Oh right yeah, I forgot how much of a bitch the encounter rate could be if this was the Dreamcast.
When we left off, our heroes had just rescued a mysterious girl after stealing a heavily armed (and loot-loaded) military ship. Said girl is brought on board, and seems to have a dream of
some mysterious place that causes my frame rate to fucking tank. Those of you who have played before likely know what's going on, but let's keep the foreshadowing vague and mysterious as a mysterious voice appears to tell the girl she must "replace Rami" and something about the Moon, while also not trusting anyone. After this brief dream sequence, our mysterious girl wakes up, and we finally get a name for her: Fina.
A brief aside, but Fina will be joining our party later in the game. Right now she's got the big NPC energy and won't be signing on, but she will later. She's the dedicated Mage I mentioned earlier and it shows-her physical stats are trash, but her magic is through the roof. I'll detail her more when she joins up.
Once she introduces herself, we get a sudden introduction to
the Swashbuckler System. Unlike most games with dialogue choices, Skies of Arcadia keeps score, bitch. Picking the right choices (even if it's an obvious "BUT THOU MUST!" situation) results in increasing your "Swashbuckler" rating. Wrong choices can subtract but some choices are just neutral. Usually when you get three choices, the game expects you to think like a ship captain-brave, but not reckless, and recognizing when tactics and cunning are more needed than bravado. Here, telling Fina she has a great name gets us points.
(Also, running from battle makes you lose points while fighting gets you points. We need to hit a certain level before we can do some of the side content, so don't go running too often)
Fina asks what an Air Pirate is, and Vyse and Aika explain that they're Blue Rogues, who only attack armed military ships while Black Pirates (the other Air Pirate faction) will attack anyone. The Blue Rogues tend to be more Robin Hood types, helping those in need. This is another common thread, for most of the early game, Fina doesn't know shit about fuck and asks a lot of questions that sound stupid to the rest of the party, but luckily give us, the audience, a peek at the world building.
After this conversation, Dyne yells down at Vyse and Aika to get their butts to the bridge, and we can take control again. Luckily the Albatross has no treasure to speak of, but it does have a
badly placed barrel. No I don't know why it's there.
Getting up on deck, Dyne gives Vyse a bit of a chewing out. Vyse counters with "I was only a little late" and Dyne counter-counters with the fact that being a little late can cost lives on a ship. And he's right, you know. Eventually Vyse is ordered to go chat with Briggs who's at the helm.
Talking to the Navigator reveals a fact about "sky rifts". In universe they'll send ships down into Deep Sky where they get crushed by the pressure. In practice, they're really just walls for until much later in the game-the game has to block us somehow, since we have the Airship already and that's usually a late game upgrade, so instead of rivers, mountains, and other stuff blocking foot travel, we have a bunch of shit blocking air travel.
Talking to the guy at the helm allows us to take the wheel, and explore Arcadia
with our own ship! Well it's not our own ship yet. We'll uh, we'll get there. We need to head to Pirate Isle, but first, see that island in front of us? Fly to it and mash on the A button to find...
A Discovery! These things can be found all over the world and come in three forms: Storyline, Static, and Moving. Storyline discoveries are found as part of the story, such as proving the World is Round which is more significant than you think. Static discoveries do not move, but are invisible until discovered. Moving discoveries do move, but are thankfully visible. It's a collectable, and oh god, how Skies loves its collectables...
In the original Dreamcast, you had:
64 Discoveries,
30 Chams for Fina's "weapon" Cupil (plus 3 special "Abrik" chams),
and depending on your definition of collectable, there are also 22 crew members for the ship we get later in the game. Ha...
Oh wait, we're playing Legends, which adds:
More Discoveries for a grand total of 89,
and 24 Moonfish
So on top of all the chests we have to get, we need to get as many discoveries as possible, find all the crew men, get all those moonfish so we can get the best shit in the game and also discover the last two Discoveries in Legends, AND get Fina's ultimate weapon by collecting Chams. I'm regretting the "full playthrough" promise now.
Anyway. We sail on South to Pirate Isle, and dock the kick ass Albratross in a secret base hidden inside the very island itself.
The crew hauls out a massive pile of gold and other loot, before Vyse and Aika offer to show Fina around. Dyne, however, has other plans and orders them to bring her up to his office. You can wander around, chat with people, even hit the tavern for a special scene or buy stuff in the weapons, armor, and items store. The weapons and armor you can get aren't exactly super important, though it wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up some Curia Crystals (Curia heals status ailments and we won't get the spell itself until Fina joins us for good). May as well just book it upstairs to Dyne's office.
Dyne proceeds to grill Fina, demanding to know where she's from and why she was sailing alone. We get a choice to either Defend Fina or sit and listen, and while your first instinct may be to play defense, don't. If you don't, you get a boost to Swashbuckler (signified by a certain audio cue). Aika will instead jump in but Dyne will tell her to shut the fuck up. He needs to
ensure his people's safety and if Fina is remotely a threat, she's gone.
Fina explains that she cannot answer his questions, not because we are dirty Air Pirates-she is very thankful for us saving her, but she is under strict orders to tell no living soul about the purpose of her quest, even if it costs her life. Dyne, being the reasonable authority that he is, recognizes when someone means what they're saying and accepts this answer, even chuckling to himself about how he loses this battle. She's given freedom to wander the island as well.
After the grilling, touch the right side of the bookcase in Dyne's Office to open a secret area. Descend the ladder and open the chest for 150 gold. Next, head topside to the main island. Aika heads to her house to "freshen up". Her house has a handkerchief on the side, covering a hole which we can peak through and see this
absolutely scandalous image! Vyse gets something thrown at him and yelled at for this, by the way.
Now for loot. First off, on top of the
massive fucking ladder to what's called "Lookout Island" finds us a treasure chest with 3 Sacri Crystals. Descending back down is required, singing Snake Eater as you do it is optional. Heading across the bridges to the mini dock, we find another chest with 3 more Sacri Crystals. Finally, there's this
stone tablet next to Vyse's house in the middle of the map, accessing it gets us into a secret area in the hangar with a chest that has another Moonberry in it.
I recommend giving both to Aika-the one from here, and the one you got from Antonio. This unlocks her Alpha Storm and Delta Shield Super Moves I mentioned in my last post. We wanna get her to Lambda Burst ASAP, but Alpha Storm is gonna also hurt a lot of enemies going forward.
After this, advance the plot by going into Vyse's house. His mom (who is only ever identified as "Vyse's Mom", no name given...in a game where even much more minor NPCs get names) invites Fina to dinner, and Aika shows up and suggests they all watch the sunset at the top of Lookout Island...which requires going up that
fucking ladder again (SNAKE EATERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!)
While watching the sunset, Vyse talks about getting a ship of his own and seeing what might lie beyond the sky, beyond the sunset. His motivation? He just wants to see if he can do it! After this, Moon Stones fall from the sky, one of which hits an island nearby, a place called
Shrine Island. Vyse and Aika decide to head out the next day and go grab it, and since they've already proven themselves to be more than capable of taking on an armored pig (which is more than can be said for some Dark Souls players), I don't see the danger at all. It's not like something will happen while they're away, right?
The party sleeps for the night. In the morning, make sure to chat with both Mom and Pop-Mom gives us Sacres Crystals, which heal 1,000 HP, and Dad gives Vyse his cut from the raid: A bitchin'
Purple Moon Stone. This allows us to set our weapons to Purple, and use Ice in battle.
Purple Magic teaches us the Crystali line of spells, getting Crystali as the first, then Crystales as the second, with Crystalum and Crystalen as the fifth and sixth purple spells learned. All of these spells are single target Ice damage spells of increasing potency. The third spell learned is Silenis, which silences enemies and prevents them from casting. Silence can also be inflicted in ship fights, though it is not permanent like it is in normal encounters, and is oddly useful against, oh, guess what,
THE FINAL FUCKING BOSS. We'll get there, just realize that Silence is not as useless as it sounds, because a lot of bosses DO NOT HAVE the usual immunities-this is not Final Fantasy where the bosses are immune to everything. The fourth spell is Panika, which causes confusion. Not used in Ship Battles and less useful in normal fights as Confusion just means enemies can attack each other, and randomly wears off as well. Both Silenis and Panika are single target.
Next Time: We hit Shrine Island!
Bonus: Music Content
Blue Rogues Ship (Plays while piloting the Albatross)
Air Pirate Secret Base (Pirate Isle Hangar)
Air Pirate Isle (Pirate Isle Aboveground)
