Rogue Galaxy Review

From the box art and beginning cut scenes, Rogue Galaxy instantly made me think of the Dreamcast classic: Skies of Arcadia. Rogue Galaxy certainly does have that flavor as well with its happy-go-lucky characters, exploration-oriented storyline, and, of course, a main character that wants to be a legendary Space Pirate (or, in this game, a "hunter"). However, where Skies had an amazing battle system and cool ship combat engine to keep the player occupied with great gameplay, Rogue Galaxy shoves random tasks in your face that only a completionist would even think about going through.

The game follows Jaster Rogue (yes, it is an incredibly stupid name and it probably came from Blandy McBland's Big Off-White Book of Bland Hero Names) in his adventures to being the greatest Space Pirate/Hunter the galaxy has ever known, and he attains this goal by relying on blind luck and the horrendous mental retardation of those around him.  If you think I am being harsh, this is how Jaster gets off his home planet (since, following the RPG cliches, he is but a poor orphan boy): first, a monster attacks his village; during this attack, two crew members of the Dorgenark (a pirate ship) are looking for a Hunter named Desert Claw (who gives Jaster the tutorial).  Desert Claw gives Jaster his sword and his license as a hunter and then speeds off to hang out with the other RPG mentors and Jaster defeats the big monster leaving those two crew members from the Dorgenark thinking Jaster is Desert Claw.  Okay, that is a stretch, but believable somewhat; however, Jaster is 16 and Desert Claw is somewhere around 40-ish and working for about half of that as his legendary self around the galaxy.  Wouldn't those two realize that Jaster wasn't a hunter when he was an infant?  Apparently not.  Also, the moment Jaster sets foot on the Dorgenark, he talks about how he has never been to space before and has never been on a ship.  I'm sorry, but there are at least 20 crewmen on that ship, one of them would have called bull on that.  To make matters worse, the crew of the Dorgenark don't realize that Jaster isn't Desert Claw until a quarter of the way through the game,  How stupid are these characters? 

Beyond the characters being incredibly dense, the story is a standard fare of evil guy wants to take over and your merry band of pirates needs to stop him.  That's it.  There isn't really any depth of character, well, there is some at parts, but great moments are ruined by the game's need to tie everything together (you will learn about this on the mining planet).  The voice acting is really good though, so, if you can survive through the stupidity of the characters, then you should enjoy the storyu regardless.

The battle system in this game is more action-RPG than regular.  It is not turn-based, instead, when you hit a random battle, you get a set amount of enemies that attack and you essentially button-mash your way to victory much like in the Star Ocean games.  You only control one character and the other two in your party are AI controled and this is another problem.  Oftentime the AI teammates will rush headlong into the fight not knowing how to block or dodge enemy attacks meaning that they die and they die a lot.  Keep plenty of resurrection phials on hand or you will not get far in this game.  You also have your standard special attacks that take MP and so on and so forth, there really isn't much to the battle system that wasn't done in Star Ocean so I can't say much about it.

No, my main gripe with this game: artificial legthening.  Now, artificial lengthening in regards to side-quests has always been a mainstay of RPG's, it helps you get better equipment, fight harder bosses, get a little more story info, etc.  In Rogue Galaxy though, lengthening is done through meaningless tasks.  You have a Hunter Score in this game, when you defeat special bosses your a certain number of enemies, you move up in the hunter ranks and you get cool items.  Good in thoery, but most of the points you recieve are for the random battle monsters and since they are random, you are left wandering around the map hoping that you will fight 3 gorillas next because you have killed 17 and need to kill 20.  It makes the game horrendously tedious especially because the earlier you move up in rank, the better the items you recieve.  Add this to the fact that your weapons level up (need to micromanage that), you need certain items to get better moves, you need to maintain a factory, you need to combine weapons to maintain the Frog Log, and you have to get hunter coins to get better hunter licenses.  That was tedious just to write, imagine playing it. 

Rogue Galaxy could have been much better, especially with the voice talent they had behind it.  I am very disappointed by this game and I am happy I got it for only $10 at my local game shop.  I recommend you avoid this game and play Star Ocean instead if you want a similar battle system with a better story.  If you want a better battle system with a similar story, pick up Skies of Arcadia.  Just avoid Rogue Galaxy.