Sky Oceans Wings for Hire Review: Passionate but Flawed

Taking inspiration from classic JRPGs of old, Skies of Arcadia in particular, this game promises fun combat in a unique feeling world. Even a glance at this title makes it clear that a lot of passion and love was put into it by the dev team, but does that passion create a good experience? Let’s break down Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire piece by piece to determine if this title is a worthwhile purchase for the casual gamer.

Let’s begin with the most positive aspect of Sky Oceans for me, the visuals. The graphics are simple, yet colorful in a way where every model stands out. It’s a very charming look that is only made better by the dialogue and battle portraits, which have a stellar art style. I found every character design and model in this game to look great in a way that almost made me feel nostalgic for Gamecube-era games in this style. While there is the occasional character with an oddly textured face, these issues are few and far between.

While the character models and portraits look great, the area designs can sometimes fall flat. Most of them look bland, with very few landmarks and boring layouts that make it difficult to remember where you previously were. However, that is a minor issue as you’ll likely be zooming through them because of the game’s main premise: aircrafts.

Sky Oceans has one of the most unique RPG gimmicks I have ever seen; almost the entire game takes place inside of aircrafts. With the exception of walking around small hub towns, you’ll be controlling planes in dungeons, the overworld, and even during combat. This adds a unique flair to most aspects of the game as you navigate the world and begin battles by first shooting at opponents in the sky.

The game even makes each party member’s plane feel unique, not only do they all have a unique design, but they also have unique abilities exclusive to each character. These abilities range from being able to detect where treasure chests are to firing missiles at enemies.

While the main aspects of the game taking place almost entirely inside planes are fun, one must also be aware of their disorienting controls. The planes do control like planes instead of people, requiring a wide amount of distance just to turn and being difficult to stop on a dime. While this feels fine in the more open areas, there are several dungeons that take place in small corridors. Navigating through these areas, particularly the first major dungeon, can be an extremely disorienting experience. When your plane touches a wall, it bounces around the room several times as it keeps hitting objects until it eventually loses momentum.

Many times during my playthrough I would become confused about where I was due to this bouncing. Taking the time to realize where I even was before struggling to turn (more often than not running into another wall, restarting the process). While this issue only appeared a few times during my playthrough, the fact that it happened at all and so early in the game is worth mentioning as it may turn players off of the experience.

Several areas of the game also do not properly communicate the proper way to exit them, requiring players to simply guess which area of the sky they need to fly into to leave. This issue particularly raised its head while trying to accomplish some side content in the game. Several hours in, I found myself revisiting an early game area: Kiezel Fracture in an attempt to search for and hunt some enemies. However, to my horror, quest markers in this area would not lead me to the exit but rather to a save point. After nearly an hour trapped in this area, I was convinced my file had been softlocked, prematurely ending my journey. It was by a mere stroke of luck I was able to find the exit and continue the game, but one has to wonder if the average player will put up with the frustration of being stuck in an old area for as long as I did.

Now, let us go over the combat of Sky Oceans. Battles in this game are simplistic compared to other RPGs, with each character having two types of elemental skills they can use to damage enemies or use support skills to buff the party. The battle UI shows which order your allies and enemies will take their turns, and even shows you which allies will be attacked by which enemies this turn. New skills can be learned at any time at the main airship hub, which each skill not just being a direct upgrade from the previous but instead inflicting a different status effect on enemies. All of this would make for a great experience of planning out turns and optimizing your battle strategies, unfortunately, the game has a major issue that prevents that: balancing.

While the first few hours of the game do involve basic RPG combat and planning out your turns to prevent failure, that doesn’t last after the first few dungeons. By the time the player is done with the second major dungeon, they’ll notice that enemies are no longer hurting them, either missing or doing 0 damage or missing their attacks entirely. This happens because nearly every battle encounter will level up the player, causing them to become powerful enough to end even boss encounters within seconds.

This balancing issue sadly trivializes almost the entire game. Because nothing will be able to hurt the player in a meaningful way, battles become little more than mashing the ice skill button and watching enemies go down like paper. Even equipment and doing side quests to afford that equipment become trivialized by the leveling system. I had nearly forgotten to learn new battle skills in the game’s main hub because my basic skills were more than enough to destroy enemies.

These issues with the battle system encapsulate the issues Sky Oceans has as a whole. The title clearly has a lot of love and passion put into it and most aspects of it ooze a positive charm, but at every turn, it is held back by design issues which sour the experience as a whole. Whether it be battles becoming trivialized, getting stuck in early game areas, or even audio glitches such as wyvern noises not stopping after battle. All of these issues make it difficult for me to recommend Sky Oceans in its current state.

However, not recommending the game doesn’t mean there isn’t a worthwhile experience here. As I have hopefully made it clear, Sky Oceans is a game with plenty of charm that I do not regret investing time into. I would go so far to say that I enjoyed the title despite its flaws. Articulating why in a review is hard, but passion can also shine through in a flawed project. Hopefully, issues like the leveling can be fixed with patches, as actually needing to plan through battles would make the experience much more worthwhile. Aside from that, I hope the future is bright for Octeto Studios and that their next projects can learn from Sky Oceans’ failings.

Skeith Ruch

Staff Writer

3+ years of professional gaming journalism | 20+ years gaming experience

Skeith Ruch is a Staff Writer for Raider King, bringing over two decades of gaming experience to their coverage. Based in Pennsylvania, USA, Skeith specializes in rapid-turnaround game analysis, delivering timely guides and reviews across multiple gaming genres. Known for completing games at exceptional speeds, Skeith provides early coverage and comprehensive walkthroughs that help players navigate new releases quickly and effectively.

Credentials: Writer at Raider King (2023-Present) | Former Writer at Hardcore Gamer | Former Feature Writer at The Story Arc | 20+ years of gaming across all major platforms | Specialist in action-adventure, RPGs, and indie titles

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