Rating of
4.5/5
I’ll Dance with Dragons Anytime
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 07/18/16
“Skyborn” is the third of four games currently available from Indie dev team, Dancing Dragon Games. Dancing Dragon consists of only a handful of people, with Phil Hamilton and Brittany Fuerst taking lead on “Skyborn.” As an “RPG Maker” game, “Skyborn” already has the deck stacked against it in the eyes of many gamers. Yet, against all odds, Dancing Dragon has created an amazing throw-back RPG that hits all of the right notes.
Presentation
Because it is an “RPG Maker” game, “Skyborn’s” presentation isn’t exactly a surprise. It looks like a 16-bit SNES game with pleasant looking sprites, character portraits, and monster designs. The game does not run in widescreen format, which is a bit disappointing. Nothing is particularly mindblowing, either in a good way or a bad way, about “Skyborn’s” graphics.
The audio is a nice touch, as there are a number of catchy tunes throughout, as well as recurring musical themes that run throughout a number of the tracks. The game also puts sound effects to good use, though there is no voice-acting, as one would expect.
The only real detriment to “Skyborn’s” presentation, aside from being made from “RPG Maker” assets, is the fact that a number of Steam integration features don’t work with the Windows version of the game. The devs have reported that these features do work on the Mac and Linux versions, which makes no sense. Things like Steam overlay integration and Steam controller support are pretty rudimentary, and if the dev team’s programmers were clever enough to figure out how to make Steam Achievements work even when the overlay doesn’t, they should also be clever enough to fix the remaining facets of Steam integration.
Story
“Skyborn” tells the story of Claret, an airship mechanic working in the steampunk city of New Stormrook. This city once had a different name, but has recently been taken over by the titular skyborn, a race of winged humanoids known for their ruthlessness and military prowess.
Claret runs afoul of the skyborn authorities when she inadvertently kidnaps a human nobleman – whom she had just been betrothed to in a marriage/business deal orchestrated by her brother. It turns out, though, that Claret’s problems are minor when compared to the systematic injustices enforced by the skyborn upon half-skyborn/half-human citizens.
“Skyborn” starts as a typical adventure story, but quickly changes direction in order to address deeper issues such as racism, class warfare, dictatorial governments, and the dangers of failing to remember or learn from historical events. The narrative handles all of these issues quite well, and the story comes to a very pleasing conclusion with no significant loose ends after approximately 20 hours. The duration is a little bit short for a classic 16-bit RPG, which typically lasted 25-30 hours, but being a little bit too short is much preferable to being far too long.
Gameplay
“Skyborn,” as an “RPG Maker” game, has a fairly predictable, bog-standard combat system. However, it does an admirable job of mixing things up by providing each of the 5 playable characters with a unique repertoire of skills and a dedicated role to play.
Combat plays out ‘Dragon Quest’ style via first-person with character portraits for the party visible along the bottom of the screen. “Skyborn” divides magic and skills into separate categories, with certain characters having access to magic and certain characters having access to skills, with a character’s capacity for using said abilities measured as a percentage instead of a raw number. Magic-using characters start with 100% MP, which goes down as they spend it to cast spells, but regenerates a small amount each turn. Skill-using characters start each battle with 0% and built up their ability to use skills by dealing and receiving damage.
Status ailments are huge in “Skyborn,” with the player’s party having a wide array of abilities that can poison, burn, paralyze, weaken, or numerous other effects. The key to most boss battles is proper use of debuffs and status ailments to keep the enemy manageable, which is a nice change of pace from most RPGs where bosses are immune to everything. Overall, combat balance feels extremely good on Normal difficulty, and the game is even do-able on Hard difficulty, though I can’t imagine why anyone would bother, aside from the Steam Achievements for defeating the final two bosses on Hard.
Aside from combat, “Skyborn” features a fairly interesting equipment system. While the player can spend money to buy gear at stores, Claret can also be called upon to craft weapons and armor from raw ore found in dungeons. Using Claret’s crafting skills is the only way to get +2 enhanced versions of the game’s non-special weapons. In addition to the weapons and armor themselves, “Skyborn” offers players the opportunity to add Augments to their gear. These Augments take the form of gemstones or other small items. Each piece of gear can have one Augment attached at a time, and some of them are quite powerful. A fully Augmented team buffed out with stat boosting items is essential for defeating the game’s one and only optional Super Boss.
“Skyborn” is also fairly unique as an old-school-style RPG in that it doesn’t promote grinding. All enemies in the game are visible in the game’s environs, and after they are defeated, they never respawn. Thus both experience points and gold are limited assets in “Skyborn.” While I never felt that I needed more of either asset by the end of the game, when my team was barely squeaking through some fairly tough battles in the game’s Arena, I was worried that the dead party members were missing out on too much XP.
Finally, it is worth noting that “Skyborn” is a fairly open game regarding its structure. Early on, it is just a matter of going from place to place along a linear path, but everything opens up before too long, allowing the player to freely explore the entire game world looking for secrets, of which there are a good number. Even better, these secrets and side-quests are extremely well managed, unlike the esoteric and obfuscated secret rooms that plagued the entire 5-episode run of that other “RPG Maker” game.
Overall
“Skyborn” is easily one of the best “RPG Maker” projects ever released. From the steampunk aesthetic to the solid narrative and character writing to the perfectly-balanced gameplay, this is one throw-back game that hits all of the right notes for its genre in perfect tune. And it’s definitely a tune that can get me dancing!
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 4/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
