Rainbow Skies is the successor of Rainbow Moon. If you know anything about (strategy) role-playing games, you know enough to go buy this game. Big shoes needed to be filled but developer SideQuest Studios delivered big time. It’s everything you liked about Rainbow Moon and then some.

Falling from the Skies

Rainbow Skies starts with Damion’s final examination as a monster tamer in his floating home town Arca. As with every good adventure, things go south very quick as Damion and his examiner Layne set free a bunch of monsters. While trying to cover up their mishap, they end up falling from the sky to their untimely death. Just before reaching the ground below, they get caught up in a bound spell, cast by Ashly. Our heroes are literally stuck with each other and go out in the world to find a way to reverse the spell.

Strategic Grid based battles

While going from town to town, you’ll encounter many enemies who trigger the battle mode. Once in battle mode the game changes from classic exploring top-down RPG to a strategy RPG. Your characters and the monsters each start as a certain formation on a grid with the occasional environmental blockades. You then take turns to move or attack (or both if you have extra turns). The battles start off really easy with just a few enemies to ease you into the game. Not long after the first few quests, you’ll need to really think about how you’ll move your party and who you’ll attack first, to avoid wiping out your entire party after just the first round.

Develop your own style

Rainbow Skies lets you develop your own favorite style by rewarding you for fighting a certain way. If you use magic a lot, your spells become more powerful. Fighting with a sword levels up the sword to become stronger. If you use special abilities more, they also level up, so your play style determines the way your characters develop. Of course, Rainbow Skies awards you experience (and loot) after every battle but the added awards for playing a certain way is a nice chance to add more depth to the genre.

The thing I liked the most about Rainbow Skies is the battle rank system. SideQuest Studios set out to develop games that work for novice players as well as for hardcore players. The way they did that in Rainbow Skies, is by awarding players who won a certain number of players, to up their battle rank. This makes the battles harder but also lets you earn more experience and loot. You can choose to lower the battle rank if you find a certain part too hard (or if you don’t feel like grinding for experience and weapon/magic/ability upgrades). But raising the battle rank again can only be done after winning the set number of battles. This system lets you play the game as a casual fast-paced experience or as a brutal strategic grinding behemoth of a game. It’s entirely up to the player to decide which is a feature I liked a lot.

Conclusion

If you liked classic RPG games, you will find Rainbow Skies to be a great classic in the making. Everything you like about “old skool” RPGs is present plus much more. Developing your characters and expanding each character’s abilities feels very rewarding. The game won’t push you towards a certain playstyle which is great for the true RPG enthusiasts out there. Rainbow Skies offers a lot of variation to keep you hooked for hours.

Tested on Playstation 4 PRO