When it comes to releasing first party rpg games, Sony Entertainment doesn't have a lot to offer.
Most if not all of their rpg games for the Playstation 2 has always been pretty much third party releases. However Sony Entertainment does have one first party publisher support from Level 5 Inc. The same creators behind Sony Entertainment first party rpg series, Dark Cloud. If you look at Rogue Galaxy from an artistic point of view, you can definitely see the similarity between Rogue Galaxy and Dark Cloud 2. But outside of the graphical similarity, Rogue Galaxy offers a much more in depth gameplay than Dark Cloud 2. Rogue Galaxy is basically an action rpg game that plays as a standard in depth story driven rpg game that provides over 100+ hours of gameplay. Rogue Galaxy is actually Level 5 biggest rpg release to date. So how does Rogue Galaxy compare to the other big rpg games like the Final Fantasy series or the Tales series? Let's take a look.
STORY
Nice to meet you, Jasper.
You.. you..DragonballZ wannabe!
For years an intergalactic war between Draxil and Longardia has plague the galaxy. In the backdrop of this war is a planet called Rosa. Here our story begins in the desert city, Salgin, where a young hunter, Jasper, has just return from his trek in the desert when suddenly the city of Salgin was attacked by a beast. Not one to stand by and watch this huge beast destroy Salgin, Jasper rushed toward the beast to protect the citizen of Salgin. To his surprise, Jasper was not alone in trying to protect Salgin from the beast as a mysterious man by the name of Desert Claw came to fight side by side with Jasper. After the beast was defeated, Desert Claw decided to leave the scene of the battle but before doing so, he gave Jasper his trademark sword for reasons unknown. Before Jasper could react or ask questions, Desert Claw was gone. At the same time, two space pirates by the name of Steve and Simon had been tracking a famous hunter called Desert Claw came upon Jasper. Not knowing what Desert Claw looked like, the two space pirates had mistaken Jasper as Desert Claw due to the fact that Jasper was carrying Desert Claw's sword. They immediately requested that Jasper come to their ship, the Dorgengoa, because their captain wishes to seek an audience with Desert Claw. Although Jasper knew it was a case of mistaken identity, he decided to meet the captain of the Dorgengoa because Jasper had always dream of traveling through the galaxy and exploring the wonders of the universe. This was a way for his dream to come true even if it was under a case of mistaken identity. Once Jasper met with the captain, he learned that the captain was gathering famous hunters such as Desert Claw, for an adventure to seek out the greatest treasure in the entire galaxy. This was an adventure that Jasper could not pass up so he maintain his false identity as Desert Claw and join the Dorgengoa crew as a space pirate to begin an adventure of a life time. The mysteries of the galaxy will unfold in Rogue Galaxy.
The thing to note about the story of Rogue Galaxy is that it seems to lack a sense of clear direction in terms of what it wants to be, a space pirate adventure story or a typical save the world rpg story. The story starts off as a space pirate adventure with Jasper dreams of traveling in space and exploring the galaxy coming true. But as you can tell from beginning to the midway point of the storyline, the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere because just trekking around the galaxy and looking for treasure isn't exciting enough. After all this is an rpg game and story so you need to be saving the world or in this case the galaxy at some point. So you know that at some point near the end of the story or game you know things are going to have to shift into a saving the world adventure and it does. However the problem comes from the sub plots that are introduced along the way from the mid point of the story to the end to make the switch from adventure to saving the galaxy. These sub plots are loosely introduce and never fully develop to the point where things seem to be introduce quickly and left fully forgotten right after that nothing really develop out of them or they just don't plain to make sense that gamers can't really grasp the overall story at all. The backdrop of the story is that there's this big intergalactic war that is brewing for a long time and that Jasper and his friends like to stop this war. However outside of mentioning this intergalactic war, the story doesn't show us any evidence at all that there really is a big intergalactic war. Kind of hard for you to care about stopping an intergalactic war when you don't even see any evidence of a war at all during the entire story. There's also a lack of a genuine bad guy too. There are a couple of possible good villains but they are introduced and quickly forgotten in the game that makes their impact in the story moot. At the end of the story, the story gives us some nameless monster as an end game boss called, Mother. And we'll suppose to beat her up and save the galaxy which we do. But the villain Mother is so poorly develop that you can pretty much tell they simply just threw her into the story for the sake of having an end game boss to fight. Defeating Mother at the end of the story has no emotional value because the Mother sub plot doesn't exist for the first two third of the story. There's like two stories in Rogue Galaxy. The first two third of the story is base on trekking around in different planets and exploring the galaxy as space pirates. Then they couldn't figure out how to end the story so for the last third of the story, they threw in this weird plot about how runes were making monsters and some planet lost in time being stuck in another galaxy and all that mumbo jumbo that overall didn't really make any sense. We'll just fit it all together as one story and if it doesn't make perfect sense than who cares. And basically that's what you get, a story that doesn't really have any clear direction as what it wants to be with sub plots that seem to go nowhere. These guys are called space pirates but they did nothing in the entire story that even seem as space pirating if you will. An epic rpg that is really disappointing with no epic story. You finish the story and all you get out of it is a sense of who cares about the story.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
The galaxy mightiest pirates.
In terms of cast of characters, you are looking at eight main characters and over ten supporting characters including villains in this game. Like with most rpg games, you have a lead male character who is Jasper and a lead female character name Kisala. The rest of the main characters that round out your overall party members are Simon, Steve, Zegram, Lilika, Jupis, and Deego. Each character has a unique personality and abilities. They are played exceptionally well by the voice actors and actresses. Overall this is a nice rounded cast of characters but… and there's a but here, the cast of character seem to fall flat though. There's a couple of reason for this. The first reason is that even though the characters all have a bit of a background story to them, their stories seem to fall in the uninteresting category. If the stories of the characters are uninteresting then you're not going to care much about the characters themselves. A second reason why the characters come off flat is that as a group, you don't sense any chemistry within them. They look more like a group that are forced together than a group that like each other and enjoy each others company. Individual likeness is also a problem as each character seems to come off as grumpy or one dimensional. You need to have at least one or two characters that are happy and uplifting that will make you smile and laugh as you play this game. And none of these characters do that here. They're not bad characters; they just come off as ordinary characters. As far as storytelling goes, you probably would want the characters to be more than just ordinary characters overall.
Score: 7/10
GRAPHICS
A journey into space...
The one thing you can say about this game is that it's definitely a beautiful looking game. I don't think any sane person can denial just how wonderful this cartoon sci-fi is render from gameplay to regular story scenes to full CGI movies. The game uses a fully render 3D cel-shading technology that you can pretty much say is the best looking cel-shading game out there. The game environments from cities to jungles are done in great 3D detailed cel-shading models that come right out of the latest Star Wars movie. You can see the influence of Star Wars in the designs of this futuristic look. The character models themselves are rendered perfectly with the cartoonish look with realistic movements. Its kind of amazing how cel-shading has improved since it was first introduced a few years back. There are a few CGI movie scenes in the game using the cel-shading style but even then I have to say the regular story and gameplay scenes are done better than their CGI counterpart in the game. A huge plus to the graphics is the wonderful use of colors in this game. Bright and colorful are the two words to best describe the usage of colors in this game. It's the pure fact that since all the environments and characters are so colorful is what makes the graphics stand out the most, great job Level 5 Inc.
Score: 9/10
MUSIC
MIO loves music.
Despite Rogue Galaxy being a huge rpg game, the music presentation seem to fall flat on this aspect. It's not bad just that it's not outstanding like it should be or can be. There's no doubt there are a lot of different varieties when it comes to the musical scores but the problem is that there is a lack of key stand out musical scores. Every big rpg game need to have a few key musical scores that stand out above the rest and define the game. Unfortunately Rogue Galaxy doesn't have any such musical scores. The best and most memorable musical score would probably be Mark's theme rendered and done in a beautiful guitar rendition. It doesn't say a lot for the music presentation when the best musical score is base off of a secondary character in the game.
On the flipside of things, at least the sound effects and the professional voice acting in this game are in top notch quality. I love the realistic sound effects that you hear as you move around in this futuristic environment. Hearing your party members talk as part of the background effect is also a very nice realistic touch too.
Score: 8/10
GAMEPLAY
God, I hate fake treasure chest.
Getting a perfect combo.
Game Information
Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: Sony Entertainment
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 130 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: January 2007
Rogue Galaxy is a futuristic action rpg game that will have you trekking through four different planets. Each of the planets will have a futuristic city or village for you to explore and stock up on supplies. In each of the planet next to the cities, there will either be a dungeon or area that is set up like a maze for you to explore to progress the game and story. You can have up to eight party members but can only have up to three party members in combat. Other party members will be place on reserve until you switch them into the combat party. Like with normal rpg games, you gain experience points and level up by fighting random enemies that will pop up during your exploration. Party members that are in reserve also gain experience points even if they don't take part in the actual battles. This is an action rpg game so you, the player, control one party member while the CPU controls the other two party members. The good news is that you can assign overall team tactics on how you what the other two party members to fight and during battles you can switch controls to other party members very quickly and easily. This is a hack, slash, and shoot' em up action rpg game. Each party member will have one close range main weapon for close combat and a sub long distance weapon. The concept of the overall gameplay is very simple and linear that is good for beginners and mainstream gamers to learn quickly. Your main base of operation is your pirate airship, the Dorgenark. Once you arrive on a planet, you'll be off to explore the city. If you look at the overview mini map or bring the overview map up, you will see a star on the map to indicate where you need to go on the map to get the story going. After the story scene, you'll most likely be directed to your next exploration area which will either be a dungeon or a ruin. Ruins or dungeons are set up like a mini maze with random encounters. Like with the cities, there will be a star on the dungeon map on where you need to go to or where your destination is. At the end of your destination you'll be put into a boss fight and a story scene after the end of the boss fight. You can find save teleports in dungeons as well as shop guys in certain areas of the dungeon. Once you clear a planet in terms of the story and dungeon, you move onto the next planet and repeat the process. The game is made up or base on a thirteen chapter storyline so as you get near the end of the story, you'll be revisiting previously cleared planets again. One thing you can say is that some of the new key elements are very interesting in this game. Here's a review of them.
Strategy Command: Like with most regular action rpg game, you basically control one party member as a default. The rest of the party members will fight and act according to the strategy command you input overall for your entire party on how you want them to behave doing combat. In Rogue Galaxy there are only three types of strategy command and they are: Attack Same Target, Fight Separately, and Stand Back and Do Nothing. Transporter: You can find Transporters in cities, dungeons, and ruins. Transporter acts as your save points, items storage, and as a transportation device that lets you transport instantly to other transporter that you have activated. Battle Recorder: Battle Recorder records all the monsters you encounter in the game and number of times you defeated them. It also records and list your Hunter rank as you progress in the game. Getting a high Hunter Rank as well as defeating numerous monsters will result in completing MIO completion list that is part of the Extra value element of the gameplay. Challenge Battles: Challenge battles randomly pops up during a random encounter. The only difference is that these battles have certain stipulation for you to complete in order to win for getting Hunter coins as a reward. You can win these battles without completing the stipulation but you won't get any Hunter coins as a reward. Revelation Flow: The revelation flow chart that each party member has it actually their special abilities activation chart. All special abilities are placed into a chart that has each abilities connecting to one another. The design of each revelation flow chart for each character is somewhat different from each other. In order to activate a special ability for a character you'll need to place certain items that will make up that ability so it can be activated. You can find these items from chests or from monster drops.
Special Abilities: In this game, every party members comes with their own different unique set of special abilities that can be used in battles. Some party members have combo special abilities with certain party members as well. As you get deeper into the game, you'll start to rely quite heavily on special abilities to just wipe away the enemies outright to save time on fights. Burning Strike: Burning Strike is a free special abilities that each character has that doesn't use MP. In fact usage of Burning Strike is base on the Burning Strike gauge. As you fight and kill regular monsters, they will drop Burning Strike chips that will help fill the gauge up. Once the gauge is full you can then unleash the Burning Strike ability using button combos to do a single massive damage on an enemy. The good thing about Burning Strike is that it's free and cost no MP. The bad thing is that you can't use it in boss fights. Frog Log: This game has a huge weapon and sub weapon synthesis elements where you can combine two different weapons of the same type together to create a much more powerful weapon or an entire new weapon altogether. This process is called the Frog Log. Basically during the game you'll encounter and recruit a talking Frog that can combine two weapons to make a new one. First you'll need to level the weapon to max by using it in battles. Once the weapon is max out in level, Frog will analyze the weapon to see what combination can be used with it to make a new weapon. Once you have the recipe, you just need the other weapon that will go with it in the recipe and feed both weapons to Frog and he'll make a new weapon for you. There are practically over 300 different combinations of new weapons for you to make in this game.
Factory: In this game you are able to create some weapons, accessories, and items on your own so they can be made available in shops later on in the game for you to buy. You can complete the game without even touching Factory but if you wish to get a 100% completion, you'll need to work and complete all the blueprints for these items. You'll require blueprints for these items from various NPC in the game. Once you have the blueprints, you can enter the Factory menu and assembled a production line using various parts and items to produce the desire results. In most cases you're probably need to buy and look for the materials needed to produce a product. Consider factory as an extra mini game that can be fun and very time consuming too. Insectron: Insectron is more or less an extra mini game for you to play. You can complete the entire game without even touching Insectron at all. Basically Insectron is base on breeding and raising insects that you capture for usage in tournament fights called Insectrons. Even though it's only a mini game, it's a huge aspect on its own with various key elements. Each insect comes in their own family and you can capture them in almost every place possible using Insectron traps and food. Once capture an insect starts off as a larva and you'll need to feed them food to boost their stats so they can become full grown adults. In most cases the insect you capture will start off as a low Rank A insect. In order to get a stronger and higher Rank insect, the raising and breeding part of the insectron elements come into play. You'll need to capture two insects of opposite sex and raise them into adults. Once they become adults, you can then try and breed them so they will give off an offspring of the next Rank. Then you repeat the process of raising your higher baby Rank insect to become an adult. You repeat this whole procedure into you get the high Rank insect you desire. Once you have the Rank adult insects you desire, you can enter them into a 5-Team tournament. Winning each rank tournament will net you some prizes. It's a little fun mini game to play and very time consuming due to the whole breeding and raising aspect of Insectron.
The good points about the gameplay is that the flow is in a very fast pace movement style. Even if you try and do a complete 100% game and rack up nearly 120 hours of gameplay, the game doesn't feel like its 120 hours long. That's actually a plus. You don't want gamers to feel like they are grinding in this game and getting bogged down because it's too long. As stated earlier, this is an action rpg game using a 3 party member system in a free movement of hack and slash combos with special abilities. The fights and combat system runs smoothly and is over pretty quick once a battle start. The random encounter rate is pretty even too that you don't get too annoyed with getting into one. This is one of those gameplay where you actually don't mind getting into battles because the end result is pretty fun. The flow of traveling in this game is excellent as well as you can go from one planet to the next and even teleports to various areas of dungeons. It makes traveling much easier and less painful. In terms of dungeon exploring or area exploring, some areas are much larger and deeper than the other but overall the actual trekking in these dungeons can be done quickly due to the movement of the game and the mini maps in each dungeons that help you make it to your destination pretty fast. Add in all the key elements of this gameplay, the game comes off with a very nice pace that allows you to have fun without realizing how quickly time flies by. So where's the downside of the gameplay? It lies in the unbalance of the offense versus defense system in the battle system. To get straight to the point, this game is geared toward offense only. You can tell right away as you look at all the weapons and sub weapons of this game compare to the defensive equipment available. The game barely provides different uniforms for each party member and those uniforms are mostly for looks than actually defensive stats boost and protection. There are some accessories but again those accessories don't add much to the overall gameplay. Its all about how much damage you can do the enemies and how much damage they can do to you. This is why fights last no more than a few seconds either you winning or your party members getting killed so quickly. This is one of those games where boss fights aren't the problems in terms of difficulty but it's the actual regular random battles that can provide the most difficult fights. There will be lots of time and I repeat lots of time where you'll be cursing at the tv screen as you see your party members getting one shotted or even two shotted and dying so quickly because of the lack of defensive stats. To be on the flipside of things you can also one shot the enemies too with nuking them with your special abilities. This is what I mean when I say the game is geared toward offense mostly. To help balance this one shot death that your party members can end up facing, the game does provide numerous different healing and reviving items so even though your party members can die numerous times in a fight, you can raise them quickly and heal them quickly right after. The chance of actually wiping and getting a game over screen is very low. It's just a bit annoying at times to see your party members getting one shot death in battle over battle at times. I had a lot of fun playing this game which I think most gamers will too and the gameplay isn't really the problem of this game. It's really the story and characters that gives that lacking feeling at times when you play this game.
Score: 8/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
The Insectron Tournament
Rogue Galaxy does provide a huge bonus when it comes to extra side quests, dungeons, mini games, extra bosses, and rewards. In fact if you want to get a 100% completion game, you probably need to spend over 120 hours of gameplay on it. The extras stuff isn't hard to complete just very time consuming. First the extras are divided into two categories. The first one is the regular side quests stuff and the other one is base on MIO completion list that you need to complete. Now in terms of the regular side quests, during the game about half way into the game to be exact, an extra planet will be added to the gameplay that you can do. It doesn't affect the overall story at all but it does provide a good place to explore. After you complete the game you can go back to your last save point and the Ghost Ship dungeon is open up for you to explore and do. Once you complete the Ghost Ship dungeon, the Ghost Ship Extreme dungeon is open up and that consist of 100 floors for you to climb. It's not as time consuming as you would think for a 100 floor dungeon but it does provide that extra gameplay that you would like to have.
Now the big time consuming of the extra comes from completing MIO tasks which is broken down into different categories. You will be reward with a different uniform once you complete a task. These tasks are: Top Hunter Ranking, you need to kill numerous monsters and bosses to get hunter points to become the #1 rank Hunter. Collect all the Rare Items, you need to collect 8 rare items to complete this task. Hunt Every Quarry, go out and kill all the extra bosses. Complete Revelation Flow chart, complete each character's revelation chart. Complete the Frog Log, analyze and synthesize all the weapons and sub weapons. Beat Insectron, achieve a rank S champion. Hunt Every Monster, find and kill all the monsters in the game. Complete all the Factory, manufacture all the blueprints in the game. One of the reasons for the time consuming aspect is the fact that you need to get some rare items to drop from monsters and this is very hard to do sometimes. You may actually need to spend over 80 hours alone just to complete all the extras in this game.
The game itself doesn't have any replay value or incentive for starting a New Game since all the extras can be done by going back to your last save file from the first game. But than again with so many things that still need to be done for a first complete game, a new game+ isn't really necessary.
Score: 10/10
On the surface Rogue Galaxy is a game that looks great but for some reason it tends to fall flat in the end. I'm not sure what it is that led to this final evaluation. The game has the elements of a massive rpg game but just doesn't seem to follow through on it. I suppose the combination of a disappointing ending with a lackluster story and characters are what really hurt this rpg game. Rpg games were always about the stories and the characters as they are the elements that separate the genre from other types of genre. And when those key elements aren't strong enough to carry the game, things just comes out flat in the game. The game was fun to play for sure if you are judging by the fun factor but outside of that, you don't really get a strong sense of satisfaction from completing the game like you normally would from an rpg game that is 100+ hours long. Rogue Galaxy would be best used as an example of just how important it is for an rpg game to have a very strong and interesting story because without that, any rpg game will tend to fall into the disappointing category for sure. And that's how I feel about this game, a bit disappointed with it as it could have been so much better.
