Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

When you have created an RPG that doesn’t have the words “Final Fantasy” in the title, you really need to do something to stand out from the crowd, especially when you make that title for the PS2.  While some gamers joke about a typical RPG set in a fantasy land with a teenage protagonist full of angst and destined to become the savior of the universe, good humor often has a hint of truth in it.  To make an RPG stand out, you need to differentiate it with either a game mechanic or unique setting.  A new RPG without some kind of history behind it can make it especially difficult to get noticed in the plethora of RPG titles.  Does Rogue Galaxy stand out from the crowd, or does it follow the same trappings of other RPG titles?

The story of Rogue Galaxy follows Jaster Rouge, a seventeen-year-old boy who finds himself on a spaceship through a set of unexpected circumstances.  During this time he’ll find himself on new planets, meeting new allies, fighting a variety of enemies, and fulfilling his wildest fantasy of traveling amongst the stars.

The cel-shaded graphics in Rogue Galaxy do an excellent job of bringing the galaxy of Rogue Galaxy to life with bright colors and amazing visuals.  The dark lines from early cel-shaded games like Jet Set Radio Future have been replaced with refined lines that don’t distract from the graphics.  Rogue Galaxy’s distinct visuals are due in no small part to the cel-shading.

The characters within Rogue Galaxy are more diverse than what you’d expect from most RPG games.  While a majority of the characters in your party have a human-like form, a few characters stand out.  One of the first non-human characters you meet is Steve, a slim robot with long arms and legs.  You’ll also meet Simon, a man enclosed within a mole-looking enclosure.  The way they all move and act within their environments are smooth and help give the characters personality.  Jester uses a gun as a secondary attack and swings his sword with strength and quickness.  You can watch Lilika pull on her bowstring to attack her enemies.  Steve attacks by swinging his arms and letting the claws on his hands strike enemies.  Each character has a distinct movement for attacking.

The varied enemies you meet throughout the game keep you guessing as far as what creature you’ll encounter next.  Some games show a creature and then change the color palate to create a different creature quickly.  Rogue Galaxy doesn't fall into that trap hard, although you do encounter some differently named enemies with different color.  The enemies also match the theme of the area you are fighting in.  Wild creatures inhabit the jungle while inside a prison the enemies are robotic in form.  While they don’t have a wide variety of animations, they still have enough movement to make them look like they are actually attacking you.

As great as the graphics are, they still have some issues.  Each world that you travel to has its own distinctive look, but the textures of the backgrounds seem to get reused a lot in the same environment.  Traveling through the prison would be confusing if it wasn’t for the map generated while playing the game.  Also, the jaggies in the backgrounds are very distracting at certain points.  At times they are so bad they remind you of an early generation PS2 game.  The contrast between the characters and the backgrounds is striking.

The music definitely has taken its cue from other RPG titles.  After the end of every successful battle a short victory tune is played.  The music has a futuristic but majestic feel.  The music isn’t all that original, but it works well with the theme of the game.

The choices for the voice acting are a bit surprising, but they work well.  Steve the robot has a proper dialect.  While the accent isn’t exactly British, it does have a hint of a British accent in it.  Simon sounds like a Scott with his kilt and bagpipes ready and waiting.  Zegram Ghart is a loner and his voice should be familiar to anyone who has played games like Killer 7, God of War, the X-Men Legends games, Pitfall, and the .hack series.  Steve Blum has also been heard in such series like Trigun, The Big O, Cowboy Bebop, IGPX, and Megas XLR.  Kari Wahlgren provides the voice of Lilika, and her credits are just as impressive.  All of the voice actor have a long list of credentials.

The amount of voice acting within the game is staggering.  While conversations with the local townspeople aren't voice acted, the main conversations are.  These conversations sound like they have the right balance of chemistry with the characters interacting with each other.

There are a few special effects during specific situations, like when an item is used or a new ability is discovered on the Revelation board.  There isn’t anything that special to them, but they do give important feedback to the player.  If they wouldn’t be there, it would feel like something was missed from the game.

Since a majority of RPG titles are turn-based affairs, the controls aren’t critical as they usually consist of hitting X on specific menu screens.  Since Rogue Galaxy is an action RPG, the controls are more crucial in their implementation.

Movement is handled using the left analog stick.  Hitting X interacts with people and objects on the screen like doors and chests.  Triangle brings up the main menu.  Circle jumps for the occasional environment puzzle.  The right analog stick moves the camera, but the Y-axis is inverted from what you’d be used to from playing first- or third-person action games.  Using R2 resets the camera position.  When you get to an event and a cutscene comes up, you can hit start and then hit Triangle to skip past the animation.

During the battles, the controls are similar, but there are a few differences.  Movement is still handled with the left analog stick and Circle controls jumping.  Turning the lock-on feature on and off is done with Up and Down on the D-pad, while switching which enemy you are locked on is done with Left and Right on D-pad.  Using your secondary weapon is done by hitting Square.  Guarding uses the R1 button, while hitting R1 and X lifts up objects and R1 with Square throws them.  Hitting Triangle brings up the Battle menu where you can use objects in your inventory and use special abilities.  Hitting X attacks, and hitting X multiple times performs a combo attack.  You can also hold down X and then perform a charge attack.  Sometimes your allies offer suggestions on items to use or abilities to use.  If you want to do what they suggest, you can hit L1 or L2.  The controls do take a little while to get used to, but it doesn’t take long for them to click with you.

Rogue Galaxy starts out as a very typical RPG.  You are introduced to the main character and are shortly joined up with the other characters of the game that become members of your party.  A few other characters introduce themselves and soon you are on your way to the main adventure.  The beginning is a little slow as it has a lot of cutscenes to set up the story, but it’s not on a scale of Xenosaga.

As in other RPG titles you explore the area, talk to the inhabitants, get new weapons, and fight monsters to gain experience.  The team at Level 5 had a bit more to work with because they had to create entire new worlds.  This meant that they could use their imagination to create worlds with whatever theme they wanted.  Level 5 created lush worlds with a variety of enemies to fight.

As you walk around, enemies come at you from out of nowhere.  The word “WARNING!!!” appears on the screen and the enemies pop up from the ground.  This means that random battles are par for the course in Rogue Galaxy.  Rogue Galaxy does seem to strike the correct balance of story and battles, with there being enough story to keep the plot moving while still having enough battles to level up your characters.  Some of the battles are fairly easy, but the Mimics that look like treasure chests and the boss battles are very tough.  Good thing Rogue Galaxy features a teleportation system that allows you to travel back to a shop and buy goods if you need them. Experienced action RPG players might think that makes the game a bit too easy though.

As you fight, your allies give you suggestion for things to do while fighting.  This might be something like summoning an ability to increase the party’s offensive ability or using a specific potion to heal themselves or another party member.  These suggestions are often intelligent and can assist you in not feeling so frustrated because your entire party went down because you were too concentrated on the action of the game instead of watching your allies’ health points.  You can ignore their suggestions if you want to, but I found myself appreciative of the feature.

You can also set the team’s strategy in a few different ways.  You can have you teammates fight the enemy closest to them, attack the same target that your character is attacking, go all out and use potions as necessary, or have everyone step back while you take care of the enemies yourselves.  While this isn’t as extensive as the Gambit system in Final Fantasy XII, the difference in strategy is remarkably different between the different strategies.

As you defeat monsters you gain experience points and level higher.  Items are usually accumulated as well.  While some items you get are typical fare for RPG titles like health and revival potions, many odd unique items come up as well.  These unique items are used for the Revelation Flow Chart.  If you’ve played Final Fantasy XII, then the Revelation Flow Chart might seem very similar.  Boxes are grouped together on a board and require specific items to gain abilities.  However, with the Revelation Flow Chart each character has a specific path that they follow to gain abilities.  This helps streamline the abilities the characters gain throughout the game.  Those who might have gotten frustrated by the way the license board spread out in FF12 can appreciate the structure of the Revelation Flow Chart.

At the end of battle you get Skill Points for your weapon.  Skill Points are assigned to the last weapon used by the character.  When the Skill Point bar is full, you are able to combine that weapon with another weapon by using a character named Toady.  Toady also gives you suggestions as to which weapon you might want to combine with a weapon in your current possession.  The combined weapons usually result in more powerful weapons than those you can normally acquire.  You can also create new items through a factory.  You need to have a blueprint for the item as well as the correct parts to get the new item.

Occasionally Boss battles occur on the screen.  These take some strategy to get past.  Usually it involves hitting the Boss’s weak spot after doing damage to another secondary area.  These Boss battles can be incredibly difficult, so you need to be sure to stock up on health potions and possibly power grind a couple of levels to defeat the different bosses.

As you fight different enemies you can gain ranks among the Hunters by gaining Hunter Points.  You can gain Hunter Points by defeating a certain number of enemies or by completing challenges.  One challenge might have you defeat certain enemies within a specific amount of time, while another one might have you defeat enemies without taking any damage.  Gaining ranks gives you a sense of accomplishment in the game.  You can also gain a large number of Hunter point by killing Quarries within the game.  The Quarries are hidden on different planets.  You can find out more about the Quarries by going to the Quarry Sheets.

For those who are into the Pokemon/Chokobo raising experiences, there are creatures called Insectrons.  You can trap an Insectron and raise it by giving it food and putting it in a Rearing Cage.  If you have two Insectrons together, they can both mate and create a new Insectron, or you can give them Battle Feed to fight.  They will grow faster if they fight more often.  Once you have an army of Insectrons, you can go to an Insectron Arena and play a game against another Insectron raiser.

The back of the box of Rogue Galaxy claims to have over 100 hours of gameplay.  While I do think that it’s possible to play the game for that long, I doubt that most gamers will need that long to finish the game.  Depending on the number of side quests and mini-games, I believe that you can complete the game in 50-70 hours time, but if you are a completist it could take you considerably longer.

The combat always keeps you engaged, and while the combos can get repetitive, the worlds have been crafted so well that you want to continue the game.  There are many times while you might say, “I’ll just play to the next save point,” and find yourself up late into the night.

The US version of Rogue Galaxy does include new items and extra dungeons, as well as an entire new planet to explore.  Seeing that extra time and effort was put into the US release is commendable by Level 5.

While playing through Rogue Galaxy, I kept on thinking that this might be what Final Fantasy XII might have been like if you were able to control the characters during battle.  It might even be considered FF12-lite due to the number of similarities between the two titles.  That is some pretty good company to be in as a gamer.  With its unique setting and engaging battles, Rogue Galaxy is a fine action-RPG and should not be missed by any fans of the genre.  It’s truly one of the best games to come out at the end of the PS2’s life.

Gaming Trend Score

86

1. Graphics: 88
2. Audio: 84
3. Controls: 87
4. Gameplay: 85
5. Value/Replay: 88
6. OVERALL:86