Pirates, scourge of the seas and delinquent's of the world, but not in the world of Arcadia, because there are good and bad pirates. Welcome to the world of Arcadia, where every land, island and ship float in the air. To add this this, there are six different coloured moons around Arcadia and each moon has its own continent far below it and each continent represents the coloured element of each moon. Examples of this would be the red moon being fire and its continents all desert, or the blue moon continents being more water than land. Confused? Don't worry, this is how the world is in Skies of Arcadia is and it works very well. There is below space and an above sky, then in the middle you have the main skies where the population fly between islands and continents. Skies of Arcadia first started out on the Dreamcast and in 2002 Skies of Arcadia: Legends was ported to the Gamecube with a few new additions. apart from normal people, different military powers, there are two types of pirates. One, the Black Pirates are the nasty and evil pirates, and then there are the Blue Pirates, who are the Robin hoods of Arcadia who only rob from the nasty rich and the bad Valuan Empire. Skies of Arcadia is originally called Eternal Arcadia in Japan, but Skies of Arcadia makes better sense.

The story features a young up and coming Air Pirate by the name of Vyse. Vyse has always dreamed of becoming his own captain, getting his own ship and journeying in to the wise and unexplored wonders of Arcadia. Vyse, his best friend Aika, the non pirates of Pirate Isle(Their home and the rest of his pirate crew are under orders by Vyses father and captain of the Blue pirates. One day Vyse and his father blue pirates raid a Valuan Armada low class ship, but after entering they find one of the six Armada fleet captains. They defeat him and after he escapes Vyse and Aika find a young mysteriously dressed girl named Fina. The main premise of the story after that, is that Vyse, Aika set off on a long journey to find the sort after moon crystals from the six continents for Fina, while the Valuan empire is after the same things. The six moon crystals hold the extreme power to summon the six giant Gigas and to control them any way they want. The Gigas are ancient giant powerful creatures that were controlled by each continent and used for war against the other continents. The story of skies of Arcadia is one of the best stories I have play through in any RPG, so you wont be disappointed. This port of the Dreamcast version has a few new things, first off there are three new NPC's which have their own back story. One of these characters is a bounty hunter and is after Vyse which you have to fight as a boss a few times, and throughout the game you find out why the bounty hunter is after Vyse and how these three characters tie together with each other and with Vyse and Aika. To add to those small additions there are some invisible creatures throughout the game which you find and capture and exchange for items with one of the new characters. Its not much, but adds a little more to the game.

The game play of skies of Arcadia is usual RPG turn based gameplay, but instead of standing still in one place, players and enemies move around the battle screen automatically, this offers not much, but is more pleasant to the eye than characters standing in one spot. Another great aspect to the normal battles is there are another type of battles, this comes in the form of airship battles where you battle using your airship. This gives anew and welcome break from normal battles as you take control of cannons, magic and whatever you need to take down the opposing airship, giant monsters, or the Gigas themselves. The basic battles consist of attacking, defending, items, special attacks and magic. You learn your magic from moon stones. Moon stones are small pieces of the moons that have fallen down from the six moons themselves. From each battle won you get the Exp for leveling up and points that go towards gaining new moves from each moon stone class. To add to this, you get to sail and explore around the huge and expansive Air and lands of Arcadia. Think about moving around an over world from games such as Final Fantasy VII or VII, but much bigger and expansive. Along with this, there are about 100 or more secret and hidden discoveries for you to discover, and you can sell your information about these new discoveries to a guild for money.

The graphics of Skies of Arcadia: Legends were viewed as good when it was released on the Dreamcast, but the character models were basic and quite blocky. That said, they are still nice even now and they do not ruin the games experiance and the characters actually show emotion which not many game RPG's do these days. Sounds fit in to the game nicely and many of the music in the game are catchy and sound nice. Some character have small snippets of voice but these only reside in battle for special attacks and sometimes a word pops up in cut scenes. Both Game play and music are a little bit dated now, but they still stand up today and make for a good experiance.

In ending, if you want a RPG with a great story and great gameplay, then Skies of Arcadia is your ticket to that experiance, and I recommend playing it through at least once. It may even beat Final Fantasy VII in the story department. Skies of Arcadia is a Rpg classic and every RPG fan should have this. Enjoy, the wide world of Arcadia.

i cant accept that you think Suiko III is overrated..*deleted*