fina were both more interested in hunting for some treasure the minute they were given a map? Wow, that's so awesome! And remember how the game made her hair and jealousy of other girls a running joke? Man, such character development.
Then there's Fina who is just...well, she's Fina I guess. One of those characters that kinda just is kinda there, and in all honesty the game could and should have functioned perfectly fine without her. She was merely a plot device (and a somewhat annoying fish-out-of-water trope who wasn't supposed to understand anything about the world she's in) despite the bad guys already having access to someone who could help them the most (but we'll get to him in a bit), and in all honesty she was incredibly forgetful.
And of course we have the supporting cast of the typical womanizer who believes in your cause and has to constantly find ways to escape a literal stalker who wants his love (and the game even blatantly makes a joke about it, aka "That's the nicest stalker I ever met"), your typical grouchy old man who eventually grows to like you because you're just so gosh darn lovable (?), and your typical runaway royal member who doesn't agree with what their parent is doing and wants to change it...and then the crew that you recruit, all of them bland and forgettable.
We also can't forget the equally bland and forgettable villains of the bunch. In order from encounters, we have:
A) Alfonso - Your typical peacock villain that has no problem saying stupid insults, but doesn't fight you because reasons (and instead has others do it for him...you literally never actually fight him in the game despite you encountering him more than once).
B) Galcian - Your typical villain who wants to kill people just because, and of course will betray the obvious-not-main-antagonist at some point.
C) Empress Teodora I - Obviously not the main antagonist, but the game possibly thinks you're a dumbass despite how very obviously not the main antagonist they are. I mean it's really very obvious they aren't in the slightest, but the game gives them dialogue to try to make you think that you're somehow going to face them (spoiler alert: your main character never even meets her before her death. Only Fina meets her once when she's captured near the beginning parts of the game).
D) Belleza - Your typical villain who hates war, but participates in it continuously as a means to end it permanently when their country rules all (soooo...basically she supports war, since that's usually one of the main goals of it), and has a "secret" crush on Galcian. She believes in using trickery and disguises to get her way...and having a ship with magic cannons that she has no qualms using on "enemies" and undesirables...not to mention summoning a giant red Gigas (aka technologically advanced weapon of destruction) that has 4 heads that shoot lasers to kill people that are deemed to get in the way of the Empire's plans (by her own choice, she wasn't forced to do such a thing). Man, such a great "I don't want to kill things, I just want to end all war" type of person. They really should have called her the "I don't like violence unless the writing wants to contradict it" villain. Did I mention she of course has a change of heart at the end and sacrifices herself to stop Galcian? Because love really does conquer all I guess.
E) De Loco - Literally the only good villain in the game because he's an absolute riot and just wants to destroy things for fun. I even love that they gave him such an obvious name to let us know that he's a lunatic. Gets a little cringey when they make him too comedic with his outbursts, but otherwise was the only villain I cared for. Seriously, he was like Kefka from Final Fantasy 6 and Moe from the 3 Stooges had a kid and it was this guy...and for some reason he wears a large glass thing with a smiley face over his head. But seriously, I was rooting for this guy and wanted him to succeed, and was hoping HE was going to be the "surprise" main bad guy over the actual one (aka Galcian)
F) Vigoro - Literally the definition of a dumpster fire in villain form, loves to play on the overcompensation trope to a T ("Haha my gun's bigger than yours!" cringes), and is an obvious womanzier (and for some reason has a giant lock on the crotch part of his pants?), and definitely raped one of your female characters, even though it's obviously more implied than anything else.
G) Gregorio - The typical old man villain who you of course get through to and he decides that he's perhaps made the wrong choice.
H) Ramirez - The "Why did he turn bad guy?!" bad guy that shocks one of your main characters with his decision to be evil, and is of course the final boss of the game.
I) Mendoza - The "not actually a bad guy you ever encounter" villain, but is presented in story bits via DLC (well, enhanced port) to haphazardly explain Ramirez's change in behavior. Was considered the "Father figure" to Ramirez that he looked up to, but obviously did something to "betray" them and set them on their path.
But the story itself has nothing on some of the awful visuals for the characters at certain points. One prime example is when you visit Yafutoma and enter the throne room of the Emperor. If you saw this guy and son:
It was pretty obvious right away that he was going to do something villain-related, especially since he was the counselor to the emperor. Like, if you wanted it to be less obvious that he was going to betray anyone because he wanted power, maybe don't draw him up to look like a 1000% obvious bad guy. Like, at least with villains like the Empress of Valua (aka the main baddy area), we were given context way before we even saw her character (since by the time we see her, we're well aware Valua is despicable and wants power), so when we first see her character, it fits having her character look like the power hungry dictator she's been built up to be. But come on, we know nothing about Yafutoma aside from it just being some place in the East by the time we meet this guy. Make. Your. Characters. Less. Obviously. Evil.
But one trait characters seem to also be a staple if you're not a main character/villain...even if you're a crew member or bounty.
Like Gordo the Round, the Black Pirate. If you read that name and think "he's gonna be a big guy, isn't he?" then congrats, you got it!
Can you guess what he likes? It's food! Can you guess why he's a pirate? Because he likes to steal food! In case it hasn't been hammered in, HE LOVES FOOD. When you beat him in battle, he opens a restaurant to make food because he's such a food guy that people would totally buy from despite him destroying so many innocent ships just for their food. He totally wouldn't have been taken prisoner and executed by anyone because food!
food!
Other bounties you face are like that...you have the typical black pirate who swears revenge and attempts to get it after you beat him the first time, and of course comes around in the end and helps you out. You have the typical misleading bounty that shows a big strong guy on the poster, but surprise! The bounty was for the guy BEHIND him who is tiny and just wants to make carpets. You have the "impersonators" who are impersonating you for evil deeds, but are so incredibly obviously not you that you wonder if the people just drink toilet water if they seriously think it's you. I mean seriously, they don't even wear the same color clothes (and you literally never change clothes the entire game, so why would anyone think some guy in red with an incredibly nerdy voice, some woman with purple hair, seductive voice and a need to name every special move after herself, and an incredibly squeaky voiced angry eyed girl was you...the trio with a guy with a moderately "meh" voice and blue clothes (and no freckle, which the other guy had), some annoyingly voiced girl with orange hair and the need to name her special moves after the greek alphabet for some reason, and an incredibly softly-voiced naive looking girl WITH A VERY OBVIOUS FLOATING CREATURE SHE USES AS A WEAPON (the imposter just uses magic and is somehow more useless).
Like seriously, what on earth were they even thinking with that bounty? A subpar impression group doing evil deeds...clearly they're the real experts since they apparently avoided the main bad guys' attention despite Vyse and the rest being basically wanted fugitives that literally any Valuan soldier would attack and arrest/kill if something that even looked like them farted in their direction.
But that's just one of the many plot holes that Skies of Arcadia has right there...like Yafutoma. After you get the Blue Crystal, the antagonists show up for talks. For some reason you decide on being "diplomatic" to people who you know want the crystal you just recovered, and let the antagonists have "talks" with the Emperor in Yafutoma when you're screaming as the Player because you know the antagonists and obvious-bad-guys are going to start a coup. The kicker to all of it is that you decide to stay in the guest room and wait naively, for some reason assuming things will go well...all the while your ship that you originally stole from the Valuans sits there unguarded (apparently) for them to steal if things went sideways.But hey...better to wait for those "talks" to finish in the guest room instead of, oh I don't know...going to that ship the minute the antagonists even showed up in town and just waiting there like a normal person who would anticipate things would turn sour. But again the game thinks you're a dumbass and they of course are somehow shocked that the genocidal people who have shown nothing but cruelty and indifference to anyone they considered less than them decided to turn the tables and use the obvious-bad-guy to start a coup within the kingdom (and here the game has been trying to make your characters seem smart, and not Sora from Kingdom Hearts levels of naive/gullible/outright stupid...though to be fair, Sora at least had the excuse of being asleep for a year and was constantly noted to have the naiveté of a young child full of innocence, whereas Vyse was just in a pirate family with a dad who was the captain and taught his son everything such as not trusting so easily and to know when to sense when things were about to go downhill, so naturally Vyse as a smart character would definitely ignore all of this just because Enrique said it was okay...even though Enrique had literally shown to be the definition of a naive royal family member and thus shouldn't have been taken at face value with his opinion on someone who had clearly self-mentioned to be a master of espionage and trickery to the party earlier in the game, and it was known by the royal family including Enrique that it was her specialty. Seriously, maybe there's just something in the water in general to hit those levels of absolute stupid).
So during your escape from being potentially executed after obvious-coup happens, your ship gets taken over by the son of obvious-bad-guy from the pic above (aka long black beard guy Kangan), and of course you have to board it and reclaim it. But here's the question: Where on earth was your crew? At this point in the game, you could hire 13 crew members of various backgrounds (including 2 right from Yafutoma itself), so like...what were they all doing? Your ship doesn't have a brig that you see, and the game never suggests they were captured and thrown in prison (in fact, the game just doesn't mention them...they're simply just not there on the ship). But the moment you reclaim your ship, they're suddenly there again (and actually I believe they were still usable for your super-special Blue Rogues moves during the boss battle to take back the ship), so were they just like in the kitchen/dining area playing cards or something while your ship was being taken over?
Again though, that's just one of many plot holes and unexplained things the game throws at you. Like, why does the game make it clear that taking out a Gigas is as easy as forcing the person controlling it to surrender (literally how you beat the first one you encounter...by forcing Belleza to surrender after you defeat her in a ship battle)...yet apparently for a weak-ass ship as Kangan's (aka obvious bad guy of Yafutoma) was, it's not an option to even consider forcing him to back down? Like, for the rest of the Gigas the game actually gives explanations: Green Gigas goes wild because De Loco (aka the only enjoyable villain) decides "Hey, I'm gonna test my big booming canon on the ship of the guy controlling it" and does so, knocking the guy out cold and making the Gigas go crazy. Purple Gigas is explained to be the result of experiments with a live creature, and the creature just wants to roam and just attacks things that attack it first (or runs because it just wants to live). Yellow Gigas doesn't have a someone controlling it and just awakens to destroy the things it sees. Silver Gigas is controlled by Galcian (aka typical "Everyone is deplorable" villain) and then Ramirez (aka the "I was good once" villain) when Galcian is defeated and basically fuses with Ramirez. But for some reason, the Blue Gigas is the only one that realistically had a second easier option of just forcing the controller to a cease-fire (again, Kangan had a really weak-ass ship that could have been easily defeated)...but no, we gotta shoot our boom boom canons and fight it directly!
Oh, but I haven't even gotten to the best part. So here in this game, you have this girl (aka Fina) from somewhere nobody except the Valuans know about (since they know she's a Silvite, which was more than likely told by Ramirez to Galcian and then conveyed by Galcian to the Empress since she trusted him completely) searching for crystals to take them back to her shrine up on the silver moon. All the while, you hear about how way back when, the old civilizations virtually destroyed themselves due to creating the Gigas to attack each other, until "suddenly" the "Rains of destruction (aka a bunch of moonstones from all of the moons raining down on the lands below)" happened and did the rest of the destruction and left the civilizations reduced to small primitive tribes.
Well,
most of the civilizations, because somehow the Silver Civilization got the memo early, and used their advanced technology to jettison a small part of their civilization to the Silver Moon while the rest of their land sank below the clouds. Yes that's right, somehow they just happened to have enough notice to escape complete destruction and lived to be able to tell the stories in accurate detail that Fina could easily correct people on (whereas for the people below, it was reduced to "fairy tales" that they heard about in vague bits and pieces). Oh my,
how on earth is that possible?If your first assumption was that the plot twist to the game was that Fina's people were the ones that called the rains down in the first place because they (of course) made their own Gigas in secret and left everyone to their own devices because they wanted to start things over...congratulations! You get a cookie. Yes, the big (and hardly surprising if you were following things even vaguely) plot twist is that the people you're gathering the crystals for are the ones that basically destroyed everything in the first place, and naturally, after their crystal is stolen by Ramirez after this heartfelt confession, they decide to sacrifice themselves to of course let the party get access to the final dungeon. Oh yeah, and of course there was the plot twist where the obvious-backstabber uses the rains to destroy the empire and kill the obviously-not-main-antagonist (as well as Alfonso because he ran off to tell of Galcian's plan, but was too busy enjoying the Empress giving him titles and not actually taking action), because big shock:
HE WAS THE BIG BAD GUY ALL ALONG!Anyways, I could honestly keep going for a while. It's very obvious that if you're going into the game thinking you're going to get a kickass story with great characters, you're in for a rude awakening. The story is bland at best with its typical save-the-world-and-fulfill-your-dreams motive to it, the characters can be honestly whittled down to traits that are either bland and uninteresting, or downright cliche (minus one, maybe two exceptions to a point). If you're going into this game, it's for the unique gameplay from when it was released (although it's really dated now in several ways, gameplay and graphics wise, though it's still a lovely overall world design, and the Discoveries sidequest is still fun), or for the pretty decent soundtrack.
Outside of those redemptive areas, it's still "Ehhhh" (although it's also a favorite of mine because it's one of those "It's so blatantly terrible that I still kind of enjoy it" types that just knows some of the good nostalgia buttons to push (and let's be honest, some of the moves are pretty kickass despite occasionally grating voice acting, and some of the gameplay elements and area/dungeon designs are still pretty neat, and I do enjoy the soundtrack).
But in the end, Skies of Arcadia and its Legend port are terrible.
