Back in 2000, Sega made a dream come true for me.....and no, the dream that came true wasn't finally getting to make out with Eva Amurri, even though that would've been pretty sweet too.
Nope, Sega gave me the chance to finally play a game inspired by the works and spirit of Hiyao Miyazaki. While Miyazaki didn't have any direct involvement in the game, his fingerprint inspiration is hard to miss. From the awesome airships to the colorful, lovable rogues that populate the game, Skies of Arcadia has Miyazaki written all over it.
WHAT WENT RIGHT: Rarely have I ever seen a more well concieved and executed environment in gaming. Mix up kickass airship with a world made up of floating islands in an endless sea of clouds and you've got a pretty perfect recipe for adventure. You get a ship pretty early on in the game, and after a few upgrades and modifications there's pretty much nowhere you can't go, including a few places you didn't even think to go in the first place. The carrot at the end of the stick when it comes to all this exploring is a plethora of discoveries that earn you cash, as well as tons of other hidden stuff. The fact that your playing an airpirate just feeds into the whole thing. The scale of the game is still pretty impressive, even by today's standards.
Even way back in 2000 the idea of the melancholy, tortured hero was already becoming an annoying cliche in JRPGs, and Skies of Arcadia distinguished itself by giving you (GASP!) emotionally stable characters you actually wanted to hang out with. Here was a group of adventurers who were just out to have a good time and get as much loot as possible and there's not a damn thing wrong with that. Sure, as the game progresses the characters get more incentive for doing what they do, but at the heart of everything is the simple feeling of craving adventure. Lots of games give you a big world to explore with lots of junk to collect, but few bother to create an atmosphere that inspires the player to explore as much as Skies of Arcadia.
Add in all sorts of neat little ideas like the VMU minigame and what you end up with is one of the best console RPGs ever.
WHAT WENT WRONG: The almost constant fighting. Even by old-school standards, the encounter rate was pretty high and considering the battle system was pretty archaic it wasn't long before you felt the grind. While ship battles helped add variety, at the end of the day even those weren't all that great. Nothing about the combat was necessarily bad or broken, there was just way too much of it.
WHY THERE PROBABLY WON'T BE A SEQUEL: While reviews were positive across the board and sales were high....they were only high by Dreamcast standards which, to be honest, isn't all that high. An enhanced port was made for the Gamecube, but that sold even less. Sega is always talking about resurrecting older properties, but considering that they have quite I few higher profile and better established RPG series like Phantasy Star and Shining Force, the chances of Skies getting a sequel seem pretty low.
On the other hand, Vyse and the gang did get to make an appearance in the criminally underplayed Valkyria Chronicles, which sold even less and got not one but two sequels.
What I would give to see a true next-gen sequel to Skies of Arcadia with an overhauled battle system done in the Valkyria visual style......
Come on Sega, make another dream come true.
