From the makers of Rainbow Moon comes Rainbow Skies. Developed by SideQuest Studios and published by EastAsiaSoft, Rainbow Skies is a fantasy role-playing indie game with a turn-based fighting system. It is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. The release date for Rainbow Skies is the 26th June 2018. SideQuest Studios are a renowned indie game developer specializing in console games and are currently focused on the PlayStation family. EastAsiaSoft is a publisher and developer for interactive entertainment, specifically for video games and related media.
You start your journey in Rainbow Skies as most people start their Sunday morning, with a huge hangover. Your character starts off with the name Damion, which can be altered. Damion is rushing around with a pretty bad headache and is going to be late for a final examination as a monster tamer, which is a respected profession in his hometown. He makes it just in time and faces a telling off by his examiner, Layne, whose name can also be altered. The examination goes pretty badly, and Damion ends up letting the monsters loose into his hometown. Afterwards, Damion aims to set things right, so he and Layne head into an engine room to reset the power and restore the monster training ground. During the training, and when in the engine room, you fight a few monsters to get a feel of the game’s combat which, as I have mentioned, is turn-based.
When you finally reach your goal, you square up against your first boss. It is pretty easy to beat the first boss, but the key to successfully fighting enemies in this game is to calculate and work out what is going to happen. Plan your attack and defend yourself well to get through each fight. Shortly after you fight the first boss, you meet a magic-based character named Ashly who can be renamed as well. Ashly soon meets with Damion and Layne by accidentally casting a magical spell that causes them to be bound together. From there, they start an adventure together to be rid of the spell. You then choose between Damion, Layne and Ashly to be your main character, and this will be the character that you control when moving around the map. As you travel around and progress through the story of Rainbow Skies, you level up the characters, discover different monsters, search dungeons for treasure, shop, upgrade your armor and weapons, perfect your tactics when fighting and pick up side quests. I know that a lot of people are looking forward to playing Rainbow Skies because of Rainbow Moon, but personally, I do not have a history with the franchise since I have never played Rainbow Moon. Rainbow Skies does not follow directly on from Rainbow Moon and is a completely separate story, which works perfectly for me since, as I have said, I have not played Rainbow Moon.
The world of Rainbow Skies is colourful and vibrant. The game feels like it is taking me back to my childhood when games were extremely bright and beautiful but still very simple. The look of the game is very arcade-like, and I can imagine that if this game had been released several years earlier, I would have been in the arcade with my friends spending all of my pocket money on playing it for hours. The game has a very nice little story, and the map is quite open with many side quests and treasure hunts. The characters seem to have never ending possibilities when it comes to upgrades, which is great because it will keep you busy for hours. On the face of it, the game offers a lot of customization and freedom for role-playing fans, and it can be quite addictive. The fact that you can change the name of the characters also gives the game a personalised feel.
One of the issues I have found with Rainbow Skies is that the dialogue is extremely long. Yes, sometimes the conversations can be quite funny, but after a while, I noticed that I was just skipping most of the dialogue because it seems to go on forever. You have the option to check any important information you may have gathered from the dialogue afterwards, so this gives you the ability to skip dialogue without feeling like you have missed anything important. For the first hour of the game, I found myself reading absolutely everything really carefully, but now, after countless hours of gameplay, I have stopped reading. Another issue I have found with Rainbow Skies is that it feels like a bit of a filler game. By this I mean that I would definitely play the game for a long time but in between the bigger and more important games. I found myself getting a bit bored and thinking of playing something else for a while. The game is extremely slow-paced in every aspect, and you have to put a lot of time and attention into it to feel like you have gotten anywhere. The game’s combat is particularly slow-paced. Some of the monsters’ attacks take a really long time to pan out and, when you have quite a few monsters around, you feel like it is taking forever to get back around to your turn. Once you have made your way through the first section of the map and have fought off a few of the different monsters, the game starts to feel very repetitive. Even though there is a lot to do and there are many side quests, it feels like you are doing the same thing over and over again.
Overall, Rainbow Skies is a pretty good game. It is bright and colourful, and there is a lot to do. The game offers hours and hours of gameplay along with character customisation and what seems like an endless number of upgrades. The different monsters in the game are creative, and it has an arcade-style feel when it comes to the surroundings and the map. I would say that it is perfect for players that enjoy slow-paced adventures and fantasy role-playing games with turn-based combat. I think people who enjoyed Rainbow Moon will enjoy pouring their time into Rainbow Skies.
Developer: SideQuest Studios
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Platforms: PS4, PS3, PSVita
Release Date: 26th June 2018
For more information about Rainbow Skies, click HERE
Read Ian Cooper’s review of Battle Chasers: Nightwar HERE or alternatively Will Worrall’s review on the Earthbound-like RPG Reverie HERE