Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire makes plenty of promises, billing itself as an homage to classic JRPGs like Skies of Arcadia. It ticks plenty of the boxes to appeal to fans of those games, offering a colourful cast of characters, an ambitious narrative, and classic turn-based combat, but there is a lack of polish that keeps this story of sky pirates from soaring as high as its lofty aspirations.
The opening cutscene feels promising, with vibrant characters in exotic locales set to a fun, if generic, J-pop tune. We were absolutely rooting for this title from dev Octeto Studios and publisher PQube, who have delivered plenty of fun indie games over the years. Unfortunately, our experience was marred almost immediately by bugs and unwieldy controls that made Sky Oceans nearly unplayable. It was disappointing from the moment we got to control our skyships.
The first character we got to control was Glenn Windwalker, a young man on the cusp of becoming a pilot dedicated to protecting his hometown. In classic JRPG fashion, his father disappeared under mysterious circumstances years before, spurring Glenn’s desire for adventure. He is surrounded by a ragtag group of friends, all of whom are also becoming pilots together. The tutorial mission took us on a tour of Blossom, which brought us to our first frustration with the game – the camera.
While walking around the town, the camera is incredibly sensitive, flying around at the slightest provocation. We had to go into the settings and turn the sensitivity right down to keep from feeling ill. Oddly, the issue was even worse when we played in handheld mode; for some reason, it became jittery as we walked around. It was the first sign that playing Sky Oceans wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience.
The bugs continued to mount up as we played through the opening mission. Text either wouldn’t load or was covered up by graphics in the overlay, making it difficult to figure out what was happening during combat. However, the worst technical issue that we encountered came after our first combat encounter. For some reason, the ambient sound effect of one of the early enemies persisted after the fight ended, creating an unintentionally comical situation as we continued with the game.
The flapping and growling of the Allibatross followed us to our next objective. It followed us back to our hometown. It followed us to the grave of Glenn’s father, punctuating the solemn cutscenes with the ghosts of combat past. Not even the loading screens were safe from the issue. The sound effect continued for hours, following us to the second hub island we visited, until we saved and restarted the game.
The most frustrating thing, though, is that even if you removed the bugs and technical issues — and several of the problems we encountered related to 'known issues' with fixes promised prior to final launch (although at the time of writing on launch day, 1.0.0 remains the only version available on Switch) — Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire would still just be a basic, by-the-numbers JRPG.
The graphics are dated, with character models that are too static by modern standards. The combat is reminiscent of Bravely Default, allowing you to choose everyone’s actions at the start of the turn. It is easy to figure out, even if it isn’t immediately clear what the host of status effects actually do. It is all serviceable, but it doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen before.
A huge selling point for the game should be the exploration mode, where you can take to the skies in airships, but these sections are bland and forgettable. The environments are largely empty save for a few combat encounters scattered around. There isn’t much incentive to actively explore, which is a huge missed opportunity.
At its best, these sections are dull. At their worst, they can be confusing, with unwieldy controls and a camera that makes it too easy to lose your way. An early section, where we were meant to follow beacons left by another character, should have taken a few minutes but instead became half an hour as we got turned around, flipped upside down, and lost. There are too many invisible walls in a world where only the sky should be the limit.
The one thing the game does well is establish its setting and characters. The writing and dialogue all feel believable enough that we wanted to know more. What is the dark secret the Windwalker family is hiding? Why has the Alliance taken such drastic measures to find them? We liked the characters and their interactions. It was enough to keep us coming back even after it was clear things weren’t going to get any better.
Sky Oceans: Heroes for Hire promises big things, but this homage to the JRPG genre fails to take off in the way that the marketing promises. Shallow combat, dated visuals, and buggy gameplay make it difficult to recommend. Even if the game’s technical issues are patched out, it would only leave a very average gaming experience behind. With so many great JRPGs on the Switch, it is tough to recommend this one.
Conclusion
We can forgive a game for being too ambitious for its own good, trying something bold, and possibly falling short. The trouble with Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is that it tries to deliver something we’ve seen before and still manages to fail at it. Even if you stripped out every technical issue, improved the camera, and polished up the visuals, you would still be left with a painfully average gaming experience. Sky Oceans doesn’t even crash and burn – it fails to leave the runway.
Comments 60
Oof, a lot of people will be disappointed by this.
Just think, in 5-20 years time, this could be the game that gamer revisionists insist was dun durty and is actually the biggest hidden Switch RPG gem of them all.
I'll take 5 copies just in case.
Can't help thinking there was a small and dedicated dev team passionately working on this for a few years. I hope they are OK and can still fix some of the bugs.
That was the Switch version so bad?
I will consider the PS5 version instead.
Thanks for the review, too bad that this game has currently so many issues despite the promising premise, will keep an eye on it to see if patches (and also Switch's successor although in this case it can't do much on its own) can improve it and if that happens then I'll get it - don't mind it being a relatively basic JRPG considering the setting and characters are interesting and even less so the "dated" graphics as much as it would be cool if those aspects were improved, too!
By the way, still have my fingers crossed that we will eventually get a rerelease of Skies of Arcadia to finally play it!
This is disappointing, I wanted something to take up the Skies of Arcadia shaped hole I've had in my life for the past 2 decades. Oh well, I'll keep an eye out for thus getting patched.
Well that's a bummer, I was looking forward to this one. Guess I'll wait for a while and see if the biggest issues get fixed and maybe grab it on sale a few months down the line.
Oh, that's interesting! I thought for sure this one would score at least half-decently well. Shame that it wasn't as good as it seemed to be.
That being said, I'm now relieved I won't be tempted by this as I really dislike the fonts and general menu displays in this one. They remind me of Codename: S.T.E.A.M. in that they're going for kind of a comic book-esque look, but it's a video game so it doesn't really work they way they thought it would.
As someone who missed out on Skies of Arcadia this is really disappointing. I was hoping for something new to play on Switch this weekend.
@Anti-Matter
Good choice. You can play the same mediocre game on a faster console.
Played the PC demo a couple months back and was surprised how mediocre every aspect of the game felt. It seemed promising in the trailers...
Aww, bummer. It seemed so promising.
@Anti-Matter not so sure that it is down to graphics alone. I think it looks like a dud game on all platforms.
Perhaps your platform of choice is no longer a Nintendo one and that is fine, but the narrative is a bit of a constant downer on these threads.
I get you like the PS5 but this is a Nintendo site.
Lol! Told ya! So glad I didn't fall for the whole "Skies of Arcadia" potential hype that everyone seemed to be gushing over.
Got to admit, didn't expect a 3 star though, ouch!
If we needed more evidence that a proper SOA remake is needed, this is it
whelp thats unexpected
Not surprising unfortunately. I played the demo on my Steam Deck awhile ago, and it was atrocious. Skies of Arcadia this is not.
Aww, that's a shame. I really liked the look of this one.
@Duncanballs
I still like my Nintendo Switch and other my Nintendo games, but when talking about 3rd party games, currently I have less interest with Switch version as I keep founding bad performance or bad treatments (partial download, code in box, streaming only).
So when I got a bad review of 3rd party Switch games again, I was thinking "Gosh, not again?!", it made me disappointed and I immediately thinking to consider the better version instead (PS5 version).
About adding the games for my Switch, now I only get certain 1st party games and 3rd party games, if they have same great performance as PS4 version (in this case for example Cat Quest 1 & 2, Ankora + Deiland, Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town, FF X/X-2 HD, FF XII TZA, etc) I will consider both Switch and PS4 / PS5 version, but if the 3rd party games have the worst performance on Switch version, I will choose PS5 version as possible.
I became very cautious and very selective in getting 3rd party games since 3rd party games are my biggest filler than 1st party games even by Nintendo.
I had fun playing the demo, so I'll probably take this review with a pinch of salt. I'll probably pick this up eventually.
Oof that’s a shame.
I’m still gonna it get on sale though.
Also I feel kinda bad for indie devs when their games flop since (usually) they do love making games and they do wanna make a game that people will love. Hopefully on this teams next project they will take the criticism to heart.
I didn't expect this game to blow my mind out but it sounds like a play it safe kind of RPG. It seems much polish and play testing still needs to be done before they could considered a physical release. Probably won't be getting it unless it polish itself up to decent quality and dropped to a bargain price maybe.
@TAndvig That's the thing, a majority of indie studios used the inspiration thing to hook you into what they are doing with their game. While most successfully deliver on that like Sea of Stars, Dark Deity, Axiom Verge, Cuphead, and Freedom Planet, most usually fall flat like this game and others such as Rime and Enchanted Portal.
Ooof this is rough. I was really looking forward to this since the cowards at SEGA refused to do anything at all for their Skies of Arcadia IP.
@Kazman2007 Skies of Arcadia still exists. How can you miss out on it?
skies of arcadia needs to be remastered.
@Thirteen1355 Missed out in the sense I didn't play it when it came out. You can always go back to older games but you can't necessarily forget all the advancements gaming have made since then.
Hello there! Dev team here
Thanks a bunch for the review, and thanks everyone for the comments. It's great to see such respect and empathy from the community <3
Indeed, a massive patch is coming for the Switch version, addressing these and other issues and overall polish.
Please look forward to it, as we want your experience to be the best it can be.
@Poodlestargenerica eh, I know better than to expect anything from fanbloid "reviews" including NL's anyway.😜 Although it's less pretty when it partly stems from one's own shameful history in the field.🙄
@edhe
I have watched the gameplay of PS5 version from YouTube and it looked really good.
The smooth 60 fps, the cartoonish design of environment that I like, I didn't see something really bad so far.
My honest take (If anyone cares): This would have been a PERFECT 3DS game. It clearly has the graphical design for that console. We accepted this visual quality because the games focused on unique mechanics to hide the scars and blemishes of 3DS graphics. This game is very unique in its combat and plane exploration. The plane exploration is a lot like EO4 but with more verticality. It just runs so awful. I haven’t and won’t try it on PS5 but I hope it runs better on other platforms. Where this game falls off the rails is when it tries to be a 3D character model roaming the town kind of game. The character models are a crime against humanity in this state. It would have been so much better to have this portion of the game be Visual Novel or something because all you’re doing in town is fetching stuff to get to the next mission. If they dialed the graphics back further and embraced a more chibi vibe then it would have been more serviceable. I’m absolutely pissed that i bought this game because i was really really excited for it. shame.
@wwwwataboy @jucemar If you guys end up patching this game I think it has a real chance to turn around. Please don’t give up on it because I really like the ideas here and I think it’s worth sticking through based on how cool the combat is. If the faces on the characters don’t look so smeared and fuzzy, that would be all I need bare minimum. Keep going!
Cool! The version that is live on Switch had lots of issues concerning asset compression, balance, and other aspects that got fixed in the upcoming patch.
Please stay tuned for updates and thanks again for your understanding
Those screenshots are brutal. Kudos for sharing the true depths of the problem and not just the eShop-worthy moments.
As always breaking a game with big negatives, this game is not perfect, dated visuals is not a minus. When ATLUS released the horrible performance SMT V, nobody made a big deal instead it was widely praised. Remember ATLUS is a AAA company and because an Indie dev releases a game with similar performance issues and everybody is ready to crash and trash. This game is an easy 8 out of 10 if some issues are fixed/patched. This is not Skies of Arcadia, and who says it was???
@Jucemar thank you!
@Lebest This is the norm unfortunately, and it's not just one reviewer in particular either.
It's almost as if indie games get a bad faith take while more popular ones get away with the exact same criticisms, despite the popular ones having way more money and resources. They can also be a bit unfair and overly negative with their points against an indie game.
Like this review starts by saying this game "makes plenty of promises" that it is "promising" as if the reviewer was super hyped about this relatively unknown indie title, but they seem to only phrase it that way so they can double down on the negative points immediately after. There is nothing in this review that tells me they have even played Skies of Arcadia before, which seems kind of important considering it is this indie game's entire inspiration and its fans are the target audience. The game description and marketing never boasts about realistic NPCs or cutting edge visuals, so these mentions of "failed promises" just comes off as manufactured and negative for the sake of being negative in my opinion (ragebait, basically).
This game's only "promise" that I could find is to be a retro-inspired, by-the-numbers JRPG that is very reminiscent of Skies of Arcadia and this review appears to be bashing it for being exactly what it claims to be.
They literally state even if the bugs are fixed that "Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire would still just be a basic, by-the-numbers JRPG." and as someone who is a fan of classic by-the-numbers JRPGs that remind me of Skies of Arcadia, I don't understand where the animosity is coming from. Whether or not it's intentional ragebait is not clear. What is clear is that this game is not the reviewer's cup of tea, and I do feel bad this person (or people) had to force themselves to play a game they clearly didn't enjoy to make the short release date review deadline.
Anyway - I picked this game up anyway because I'm a hardcore Skies of Arcadia fan and other reviews I read said it was about average and that's good enough for me.
I'm glad I started listening to other reviewers because this game was made for fans of Skies of Arcadia like me, not someone who is unrealistically expecting Octopath Traveler levels of quality from a small team indie dev.
@Astral-Grain absolutely in agreement. Same here I played over 1 hour so far and it is not that bad and I saw a comment about upcoming patch, so it can only get better.
@Lebest Right on, I'm just getting started also.
Is it a bit janky? You bet. Good thing it's turn-based lol
Is it a 3/10 "nearly unplayable" game? Absolutely not.
Some other things this review completely failed to mention:
This is not a serious review.
Being inspired by definitely does not guarantee that the final product will be good. This only makes me want to play Skies of Arcadia that much more. I can only hope that as Sega goes through the resurgence of its IPs that Skies of Arcadia will be among them. I'd be fine with the re-release port.
No one could tell from the trailer and art style that this wasn’t going to be great?
Ouch. Kinda had a bad feeling but didn’t realize it would be this bad. I wonder if they can salvage it.
Serious question; does Nintendo Life choose the screenshots for their reviews? Because most of them for this review are just... what the hell am I even looking at? And don't tell me it's the game. Screenshots for reviews on this site have sucked for a while now.
'Visuals are dated' When every developer and their mother release a 8 bit retro inspired game we call it charming and stunning visuals, but when someone tries to do something more its dated.
Cheers for the review. Quite disappointed. Even with patches and fixes it wouldn't stand out enough in the eShop's own "ocean" for me.
That's a shame. I need something to fill the Skies shaped hole in my life.
@ChHa
Just made me log in after I dunno how many years to say YES. Honestly the graphics for this game look pretty good to me just based off of some screenshots. The hurdle between retro-inspired game and anything beyond that is non-trivial imo...
@Astral-Grain
Continue playing it friend, you'll sadly discover that the score is quite well earned.
I honestly doubt that they will able to fix every broken aspect in this game. There are so many issues and glitches that i simply don't have the time to mention everything.
I recommend the steam discussions to read up on everything for a detailed explanation.
@completo88 You know, it's pretty pointless to try and convince someone a game is bad when I've already mentioned I'm playing it and enjoying it.
Too bad for you.
Did you notice there are about 12 Steam reviews at this time and all of them recommend the game?
1. Make auto text an option instead of having part of it auto text with very short time to read long texts or fully button press text.
2. Rebalance the graphics and framerate.
3. Easy nagivation for location to destination, some areas are not easy to nagivate.
For me, these 3 changes are enough to give this game an 8 out of 10.
@Lebest I agree with all this feedback, and have some points to add.
1. For some conversations, I could tap to progress dialogue but many of them seemed tied to a cutscene or animation and could not be controlled - it would be nice to have consistency across all text boxes so they include auto advance and the ability to manually progress at our own pace.
2. The most irritating graphical issue right now is the low res faces, I think all other textures are decent enough, but the faces make the biggest impact. Also for performance, movement with ships is fine but turning the camera while steering has a slight jutter to it and doesn't feel smooth.
3. On this point, I have to say the inclusion of a compass with waypoints (similar to games like Skyrim) is much better than Skies of Arcadia's original simple compass that just pointed directions and hidden treasure, but the flying overworld of Sky Oceans is bit more complex and requires us to "find paths" around the invisible walls that aren't a direct shot. I think this could be remedied if the world map was actually detailed with paths and invisible wall passages rather than just the general direction of major locations in the world.
@Jucemar I appreciate the work you and your team have done to make this game available on Switch and I'm especially looking forward to the patch you mentioned, hoping it drops on Switch soon.
Aww this makes me sad. I adore Skies of Arcadia and I was looking forward to this.
Hey there!
There's a massive Switch patch released today O.O
We strongly recommend you try it out
@Jucemar Thank you for letting us know, good timing
@Lebest heads up, new patch!
I just downloaded the new patch and immediately noticed the performance and texture issues I mentioned have been resolved.
-Character faces, other 2D graphics and portraits look much better now, which was my biggest drawback visually.
-Flying and movement in general is also much less stuttery and easier to control, and framerate issues seems to have been resolved as well, at least in the areas I tested.
I'm sure there's more to the patch than just what I noticed so far, but I'm happy I held off playing until the patch - I'm excited to get back into it.
Anyway, NL very likely won't revisit this title to update the score for all the peformance/texture issues being resolved, especially because it's an indie title. I hope people check the other Switch reviews besides this one, which are more reasonable and more detailed in comparison.
Having said all that, I do want to thank you and your team again for addressing the texture/performance issues so quickly and thanks for bringing this game to Switch!
After patch:
Thank you for the new patch.
Overall 8 out of 10. May get an 8.5 after fixing the minor issues.
@Astral-Grain thank you for the heads up.
@Jucemar THANK YOU!!!!
Just as an additional note, the music and sound effects are AMAZING!
Install the full game on the System memory to get the best performance, in case you have the Digital version (like I do).
@Jucemar Hi, I have some comments of people that are further into the game than I am:
I like the game alot but there's still major issues that need patching and the further in the game you get you can see patches are desperately still needed. Core mechanics are affected because of a number of bugs. Upgrading and maintaining your jets is rather pointless or i should say a pain as all the stats show 0 on everything, completely ruins a core and very important mechanic of the game atm. The buffs you can get from food are also botched atm because error msgs you get regarding them and makes another important system pointless right now
There's a number of other issues from small like quest markers not disappearing after completing or needing to reboot because the game is stuck in fast forward to rather big ones such as core elements of the game being completely broken that still need patching. I highly enjoy the game but no way would I rate this anywhere close to what you have when so many things in the game including core elements are still bugged out. The latest patch was a bare minimum fix, there's alot more needed including with core elements of the game that desperately need patching
If and when all the issues get fixed, I'll fully agree with your score, its a very fun and rather unique rpg but atm no way will I rate something so high even if i enjoy it when it still.has so many core problems, the game clearly wasn't finished when it launched. More patches are desperately needed and asap.
@Lebest thanks, we completely understand, and we have not stopped working on a ton of issues and improvements, so please expect a new patch coming in very soon.
Thanks again!
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