Hoist the sails, raise anchors, swab the poop deck & get ready for Rogue Galaxy a cel-shaded space pirate themed action RPG by Level5. You follow Jaster Rogue, an orphan that through mistaken identity gets involved in the misadventures of the greatest space pirate in the galaxy, Dorgongoa & his eccentric crew.
The plot quickly gets going as your hometown on the enslaved desert planet Rosa gets attacked by monsters. It is a place already down on its luck by product of an ongoing galactic war so as expected out friend Jaster quickly gets going doing the hero thing. On his way he meets bounty hunter extraordinaire, Desert Claw, which sets in motion Jaster’s pirate misadventures by giving him a very special sword which so happens a certain crew is using to ID in hopes of recruiting the real Desert Claw to their crew.
Once said & done, Jaster starts his grand misadventures through various planets in his small part of the galaxy as part of Dorgengoa’s quest to search for a very special fabled planet. Crash land in a jungle & get embroiled in a village’s affairs, visit a high-tech city & stop a mad-man or chase a myth in a mafia controlled mining planet. The game certainly has some varied locales.
One of biggest issues with Rogue Galaxy’s plot is that it is very trope filled. It is not entirely original & twists are sometimes easy to figure out. While the story isn’t particularly groundbreaking this by no means means that it doesn’t have its amazing or emotional moments. On the same side of the spectrum, characters are just as trope filled & follow a certain formula. Once again, they do have their moments & whatnot but what really makes them suffer is that little time is spent developing them further than established. They get called to a scene, do their thing & done till whatever plot point needs them.
On the subject of characters, voice acting is serviceable, nothing outright terrible except one that I found to be too whiny & high pitched. Thankfully you can bench said character & be worry free as the game shares EXP with benched allies. Steve Blum is also there, always a big plus to me.
Now on to the meat of the game, the combat. It is a free movement affair, set in arena with 2 or you allies vs. mobs of enemies. Attacks, skills & items are free to use but an ‘action bar’ limits spamability. Once ran out, waiting a few seconds refills it or a well time block against an enemy’s attack will instantly fill it. Combat is melee based but every character has a ranged sub-weapon to deal with enemies. Character skills range from AoE attacks, stats & weapon buffs. It is all easy to pick up & succeed. Rogue Galaxy’s combat is fairly challenging, oftentimes enemies hitting for a huge chunk of HP or outright killing. Heavy grinding is not required any means but having your weapons up to par certainly goes along way. Ultimately, random mobs can be dealt with AoE attacks, these often deal high damage & most all characters unlock at least 1. This strategy of course doesn’t work well on bosses. Combat is by no means bad but calls to question a bit about its balancing.
On the subject of skills, these are tied to the ‘Revelation Flow’ something akin Final Fantasy 12’s ‘License Board’ but unlike that one which uses points, the ‘Revelation Flow’ uses everyday items to unlock skills. Items ranging from consumables (status clearers, HP potions, etc) to stuff like hot peppers, electronics, a stinky sock, etc. These are often bought, found in chests or dropped by mobs so one will never be locked out of completing the board. Needless to say, it was a fun approach to unlocking skills & seeing how the items needed were themed to the skills was interesting, some skills even using some of the items themselves in the cutscenes.
While Rogue Galaxy doesn’t have the greatest of plots it sure has a ton to do in the background. Things like combining weapons to get new ones of which there are a ton, 60 swords for Jaster alone not counting his guns, hunts which are mini-bosses scattered throughout the various planets, the factory & insectrons both of which other games in on themselves. The factory is used to unlock some weapons & items but it is not as simple as that. It is a giant timing based puzzle, having you placing various machinery & having materials reaching the end at the same time to get a result. I certainly was not up to the task so I bid you good luck. Insectrons on the other hand is a bug catching & raising game to ultimately have them duke it out in a chess-like battler. You start of capturing insects by setting traps all throughout the game’s locales then you raise & breed them to create buff insects to set them out on the Insectron tournaments. These chess-like battles take into account the various bugs abilities & skills, your goal being to take out the opponent’s ‘king’ before they do the same to you. All in all plenty to do in the game when not chasing treaures.
For all its varied areas & themes with each planet, dungeon crawling is a weak point. Often empty corridor after corridor. Visuals & vistas are often amazing but when it comes to the dungeons, it certainly got to me. Another issue being enemy design lacking variety. While often they were not simple inverted color pallet swaps ultimately they were just the same monsters with a new skin in another long corridor of many.
At the end of the day, Rogue Galaxy despite its flaws in story, characters, dungeon, enemies & sometimes difficulty had me engaged enough to keep going. Seeing what new weapons I unlock, puzzling out the factory & watching insects duke it out & yes even some parts of the story all had me going from start to end, both back ages ago when I first played the game & now again as I replayed it. This is certainly a game I recommend.
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