Trim the sails and roam the sea!
As of writing it's the beginning of the summer vacation of 2022, a heat wave have just appeared and what better way to start is too cool down with high adventure in the skies as you battle the Valuan Empire as noble air pirates? One of my favourite games that I hadn't played for over 10 years if I'm correct. Plus the big summer game for 2022, Xenoblade 3, comes out the week after I'm back to work. Story is that a lone girl sailing through the sky at night is attacked by the Valuan armada, but is rescued by the air pirates Vyse and Aika, taking her back to Pirate Isle, Vyse's fathers Dyne's base of operation. The next day Vyse and Aika travels to nearby Shrine Island to get a moon stone that fell from the sky (which they uses to make weapons and power their ships and machines). While they are away the Armada returns and take all men prisoner and the girl Fina. Returning Vyse and Aika take up pursuit but their ship is destroyed by an unnatural big archwhale Rahknam. They are rescued by Captain Drachma that hunts Rakhnam to avenge his son Little Jack that's also the name of his ship. He takes them to Valua as he puts in a harpoon cannon and with the help of a valuan boy Marco they break out the air pirates from the Colosseum through the sewers and then get Fina from the rail transport to the Grand Fortress. They all escape and Fina tells them that she is a silvite from the lost silver civilisation that are looking for the moon crystals scattered across the lands that controls the Gigas, ancient weapons that wrecked havoc on the old world and summoned the rains of destruction that destroyed all civilisations besides the silver one (this world have 6 moons). Valua is after them as well with Grand Admiral Galcian as the biggest threat.
That was the intro. You continue by traveling to the temple of Pyrynn where the red moon crystals is hidden with the help of a dancer, that turns out is the valuan admiral Belleza that summons the red gigas, Reculmen, that the Little Jack hardly can scrape. You solve it by defeating Bellezas ship instead since she has the crystal. After taking her engine you travel to the lands below the green moon, Ixa'taka, modelled after the native American civilisations like Inca and Maya and such. You rescue Ixa'takans from the Valuans that colonised them and used the slaves to mine for moon stones. You rescue the high priest that tells you the legends of the ancient capital that like Machu Pichu exists on the mountain tops. But the Ixa'takans had already found the crystal and uses it to summon Grendal the green gigas to push the valuans out of Ixa'taka. Of course admiral De Loco uses the same tactics as you and incapacitates the ship holding the crystal making the gigas run amok. After defeating them Vyse travels north back to Valua, but are intercepted by Rakhnam that Drachma must fight, but the Armada is hunting him as well after destroying several of their ships. This time by admiral Ramirez. During the battle they harpoon Rakhnam, but Little Jack takes heavy damage so they have to escape, but Drachma pushes the life boats out to go down with his ship. Meanwhile Ramirez starts firing on the life boats so that Fina and Aika is seperated from Vyze. The girls end up in Nasrad (the capital of Nasr, the main enemy of Valua and an ottoman expy) with the help of the air pirate Clara where they work as waitresses to get money for a ship and finding a map to the Island of Daccat, a famous air pirate. Vyse meanwhile is stranded on an deserted island where he also finds a part of the map and after some time is rescued bu the air pirate Gilder that helps him to Nasrad and onward to Daccat Island that after the trails of Daccat the parties are united with a single gold coin. Returning to Nasrad the Armada attacks and topples the kingdom of Nasr and captures our friends and take them back to Valua and the Grand Fortress. Gilder gets them out and after causing chaos and mayhem they try to escape and is helped by prince Enrique, the son of Empress Teodora, that can't stand the atrocities the Empire causes for its goal of world domination. He helps them to the newly built flagship Delphinus that they take and escape, blasting through the fortress with the moon stone cannon, the weapon built to rival the gigas.
From here you make the deserted island your base as you travel through the Dark Rift to get to Yafutoma, the Japan/China substitute where you rescue the kingdom from Valua as well as a greedy adviser. You pick up Princess Moagi that's fallen in love with Enrique and after stopping back at Cresent Island (your home base) you travel to the Ice Continent and find Glacia below the ice where you encounter Drachma again that survived the battle with Ramirez (who we also is told is another Silvite that went rouge in search of the crystals), but ended up stranded in Glacia with Rahknam that turns out to be the purple gigas in his final dying moments. They watch him die, takes his crystal and heads back, travels below the continent of Valua to enter the Maw of Tartas where the Yellow Gigas is sealed and after fighting him they ponder how to get Fina back to the Great Silver Shrine that apparently lies between the Silver Moon and Arcadia. Gilder tells them about a rumour that the Armada is building a special base and ship that apparently can go below the deep sky. Infiltrating the base they make of with the schematics of the ship, but are cornered by Galcian. To their aid comes admiral Gregorio, the oldest admiral and pretty much Enrique's foster father that tells them about Galcian's plan to use the crystals in order to usurp power for himself as he has taken complete control of the armada. Pushing them out of the way he faces Galcian alone to give them enough time to escape. Back at base they fix up the Delphinus and sets out again and sink below the clouds to find the ship Fina came in that was shot down by the Valuans in the beginning. At the depths they fight De Loco for the third and final time as his ship explodes after enough damage. Exiting Deep Sky Enrique leaves the party to travel to Valua and warn the Empress. Vyse returns to base where the Armada attacks and Ramirez reveals that the mission the elder sent them on wasn't to stop Valua getting the crystals so that they wouldn't be used, but so the Silvites could use them to once again cause the rains of destruction with their own Gigas, Zelos.
And to top it all of, all Silvites have a piece of the Silver Crystal inside them so Ramirez starts extracting Finas, almost killing her if it wasn't for Gilder firing his cannons from the Claudia to distract Ramirez. The armada gets away with the other crystals and the base is completely in ruins. Vyse and the gang flies off with Fina's ship to the Great Silver Shrine where you gotta run around in a maze until you find the chamber of the elders where they confirm what Ramirez said. They intend to destroy the world once again and reset it since they are on the brink of once again creating gigas or unleashing them, but Ramirez and Galcian shows up, killing elder Prime, the one that acted as a father for Fina and takes his crystal and leaves. Returning the base is back in order and you gotta stop Galcian before he removes the seal on Zelos. Back to the Armada base and fight of Admiral Vigoro and then take an elevator down below Deep Sky.
You of course are too late to stop them and they raise the continent of Soltis and unleashes the rain of destruction on Valua, destroying the capital and killing admiral Alfonso (an uptight brat noble that you faced of against a couple of times and renegade Galcian in order to become Grand Admiral himself) and the Empress. Enrique was able to escape with the help of Belleza that was sent to Value to prolong their response to the Armada going rouge... and killing her of since Galcian noticed she wasn't that comfortable to kill all the innocent. All reunite on Crescent Island together with fleets of Air Prates that you encountered during your travels, theres the black pirate Baltor and Gordo you fought of, Centime the tinker you rescued in Ixa'taka, Clara, Gilder's ship Claudia, the Tenkou (air pirates from Yafutoma lead by the rouge prince of Yafutoma) and your father Dyne's new ship. With the pirate fleet you set off to face Galcian as he tries to bend the world to his knees. You corner him and fight him at his new ship the Hydra, a flying fortress. As you got him on the run he enters the command centre and flies away, but who turns up if not Belleza in her ship that crashes right into it taking it down and exploding with her. Ramirez loses it and intends to wash the world away with the rains of destruction, but as the signal fires away the Great Silver Shrine comes crashing down, stopping the rains and destroying the energy shield around Soltis. You board the continent through Shrine Island from the beginning. You defeat Ramirez, he merges with Zelos and you defeat him with the Delphinus and then he crashes on your ship and you fight him for a third time The fight over you head back, Enrique marries Moagi and starts rebuilding Valua, Vyse, Aika and Fina gets a new ship and continue to travel the sky. The end.
I love this game, it has everything. Ship battles, giant monsters, lost continents, space travel, the fricking Moonstone cannon. There's tragedy, romance and always an optimistic hero and the great soundtrack pushing every scene above and beyond. The whole world is inspired from earth's history around 1400 - 1700 with the conquering of the world by Spaniards, Englishmen and the Portuguese. Which probably also explains why there is no African expy since the scramble for Africa was in the 19th century, which with the caricature vibe that wouldn't have gone over that well, but still. I've played it several times since it came out for the GameCube back in 2003. Didn't know what I did back then so this was the first time I used magic in different ways, changed around the accessories to get the benefits from that (back in the day it was just defence and power that mattered) making some of the harder bosses a little bit to easy. I mean, last air battle against Zelos is a magic caster that you can silence. I never used that before. There's also side-quests like the bounty hunters, moonfish and chams to feed cupil, Fina's weapon. The moonfish rewards you with items and backstory for Ramirez. You can gather crew members for your ship and customise the base. And finding discoveries around the world which you can sell for gold that gives you tidbits about the world. It's amazing.
Playing through it though, the world is kinda small, There's only 7 towns to visit and Nasr and Valua have two towns each... doesn't feel like empires. Also, the game is long overdue a remaster or a remake, especially as this goes up it have been 20 years since the Legend version was released. The Legend version is the best way to play with the added content of the bounty hunts and more discoveries and lowered encounter rate. It is said it took a hit in the audio department, but since I never played the Dreamcast version I can't say if that's true. I also discovered I still have my own written lists of moonfish, chests and discoveries I got from the internet back in the early 2000's when I tried getting 100 %. Fun times, could have used it for the treasure chests since I missed a couple apparently and had to run through a couple of dungeons again to get the last missing moonfish.
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