We’re going to start this off by stating that, I hate MOBAs. Although I’ve tried to dabble in League of Legends in the past, while the art is cool, I dislike the rest. It was such a strong dislike that I even stayed away from watching Arcane for a bit. Don’t worry since then we’ve resolved this. The good news is that Skygard Arena is not League of Legends. While the characters may appear as very MOBA character style, thankfully, the game play is much more strategy RPG. For a quick look at the game, let’s watch the trailer below.
The game truly is what the developers at Gemelli Games promise, turn based tactics with MOBA characters. So you aren’t being sold a false promise. However, that being said, there are still aspects of the game that could have potentially taken some more time and hopefully will see some more growth.
Gameplay Modes
Skygard Arena comes with two different modes, campaign and arena. The arena is your one off matches and rankings. You can play against classic AI, PVP against friends, or be placed in a match against other random players. This is a bit where it feels like it leans more towards a MOBA game since there is a leaderboard and match making. With the AI Skirmish you can play around with team compositions and see what team really works for you. Of course, once you step into the Matchmaking, there can always be a team that breaks your build. This is what keeps these types of games fun and competitive for the competitive sorts.
The campaign will give you the lore of the series, the world, and a bit about the factions and characters you can control. The campaign is compromised of three acts which each have their own missions. The missions will have a main quest and if you want an extra challenge you can try the additional challenges for a harder difficulty.
To start, I dove right into the campaign. This is where we learn the history of the world, the five main factions, and a bit of who hates who. The Shattering occurs and in the new world is five new factions. Every five years the factions send their best warrior to take part in a competition to be able to have control of the mines. But this year, we are also fighting for the crown that has an ancient magic and we must not let it get into the wrong hands. So as is tradition with these sorts of games, it will fall into the wrong hands. It’s up to us and our new companions to save everything.
Campaign
As previously mentioned, the campaign is comprised of three acts. However, each of these acts is relatively short as the entire campaign only has 13 missions. This is actually where I think Skygard suffers the most. The campaign is at best, cute. It’s not a bad campaign and it is an opportunity to understand some of the tensions between factions. However, it feels that we just scratch the surface of the characters. This feels more like an outline to what could be a fantastic strategy RPG and not a full campaign. In between each mission there is time at camp and you can speak to a selection of your companions. This means you never get a chance to get everyone’s opinion or see what each person is up to. It feels like as though we only get a small sliver of what could have been an amazing story.
Our main character, Na Jima is a fine protagonist, but it really does feel like the other characters deserved time in the spotlight. In fact, I’d say without Bu Shin, she’s actually a bit flat. We know she wants to prove herself and feels unsure at times but we don’t get to feel the real growth. It doesn’t help that as you progress through the campaign, more characters join your party. Yet, for some, we get such little time with them. Perhaps it’s my sympathy for the villains, but I would have loved more time with Raine.
It’s a credit to those who designed the characters that they gave us interesting characters. However, with a campaign that doesn’t give enough time with these characters, it leaves you wanting more. This time, not in a good way. It feels as though the campaign should have been it’s own game to allow for the room and growth of these characters. Despite there being five factions, we don’t get to learn too much on any of these which feels unfortunate. This is something I hope that perhaps in the future gets fleshed out more. Additional campaigns or the possibility to even see the story from different perspectives might be very interesting. Perhaps even alternate timelines if you use a different faction as your main character?
If you do want more time in the campaign, you can try for three stars in each chapter. However, while this is a fun challenge, it reminded me of how empty some of the story feels. Perhaps it is because I love a good story and the outline is there, it just needs more filling. The main beats are hit, but it could be better.
Arena
The arena allows you access to all of the champions to create a team of three characters to go against other champions in Skygard Arena. This is where the majority of the gameplay is meant to be as Skygard Arena is a tactical skirmish game. You can choose to play against AI or in PVP options which is good so new players won’t have to go in for a stomping too soon. This is where most of my matches took place. This might be the best for my ego. It’s clear that players who joined in early access very early have found their stride!
It worth noting when you play against the AI, there are a few different levels of challenge. Even the classic can give players a bit of a run for their money depending on team composition. It’s a great way to challenge yourself and find what works best for you. Also, how quickly you might be able to readjust your strategy when going up against a team that should wipe you out easily.
In the arena, it’s a race to 25 points before your opponent gets there. Control pillars and defeat their champions to score points. These matches usually last no more than about 15 minutes in either direction. Skygard Arena doesn’t hold you hostage unless you really aren’t playing tactically.
It did feel like the different from classic to Experimental 1 was quite a bit. Not that this was a bad thing, it just felt like quite a jump at first. I won’t say it was easy to readjust but at least I didn’t lost as quickly as I did to the higher levels. Challenge is an understatement with some of these levels. I would definitely recommend that these be taken very seriously if you’re just messing around with the characters and combinations. Of course, it is quite nice to win when a win comes around.
Combat
No matter what game mode you play, the combat mechanics are varied based on the champions you choose. Each champion has varying personas and different relics that can give them different abilities. This is what leads to the over 250,000 different team compositions that Skygard Arena boasts.
Once you’re in combat, it’s fairly straight forward for most strategy games. You have some limited movement, you have a primary and a secondary action, and after enough charges, you’ll get an ultimate attack. However, depending on the persona you use, you’ll have different abilities.
Those abilities may also be buffed by the different relics you use to bring into battle. In the campaign, you’ll unlock more relics as you progress the story. In the arena mode, you’ll have access to everything to see what you like best. It may seem overwhelming at first, so my recommendation would be to try them bit by bit through the campaign. Of course, if you feel you can deal with the amount of options, dive right in!
Combat was one of the few places that I found the game would sometimes take a bit to load. While I never had a full crash, the game would sometimes freeze during combat. This didn’t happen every chapter, but sometimes it felt like the AI was taking a while to decide what comes next. Overall, not too bad. If anything what was more confusing, was when the game would glitch and characters wouldn’t die despite being at 0 hit points. This would happen on both sides, my side and the opponent, but it wasn’t very often thankfully. This didn’t happen towards the tail end of my reviewing so it’s possible this has been patched out since I started playing for review.
For those who are newer to tactics games, just be sure that you are thinking carefully when you play through this. While some tactics games do have rewind features to allow you to redo a turn, Skygard Arena did not have this. In truth, I’m glad it doesn’t. Leave the challenge on. Although of course it could be an opportunity for them to add this to the campaign mode for players to earn more practice. It’s definitely easier to rewind a turn than to restart the entire combat.
Art & Music
The music is a standout of the game to be honest. The soundtrack which last about 90 minutes is at times soothing, at times thrilling, and always just enjoyable. The soundtrack is composed by Raphael Joffres who was Audio Lead on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Clearly music was important to Gemelli Games and they made sure to get someone who would set the stage with their music. They succeeded.
Another area they succeeded was the character art as well. Each character has two personas and each persona has a different image. Some are subtle such as the coloring of the clothes, but others see more of a change. Aerica will have a whole different gun to accompany her new look. Na Jima loses the bow in place of what seems like magic. Vallya loses her commander flag for a shield the size of herself (and an angelic look) when she becomes a vanguard. Each of these are also in line with their different skills.
Gemelli Games
The combat settings are fairly standard, but it feels like this is to make sure the characters get their time to shine. The combat field will sometimes have some items on the ground to block your path but these always feel in line with the area. Tree stumps, pillars, or even statues end in on the plots to make the setting feel more real and be part of the combat strategy. The art and music really tie everything together in Skygard Arena and never feel out of place. A testament to a team that had a shared vision.
If the characters had more dialogue, more story, we definitely would have needed more character sprites for their interactions. However, at this time, where the story is, the basics do the job. Although it would be good to see a few of these characters with more of a smile or true sorrow when what they hold as truth is suddenly proven wrong. Again, great characters, and I’d love to see more of them in future settings or stories.
Final Thoughts
Skygard Arena is good first pass for a game by new studio Gemelli Games. It feels like they tried to take concepts of two different games and blend them together and they mostly succeed. More time with the characters and a more fleshed out story would make this game overall a more enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, as we don’t get to dive deep into the characters, it’s the game play and tactics that will keep players coming. For those who like a good competition, they’ll find joy in this. For those who like tactical gameplay and want to be able to test their wits against others, this is a great game for you. However, those who want a strong story to accompany the tactical game play may feel a bit disappointed.
Gemelli Games can definitely have a bright future ahead of it, however I do think it’s worth needing to perhaps focus on one type of play style be it single player or competitive as opposed to trying to find the best of both. For the price of $14.99 USD, it’s worth giving the game a chance for sure to see where Gemelli Games can find their way forward. The studio definitely has promise and Skygard Arena seems like just the surface of what Gemelli Games can do. I’ll be enjoying this game a bit longer but I’m more excited to see what the future holds perhaps for Skygard Arena and definitely for the studio.
Skygard Arena enters leaves early access for it’s full launch on September 18, 2025 for PC (Steam). Skygard Arena is $14.99 USD with no plans to change the base price of the game on full release launch. Thank you to Gemelli Games for the code.
