Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire Review (ToferGofer.TTV)
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 SHITTY 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 FUCKING 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.