Having never played the classic Skies of Arcadia back in 2000 on the Dreamcast, the promise of similar sky pirate hijinks in Sky Oceans: Wings For Hire is intriguing. The developers are proud to present their creation as retro-inspired, and the character design, setting, and feel all hearken back to that acclaimed RPG. The game does not measure up to these grand influences, however. A combination of poorly-executed systems, uninspiring combat, and a bevy of glitches serve as a storm warning. So buckle in and batten down the hatches. There are choppy skies ahead.
The narrative is the strongest aspect of Sky Oceans. The tale of Glenn Windwalker and his journey to find out what became of his absent father quickly incorporates multiple characters and several plot twists. As an airjet pilot, he serves the community of Blossom as an explorer and defender, much like his parents. An unexpected assault on the village early on in the story throws his world into chaos and forces Glenn and his companions on the run, where they attempt to find allies to answer questions about his family and liberate Blossom.
It weaves in themes of family heritage alongside free choice and self-determination, all the while adding some nuanced world-building about how the shattered sky islands came to be and how unearthly forces had a hand in this. Glenn’s journey to find answers integrates nicely with the main antagonist of the story, Magnus, and the powerful faction he represents alongside his motivations for confronting these alien forces. There’s a mature aspect to the dialogue at times, and the bright sprites belie the fact that the story does not shy away from loss or anger. Character dialogue is solid, although it’s difficult to distinguish much personality other than a few style quirks like antiquated pirate language. One problem is just how many characters vie for screen time. By the end of the game, Glenn’s crew numbers well over a dozen members with few having an impact on main plot progression.
Graphics in Sky Oceans are a combination of 3D construction with a cell-shaded aspect: the thick, black edging on character designs accentuates the nostalgic designs and places the characters front and center. Characters’ facial expressions remain static throughout in-game story scenes, which does make for odd moments where melodramatic dialogue contrasts sharply with the permanent grins sitting on Glenn and the faces of his crew. Having said that, the 2D character portraits do reflect these shifts better. It’s a pity the graphic design doesn’t take fuller advantage of the sky-based setting besides the obligatory floating islands and limited verticality of the small dungeon/battle maps. There’s nothing inventive, and the few creatures flying around are uninspired, too. Sound design and music are similarly uninspired. It’s the sort of soundtrack you’d expect in each thematic area or during combat, but nothing is particularly memorable.
Once Glenn acquires a full airship, he can explore the skies across his world. As Sky Oceans progresses and the ship gets upgraded, this exploration extends into both lower and high altitudes, with just the stars for company. Alongside the promise of wind walls and currents blocking off areas of the map, this looks to be a more unique take on dreary world map travel. However, the execution is lacking, through the very plain graphical detail of the overland part of the game and a horrendous amount of pop-up at close ranges even on ‘Ultra’ graphics settings. At all three altitudes, the skies appear empty until Glenn’s airship comes within a short distance of graphical assets like a massive chunk of floating rock or a huge wind wall. It vastly undermines the potential of the setting and is a graphical area where extra love is needed.
Dungeons also feature movement using the crew’s smaller airjets, each of which has an ability used to support overcoming dungeon challenges or aid exploration. None of the dungeons are that long or involved, and what at first seems like it could be a complex, multi-part dungeon with novel puzzles quickly becomes quite linear. The graphics are more varied here, like alien sky-bases or crystal caverns, and don’t suffer as much pop up.
Overland and in dungeons, the camera offers no favors at all, with regular glitches during overworld exploration and fiddly controls during the dungeons. Unless you elect to travel at very slow speeds, it’s easy for airjets to careen around the dungeons, taking damage from unintended scenery collisions and with a camera sometimes completely obscured by a wall or the back end of the PC’s airjet.
For all its potential as a unique twist, airship/airjet combat is repetitive from the start. Sky Oceans’ turn-based systems are very familiar (attack, evade, ability, item, retreat), and the systems don’t account for combat taking place in a 3D plane with fast-moving vehicles. Sprite and battle designs are unimaginative and the combat camera places enemies so far away that individual details are difficult to discern, negatively affecting any design appreciation. Combat attacks and abilities take the form of brief animated attacks, swoops, and dakka-dakka moments. These never vary, and even different abilities (most of which are elemental magic variations on attacks) are just palette-swapped rather than introducing fresh animations or effects.
A set of unintuitive wider systems compounds the effects of repetitive combat. There are a bevy of status effects, a sliding scale of battle advantage/disadvantage, and a turn order influenced by the speed of character abilities. Sky Oceans does not explain this very well, and although a ‘Status’ button does enable you to read descriptions of all current active effects. You’re hard-pressed to consider how to use these effects to your advantage, much less know how some of them occur.
This confusion extends into the party mechanics. Party equipment, learning new abilities, and upgrades for the main airship are easy enough to select, even if the UI does a clumsy job of showing the improvements and relevant items for each character. There’s an obligatory food crafting system, and there’s also a relationship dynamic between the main character and his crew, as well as a system for tracking how tired and stressed characters are after completing successive missions. In all honesty, across two playthroughs, character bonds were always massively positive with Glenn from day one, and even though the core combat team appeared heavily fatigued, this never seemed to make a significant difference in combat.
There are plentiful bugs and glitches in Sky Oceans, from basic camera glitches to occasions where dungeon assets are impassable or render the airjet immobile. Worse, there are several plot bugs where completing mission objectives out of order can render it impossible to progress. On one occasion in a dungeon, this led to all sorts of weirdness, with an old cutscene suddenly replaying and Glenn booted back to a prior settlement without explanation. Autosaves didn’t help, as they’re not common and only having three save slots seems pretty archaic in 2024.
There are a few other features to divert you from the main story. Although sidequests and collectibles do exist, they’re not well-signposted and the actual missions are mainly variations on fetch quests or kill counts. There’s certainly not a lot of excitement or mystery to Glenn’s ‘wings for hire,’ it must be said. Most of your time is dedicated to looking for the best options to grind for cash, as the equipment upgrades are key to managing the endgame. That said, Sky Oceans isn’t the most difficult RPG, but it does mask some of its difficulty with this grind. Given how bland combat is, this is not exactly a positive.
When all is said and done, the negative headwinds are too strong for Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire to navigate successfully. The earnest story and varied, if simple, setting assets can’t make up for the obtuse systems and vapid, repetitive combat. The raft of graphical glitches and plotting bugs only adds to the terminal altitude loss. For the very committed, there may be enough content and exploration for a week or so. But with many better retro RPGs available, from indie to triple-A, the turbulence on deck is too great to warrant a recommendation to hire Glenn and his crew this time.
