Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire

This game has an interesting and unique aesthetic, really great character design and 2D animation, the menus and UI are fantastic, and the opening movie is a delight. It's another indie RPG where those are the best things about it. Visually, the 3D portions don't really stack up to its ambitious design choices and end up making the experience disjointed and meandering. Artifacting in cell-shaded character textures in the final release of a game is pretty egregious. It would literally have been a matter of exporting them again at a higher resolution. Crisp character portraits don't belong next to models whose textures look like they were exported from a resized image in MS Paint. Even putting a low-res pixelation filter over the 3D portions to create some visual unity and hide things like artifacts in textures and corners that don't connect would have saved it from many of my complaints. Gameplay is very slow in the early portions. I haven't gotten past the first few areas but the general lack of selection in abilities and repeated animations makes the length of the RPG battles punishing. The open-level flying potions are somehow both too big and confining. Too much open space with not enough happening. The character exploration segments are pretty okay but it makes me wonder why it's not just a menu since the character models aren't used for any animations. It seems like it was just another aspect that could have been cut in favor of making the rest of the game more fun. I feel like this game is brushing up against greatness, it just doesn't push over in any of the categories that would give it a handhold to pull itself up by. The game needed the attention to detail in the finishing steps that just wasn't in the budget. It tried to be too many games at once and thusly failed at being a passable version of any game. More testing and time spent on thing like pacing of battles and levels would have saved this game.

A cute little indie RPG that pays homage to the classics, specifically Skies of Arcadia. Basically a great catastrophe cased the land to explode and turn into islands in the sky. Now, as some of the few humans left in the world, you and your people explore the islands and forage for relics from the old world. Your world is turned upside down when the Alliance attacks your home island, searching for your father and mother. Now, in a race against time, you and your companions set out to stop the Alliance in their tracks. Now, this game is cute and deff has some fun aspects, cute characters, fun art and an intriguing story so far ((apparently the game is roughly 9-10 hours long so it's the perfect bite size), but the game is ALSO boggled down by some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanical choices. First off, the sick bay and how it works is insanely obnoxious. Your character's mental health decline throughout the game as you battle and they need to rest in the sick bay. But rather than having them recover via game time OR a small fee, they MUST REMAIN in the sick pay for a set number of battles. This can be very frustrating especially when only two of your characters have healing skills, so if they both are in the sick bay, guess what? You best have a hefty supply of healing stock. Second, as fun as the battles are at first, they become tedious and repetitive towards the end and this game would SERIOUSLY benefit from an auto-battler (for the easier fights) or at least a speed up button. Third complaint, the "checkpoints" are INSANELY far apart, like I died in the AI dungeon, the closest "story checkpoint" WAS ALMOST A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HOUR BACK IN THE GAME!! AN HOUR!!! Another issue the game has (and kind of corresponds with my previous complaint) you can't skip dialogue. If you die, you HAVE to sit through ALL THE DIALOGUE that you had just went through, which honestly, IS ANNOYING AF!!!! Aside from these the game has OVERALL been a fun journey, and if it wasn't for the fact the game was a good bite size, honestly some of those above issues would NORMALLY make we stop and abandon the game on stream, but because we're almost done I play to see it through to the end. If the game ever gets a sequel I really hope they can score a bigger budget and REALLY step it up, cuz this could EASILY become the new successor to Skies of Arcadia, over all i give the game 3.5/5 paws.

Nettes Spiel, finde das Rundenkampf System mit Flugzeugen cool und mal was anderes.

I am a massive fan of Skies of Arcadia and was super excited for a "spiritual successor" since SEGA doesn't seem to want to do anything with the game. The game is somewhat buggy but I haven't had major problems, but the main problem is the only thing that feels like Skies of Arcadia is the setting of a world with floating islands and sky instead of oceans. It feels really misleading to to call it a successor. If they had been more honest I would have probably enjoyed the game more but if you want that Skies feel you wont find it here.

Todo fan de los JRPG debe jugar a esta joyaaaaaa que nos vuelve a llevar a la época dorada de los rpg. Una joya visual y sonora que te tendrá enganchado a la pantalla :D :D :D os lo recomiendo 100x100

La verdad es que este juego me dejó un buen gusto de jrpg, y tiene un estilo que pega bastante. Siento que tiene potencial para seguir mejorando, pero ha sido una experiencia bastante grata.

Tried to play game again. It is coming up on its anniversary. The problem the CONTROLS ARE STILL A HORRIBLE MESS. Horrible in every way. I can not play game because it feels like I am driving a 50 ton tank through the air. Cant give a review of game play because i cant get passed the controls, even after a waiting . So this game is a big NO.

It is my fault for getting this game. I thought it was an interesting arcade flight sim. But no! It is a full-on JRPG with turn-based combat, and you only fly between fights. The art is nice, the story is so far interesting, but the game is just boring, the spacing is just wrong, and it has no voice acting to make it somewhat bearable, at least the first couple of hours, when I gave up. The fights are all the same: activate skill and wait for your turn. You auto-heal in the end, so it doesn't really matter if you get hurt. Others said the controls are junky, but I played with a gamepad, and it was fine there.

Damn solid RPG, large and innovative with its combat design. There's still some bugs, but I've been enjoying my playthrough so far!

[b] Top Gun JRPG. [/b]