In short: Rogue Galaxy is a game that’s built around a very interesting start-point, but quickly loses itself in the gig

User Rating: 6 | Rogue Galaxy PS2
By thevexille | Review Date:
In short: Rogue Galaxy is a game that’s built around a very interesting start-point, but quickly loses itself in the gigantic tide of poorly written script, excessively ambitious storyline and repetitive gameplay. While the production features some beautiful graphics and very good music, it doesn’t do much to keep the game from getting old incredibly fast. Rogue Galaxy tells the story of Jaster, a young boy who wants nothing more than an opportunity to leave his godforsaken desert planet, Rosa. He lives with a gentleman named Raul (who seems to be some sort of priest, tough the game doesn’t really explore that) who took him and raised him when he was just a baby. Now a young and strong man, the protagonist earns a living by slaughtering capturing beasts in the desert and selling what is left of them in his town, which, by the way, seems to be the only relevant city on Rosa, considering it’s the only one ever mentioned in the game. In one gorgeous sunny day, however, Jaster’s life turns upside down. When in pursuit of a giant monster that mysteriously invaded his home planet, he finds himself ambushed by other small beasts and ends up being saved by a Mysterious Clothed Man. Although he doesn’t know it yet (tough it can hardly be considered a spoiler) the man is Desert Claw the biggest rock star of the eighties most skilled hunter in the entire galaxy, who, after this unconventional encounter and for no apparent reason, gives the boy his sword (the mighty Desert Seeker) and leaves. Because he is now in the possession of such artifact, Jaster is mistaken for Desert Claw himself, and thus, ends up being hired by the famous space pirate Dorgengoa to be part of his crew. And since he always dreamed of exploring the galaxy, he makes no effort whatsoever of unveiling the truth, pretending to be the great hunter so he can get some girls.... I mean adventures. That’s how Jaster’s quest (and the game itself) begins: a surprisingly original, uncompromised and downright fun premise. Unfortunately, it all boils down to the old tale about the orphan-boy-who-discovers-the-great-power-carried-in-his-blood-and-sets-off-to-save-the-universe very suddenly. Examples of this kind of journey are many in number and somewhat varied in nature (tough they more then often preserve similar aspects), which isn’t, in itself, a reason for not writing a game script based on it. However, in this particular case this is not done very well. Rogue Galaxy’s plot seems to evolve to its core very roughly, barely taking the time to give certain events the proportion and the amount of depth they should have. You spend (approximately) the first half of the game getting to know the universe you live in, getting in and out of fun, lighthearted (tough far from stupid) situations with you new friends and living good adventures while the whole point of the story starts to reveal itself. From the second half until the end, tough, the tone of the narrative starts to get unreasonably bigger and the events receive an increase amount of magnitude that’s not justified by any kind of dramatic build up. Everything starts looking very fake. The way the main quest is shown (which is predictably linked to the nature of the main character) is so clichéd, so lacking in depth, in beauty and poetry that the experience becomes frustrating, and some of the dialogue related to it - especially the attempt at drama - seems poor and out of place. A shame, the game took a pretentious turn and walked away from an interesting and original road to weakly narrate a known one. In the middle of all this, there’s seems to be very little time to work on the personality of the characters, the villains in particular seem to suffer a lot from lack of development. But enough of the storyline, let’s talk about the game itself.

Rogue Galaxy more or less follows the formula of the action-RPG genre: you level up your characters, gain experience and money to improve your status and equipment, but it’s up to you to walk over to the enemy and slash the hell out of him/her in real time battles. There are foes you can fight normally (which basically means: slash them compulsively so then can’t attack you), foes that can only be hit on the head (so you jump before slashing) and enemies that have barriers (which you have to break with special attacks before fighting normally). You are granted with a party of three members whose AI’s are fairly good to deal with the two first types of monster, but noticeably bad when dealing with the third. All in all, there’s little to no strategy on it, but that shouldn’t mean the battle system is boring. You can come across a distinct pleasure in Rogue Galaxy’s fights even tough they are generally very repetitive and predictable, it must be due to the fair amount of adrenaline and thrill present on them, as well as to the interesting and innovative level up arrangement, in which not only you, but your weapons gain experience and evolves. Of course, the game battles do not consist only of jumping and slashing: every character has their unique set of abilities and special attacks that they can use. While the animation of said attacks are generally good, the game offers you the option of skipping them, and you will find yourself using it quite often. The special attacks are somewhat the same. You have techniques that hit all the foes on the screen, abilities that enhance the damage caused by your weapon and abilities that cause status change (inflicting either positive status on you or negative status in your enemies). There is very little variation on them, and – even worse – the characters don’t seem to differ very much skill wise, so there’s barely any distinction in which party you choose to fight each battle. Your group members also have an attack called “Burning Strike” (which can be considered this game version of Final Fantasy’s “Limit Break”), in which the battle stops and you character performs a gorgeously animated super attack on your enemy, whilst you timely press buttons that appear on the screen in order to keep the attack going for as long as possible. Whereas a great addition, there are, on the other hand, two distinct problems with this resource. Firstly, pressing the buttons in time while the attack is going on will probably make less-then-slick players unable to sit back and enjoy the excellent animation of them, and secondly, the “Burning Strike” can’t be used against bosses, which is generally the moment when you would need them the most.

Rogue Galaxy is not a difficult game, tough it can be a bit tricky at times. You rely a whole lot on item usage here, in fact, they are the only healing resources available during battles, and you use them so much that the game offers you the option of putting that action on automatic mode, so you don’t need to stop what you are doing to access the menu all the time. Some of the enemies in the game can hit pretty hard, being capable of taking 2/3 of your health with a single blow. Considering this, it is imperative that you master the use of the blocking ability, especially against fast hitting foes, since this action cuts the damage of your enemy’s attacks by 80%. Every now and then you might have to face a unexpectedly strong boss, but the abundance of save points (which not only record your progress, but also heal you and serve as teleporters for other visited areas, meaning you can go right to the nearest shop and restock you item supply) prevent that experience from becoming frustrating. At the very least, Rogue Galaxy is an accessible game, with easy-to-pick-up gameplay and mild difficulty. The production is certainly the most satisfying aspect of this product. The in-game graphics are very nice, combining good textures, solid animations and lighting effects. The frame rate runs smoothly throughout 99% of the game and the loading times are short and only eventual, while the cell shaded, anime-like characters and environments work very well with the theme proposed and are handed beautifully. However, it’s on the animated sequences that the graphics really shine: they are downright stunning, displaying a graphical quality comparable to most animated movies and cartoons (oriental and occidental) of today, if not better. The sound is equally excellent. Rogue Galaxy presents not only a solid work of voice acting (which comes out surprisingly “uncheesy”) but also a beautiful music score, full of slow, emotive ballads and more ethnic flavored upbeat tunes. In particular, the acoustic guitar driven theme of the “Kuje Desert” stands out as one gorgeous piece of work. Rogue Galaxy is, in the effort of defining it with one word, disappointing. Not only the story get’s incomprehensively bad at a certain point, but the gameplay is not varied enough to keep the interest of the player fresh through the entire experience of playing it. Overall, it’s a pretty neat game to look at and listen to, but not to play for too long.

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