The RPG genre has so many adventures involving a diverse group of heroes that need to save the world from the dark forces of evil. However, you don't always control them directly, and Three Skies by Shiny Box is a prime example of that.
Take a leading role in this 2D turn-based RPG filled with heroes, treasures, and places to explore. You'll go from location to location with your select group of heroes as you explore the dungeons within to clear out the monsters and make the world safer. The more you collect, the more strategic options you'll have the further along you get.
What are Three Skies?
When it comes to making fantasy adventures, it's understandable to rely on certain conventions while also trying to add original content. Three Skies does this in order to tell its fantastical story. This game puts you in the world of Baranor which is under the threat of a mysterious yet dangerous event known as the Calamity. As the hero, you'll emerge from an uncertain past as you use your unusual abilities to lead those willing to join you on your adventure. As you fight more battles and make more friends, you'll find yourself facing a foe that is more connected to you than you would think.
Soaring Three Skies
With a fantasy adventure that proposes an epic journey, it needs to live up to that so you'll always have something to go back to when you have time. To its credit, Three Skies gives you a lot to do. It claims to be a collecting game and it truly lives up to that label. There are so many different heroes for you to meet, collect, and earn by playing the game. They cover a number of different classes, visual styles, elements, and some distinct traits. You could sink so much time into finding them all and even more into trying all of them in battle. It's a good way to find the party chemistry that works best for you. Considering that there are tons of locations and dungeons to explore, you'll always be busy under these skies.
Then there is how it treats turn-based combat. Though this style may have fallen out of favour in recent years, it still has its place and this game is one of them. Your character acts as the leader while the heroes take charge to carry out your strategy. With the number of moves available, there will be tons of combat combinations to test out against all the enemy types. There's also an interesting mechanic when it comes to magic which changes an important part of fantasy combat. If you run out of MP and have no way to restore it, you can sacrifice health to cast spells which can lead to tense and exciting situations.
Stormy Three Skies
With large and expansive games, there are bound to be tons of problems and some are hard to ignore. Three Skies has issues that can't be avoided and the most prominent is the visual style. While rigging animation can work in gaming, here it just looks robotic and simplistic. This isn't aided by the fact that while the characters and enemies look okay, they have an overall flat appearance lacking in details. It feels like you're bumping paper cutouts together which loses its novelty pretty early on.
The UI is also a problem, being even flatter than the character and environment art. It takes the form of plain white text that pops up in awkward places. It also greatly darkens the screen and freezes the screen as you click outside the program, which breaks immersion. Interacting with it can be troublesome as it doesn't always read the inputs correctly, so you can end up trashing a bunch of potions as you try to heal your party.
Looking up at Three Skies
Three Skies is a 2D turn-based RPG about collecting heroes to explore dungeons so you can save another world of fantasy. The amount of content will definitely keep you busy with so much to earn and explore, with some functional turn-based combat. It needs to loosen the stiff rig animations, touch up the art style, and fix the UI to make the overall experience more enjoyable. Play it outside and you'll be tempted to look up wondering what three skies might look like.
Three Skies review - "Making the Skies of fantasy safe again"
Customize a hero to lead an ever-growing collection of warriors against a world-ending entity through lots of dungeons, with a desire for better visuals and smoother UI.
Will Quick
Will Quick is a travelling writer currently dedicating his time to writing about the games he spends his free time playing. He's always on the lookout for the smaller and stranger of the bunch so he can shine a light on them.