Rogue Galaxy is an entertaining futuristic romp that does a lot of things right but falls just short of being amazing.
Story
Rogue Galaxy takes place in a fictional galaxy filled with robots and space pirates and various alien species, all brought to life in a colourful and lively manner. Our hero Jaster begins life much like Luke Skywalker living on a desert planet, unfortunately a rapid series of events of mistaken identity soon have our simple hunter hero as a member of a pirate crew roaming the galaxy in search of an ancient treasure some even more shifty and unpleasant characters than the crew themselves want to get their hands on. The story develops pretty rapidly with some entertaining and well-put together yet ultimately predictable plot points gradually revealing themselves as your motley crew trek from planet to planet. While the world the story is taking place in is well realized the galaxy and locations the game takes place in feel somewhat restrictive as your limited to a bunch of similar environments and locations. This isn't necessarily the games fault as it offers as much variety planet wise as KOTOR does, yet it's the fact the games world isn't as fully realised or complete as Star Wars that makes the variety of planets available seem a bit disappointing.
Characters
The game has a pretty sizeable cast and for once I can't actually find much of a fault in any of them. The characters are all relatively likeable, some are brilliant to both play as and watch in cut scenes and the excellent dialogue brings their personalities to life. Jaster himself goes beyond a basic JRPG hero managing to be a strong-willed, brave and courageous lead who you really feel yourself wanting to help succeed. Other characters that stand out more than others are the camp robot Steve who provides some excellent comic moments and the fairly cliché but undeniably incredibly cool kick-ass Amazon style tribeswoman Kisala.
Gameplay
RG is a action RPG with random encounters in real time. When a monster attacks all other people around you vanish, and you are in an invisible bubble fighting the monsters in real time. Should you touch the bubbles invisible walls you can run away. Combat involves simple button presses to unleash melee and ranged attacks, holding down buttons unleashes power attacks similar to Zelda. You also gain powerful unlockable skills to unleash deadly attacks for yourself and your allies as you progress and combat can be paused anytime to order these to be performed (you only control one party member, the rest are AI controlled) and issue heal/mana replenishment orders. Your allies will also suggest certain moves at times and you can tap a button to either confirm their suggestion or ignore it. The most interesting thing about RG's gameplay is the fact that the unlockable moves aswell as stat boosts are unlocked via finding items and slotting them into a grid similar to a sphere grid. Four or five items will unlock an ability and everyone has there own grid full of items to search for to unlock moves. Its innovative and adds a lot of depth.
Unfortunately the game has some drawbacks to its combat initially it's fun and unlocking new moves compelling but as the hours tick by things can drag combat wise especially when it takes approximately one use of a certain special move to wipe all enemies on screen out instantly in many situations. A prevalence of mana potions means essentially you can plough through every encounter with minimal effort which while of course something you can avoid, leaves you lots of repetitive hack and slashing as there isn't enough variety or "oomph" in the other abilities. In the end the fairly uninvolved level of the combat, particularly in an action RPG began to put me off in the long term even if hunting for new items for abilities was fun.
Despite the flaws the combat is by no means awful so don't misunderstand me, it just feels that a few tweaks here and there could have made a big difference.
Graphics
Visually for a PS2 game Rogue Galaxy is beautiful, every environment from sand swept ruins to huge robot factories to towering cities with flying ships is rich detailed and alive. The draw distance can feel a bit lacking on occasion but it only provides a minor annoyance and everything else is just right. One additional bonus feature the game throws in is an addition of hidden outfits to change the casts appearance and it's good to see a game put in that little bit extra in terms of fun features to improve the variety of its visuals.
Sound
Again all is well here, beautifully orchestrated music, great voice acting and pretty much everything you need for a quality soundtrack for your gaming experience. I wouldn't say the tracks are necessarily memorable, but they all work well and that is of course the key thing where so many titles fall flat.
Lastability
The main story isn't super long but there is still a good 30 hours of fun to be had here plus tonnes of optional content that could push the length to astronomical proportions as is normal for the genre. If your looking to sink a lot of time into a title or just play through a story both needs are easily sated here.
Overall
RG is a little lacking in the combat area and in terms of repetition of gameplay but everything else it does well and as a result can be forgiven for dragging at times. This is an epic sci-fi RPG and a great addition to anyone looking to add to their PS2 RPG collection.