A true classic that's slipped past many RPG fanatic's radars.
As the story line's craftiness shines, so does Skies' battling system(s). Regular battles are pretty much your standard RPG fair, though instead of your team standing in a line, depending on their personality, your team mates will run up to enemies and take swings at them while dodging enemies in the process, your characters will also back up and guard in some cases; though none of this action really matters, it's just there to add the feel of a real battle. The one thing that makes Skies of Arcadia's ground battles stand out is the SP points system; these SP points will be recharged every single battle, allowing you to unleash devastating special attacks on your foes, while also gaining back more SP points after every turn allowing for a wide variety of action. Your maximum SP points and how fast they charge up will depend on your experience levels though, most of the game it's a pretty good balance that makes battles pretty close, with out letting you totally trash every enemy you encounter. You can also use magic, like every other game, but the special attacks almost make the magic system obsolete, considering magic takes away magic points and special points; though the magic system can do without, it just depends on your battling style to whether or not you will to use it. Now onto the ship battles, well, these aren't the ship battles you’re probably thinking of right now, in Skies of Arcadia you actually get to engage in a battle with another ship! This proves to be the more original battling system in Skies, and surprisingly has a great deal of strategy to it. A ship battle is set up where you and your opponent's ship will constantly be flying around (each ship battle varies from each type of ship you face), though this battle system is still turn based, it still manages to work its charm right in by giving varying types of cannons, items and magic attacks to use. What you do is, you pick which one of your team mates will fire what type of cannon on what turn they will do it on (they can use items too). This might seem complicated in text, but it's really fast on the grid system that allows you to just pick what you want to do just like that. Then as you confirm your last character's move, you'll watch the battle unfold with cinematic like camera switches, zooms, and pans, then you'll start the process all over again until one of your ships reaches 0 hp. I almost forgot about one innovative feature that the battling system(s) that Skies has to offer, on the fly you can change the type of attack your weapon is attacking with, whether it be, ice, fire, electricity, spirit, water, or earth. Depending on what type of enemy you are facing, you want to have the best possible property to attack with (the instruction booklet shows what color trait is best against what color); it might take awhile to learn what most enemies are weaker against, but this does add a nice subtle twist to the battles. Which brings me to mention the extra story line additions they've added, though they don't seem to be much of an addition, they do add an extra mysterious level into the game, though the Piastol fiasco just seems stupid, it's easy to block that part of the story line when so much other things are going on though.
So we've capped on the story line and battling, now it's finally time to divulge into the extras Skies of Arcadia has that will have you playing this classic for well over 100 hours of play. Still present in this Skies of Arcadia remake is; the fish you can collect, which can be sold or used as items (each fish has different effects), or in some cases collected for people; Fina's Cupil still has to be fed "Chams" to gain levels and evolve, in case you didn't know, Cupil is a round flying creature that transforms into weapons to help Fina fight. There's still tons of discoveries to find here, 88 to be exact, discoveries are like vast mysterious places, objects or creatures that will be documented when you press the A button by them (The compass will start spinning like crazy to let you know that your next to a discovery); Also still present are the ridiculously hidden treasure chests to find, I still don't know any one who's found 100% of them, even people that have had strategy guides couldn't do it; Extra crew members can also be found here (don't want to ruin anything later in the story line, so that's all I'm going to say); little side secrets to get rare items and weapons are still in this version, actually with a few more added in too. Those are the extras that were in the original, now I'd like to display the new extras that have been added to the new Skies game; first off, are the "Moon Fish" that are scattered throughout the dungeons and towns, moon fish look like flying Pikmin and can be captured switching to Vyse's first person view, as you capture these "Moon Fish", you can feed them to a pet that a little girl on Doc's ship has, as you do this, you'll find out about a couple people's mysterious pasts that kept you wandering before; now there are bounties that you can find and defeat, bounties are people that have a wanted poster put out for their devious crimes; Also added now is the Swashbuckler rating system, which keeps track of every single thing you've done (some times it just depends on what's happening in the story line too), including how many fish you've caught, how many battles you've won, lost, or ran away from, what story line decisions you've made, how many discoveries you've found, how many bounties you've defeated, how many times your party members have died during battle, how many battles you've fought total, and how many treasure chests you've found. The Swashbuckler rating does allot for the importance of the extras in this game, including actually making a point to have choices of how to react at certain parts during cinema scenes.
Another huge focus in this game is its sound's great sense of involvement and flair. Almost at all times will Skies of Arcadia's sound tilt your mood and awareness to what going on at all times. There are plenty of memorable songs to keep your mind flurrying with joy every time you enter a familiar place. The short voice acting blurbs that remain through out the story and battles, also give your mind just enough to see each character's personality quite well too. Though it's a shame that they didn't have more voice acting, it doesn't really hurt this title; it just leaves you wandering what it would be like if there was full voice acting.
After everything is said and done, Skies of Arcadia is a phenomenal title, with one of the most memorable story lines ever, great fun battles with enough innovation to keep you coming back, and plenty of extras that triple the amount of replay time after the storyline is finished. A must have for anyone, even if you don't like RPG's you just can't help but love this game.