A veritable shmorgusboard of gameology: Final Fantasy XII, meets Dark Cloud 2, meets Star Ocean: Second Story, me
With inovative gameplay, including exploration, gameplay, item development and creation, and intuitive characters and story players cannot help but be sucked in by this virtual work of art. Jumping immediately into the story players are introduced to Jaster Rogue, protagonist and space exploring hopeful with his feet firmly planted on the heavily controlled, even referred to as "enslaved", population of Rosa, a quiet desert planet rich with hidden resources. Jaster is a bit of a monster hunter who tracks and hunts beasts in order to feed himself and a local priest whom it is quickly learned raised Jaster from an orphan left outside the church. Following a brief hunting trip, Jaster and all the residents of Rosa are promptly suprised to find a massive creature ravaging the town. Jaster, being the emboldened young man he is, of course rushes on his way to chase down the creature and save the town. Welcome to Rogue Galaxy.
Players are immediately immersed in the game's universe and the introduction to the game's very active gameplay style is cemented almost immediately. Following the tutorial information windows that pop up at the introduction of every new gameplay element (even hours into the game when you begin combining items, or the like), the game is a smooth and beautifully flowing piece of genius.
And by smooth, I don't just mean Zegram's way with Juraikan women. The game boasts of limited loading screens, and none during standard gameplay, which is true in a most impressive sense. There's a slight pause at battle initiation but it's so miniscule it's unnoticable 99% of the time as monsters will spawn to combat you. Beyond this as you travel across the world you won't see the same 10 second load screens between areas because there simply aren't any, world's consist of single massive spaces ready and waiting for exploration. Now, this may not be because there are no loading screens but because they are beautifully hidden in the form of elevators, or closed cavernous pathways, and the like. The graphics similarly are a beautiful melding of 3D cellshaded and standard environmental rendered elements.
Sound for the game is well recorded and the English dialogue is far from the jarring dubs of older localized games. The English of the characters is similarly far from simply translated as players will often notice certain Western, even very American phrases and terms sprinkled throughout. Beyond this, on sound specifically, the music for the game, while sometimes underscored by the gameplay itself, is beautiful.
Gameplay itself consists of countless elements such as travel and exploration, combat which is akin to "Tales Of", "Star Ocean" and the new Final Fantasy XII games in which players ar able to freely roam in a combat area while fighting enemies or even possibly to run away further into the seamless world-map to escape. Similarly, another element which may appear familiar to players, is the inventory which appears suspiciously like the Dark Cloud game inventories. Item combination, and later creation from raw materials. And who can forget the beastiary listing with points awarded for killing enough of a certain enemy similar once again to Final Fantasy XII's system. Then, with points, comes galaxy hunter ranking. Needless to say, it's no suprise Rogue Galaxy also boasted of over 100 hours of gameplay in promotions.
The game has some problems. Pacing, if you're planning on doing everything, can slow down significantly. And, though it's been mentioned countless times, combat can be utterly brutal as, since you can again only control a single character, ally combat AI is highly limited unlike the FFXII system. Players are limited to commanding either direct assistence via attacking the same enemy, attacking any enemy, or doing nothing at all.
This issues are of course a minor nuisance to be quickly overlooked or remain unnoticed completely through the incredible draw the game has to pull gamers into the universe of Rogue Galaxy.