Close but no cigar.
User Rating: 8 | Rogue Galaxy PS2
This game is from the acclaimed developers Level 5 who made Dark Cloud 2. Sadly this game doesnt quite rock like its predecessor and playing this game just made me miss playing DC2. The best part of DC2 and one of the more boring parts of RG is weapon customizing. In RG you basically just buy a bunch of crap from a shop and when it gains enough experience you squish two weapons together. You end up having to buy like 50 of one weapon and 25 of another to make the ultimate weapon and just endlessly level up the same weapons over and over. Then at the end of the game and alot the way they reward you by letting you buy nearly finished weapons that only need one more squish. Its like a big slap in the face lol. DC2 did a much better job. Every time your weapon level you got points and you got to melt stuff and squish it into your weapon for points and the end result was that you didnt feel like you were doing the same thing over and over. DC2 also had a great combat system. Block, shoot, smash, jump. Sometimes you had to time your attacks just right or do a powered up attack. RG has some really lame combat. They made quite a few of the monsters invincable until you do some gimmick like jump onto the top of them or shoot them with a special gun or just only being able to hit them if you jump. Way to many hoops to jump through for my taste. And since there are 3 people fighting thistime around instead of just one there are alot more monsters and they come at you from all angles. Just made combat seem more bogged down and boring. DC2 let you rebuild towns and even though you had to follow certain patterns there was alot of creativity involved. Nothing like that exists in RG. DC2 also had some fun mini games. You could go fishing or play golf. The fish that you caught could be fed and then entered in races. RG has a kind of chess game called Insectron. You can catch bugs basically anywhere and then use 5 of them to fight an opponents 5 bugs. You can take out the king bug on the opposing side or wipe out all his bugs. Its ok but leveling them up and feeding them and not to mention trying to randomly catch bugs is pretty hard work. The actual insectron game is fun though and will be the only reason i pick RG back up eventually. I dont know why Level 5 tried to do things so differently. RG doesnt even come close to how great DC2 was. I say RG is only worth renting. After you beat it there isnt really anything left to do except play with your bugs. I guess I will have to dream about a Dark Cloud 3 on the ps3. 
