• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $17.99 until September 1st)
• Developer: SideQuest Studios
• Publisher: eastasiasoft
• Release Date: August 11, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by eastasiasoft on behalf of SideQuest Studios. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Rainbow Skies is an isometric-style strategy RPG with tamable monsters. As I generally enjoy monster taming games, I was excited to check this out. The story begins with main character “Damion” spending the night before his final monster tamer exam drinking. In his hungover state, he not only fails the exam, but also destroys the town’s force fields that surround their monster dens!

After his catastrophic attempt at the exam, Damion and examiner Layne end up crashing near “Ashly” the magic user, who was trying to bind a monster to her but hit them instead. Damion and Layne fell from their city in the sky, and they have no way of getting back there at this point. Now their goal is to find someone to help separate them from Ashly.

As you walk around the map, the game will track your map completion for the area you’re in. There are a few enemies that physically appear on the map as you travel to your next destination, but other than that there are no forced encounters. “Ambush alerts” – potential battles – will pop up on the screen every once in a while, but you have to press A to actually start them.

When you start the game, they ask you if you’d like a little help starting out (coins and equipment), or if you’d rather unlock everything on your own. This is separate from difficulty level; if you decide to change to a higher battle rank, you get more coins and unlock optional bonus areas.

You can’t instantly switch back and forth between ranks because you have to win more battles to unlock the higher rank again. I liked having different difficulty levels, but I didn’t like that some content was locked behind higher levels – or that you can’t just switch between them at will.

Regardless of what difficulty level you choose, battles consist of the same turn-based combat on a grid of sorts. I like how units can have multiple actions per turn – you can upgrade your characters’ stats, and as you level up you’ll unlock additional actions per turn.

You have to buy skill books for your units to learn new abilities, although each character is limited to using skill books they’re compatible with. Skills use a predetermined number of action points in each turn, and more basic skills serve as prerequisites for unlocking new ones; using an ability earns experience towards leveling it up. Once a skill reaches a certain level, another skill unlocks.

Sometimes I found it a bit challenging to use skills because they often prevent you from using them if another character or item drops are in the way. A few skills require enemies to be in specific positions to use them, which could get annoying. I was also baffled by the inability to use healing skills outside of battle, and you can’t use items besides revival potions on your allies in battle either.

I did like that they at least included special items to permanently increase skill range, and the animations for skills were often amusing. (I particularly enjoyed Layne’s Acid Rain skill, where he hides under an umbrella as acid rains down on his enemies.)

Handling your equipment is another important mechanic. I often thought that the new equipment was a little pricey, but I managed to scrounge up enough coins for some of it. I really enjoyed seeing how different weapons and armor would change my (human) units’ appearances. You can enhance your new equipment for free wherever there’s a blacksmith. The items that monsters drop can be applied to the slots in each piece of equipment to increase stats.

After traveling with your human companions for a little bit, you unlock the ability to acquire monster eggs by defeating a monster multiple times. Many of the inhabited areas you visit have monster tamer facilities where you can hatch eggs. You can choose to hatch an egg at level one or a higher level, but hatching monsters at higher levels costs more money.

How long it takes to hatch an egg depends on what level egg you paid for; you need to win several battles for eggs to hatch. If you choose to hatch the monster at a higher level, you have to win more battles. You can equip your monsters with weapon and armor of sorts, and upgrade their stats like you do with your human units. They also learn their skills from skill books.

I must confess that I was somewhat disappointed with the monster taming mechanics. When I read that there were “tamable monsters” in the game, I took that to mean that we could tame the actual monsters we battled – as opposed to the way it actually works, receiving egg drops at random.

I could maybe get over hatching those eggs, although I didn’t love the hatching method of waiting until I’d completing enough battles. I would have preferred something more like Pokemon’s egg hatching method, with the egg in your party for convenience. Here you have to stop what you’re doing and return to the nearest monster tamer facility to pick up the newly-hatched monster.

Reading the game description, it says we can “breed” monsters, which I thought meant we could breed two different monsters together and hatch their offspring. It would have been more accurate to say that players hatch monsters instead of breeding them.

Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t have an overwhelmingly negative experience with the monsters. I felt that there were some inconvenient mechanics, and I just had different expectations of what the game’s monster taming entailed. (One feature I did like was the ability to have monsters gain experience at the monster tamer’s place as you battle elsewhere.) I will say that the quirky, cartoonish designs were appealing enough, though; I particularly liked the birds that wore top hats and the hammer enemies.

As much as I enjoy turn-based combat, the battles started getting longer and longer as I got further into the game. I don’t mind battles with ~20 enemies, but at the 2* difficulty level (the lower end) the monsters seemed pretty sturdy. Some enemies are capable of summoning allies, too.

Towards the end of the main story I got really sick of enemies constantly overpowering me before I could even act (despite my best efforts to upgrade my speed stats). I also had some trouble because you can’t move your units through allies to get to another square.

I did appreciate that losing battles did not result in a game over – you just have to go find a healer. But enemy monsters kept bringing other in, using abilities that split damage amongst themselves, emergency healing abilities that completely restores HP once they hit zero, or an ability where they take zero damage for one attack.

I do my very best to complete the games I review, but I had to stop when I was around 75 hours in and ~90% of the way through the main story. The plot had elements that I usually like, but it was kind of “bare bones” and lacked substance. I didn’t really feel much of a connection to the characters either. Perhaps if the story hooked me more I could have mustered the motivation to finish. But I was feeling mentally fatigued at my stopping point.

Even though the game simply didn’t “click” with me, there are definitely some positive aspects of Rainbow Skies. I really liked the exploration elements that encourage the player to 100% maps. You can earn awards for map completion, and there are hidden items in each area – plus some treasure maps for some additional fun.

The graphics may be hit or miss for some people; personally I liked how colorful everything was, and the animated cutscenes were neat. I think the soundtrack is excellent, with lovely instrumental music. Although the story and characters didn’t work for me, there were occasionally some funny moments – and the silly tutorial screens often made me chuckle. A major plus for me was the short loading times, which is extremely helpful in a game with so much content.

When I stopped playing at ~90% main story completion, it said I’d hit 50% of the game overall. The website says that there’s an “extensive” post-game with new areas, monsters, items, and quests. You can also increase the level cap to 999!!! That’s a lot of content, and I’m sure you can easily hit 100 hours+ if you try to 100% the game. If you like the sound of a lengthy and challenging monster taming game, Rainbow Skies may be for you.