Written 04.11.2008 - Uploaded 04.11.2008
A few years back most of my friends were waiting for Final Fantasy XII. I, on the other hand, was not very impressed and once I learned about Rogue Galaxy, I stopped paying attention to FFXII. Ironically I still ended up playing FFXII first and it turned out I was right: the game just was not worth waiting at all. Now that I've finally played Rogue Galaxy as well, it is time to analyze whether I can say “told ya” to everyone who waited for FFXII. Surprisingly enough, the games are actually similar in many ways.
Initially what really caught my attention was the announced real-time battle system; ever since Star Ocean: Till the End of Time I've been interested in such mechanics. Making a real-time system is always more of a challenge than turn-based - there needs to be mechanics for limiting actions. Otherwise the game will be just a chaos of continuous attacks. In Rogue Galaxy the mechanic for limiting player actions is an action meter which gets down every time something is done. Once its down to zero, the character has to wait until it refills entirely. This introduces some tactics to boss battles, but most of the time has relatively little influence. Just make sure your bar is full when the boss' defenses are down, then unleash a barrage of attacks. The action in Rogue Galaxy is fast-paced and battles are often over in tens of seconds. This is definitely a plus since the game has rather frequent random battles. Actually, most battles are over even faster as Rogue Galaxy is a game where abilities do matter.
Each character has a selection of abilities which are learned through the Revelation system. Abilities are typically either attack spells, attack buffs or general party buffs. Attack spells in the game are actually pretty damn powerful: in my party, Kisala (your resident magic user) did away with most enemies with just one attack spell, ending battles before they even started. Sounds a little bit disappointing but let me tell you, it's not. Besides, the game does have something to throw into the mix: there are three special defenses, and enemies who have one of these are initially immune to damage until their defense is broken. These could've been definitely done better though, but are nevertheless a welcome breeze of variety. Real problem is, it gets mighty annoying if you continuously run into these kinds of monsters, as battles start to last much longer (and are still very frequent). Balance is mostly kept in check though. Buffs also matter in this game as their effects are significant: as it's possible to have one attack boost for each character and one party boost at the same time, the main character in my party did something like four times his normal damage.
The battle system doesn't have that much depth or challenge but it's definitely entertaining and doesn't make the player hate random encounters. This is definitely good in any game but especially so in Rogue Galaxy as the game encourages exploration and has rather large areas. The hook we're looking into is the Revelation system, where new abilities are gained not by character advancement, but by finding items required to activate a new ability, and as discussed, the abilities really do matter. On the other hand, while entertainment is all good, there are some design flaws that make game overs in Rogue Galaxy almost impossible to get. The biggest is the ability to spam healing items and their good availability. Basically, if you can just go to the menu in time before everyone dies, you can throw as many items as your and your allies' action meters allow. Then again, to really fix this, the mechanics would need good amount of tweaking.
The game certainly lacks challenge but it did keep me interested in many other ways. For starters, Rogue Galaxy is very good looking for a PlayStation 2 game and very smooth overall. For instance, loading times are rare while area size is definitely in bar with Final Fantasy XII. The game's cell shading graphics are probably the best around although I sometimes found the characters sticking out of the background a bit too much with their very visible black borders. While a few dungeons are kind of repetitive and disappointing, most areas in the game are also very good-looking. There is especially one planet worth mention that really caught my interest: the mining planet Vedan which mixes some kind of steam punk feeling with gangster movies, complete with an atmospheric music. I really loved the place and the subplot taking place there has an impressively directed ending. Definitely the best moment in the game. There are a few other moments where the plot does shine but none compare to this, sadly.
Otherwise the story in the game is rather dull and naïve, and not surprising at any point really. There's nothing special worth mention about the plot or its characters and storytelling-wise the game is overall very average: it does its job but character depth isn't explored very deeply, save for the leading couple composed of Jaster and Kisala. Even they don't get nearly as much screen time as I'd like to see. While character concepts are nothing new, a couple of them show some promising charisma and taking more out of it could definitely improve the game. Either way, the game managed to be entertaining enough to keep me interested through its length and it did have its moments. Dialog is just too infrequent. It is definitely an improvement over Final Fantasy XII though but that's not much. Another small plus can be given for voice acting which is among the better ones I've heard and I actually liked some voices and found none annoying. That is rare.
To summarize the story's familiarity, we can just look at the initial setting: there's a young man living on a desert planet. He dreams of going up into space. Then we have space pirates who have sent a comic-sidekickish pair of characters to find the legendary bounty hunter Desert Claw from said desert planet. Of course they screw up and mistake Jaster's identity to that of Desert Claw, taking him instead. We can all guess where the story goes to so I feel safe when saying there's the typical “chosen one”, “evil corporation” etc stuff going on, and of course in the end the universe gets saved from certain destruction. So uh, not very creative writing from Level-5. After looking at a preview of their next big game, White Knight Chronicles, I have to say this group really needs to hire new writers.
While it's not the best game around, or even among them, Rogue Galaxy manages to be highly entertaining. Aside the main plot, there's some sidequests to be done as well as minigames. These days I find myself a little bit too busy to get involved in these, so I left them mostly untouched. The game took me some forty hours to complete and I probably could've done with a little less dungeon crawling and more dialog. Personally I recommend Rogue Galaxy if you need to spend some time with a quality RPG that's not very demanding plot- or mechanics-wise but for some serious RPG playing there are better titles available for the PS2.