Pros: beautiful graphics and effects, battle system, innovative gameplay, Pinta Quest
Cons: elemental system, random encounters, ship piloting
The bottom line: Pick up Skies of Arcadia for an awesome adventure in the high skies. It beats the pants off of green grass, that's for sure!
Skies of Arcadia was the first role-playing title I played for the Dreamcast, and I was instantly taken in by its immensely beautiful graphics, town and dungeon design, and liveliness when it comes to facial animations and expressions. During the first scene, I took one good look at Vyse and Aika and thought what in the world they were doing as air pirates. But as I grabbed the controller and started my way into the game, I soon let go out of that first impression and became nearly enthralled. With good reason, too.

The battle system comes across as very clean and polished, with plenty of attention (almost too much) paid to the finesse of your character's super moves. Aika's Alpha Storm, for example, carries enough on-screen glitz and flash that surely it could produce seizures. When Vyse strikes with his hard-hitting and flashing Thrashing Sabre, it almost brings about an involuntary wince with each successful hit. I could've personally done without the voices, sure, but hey it works. Another strategic component I like, for the most part, is the elemental system. Unlike traditional RPGs in which the only way you could pull off a water-elemental standard attack was to equip an Ice Blade, you can change your character's weapon to one of six different Moon Stone colors -- Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, or Silver, each with its own properties. Better still, the more you use a Silver weapon, the quicker you learn Silver skills such as healing or reviving the dead. You'll soon discover that some characters have certain rapport with some elements over others. Aika learns Fire spells quickest; Fina's loyal to the Silver ones.

Unfortunately, the relation among the Moon Stones is a bit odd. It makes sense that Red (Fire) weapons hurt Blue (Water) foes, or that Red and Purple (Ice) greatly conflict each other. But why does Blue hurt Purple more? Or Blue to Yellow (Earth)? Or that Yellow and Silver (Life) mutually damage? Or Yellow severely threatens Green (Wind) foes? I learned my elemental relationships through such classics as the Final Fantasy series, and time after time again, it made little sense to hit a flying creature with Quake. Why the change now? So, of course, you'll probably spend much of your time on page 19 in the instruction booklet, just to make sure your strategies are sound.

Though the battle sequences are pretty fun in and of themselves, the Skies programmers set the random encounter rate incredibly high. You'll notice this most when you're piloting the ship in the skies; when you're trying to find your way to the next destination and it took long enough to get your compass and direction squared away, you have to fight many, many monsters before you can finally reach that next spot. (If the monsters line themselves up well enough, one Alpha Storm is sufficient to take them all out.)

Once you reach Pinta at the Sailor's Island, you discover the greatest fun in the title -- the Pinta Quest. Download Pinta to your VMU and he'll mimic the ship exploration element of Skies. He can fly around and discover treasures, fight enemy battles, and negotiate and trade goods. And when you plug him back into your Dreamcast controller, you can transfer the goods from your minigame into treasures for Vyse and his crew. Translation: you'll get incredibly valuable items to guarantee your team's survival.

If you can get past the awkwardness of controlling your ship, Skies is an easy RPG to immense yourself into, thus proving how fun it can be for all ages.