Buy Used/3rdParty More product information	Skies of Arcadia List Price: $49.99    Our Price: You Save: 100% 19 November, 2000 Manufacturer: Sega of America, Inc. Availability: This item is currently not available. Number of Media: 1 Platforms: Sega Dreamcast
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Product Description Arcadia is a magical world in which folks float through the air on giant airships. A young and lively air pirate, named Vyse--who leads the swashbuckling Blue Rogue pirates--spends most of his time traveling from floating island to floating island. While touching down on the Valuan Empire one fateful day, Vyse and his sidekick Aika rescue a mysterious girl, named Fina, who was captured while trying to find six magic crystals that are used to summon Gigas--powerful ancient weapons. Naturally, the Valuans want the Gigas for their own malevolent political plans; Vyse, Aika, and Fina, then, set out to find the precious, scattered crystals and fight enemies (both human and nonhuman) to keep the world safe from tyranny. Customer Reviews The Dreamacast's No1 RPG Skies of Arcadia is an absolute masterpiece, I can remember back in 2001, when it was released in England and i picked it up immediatly after hearing rave reviews. It really did live up to the hype, unfortunately much like the Dreamcast it was criminally overlooked, although im sure most people who owned a Dreamcast did buy it. The combat itself is nothing special, in fact the turn based battles are pretty slow, not as flowing as the active time battles of most Final Fantasy games. The beauty of the game doesn't lie in the battles though, the plot is where all good RPG's excel and this is no different. Exploring the planet is great fun in itself, despite the random battles (which you can later avoid), and the plot moves along superbly right until the end of the game. Where this game really innovates though is in the ship battles. The ship battles are excellent, rather than fighting as a party, as you do for most of the game, you instead pit your ship against another ship, sometimes even monsters, though usually an enemy pirate or general from the armada. If you have played the game you will know how good these battles are, and what a joy the game is to play. If you still have a Dreamcast picking up dust and you don't already own this, you could do no better than to pick it up. It also came out for the Gamecube, which I believe was basically the same game. A truly classic RPG, which deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other classics like Final Fantasy 7, superb. An awesome Japanese-style RPG - marred only by random combat I have enjoyed Skies of Arcadia more than practically any other RPG I've played - yet curiously, the place the game is most lacking is at its core. The combat system (and in particular, the random nature of the combat system) is rather lacklustre, and not as good as (say) Grandia II. In many ways, Grandia II and Skies of Arcadia are the perfect RPG split into two. Take the combat from the former and wed it to practically every other aspect of Skies of Arcadia and you have an awesome game. Skies somehow manages to work despite its lacklustre combat (and irritating random combats - which thankfully you eventually earn the right to avoid). I think much of this is due to the amazing world that you get to explore - and I really do mean explore, as flying your ship around Arcadia is one of the best exploration experiences I have ever had in an RPG. New and wondrous sights are always just around the corner, and the desire to see more of the world just kept me going. Not only did I love exploring the world - but later, when you get to recruit your own crew - you can go back and interact with people you've already met and ask them to join your crew. This was also hugely satisfying - finally, a game with NPCs who aren't just cardboard. If the combat has to be just right for you to play a game, or if you find random combats very annoying (and I have to say, I wouldn't play a sequel unless they fix the random combats), you'd do best to avoid it. But otherwise, every RPG fan needs to play Skies. Everything but the combat is pratically perfect. Memory Maker There a few games that provide wonderful, enjoyable and everlasting memories. Skies of Arcadia is such a game. This game has such beautiful environments, scenery and characters that you immediately fall in love with them. You even learn to love the villians. Whenever I hear the soundtrack, I feel utter nostalgic and would recount the events in my life during my game time with SOA. I nothing but the best opinions for SOA. Unfortunately, Sega Overworks will not release a sequel to SOA. The sequel was in the planning stages but later scrapped because the GameCube Director's Cut did not sell well. In fact, the GameCube version of SOA sold worse than the Dreamcast version. Thus, SOA 2 was tossed in the bit bucket. I only have one copy of SOA and Dreamcast. I'm keeping these for life. You can have them after you pry them out of my cold, dead hands.