Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire, at its core, is an excellent turn-based RPG, albeit one held back by lacklustre open-world gameplay, low-quality visuals, and weak dialogue.
Singleplayer.
I love the idea of Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire more than I enjoyed the game itself.
While the turn-based combat system is excellent, a delight to use, and offers a surprising amount of depth for a game that is so reasonably priced and simple in appearance, there are far too many random encounters, and most of them last much longer than necessary.
Focusing on a smaller selection of high-stakes, high-intensity battles with real narrative weight would have vastly improved my time with the game and made me much more comfortable recommending it to others.
I understand the desire to make a game last longer to give the buyer a feeling of getting their money’s worth; however, Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is a perfect example of a game that would have been much more enjoyable with fewer systems and a significantly shorter run time (and it’s already pretty short).
Exploring the semi-open world and, to an extent, exploring cities/hubs was a perfect example of mechanics that should have been cut, as they are so bland that a menu system similar to the one from the Fuga games would have been just as good, if not better.
While this is a bold opinion, I feel it is justified.
While exploring locations on foot was “okay,” every location I have visited feels lifeless, and every building looks more like a set piece than a real location or residence.
Taking to the skies is even less enjoyable, with frustrating flight controls that do little to improve the tedium invoked by exploring a map that appears to have been designed with the Nintendo Switch’s graphical limitations in mind.
I understand the importance of catering to your biggest player base, and I know that the developers may not have a team large enough to create separate ports for each platform.
However, even a few extra graphical settings and higher-quality textures for the remaining consoles would have made Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire look much better on every other platform.
This change would have gone a long way towards making Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire more visually appealing.
While the 2D artwork is gorgeous, the aesthetic attractive, and the characters are charming, many 3D models suffer from a severe lack of anti-aliasing, sometimes making them appear to be coming apart at the seams.
I understand that games on the Nintendo Switch often have these issues. Still, I was playing on an Xbox Series X, which would have no issue running the game on vastly higher-quality settings, and I wish the developers had made an allowance for that.
I must admit to liking the narrative concept of Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire; however, I feel the developers struggled to do it justice.
While this could be partially due to the cutesy aesthetic and mechanical limitations previously mentioned running counterclockwise to the, at times, rather intense plot, the poorly written dialogue doesn’t help either.
Sometimes, I skipped through what felt like pages of mindless back-and-forth chit-chat that added very little to the story, which is a shame as I mostly liked all of the characters and appreciated their relationships with other characters, such as the friendship between
Poorly written dialogue aside, the narrative is filled with plot elements that make little sense and do little to move the story along.
A perfect example is the main character going out to fetch their mother some stew, only to engage in training missions, a gradation ceremony, and a pleasure flight before taking the stew home to his poor, starving mother.
By all means, have him take stew home to Mother, but it would have been better if he had picked some up as an afterthought instead of starting the day by going to collect stew only to not arrive back home until near sunset!
Unfortunately, moments like this distracted me from what was otherwise a fairly rich JRPG narrative that breaks from more traditional fantasy norms due to its aviation focus and unique elements.
I would love to see the developers re-release Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire with far less repetitive content, fewer mechanics, and better dialogue. However, that is unlikely to happen due to its poor sales and lacklustre critical reception,m which is a real shame, as Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire had the potential to be so much more, potential that is unfortunately never going to be fully realised.
Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is a 4x strategy video game developed by Octeto Studios and published by PQube, it was released on 9 October 2024 and retails for $24.99.
Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is available on the following platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is rated PEGI 12+ and contains:
Ultimately, Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire is a good JRPG with a unique setting, and most gamers will get their money’s worth.
However, there are much better JRPGs at similar price points, so I recommend waiting for a sale or watching some gameplay before you commit to buying it.
While I did like certain parts of Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire, such as the excellent turn-based combat mechanics, I do not feel comfortable enthusiastically recommending the game on that alone. While I enjoyed those mechanics immediately, others may not feel they make up for [game_titles]’s weak dialogue and low-quality visuals, which I freely admit are both pretty rough at times.
