Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire

[table][th] Review by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34633003-Gaming-Masterpieces/lists/] Gaming Masterpieces [/url] - The greatest games of all time on Steam. [/th][/table] Is this game a masterpiece? There are countless pirate games, but few have been able to capture the pirate feeling as authentically as Sid Meier's Pirates (Microprose, 1987) or Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (Ubisoft, 2013). With Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire, a new game is trying to follow in the footsteps of the great classics. We take control of a crew on board a ship that does not, however, cruise the seas in search of prey, but an airship that makes the skies above the world of Sky Oceans unsafe. In short - Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is a fantasy game, not a historical pirate simulation. The next big change to the classics are the battles - they don't require any skill with the gamepad, but are turn-based. Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is clearly inspired by the great JRPG classics. It reminded me in particular of the JRPG hit Skies of Arcadia (Overworks, 2000), which was originally released for the Sega Dreamcast. The main role in the game is played by young Glenn Windwalker, who you also control directly. Actually, you were just a trainee pilot in the small town of Blossom Town who has just passed his final exam. But the night after your final exam, the troops of the mighty Alliance attack your peaceful town, which quickly surrenders. You escape, however, along with your mother... who's been carrying a few secrets since the death of her husband (=your father). It's funny that the Alliance is mainly interested in you... After a successful escape, you and a few other refugees from Blossom Town set up a base in a remote location, from where you set off on various missions with your carrier ship “Nimbus”. You run through the 3D world in search of quests, crew members or improvements for your ships. There are always useful items lying around in crates. A quest marker always shows you the way, making it difficult to get lost. You often have to explore the area in a primitive flight simulator - enemies are visible, but when it comes to combat, the game switches to turn-based battle mode. On the one hand, you are responsible for selecting your crew. Up to three companions and their ship will accompany you on your adventure. You can also upgrade your ships with improved parts. The following areas of the ship can be customized: the armour, the ship's frame, the steering, the drive and, of course, the built-in cannon. However, this all costs money, which you can earn by winning aerial battles, among other things. The battles take place between various flying companions (or defensive flying animals). They are turn-based, like in a typical JRPG. Move your ship, use your weapons and use special abilities to knock your opponents out of the sky. You command a small airship (airjet), usually with one to three allies in their airship (which you command just like Glenn). Typically, the character whose turn it is next is displayed at the top of the screen. You give him a command such as attacking, dodging, using special weapons or other equipment (e.g. repair kits), or even trying to escape, and then the next character (or opponent) takes his turn until all opponents are destroyed (or your airship crashes to the ground). After the battle, you will receive experience points, loot and money (crowns), and your aircraft will be repaired. Between battles, you explore the world, which is quite extensive. New lands, civilizations, NPCs - the game has a lot to offer. Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire was released in October. Following its release, a large patch has already been published, which has removed countless teething problems. However, this does not mean that there are not still a few bugs. A few QoL improvements wouldn't do the game any harm either. The current version that I have been playing for the last few days is 1.0.1. Control with the gamepad works without any problems. Cloud saves are incomprehensibly not supported. Some of the cutscenes cannot be skipped. During the conversations, you can usually skip to the next sentence by pressing a button, but sometimes the conversations run automatically and the (non-voiced) texts disappear so quickly that nobody can read them that quickly. There are no log files in which you can view conversations again. Apparently there is also no way to watch the tutorial overlays again. So if you didn't pay attention the first time or missed something - bad luck. [u][b] Conclusion:[/b][/u] Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is an indie JRPG (Japanese role-playing game) that has some potential. It is heavily inspired by the classic Skies of Arcadia. You roam the towns on foot to talk to NPCs, visit stores and hire new people. However, you travel long distances across the land in your airship, and this is also where the turn-based battles take place. Give orders to your four party members to evade enemy fire with your airships and shoot down the enemy companions (or monsters). You upgrade your party members as well as your airship. If you like JRPGs, the combat, graphics (in typical Japanese Studio Ghibli style) and story will definitely appeal to you. Unfortunately, the current version of the game still has a lot of rough edges, which will hopefully be removed.

Skies of Arcadia is one of the most memorable, creative, visually and aesthetically pleasing JRPG's ever made imho. It was the game that cemented my love for the genre. SquareSoft games generally rank up at the top of the heap for me, but Skies was something else. Why am I talking about a 20+ year old RPG on a long dead gaming platform? Because when I saw the trailer for Sky Oceans it was clearly an homage or tribute to that game. With all that said, Skies of Arcadia deserve a MUCH BETTER spiritual-successor. I'm not even going to waste my time listing the problems this game has. The top rated review already covered everything. I just want these devs to know how absolutely disappointed I am that they thought to release such a ramshackle, broken piece of garbage in a 1.0 release. This thing feels like a Beta build. Like pre-Early Access. It's so bad. I don't even know if I want to play this in a year when these devs actually fix it. Because I just had such a bad first impression.

This game could be a real gem, but as it stands right now, it's a flawed one. Nothing deadly, nothing that kills the game outright, but the game is SORELY in need of further polish. Dangling plot threads, hooks that go missing, dialogue trees that stop or are broken, a control system that is desperately in need of a tuning and cleaning, equipment lists that are bugged and broken... but under all that there's the potential for a real winner. An interesting and classic "jrpg quest" type story, a fun world, equipment and loadouts that look like fun to min/max and tinker with. I just hope more development goes into it so I can give it my whole hearted support.

Really wanted this to be good because I loved Skies of Arcadia but this is deadly dull, with empty towns, no characterization, tedious combat... definitely not worth it.

Great concept, wonderful world, charming characters, but terrible execution. I've been playing through this game with my stream community, and we've been delighted at the world and the music, but the gameplay and bugs have let it down so incredibly much. From infinite item glitches, enemies that won't stop healing every single turn erasing all your progress and dragging out the fights, accidental sequence breaking by following developer placed breadcrumbs, ally spell targeting being unreliable (heal Glenn, but it goes on anyone else for some reason), adding a pilot blocks the use of the equipment and arts interface until you reload, some equipment simply will not equip on some airframes despite no notation of it, and the absolutely infuriating menu glitch where any menu selection automatically jumps down two selections for some reason, this game needs way more time in the oven. It really should be Early Access with the level of raw that the experience is providing. I want to love this, I am severely disappointed that I cannot.

I love the concept... But the combat is so boring. Combat goes like this: You choose an attack, and then you miss, and then you select an art and miss some more. Eventually you hit something, but the enemy selected a healing move just in case you tried to had fun. Selecting the harder dificulty just seems to make the enemies into damage sponges. Please, i really REALLY want to continue the story, but its so hard to continue.

I wanted to like this game so much. I'm yet another Skies of Arcadia fan and loved the trailer. Waited for a 50% discount so I'd have that much less expectations. After nearly 2 hours I had spent more time wandering around an empty town or flying in empty spaces. 2 fights, with 1 of those being a boss encounter. Combat is somehow both boring and frustrating at the same time. I easily spent 75% of the time playing doing nothing. There is so much potential here but the combat system is terrible. A lot of things that sound good but don't quite work. Writing is good but I came here for a game and it does feel more like I'm in a visual novel that eventually decides to be nice and let me play a game in between cut scenes. Leans heavily into the worst JRPG tropes. I ignored negative reviews just convinced based on the concept and trailers this MUST be good but it turned out to just be tedium that I paid for.

I played this for 19 hours and I got to say the controls are janky and overly sensitive during navigation. There are times where you have to fly super close and through narrow structures and terrain and its not very good. The field of view is absolutely narrow. You can't see what around you. I just played in the area where you got to retrieve the red ore and the game prompt said to fly through and find gaps in the ore to find Admiral Venier. Bumped into several walls, and died. I wasted about 40 minutes of game time because the last checkpoint was at the start of the mine. Nice to meat you_2 achievement and island are bugged out. Every time I get to that area of the map its not there. It actually shows up in two different areas depending on what map you use! There's been a few fetch quests so far, and they feel outdated and time fillers. The story so far is okay, very predictable at some points. The battle where we lose Glenn's mother should have felt more challenging because I was about to beat that boss fight, but then it was like nope I'm going to make it so you just lose out of no where. Come on, if its going to be like that then make that fight more intense. The combat for this game is fun, but there's a lot of abilities and traits in the game that aren't explained very well and trying to equip gear for your pilots are so janky that it doesn't work when you try to do it. The amount of currency you need to farm to upgrade everyone's abilities and to buy gear are super slow. You can't outfit your pilots properly unless you spend hours farming so that you can buy them stuff. Overall, I can't find it in myself to play this game. I really wanted to give it a shot, but there's so many issues with this game. As people have said, it pulls in a lot of details and stuff from games like Skies of Arcadia, along with all the janky controls and camera angles. Its 2025, those kinds of things shouldn't be an issue these days. Those are things I'd only expect from super old games from the 90s and early 2000s. Sorry, but I just can't play this game any more. Edit: Forgot to mention that the dialogue sometimes auto plays, thus forcing you to miss out on well, dialogue. It only gives you a couple of seconds to read a whole line of text then its off to another line of text. Why it does that, I don't know. Its very annoying. So many small issues results in a not so fun play experience. I may try this again in the future if this game is overhauled with loads of optimizations.

Characters are charming, and the story is heartfelt. Soaring through the skies with my crew of misfit sky pirates has been an absolute joy. Highly recommended!

I'm a huge fan of classic RPG. This is a powerfull story with a really fun battle system.