We start with a
mysterious ship being piloted by an even more mysterious young girl. She is being pursued, in classic "This is a Star Wars homage" fashion, by a very scary gunmetal grey ship. But instead of any respectable Empire captain or even a Darth Vader type, our captain is...
this guy.
This guy is named Alfonso. He is an Admiral of the Valuan Imperial Armada. Valua as we quickly find is pretty much colonial era Spain, and this guy is a
massive prick-not because he's Spanish, but because he's an asshole. As a member of a wealthy family, his position was basically bought with hard, hard cash, and he has practically non-existent leadership and fighting skills. His combat is so non-existent that we don't even get a boss fight against him, despite him having the most punchable face in the entire Armada.
Alfonso gives the order to fire close to the girl's ship, but tells them not to score direct hits ("Careful you idiot, I said across her nose, not UP it!") The girl gets knocked the fuck out in the shelling, and Alfonso catches up, the girl being taken on board and the girl's ship left to fall below the clouds...all seems to be going smoothly for our initial villain, until an explosion rocks his ship. His crew quickly discovers that someone is attacking them!
This game makes hilarious facial expressions.
The attacking ship is an Air Pirate ship carrying our heroes...and the rest of the crew they're a part of. The cutscene swiftly introduces us to our main hero:
Vyse.
Vyse is one of the most intelligent JRPG protagonists ever created. That is no exaggeration. In universe it's very likely his father, the Captain of the Albatross that Vyse is currently standing on, was grooming him to become a captain in his own right and it shows. His plans are more thought out than "let's just do a thing" for starters, he has some solid leadership skills behind him, and while some of his inspiring speeches are a little corny, he speaks honestly and even a little bluntly at times. He very quickly became my favorite protagonist in a JRPG and it'll be hard to unseat him-you'll learn why as we go along.
Grappling hooks pull Alfonso's ship in, and Vyse leaps from the Albatross to the deck of the Valuan ship. He is quickly joined by his childhood friend,
Aika.
The whole "childhood friend" in most RPGs always bugged me-typically, they're always either love interests or just don't act like how friends really would. While Aika is a love interest (hell, one of two! This game has a goddamn love triangle!), she also constantly banters with Vyse, teasing him and calling him out for his bone headed moves (especially in dialogue choices, we'll get there).
Since we're also in the middle of a bunch of soldiers,
we get introduced to combat as well.
Battles take place on a sort of grind like thing, but don't think you can move around much. Characters move on their own for the most part. Some attacks care about enemies on a line, or close to each other, or whatever, but this isn't Fire Emblem-no tactical movement or anything.
The enemies we're dealing with are called "Ferratus". We'll meet others later on called "Praeses" which are much weaker-Praeses die in one hit from either character, Ferratus actually have a bit of health. Skies of Arcadia has many unique systems, the first we'll be dealing with does not involve that giant bar you see at the top of the screen, but rather, you notice how the enemies have colored borders? The borders represent their element. The game has six elements, and we can start using two-Earth (represented by Green) and Fire (represented by Red). We'll get access later on to Purple (ice), Blue (Water/Wind), Yellow (Lightning) and Silver (Void-ish?) Each element has its own unique damage bonus or penalty when you attack with it, and right now, you have Green which does less damage when hitting Yellow, or Red, which has no bonus or penalty.
Being dumb, I read
this chart completely wrong and thought Green had a bonus against Yellow. It doesn't matter until the boss, but don't be dumb.
Also, after every battle, whatever color your characters end in determines what kind of Magic Exp. they get. Each character gets their own normal experience, but magic experience is kind of shared-each battle gets you some amount of Magic experience, then each character gets that amount of magic experience in each color a character was using at the end of a fight. So if Vyse was Red and Aika was Green, they would both get some Red, and some Green points. If they're both Green (like I was), they get Green points for each character using green. Basically, if you want to powerlevel a color of magic, set everyone to that color.
Right now, Green is best until Vyse and Aika both get Sacri, the first healing spell. Each element has six spells associated with it, and each character learns at different rates-you can see that Aika is gonna learn the first spells a hell of a lot faster than Vyse, and has already learned the first of the green spells from this one fight. Of the elements we have, the spells are as follows:
Green: Green has all the healing spells, there's only 4 of them to be fair. Sacri is first, then Sacres is the third green spell learned, Sacrum is fifth, and Sacrulen is the last spell and is worth grinding for on everyone. Healing amounts are
static and cannot be enhanced by any means. Sacri heals 500, Sacres heals 1,000, Sacrum heals 1,000 to the whole party, and Sacrulen is a single target full heal. As far as other spells, Noxi and Noxus are the second and fourth spells. Noxi is a single target, poison damage spell, while Noxus expands that to the whole enemy team. They each have a chance of inflicting poison, a permanent debuff that does damage every turn, but wears off after battle. Trust me, you'll want Green more for the Sacri line than the poison, because if you want damage...
Red: ...You want to come here. The first, third, fourth, and fifth spells are all of the "Pyri" line (Pyri, Pyres, Pyrum, and Pyrulen), and they all do the same thing: Fire damage on the entire enemy team. Yes, it starts with a massive AoE burst and just gets more potent from there. Even the support spells are offensively minded, as the second and sixth spells are "Increm" and "Incremus". Increm increases offense and defense for a single character by 25%, Incremus does the whole party in one go.
As far as learning rates go, Vyse is pretty slow on green magic out of everyone, but takes the least amount of XP to max out Red-he learns it slightly faster than the dedicated Mage of the party! Aika, despite her affinity for flame, learns it slower than Vyse, the dedicated mage, and a third character we'll be meeting much later. Meanwhile, Aika is right behind the dedicated mage for learning green magic, while Vyse is the second slowest (that said, the gulf between him getting the last spell in the green chain and the actually slowest learning character in the game is massive-1300 XP worth massive). Luckily, we don't have to worry about maxing out for a long time.
After defeating the soldiers, the cutscene shows that we apparently didn't make a dent in their numbers-Vyse and Aika are still surrounded by five soldiers. One of them even taunts about how the kids are outnumbered, until one of them gets shot in the fucking head by
this guy:
Meet Vyse's father, Dyne. This dude is awesome, if his opening line didn't clue you in. He is also captain of the Albatross (the ship you see in the background) and all things considered, a reasonable authority figure as well.
He orders Vyse and Aika to head below deck and make their way to the bridge, and our heroes use the distraction caused by his arrival to make a break for it. We land below deck, and we can now take full control.
Keep your eyes peeled for these boxes, or anything that even looks remotely like a treasure chest. There's a lot of one time dungeons in this game, and a lot of the bonus content relies on you getting at least 90% of all treasure chests. There's not much to get on the Valuan Battleship (that's what the Save Points call this ship), but there's enough to worry about.
Head to the only door, run through the hallway, and into the next room. Alfonso taunts the party and sends a bunch of soldiers to stop you-for some reason, his last line ("Dispose of them!") is fully voice acted, I don't get why. You're thrown into a fight with 4 Praesus enemies, which would be scary if they didn't die in one hit to an element they're strong against...and even if it's Aika, who's physically weaker, doing the hitting.
I should probably take a moment to explain how these guys work in combat. Vyse is not your usual jack of all stats you get as a protagonist, instead, his stats are oriented towards physical offense. His magic suffers, and his speed is average. Aika, meanwhile, has low physical offense and defense, but her magic defense is good along with her magical offense, and her speed is second to none-seriously, after a few levels, Aika will start going first practically every round. The only things moving faster than her are speed buffed enemies (which you can counter by speed buffing your team) and any action hard coded to go first in a round (this includes, but is not limited to: Guard actions, defensive super moves, certain boss attacks, etc...). If something needs to be done yesterday, assign it to Aika.
After the fight, in the corner of the lower floor is a chest with more Sacri Crystals. These things behave exactly like the spell-500 HP to one party member. Head up the stairs, the path is a bit linear due to crates blocking the way. At a certain point, Alfonso will scoff at you and make his exit. Continue along, and duck along a side path for a chest with 50 gold in it.
Head into the room Alfonso went into to find a save point and another chest with 2 Magic Droplets. These items each restore 1 MP. Each spell also only requires 1 MP to cast it, so Magic Droplets never lose effectiveness as far as restoratives go, which is nice. Alfonso's locked the big door to the hangar bay, so you're forced to take another exit, and descend a ladder on the side of the ship.
This game loves long ass ladders, and the climbing animation is slow. Get used to hearing Snake Eater in your head.
Alfonso is ready to make good his escape, with his Vice Captain assisting him. However,
Alfonso has plans...
"Valuans are dicks" counter: 1
Vyse and Aika see the whole thing, and challenge Alfonso. Alfonso, being a pompous prick, decides its not worth his time and instead throws his war pet at them:
I honestly do not know why there was a door if Antonio was just going to come bursting out instead. It's clearly big enough for him!
BOSS FIGHT: Antonio the War Pig
While not particularly difficult, Antonio does quite love counter-attacks. This battle system allows
anyone to counter
any normal attack from anyone. Bosses seem to have a higher counter rate than most regular enemies, and Antonio will punish you for playing too loose. His normal attacks do about 60-80 damage, and his counters do the same amount.
Thunder of Fury is Antonio's one special attack, and as you can see, it's hitting Vyse like a ton of bricks for 200 damage. You have a max of about 500 on both characters right now. And yes, you can get counter-attacked, and then blasted with Thunder of Fury for a cool 260 damage minimum.
On rare occasions, bosses will do an "Assess Damage" move. This move does nothing, and is literally a free turn for you. Antonio will likely do it at least once.
So how do you beat him? Simple: Start by using the Y button to switch both Vyse and Aika to red elements, indicated by the color of their weapons. While it doesn't do extra damage, it also doesn't do less damage like Green does. Use basic attacks, and let your Spirit build up-Spirit is that big bar at the top of the screen. When it maxes, have Vyse use his Cutlass Fury Super Move for tons of damage. Have Aika or Vyse use Sacri Crystals if anyone dips too close to half their health, or less. Antonio is insanely slow and will usually go last in the line up, so you only have yourself to blame if you screw up and let someone die.
Defeating Antonio grants a Moonberry, along with a pile of XP and gold. I'll get into Moonberries in my next post where we'll detail Super Moves and the Spirit system.
Alfonso, surprised that we kicked the shit out of his war piggy, makes good his escape after promising we'll see him again. Vyse and Aika give chase, to no avail. Aika calls him a coward, but then...
This will be a common thread. Aika likes to get paid.
On another note, the mysterious girl Alfonso grabbed? Well, he didn't take her with him, and so now, we get to take her with us and be the awesome rescue party. She's taken on board the Albatross as she dreams of home...spoilers: It's really far away.
With that, the Battleship is cleared, and we're on our way back to our home and headquarters. Next time: Magic! Super Moves! A Swashbuckler System! Mysterious girls and Moon Stones! Tune in next time!
EDIT: Let's get some music up in this bitch. I'll be posting the ones you'll have encountered by this point.
Opening Theme (Plays during the opening movie on game startup)
Main Theme (Plays in the Game Start menu)
Military Facility Dungeon (Valuan Battleship Music, plays in a few other dungeons)
Battle 1
Boss Battle-With Bonus Dynamic Shift! (The Boss theme changes depending on how you're doing, in this track, it shifts to the "boss almost dead" version)
Blue Rogues Theme (Plays during boarding cutscene)
Bonus Content:
Antonio Boss Fight Video
