Review: Rogue Galaxy (PS4)

Despite me crapping over the PS2 titles that Sony has already released, they just happened to release a game that's been sitting in my backlog since it first came out: Rogue Galaxy. I caved and purchased it (again). Rogue Galaxy did quite well for itself the first time around, but does the game play really hold up to today's standards? Time to find out.

The Story

Jaster Rogue is a young man forced to live out his days on the desert planet Rosa under the rule of the Longardian Federation. Yearning to be free of the tyrannical rule and to see the rest of the galaxy he ends up stumbling into a group of space pirates who mistake him for a legendary bounty hunter who wish to take him to their ship.

After joining the pirate crew Jaster is informed they will be looking for the lost planet Eden and it's during this search that Jaster and Co. run afoul of the intergalactic company Daytron. Daytron being your typical evil organization ends up having facilities all over the galaxy performing various shady works. It falls to Jaster and the rest of the pirate crew to thwart Daytron and find Eden first.

Daytron and the Longardian Federation never really present a threat to the player and seem to be only ever lurking in the edges of the story. Referenced constantly they appear to be part of the fabric of the universe, but what they actually do or the the threat they posses never really materializes. Even after playing the game and reading the wiki, I'm still not entirely sure who the Longardian Federation has gone to war with or why Rosa is occupied.

Killing Those Monsters

In Rogue Galaxy you will be fighting lots of monsters. Controlling one character in a party of 3 you will face enemies in real-time. Armed with 2 weapons, in Jaster's case a sword and gun, characters can hack or shoot their way through most fights without too much issue. To prevent the player from spamming attacks, there is an "action gauge" and ammo system in place, ranged weapons reload automatically once depleted and the action gauge does much the same, but can be filled quickly by blocking an attack,

On top of the hacking and shooting there is also a variety of special attacks that can either deal damage, bolster the party or hinder the enemies. For the most part the skills aren't necessary to succeed in a fight, but they can greatly hasten victory. One big issue being later skills are entirely game breaking as they can end a fight as soon as it starts.

Combat tries to mix things up by adding enemies that are shielded, can block and that are tall (who only take damage in the head). These encounters prove to be more of an annoyance as the enemies can only take damage from one type of attack or they must be first attacked by a specific weapon before they'll take damage normally.

Upgrading characters up comes in two flavours. First being the standard leveling mechanic of gaining experience points through victory. Gaining levels in such a fashion serves to increase a characters base stats, such as HP and attack. The other way of leveling is to use the Revelations Flow. The Revelation grid serves as a repository of a character's skills, but skills can only be used once specific items have been inserted into the grid.

Another addition to the character building is upgrading weapons. Present since the Level 5 made Dark Cloud, weapons can be upgraded after they have gained enough experience. Once a weapon has reached "maxed" status it can be combined with another weapon of the same type that has also been maxed. This usually results in a superior weapon, but if it won't, the character performing the fusion will warn you ahead of time so you don't waste the weapons.

The Galaxy and Beyond

The one thing Rogue Galaxy prided itself on back in the day was its lack of load screens. The entire world was to be one connected environment, and for the most part - they succeeded. Once you are on a planets surface you won't see a load screen - you can walk to a dungeon and all the way to its depths without so much as a hiccup.

I'd like to say this is an impressive feature, but the worlds created come off as fairly bland. Walking mostly through corridors their repeated architecture begins to wear it quickly becomes easier to look at a map to figure out where you are and where you are going. The grandiose nature of the worlds also leave you to do a ton of walking where the random encounters begin to irritate as they slow progress down. With six planets, each with multiple dungeons, there is a lot of walking.

I can't be too hard on Rogue Galaxy. Though the environments might be a bit lacking (even in the PS2 days) Level 5 did an excellent job on the characters and enemies. The cel-shaded look works well for the characters and monsters and hold up fairly well. 

Distractions

While traipsing through the galaxy a number of distractions will present themselves, The Insectron Tournament, hunting monsters and a producing items in a factory. Each one will offer their own set of rewards and though completing them is entirely optional they offer up a decent distraction from the main plot (or lack thereof).

I never took much interest in the Insectron Tournament, but the monster hunting and the factory work ate up a number of hours while playing through the game.

While on the planet of Zerard you can pick up various bounties for problematic monsters found throughout the galaxy. While the list starts small, it slowly expands the further into the story you go. Once a bounty has been selected you may travel to the area hinted at in the bounty and then present a specific item to bait the monster. The baiting of the monsters is neat in theory, but can prove to be rather irritating when you can't find a particular item or you happened to have used your last one to unlock a skill.

The factory is rather novel pursuit. Here you can create a variety of different items by first finding a blue print (a complete pain in the ass as they are found on random characters throughout the game) and then assembling it. To assemble the product you must solve a puzzle by placing various machines and power cables in the right order and distance from one another so that the processed ingredients all arrive at the end point at the same time. A truly rewarding event for some of the more complicated set ups.

Final Thoughts

Rogue Galaxy is not a great game, but it tries. The environments are large and bland, the story is just an excuse to run around the galaxy and the combat is an experiment that doesn't quite work. Games have come a long way in nine years and playing Rogue Galaxy has reminded me of just how far we have come, both as players and developers. Rogue Galaxy showed me an earlier point in Level 5's history and in doing so I was able to see how their later works expanded on what they tried here. Their story telling got better, combat got deeper, side-quests greater and environments larger (I don't really like that last one). Rogue Galaxy might not be one of the PS2's greatest hits, but of you're a fan of RPGs or Level 5, you owe it to yourself to play this bit of gaming history. Plus, it'll show Sony we want more PS2 games.