Rogue Galaxy

Rogue Galaxy is like a combination of elements from Star Wars, Treasure Planet, and Pirates of the Caribbean, stringing them together to create an epic role-playing experience. While the game shares many similarities to Dark Cloud 2, another role-playing game developed by Level 5, its challenging combat experience can be fun for many role-playing fans. It's also pretty easy to connect with the game's characters, and find its dungeon-crawling levels completely intimidating. The story starts out pretty strong, but sadly falters towards the finish line. Although that was a bit of dissatisfaction, the rest of Rogue Galaxy is worth exploring into, and definitely enjoyable in its entirety.

Jaster Rogue is a young man who dreams of an adventure to the galaxies beyond, and has had a desire to become a space pirate for as long as he can remember. His story begins when a gigantic monster attacks his home planet of Rosa, and he sets out to defeat it. He encounters a mysterious man who gives him the Desert Seeker, one of the legendary Seven Star Swords. After defeating the beast, Jaster is greeted by two pirates who invite him to the Dorgenark ship. Jaster's dream is fulfilled when he joins the ship's crew, and together, they set out on an epic adventure to unlock the mysteries of the legendary planet, Eden. However, their adventure is not met without enemies, who desire the same ambition.

Sadly, the story is Rogue Galaxy's weakest aspect. I mean, don't get me wrong; the main plot itself has this nice impression of an epic pirate adventure--and it starts out very strong as well. But when you get near the end of the game, that's where things start to fall apart for me. After finishing all these chapters and solving the mysteries of the planet Eden, it's just exposition after exposition from here on out. I think this is a bad transition, having all these multiple plot twists towards the end was too much for me to take all in. For that fact, you realize the typical pirate adventure you're immersed into just changes into something much bigger entirely. That's totally fine, but the game's final events turned out to be pretty ridiculous. Let's just say this so-called epic pirate adventure game suddenly just changes into…kind of a fairy tale towards the end. I thought that was a bit preposterous, and it was such a disappointment on how Rogue Galaxy ended. But despite with how indifferent those final moments felt, I'd say Rogue Galaxy has got a pretty good cast of characters. Everyone has got their own episodes strung within the main storyline, and it's a good way to connect with the characters because you learn something about each one. Dialogue could have been better though. Thankfully, you can skip cut scenes for that matter.

Rogue Galaxy is, in many ways, Dark Cloud 2's spiritual successor. There are absolutely many game play aspects and elements similar to each other, such as dungeon crawling. In this game, dungeons are massive, and definitely a lot of ground to cover. As exciting as that sounds, exploring can also be very daunting. Since the maps are exceptionally huge, it takes an awful lot of time to get from point A to point B. After a while, all that lengthy dungeon exploring will start to wear on you, which is really an annoying experience to go through. Thankfully, there are many save points throughout each dungeon. If you suddenly feel like backtracking, you can just teleport to any save point you have successfully activated. While the overall dungeon exploring in Rogue Galaxy can be dreadful, these reliable save points can accumulate lots of wasted time and makes things less frustrating than it already is. Oh--and did I mention I hate Mimics?! I sure do.

Enemies appear in random encounters, but the battle screen does not change from the real-time perspective. Players control a single character during battle, while party members act on their own, though you can switch to another character you want to control at any given time. Basic action-role-playing commands are present in battle, such as attacking/blocking with your main and sub-weapons, or throwing objects towards enemies. Each character also has a limited number of action points, which is a blue bar on each character's heads-up display. Portions of the action gauge are spent as you perform attacks. A character's abilities are disabled when the gauge is empty, so you would have to wait for it to recover completely until you can act again. Each battle can also be paused, whether you want to take a breather or if you want to use particular items in battle. Other than that, you can also issue commands to other characters, whether to attack separately or attack the same target. Party members also ask for help in what to do next, like use a potion, execute abilities or burning strikes.

Combat is especially challenging. Enemies are a force to be reckoned with, no matter how high your character levels are. It's even worse when they're in a swarm; things can turn deadly for you and your party if the characters' HP levels are not watched carefully. Even taking a single hit from the enemy can turn into a game over in an instant. Players also have to be extra cautious when fighting bosses as well. Majority of them can be such a pain to deal with, situations like this make combat in Rogue Galaxy often unforgiving. And I especially hate battles where you can't change anything on the battle menu, and you're forced to use whatever the game wants you to fight with. When I was thrown to that kind of situation, I felt extremely frustrated and disappointed, that it pulled me away from the game altogether. Afterwards, I felt Rogue Galaxy isn't even worth a second playthrough. For those of you who've finished the game themselves, you should know I'm talking about the game's string of final bosses.

Other than the similar dungeon crawling concept and the challenge Rogue Galaxy and Dark Cloud 2 share, there are some more things worth spending a great amount of time into. Characters' weapons level up as you defeat enemies in battle, and the weapon synthesis system will allow you to create stronger and better weapons for your party. Simply combine two leveled-up weapons, and produce interesting results in the process. Insectron Tournaments are pretty fun as well. It's basically a mini-game where you have your own captured insect against other insects in chess-based combat. Experience is gained when defeating other insects, or providing your own with food and other items. Players also get special items for winning tournaments, which prove to be extremely helpful on your adventure.

The Revelation Chart sort of reminds me of the Licensing System present in Final Fantasy XII. Basically, each character has their own Revelation Chart. There are empty slots that are outlines of certain items. By inserting the correct items in these slots, you can unlock abilities and stat improvements for each character. Other abilities are unlocked by 1 or even 5 empty slots, so the player has to do a lot of exploring and battling to gain the items necessary for the Revelation Charts. Lastly, the Factory, which is based off of the Georama-based game play in Dark Cloud 2. Using blueprints you have collected in your journey, you can set up equipment in the factory and create new items in the process. By completing certain items, they will eventually be available in stores throughout the game.

Rogue Galaxy's got some impressive cel-shaded graphics overall. Buildings, walls, trees, and other things are well-detailed. Water flows realistically, and various environment animations look great. People walk around and interact with others, which makes every city you visit feel lively. However, I found the various pre-rendered cut scenes a little bit disappointing, just because of how the characters looked in these events. I'd say they look way better in cel-shaded form than the latter. But Rogue Galaxy, in its entirety, is a very large place that is awe-inspiring and captivating to be a part of. The game's also got a great voice cast. Some of them may sound monotonous and unimpressive at times, but overall, they have put a good effort in making their characters' personalities interesting. Various sound effects, like gunfire and sword slashes are believable enough. On top of that, Rogue Galaxy has a remarkable soundtrack, containing themes that fit the atmosphere in every place you visit.

To sum it up altogether, Rogue Galaxy is an epic pirate-based adventure full of appealing characters, challenging battles, and interesting, enjoyable game play elements that can somewhat feel nostalgic, but are otherwise worth spending countless hours into. Unfortunately, the story is a disappointment, which brings down a chunk of the game's value generally; something that should have been approached in a better manner. But all in all, Rogue Galaxy is a gratifying pirate journey that is agreeable enough to fathom by many players who appreciate this kind of experience.

David Gabriel, NoobFeed