Rogue Galaxy
I can't play RPGs like I used to. Before Final Fantasy VII, I had to scour bargain bins and thrift stores to find them. I'd jump at the opportunity to play every RPG I could, because I relished in their longevity and their evolved narratives, things you just didn't see often in most other genres at the time. Through the 16-bit era, I played all the greats. Final Fantasy IV and VI (I knew them as II and III), Breath of Fire, Lufia, you name it. But still, these games were few and far between, and my lust for RPGs was never quite satisfied. Final Fantasy VII changed all that, and while its stature as a well-made title can be argued, you have to love it for finally bringing RPGs out of a niché designation and into the spotlight.
Thus, I had no shortage of RPGs throughout the Playstation's run. Things went from 1 RPG a year to more RPGs in a week than I could possibly keep track of. It was heaven on earth for an RPG fan starved nearly to death in the previous generation. And all was well. Then, the Playstation 2 came. RPGs were still quite frequent, but something happened. Where RPGs were the light of my life previously, I was becoming jaded with them. The once underground genre had become grossly over saturated. It's not that the games were worse. Far from it. It's just that I had seen it all. I was a combat veteran weary from battle, looking to rest my head and enjoy simpler things like action games and shooters.
So then Rogue Galaxy comes along. Rogue Galaxy is the perfect game for me because it provides the same experiences that any good RPG does with the pace and mechanics of an action game. While I stopped playing Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, Xenosaga, Dragon Quest VIII, and many of the other celebrated RPGs of this generation long before I could finish them, I managed to log 140 hours onto Rogue Galaxy before finally putting it down, a true testament to its addictiveness and longevity.
Rogue Galaxy is (mostly) the story of Jaster Rogue, a young man.. huh? Yes, indeed. A young man. Not a 16-year old boy ridden with angst and wrapped up in an immature, baseless relationship with a shy, reserved 14 or 15-year old girl in white clothes who will no doubt be healing him throughout his journey. A young man just trying to find his way in the world. An archetype of Luke Skywalker, with boundless dreams weighted down by the chores of reality, trapped on a backwater desert planet with no spectacular future in store for him. Resigned to his ordinary fate, Jaster lives out his formulaic and mediocre life as a small time bounty hunter, tracking down the meager beasts that patrol the outskirts of Salgin, which serves as his Mos Eisley.
However, like most protagonists in the games Rogue Galaxy shares its genre with, Jaster's life is flipped upside down upon a chance encounter with a pair of space pirates, Steve and Simon (whom function as his C3PO and R2D2, respectively). These two oddball swashbucklers are scouring the planet of Rosa (Tatooine) in search of a bounty hunter named Desert Claw (Obi-Wan Kenobi). They seek to enlist him as part of their crew, but upon encountering Jaster and his abilities as a bounty hunter, they mistakenly bring him into their group, assuming that he is the Desert Claw they seek. Jaster, although honest and well-to-do, doesn't tell them that he's not the legendary bounty hunter and uses this as an opportunity to escape Rosa and set out into the sea of stars he's always dreamed of exploring.
And thus the saga of Jaster Rogue begins. Throughout his adventures, he will meet many colorful and memorable characters, each with their own well-developed back stories that will slowly be exposed over the course of the game. The characters are all completely unconventional of the archetypes you may think they adhere to when you first see them. No character is insignificant, and each one of Jaster's companions has some kind of revelation that will change your entire outlook on them. The story itself is nothing new or spectacular, but the way this cliché-ridden tale is pushed along by its amazing characters is nothing short of pure brilliance. It is the exact opposite of the modern, conventional structure of a complex and usually convoluted tale ridden with plot twists and told with an uninspired and unbalanced cast.
What really helps the characters along is one of the most incredibly well-done voice overs I've ever heard in a game. Where I've found myself cringing during most RPGs that have spoken dialog, Rogue Galaxy has some veteran anime/TV show actors giving sincere and fitting performances, notably Steve Blum whom some my recognize as Mugen from Samurai Champloo or Sun Jian from Dynasty Warriors.
Now just think. The story that I've just described is the least impressive part of Rogue Galaxy. It's all uphill from here.
Rogue Galaxy is a beautiful game. While not quite as technically striking as more high-end games like Final Fantasy XII or Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, Rogue Galaxy's enchanting, stylistic design more than makes up for what it lacks in polygon count. Utilizing a more advanced build of the Dragon Quest VIII engine, Level-5's adoration for cel-shading since Dark Cloud 2 has come full circle. The character models in Rogue Galaxy are like hand-drawn sketches that have leapt off the page and into an adventure. They move fluidly with very lifelike motion-capture and animation, and are able to exude feeling and emote quite convincingly despite their slightly abstract and artistic appearance.
While most of the game's cut-scenes are done quite competently using the real-time engine, there are quite a few computer generated cinematics that use a much more intense method of cel-shading. Some of these sequences are quite spectacular, but it would've been a bit more fluid and coherent if they had just used the real-time engine throughout the game. Major props need to go to Yoshiaki Kusuda, who directed the cinematic action sequences and choreographed fight scenes in the game, which are as intense and impressive as anything Hollywood can offer.
Rogue Galaxy's environments have almost as much personality as its characters. Jaster's adventures will take him to 5 major planets, each with its own distinct set of races and cultures, and each with a well documented history that can be uncovered by those willing to explore beyond the bounds of what's necessary to merely beat the game. And this, as I will get into later, is the whole underlying theme of Rogue Galaxy; going beyond what's necessary.
The dungeons in Rogue Galaxy look very good for the most part. There is a lot of detail in every locale, with some quite dynamic multi-tiering going on. My biggest gripe is that there are some instances where it seems like the same chunks of terrain are being repeated, but this is a very common flaw in most RPGs, and considering the massive size of Rogue Galaxy's environs, one can't expect there to be uniqueness every step of the way, especially when you're being blinded by the sheer beauty of some of the areas, like the majestic and awe inspiring Ti'Atha Forest on Mariglenn (screenshot below).
To assist Rogue Galaxy's environments is a very enjoyable and atmospheric soundtrack by Tomohito Nishiura, whose compositions capture the same feeling as Skies of Arcadia, which is adequate because this entire game feels partially inspired by Overworks' air pirate epic. While the themes aren't incredibly memorable, they provide a very nice backdrop to the action and are of the highest orchestral quality. Of note are the various themes where vocals are used. Vocals have become quite a fad and are a bit overzealous and out of place in most games where they are used, but in Rogue Galaxy, they are used quite intuitively to enhance the mood of the environments and situations.
And now, onto the good stuff. Rogue Galaxy's most enjoyable aspect for me is its battle system. It's a very innovative mixture between turn-based and real-time combat. Enemies are encountered randomly while exploring dungeons, but there is no battle transition. Your characters stop, draw their weapons, and combat begins right on the spot you were standing. You are free to move around the battle field and attack your enemies without the use of a menu system. You simply press X and you attack. Each character has a combo string, so you can link about half a dozen physical attacks together. At any time you can open the menu using the triangle button, from which you'll be able to issue various commands such as magic, special skills, and item use.
Rogue Galaxy is no hack-and-slash, however. As you wail on your enemies, a meter above your character's status portrait in the HUD depletes. This meter is your Action Gage, and indicates how many actions you can perform before your character is exhausted. Once your character is out of juice, your only option is to avoid enemies or sit back and block using the R1 trigger. The gage takes about 10 seconds to refill, but if you're hit by an attack while you're blocking or not, it refills instantly.
Rogue Galaxy is unique in the sense of control you're given over the battlefield and the characters in it. You can bring any 3 of your 8 characters into battle with you at a time, but at any time you can swap out characters. You're also not resigned to playing as Jaster throughout the game. You can switch which character you wish to play as via the menu at any time so long as that character isn't in mid-action. Your characters also have more options than the typical action RPG, able to jump, pick up and throw background objects and enemies, and use devastating team attacks a la Chrono Trigger. Each character also has 2 completely different types of weapons that serve different functions, mapped to the X and square buttons. The X button is usually the standard melee weapon, but this is not the case with all the characters. These weapons can be charged by holding down the X button. Upon release, they deal greater damage and break through a guarding enemy's defenses, exposing them to further punishment. The weapon mapped to the square button is a limited secondary weapon. These secondary weapons are critical in that they're sometimes required to break through magical barriers enemies may have erected in front of them.
The battle system has a very good balance of intense action and strategy. As you fight, your AI controlled characters will make suggestions. These suggestions are mapped to the L2 and R2 buttons, and pressing them confirms this suggestion. The suggestions are relevant to what's happening in the battle. If a certain character is running low on HP, one of your AI characters will ask permission to use a potion. If you encounter a horde of weaker enemies, a character will suggest the use of a magic attack that hits all enemies. If one of your AI characters is having trouble doing adequate damage to an enemy, they'll ask permission to use a stat-augmenting ability in order to attain more potency.
Like most RPGs, as your characters fight, they gain EXP and level up. But this is not how they learn abilities. Abilities are learned through the use of the Revelation Flow system, a fairly straightfoward network of boards with empty slots that works vaguely like the License Board in Final Fantasy XII, but not quite. There is an entire sub-category of items whose only use is to be utilized on the Revelation Flow board. As you find these items and fit them into the empty slots on a character's board, they will learn abilities.
Not only do your characters grow, but your weapons do also. Each weapon has its own individual experience level that increases with each battle. After about 15 battles or so, a weapon will be maxed out. At this point, 6 new gages designated to a particular weapon begin to fill individually. These represent elemental bonuses that increase attack power against enemies susceptible to particular elemental attacks. Once all six of these elemental gages are filled, the weapon is completely mastered and can no longer grow.
The moment you start playing Rogue Galaxy, your life for the next month or so, for all intents and purposes, is over. You've just opened pandora's box, right from the outset of your adventure. Where many RPGs have to feign length and content by forcing you to fight battle after battle with the same enemies over and over again to obtain a rare drop or level grind in order to fight a ridiculously powerful monster, Rogue Galaxy has a downright obscene amount of stuff available for you to do, and it just keeps piling on as the game progresses.
First, and least notable, are the enemy quotas. The game logs how many of every type of enemy you've killed. When you've killed a certain number of a type of enemy, you'll be able to claim a reward in the form of Hunter Points. These points raise your reputation as a monster hunter on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being nothing to consider and 1 indicating that you are the leading cause of endangered species in the galaxy. It'll likely take you the span of the entire game to acquire enough of these points to travel all the way up this hunter stratification, but the effort it is worth it as for each 10 of the first 90 ranks you climb, you receive a hefty reward, and another reward for each rank you climb from 10 to 1.
A bit more sophisticated than the enemy quotas are the various quarries you'll be tasked with hunting down. Much like in Final Fantasy XII, you can buy assignments to hunt down infamous monsters that wreak havoc across the planets. In order to encounter them, you'll need to have a specific item handy that will draw out said monsters. These battles can be very tough, as the quarries are typically several times stronger than any of the bosses that you've encountered up to that point.
Not far into the game, you'll meet up with a very strange creature; a giant toad. This toad has a special power that allows him to synthesize any two weapons you feed him so long as the weapons are of the same general type (i.e. you can't fuse swords and spears) and both are maxed out. By feeding it two weapons, you'll either receive an augmented version of one of the weapons you gave it, or a new type of weapon altogether. The stats of the weapon you end up with depends on how close to being mastered the two synthesized weapons were when you fed them to Toadie. The fusion process causes you to lose about 10% of the elemental stat bonuses you had on your weapons before you fused them, so if you just keep fusing weapons the instant they're maxed out, you're eventually going to end up with a really powerful weapon with completely base stat bonuses that are going to take a long time to rebuild. It saves time in the long run to properly "season" your weapons before you fuse them.
But that's not all! A bit later, you'll find yourself in possession of a run-down factory. By using a building/construction engine similar to the Georama system in Level-5's own Dark Cloud, you can produce and invent items that you wont be able to find anywhere else. To do this, you'll need ideas. Various NPCs throughout the galaxy have great ideas for items. You'll need to track them down and turn their ideas into blueprints, and then reconstruct the factory in order to adequately utilize these blueprints, and lastly, you'll need to provide the materials needed to create the item in question.
Lastly, and most exhausting, is the Insectron mini-game. Insectron is a whole separate game unto itself. You could easily chop it out of Rogue Galaxy, put it on a handheld system and sell it for retail price with hopes to compete with Pokémon, because in essence, that's what Insectron is. Somewhat early in the game, you're given the the opportunity to begin catching and raising Insectors, cute little bugs that you can raise and do battle with. By setting traps with bait, you can catch all kinds of Insectors which much be housed in a rearing cage. From the cage, you can raise your Insectron by feeding it or dueling it with other Insectrons in your cage. Each type of food you feed an Insectron effects its stats differently, increasing some while decreasing others. However, each piece of food you give it brings it closer to an inevitable brick wall where it will no longer be able to grow. At this point, you'll have to breed it with another Insectron. Breeding a new Insectron will ultimately kill the parents, but the new Insectron will have 90% of what the combined stats of the parents would be. Your new Insector, however, is an infant, and you'll be able to raise it just as you did its parents, with each piece of food you feed it complimenting the combined stats of its parents. After several generations, you'll have a fully evolved monster Insector that'll cut swathes through anything that gets in its way.
Once you've raised a team of at least 5 Insectors, you'll be able to compete in the Insectron Tournament, an epic, 6-tiered contest, with each tier consisting of an endurance test of 5 consecutive matches with fellow Insector enthusiasts whom are obviously affectionate mockeries of Pokémon characters such as Ash. These battles are nothing like those in Pokémon, however. The layout is like a strategy RPG. You can move your Insectors about in a limited range on a chess-board like layout, and order them to attack once they're in range. Each species of Insector has its own special attack, and it's good to have a diverse team of Insectors so that you can exploit any weakness an enemy's team may have. Winning the tournaments will net you all sorts of rewards.
Quite a bit of additional content was included exclusively in the North American release of Rogue Galaxy. One of these is an optional planet with its own little side story and set of monsters and bounties to hunt. The battle system also received a few refinements, most notably a new type of attack for each character called a "Burning Strike". Burning Strikes are devastating counter moves performed while your character is blocking. Once the move is activated, a DDR-like cinematic sequence begins with buttons popping up all over the screen. You'll need to match these buttons with fairly well-timed presses in order to successfully execute the whole attack. If you've ever played the Legend of Dragoon, you'll be familiar with Burning Strikes as they're quite similar to LoD's Additions.
All of these elements add up to a game that provides a highly varied experience depending on how you play it. Most of the content can be ignored. You can survive well enough using store-bought weapons rather than utilizing the fusion system. The rewards from quarry hunting will not drastically change the flow of the game. The Insectron game can be ignored entirely if that's not your thing. If you're just looking to beat the game, you'll be done after about 40 hours. But you'll be seriously cheating yourself. The bonuses and rewards I've gotten for spending extra time with the game account for a great deal of the enjoyment and satisfaction I've had playing Rogue Galaxy. Exploring every nook and cranny and exhausting every facet of the game's content will take you upwards of 150 hours, and easily more, but you'll walk away with quite a few goodies, like the half a dozen or so alternate outfits for each character and insanely powerful weapons. Replay value is also through the roof, as beating the game unlocks a whole new massive area to explore with its own story arcs.
I don't think it needs to be said at this point, but Rogue Galaxy is massive, exciting, and dripping with personality and style from every pore. It stands as one of the best RPGs I've played this generation, if not THE best. For $39.99, you couldn't ask for a more satisfying experience. My eternal thanks to Level-5 for spending so long localizing and tweaking this game for us North American gamers to enjoy.
Visuals: 14/15
Sound: 19/20
Story: 12/15
Gaming Experience: 50/50
Overall: 95/100 - Masterpiece
I can't play RPGs like I used to. Before Final Fantasy VII, I had to scour bargain bins and thrift stores to find them. I'd jump at the opportunity to play every RPG I could, because I relished in their longevity and their evolved narratives, things you just didn't see often in most other genres at the time. Through the 16-bit era, I played all the greats. Final Fantasy IV and VI (I knew them as II and III), Breath of Fire, Lufia, you name it. But still, these games were few and far between, and my lust for RPGs was never quite satisfied. Final Fantasy VII changed all that, and while its stature as a well-made title can be argued, you have to love it for finally bringing RPGs out of a niché designation and into the spotlight.
Thus, I had no shortage of RPGs throughout the Playstation's run. Things went from 1 RPG a year to more RPGs in a week than I could possibly keep track of. It was heaven on earth for an RPG fan starved nearly to death in the previous generation. And all was well. Then, the Playstation 2 came. RPGs were still quite frequent, but something happened. Where RPGs were the light of my life previously, I was becoming jaded with them. The once underground genre had become grossly over saturated. It's not that the games were worse. Far from it. It's just that I had seen it all. I was a combat veteran weary from battle, looking to rest my head and enjoy simpler things like action games and shooters.
So then Rogue Galaxy comes along. Rogue Galaxy is the perfect game for me because it provides the same experiences that any good RPG does with the pace and mechanics of an action game. While I stopped playing Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XII, Xenosaga, Dragon Quest VIII, and many of the other celebrated RPGs of this generation long before I could finish them, I managed to log 140 hours onto Rogue Galaxy before finally putting it down, a true testament to its addictiveness and longevity.
Rogue Galaxy is (mostly) the story of Jaster Rogue, a young man.. huh? Yes, indeed. A young man. Not a 16-year old boy ridden with angst and wrapped up in an immature, baseless relationship with a shy, reserved 14 or 15-year old girl in white clothes who will no doubt be healing him throughout his journey. A young man just trying to find his way in the world. An archetype of Luke Skywalker, with boundless dreams weighted down by the chores of reality, trapped on a backwater desert planet with no spectacular future in store for him. Resigned to his ordinary fate, Jaster lives out his formulaic and mediocre life as a small time bounty hunter, tracking down the meager beasts that patrol the outskirts of Salgin, which serves as his Mos Eisley.
However, like most protagonists in the games Rogue Galaxy shares its genre with, Jaster's life is flipped upside down upon a chance encounter with a pair of space pirates, Steve and Simon (whom function as his C3PO and R2D2, respectively). These two oddball swashbucklers are scouring the planet of Rosa (Tatooine) in search of a bounty hunter named Desert Claw (Obi-Wan Kenobi). They seek to enlist him as part of their crew, but upon encountering Jaster and his abilities as a bounty hunter, they mistakenly bring him into their group, assuming that he is the Desert Claw they seek. Jaster, although honest and well-to-do, doesn't tell them that he's not the legendary bounty hunter and uses this as an opportunity to escape Rosa and set out into the sea of stars he's always dreamed of exploring.
And thus the saga of Jaster Rogue begins. Throughout his adventures, he will meet many colorful and memorable characters, each with their own well-developed back stories that will slowly be exposed over the course of the game. The characters are all completely unconventional of the archetypes you may think they adhere to when you first see them. No character is insignificant, and each one of Jaster's companions has some kind of revelation that will change your entire outlook on them. The story itself is nothing new or spectacular, but the way this cliché-ridden tale is pushed along by its amazing characters is nothing short of pure brilliance. It is the exact opposite of the modern, conventional structure of a complex and usually convoluted tale ridden with plot twists and told with an uninspired and unbalanced cast.
What really helps the characters along is one of the most incredibly well-done voice overs I've ever heard in a game. Where I've found myself cringing during most RPGs that have spoken dialog, Rogue Galaxy has some veteran anime/TV show actors giving sincere and fitting performances, notably Steve Blum whom some my recognize as Mugen from Samurai Champloo or Sun Jian from Dynasty Warriors.
Now just think. The story that I've just described is the least impressive part of Rogue Galaxy. It's all uphill from here.
Rogue Galaxy is a beautiful game. While not quite as technically striking as more high-end games like Final Fantasy XII or Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria, Rogue Galaxy's enchanting, stylistic design more than makes up for what it lacks in polygon count. Utilizing a more advanced build of the Dragon Quest VIII engine, Level-5's adoration for cel-shading since Dark Cloud 2 has come full circle. The character models in Rogue Galaxy are like hand-drawn sketches that have leapt off the page and into an adventure. They move fluidly with very lifelike motion-capture and animation, and are able to exude feeling and emote quite convincingly despite their slightly abstract and artistic appearance.
While most of the game's cut-scenes are done quite competently using the real-time engine, there are quite a few computer generated cinematics that use a much more intense method of cel-shading. Some of these sequences are quite spectacular, but it would've been a bit more fluid and coherent if they had just used the real-time engine throughout the game. Major props need to go to Yoshiaki Kusuda, who directed the cinematic action sequences and choreographed fight scenes in the game, which are as intense and impressive as anything Hollywood can offer.
Rogue Galaxy's environments have almost as much personality as its characters. Jaster's adventures will take him to 5 major planets, each with its own distinct set of races and cultures, and each with a well documented history that can be uncovered by those willing to explore beyond the bounds of what's necessary to merely beat the game. And this, as I will get into later, is the whole underlying theme of Rogue Galaxy; going beyond what's necessary.
The dungeons in Rogue Galaxy look very good for the most part. There is a lot of detail in every locale, with some quite dynamic multi-tiering going on. My biggest gripe is that there are some instances where it seems like the same chunks of terrain are being repeated, but this is a very common flaw in most RPGs, and considering the massive size of Rogue Galaxy's environs, one can't expect there to be uniqueness every step of the way, especially when you're being blinded by the sheer beauty of some of the areas, like the majestic and awe inspiring Ti'Atha Forest on Mariglenn (screenshot below).
To assist Rogue Galaxy's environments is a very enjoyable and atmospheric soundtrack by Tomohito Nishiura, whose compositions capture the same feeling as Skies of Arcadia, which is adequate because this entire game feels partially inspired by Overworks' air pirate epic. While the themes aren't incredibly memorable, they provide a very nice backdrop to the action and are of the highest orchestral quality. Of note are the various themes where vocals are used. Vocals have become quite a fad and are a bit overzealous and out of place in most games where they are used, but in Rogue Galaxy, they are used quite intuitively to enhance the mood of the environments and situations.
And now, onto the good stuff. Rogue Galaxy's most enjoyable aspect for me is its battle system. It's a very innovative mixture between turn-based and real-time combat. Enemies are encountered randomly while exploring dungeons, but there is no battle transition. Your characters stop, draw their weapons, and combat begins right on the spot you were standing. You are free to move around the battle field and attack your enemies without the use of a menu system. You simply press X and you attack. Each character has a combo string, so you can link about half a dozen physical attacks together. At any time you can open the menu using the triangle button, from which you'll be able to issue various commands such as magic, special skills, and item use.
Rogue Galaxy is no hack-and-slash, however. As you wail on your enemies, a meter above your character's status portrait in the HUD depletes. This meter is your Action Gage, and indicates how many actions you can perform before your character is exhausted. Once your character is out of juice, your only option is to avoid enemies or sit back and block using the R1 trigger. The gage takes about 10 seconds to refill, but if you're hit by an attack while you're blocking or not, it refills instantly.
Rogue Galaxy is unique in the sense of control you're given over the battlefield and the characters in it. You can bring any 3 of your 8 characters into battle with you at a time, but at any time you can swap out characters. You're also not resigned to playing as Jaster throughout the game. You can switch which character you wish to play as via the menu at any time so long as that character isn't in mid-action. Your characters also have more options than the typical action RPG, able to jump, pick up and throw background objects and enemies, and use devastating team attacks a la Chrono Trigger. Each character also has 2 completely different types of weapons that serve different functions, mapped to the X and square buttons. The X button is usually the standard melee weapon, but this is not the case with all the characters. These weapons can be charged by holding down the X button. Upon release, they deal greater damage and break through a guarding enemy's defenses, exposing them to further punishment. The weapon mapped to the square button is a limited secondary weapon. These secondary weapons are critical in that they're sometimes required to break through magical barriers enemies may have erected in front of them.
The battle system has a very good balance of intense action and strategy. As you fight, your AI controlled characters will make suggestions. These suggestions are mapped to the L2 and R2 buttons, and pressing them confirms this suggestion. The suggestions are relevant to what's happening in the battle. If a certain character is running low on HP, one of your AI characters will ask permission to use a potion. If you encounter a horde of weaker enemies, a character will suggest the use of a magic attack that hits all enemies. If one of your AI characters is having trouble doing adequate damage to an enemy, they'll ask permission to use a stat-augmenting ability in order to attain more potency.
Like most RPGs, as your characters fight, they gain EXP and level up. But this is not how they learn abilities. Abilities are learned through the use of the Revelation Flow system, a fairly straightfoward network of boards with empty slots that works vaguely like the License Board in Final Fantasy XII, but not quite. There is an entire sub-category of items whose only use is to be utilized on the Revelation Flow board. As you find these items and fit them into the empty slots on a character's board, they will learn abilities.
Not only do your characters grow, but your weapons do also. Each weapon has its own individual experience level that increases with each battle. After about 15 battles or so, a weapon will be maxed out. At this point, 6 new gages designated to a particular weapon begin to fill individually. These represent elemental bonuses that increase attack power against enemies susceptible to particular elemental attacks. Once all six of these elemental gages are filled, the weapon is completely mastered and can no longer grow.
The moment you start playing Rogue Galaxy, your life for the next month or so, for all intents and purposes, is over. You've just opened pandora's box, right from the outset of your adventure. Where many RPGs have to feign length and content by forcing you to fight battle after battle with the same enemies over and over again to obtain a rare drop or level grind in order to fight a ridiculously powerful monster, Rogue Galaxy has a downright obscene amount of stuff available for you to do, and it just keeps piling on as the game progresses.
First, and least notable, are the enemy quotas. The game logs how many of every type of enemy you've killed. When you've killed a certain number of a type of enemy, you'll be able to claim a reward in the form of Hunter Points. These points raise your reputation as a monster hunter on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being nothing to consider and 1 indicating that you are the leading cause of endangered species in the galaxy. It'll likely take you the span of the entire game to acquire enough of these points to travel all the way up this hunter stratification, but the effort it is worth it as for each 10 of the first 90 ranks you climb, you receive a hefty reward, and another reward for each rank you climb from 10 to 1.
A bit more sophisticated than the enemy quotas are the various quarries you'll be tasked with hunting down. Much like in Final Fantasy XII, you can buy assignments to hunt down infamous monsters that wreak havoc across the planets. In order to encounter them, you'll need to have a specific item handy that will draw out said monsters. These battles can be very tough, as the quarries are typically several times stronger than any of the bosses that you've encountered up to that point.
Not far into the game, you'll meet up with a very strange creature; a giant toad. This toad has a special power that allows him to synthesize any two weapons you feed him so long as the weapons are of the same general type (i.e. you can't fuse swords and spears) and both are maxed out. By feeding it two weapons, you'll either receive an augmented version of one of the weapons you gave it, or a new type of weapon altogether. The stats of the weapon you end up with depends on how close to being mastered the two synthesized weapons were when you fed them to Toadie. The fusion process causes you to lose about 10% of the elemental stat bonuses you had on your weapons before you fused them, so if you just keep fusing weapons the instant they're maxed out, you're eventually going to end up with a really powerful weapon with completely base stat bonuses that are going to take a long time to rebuild. It saves time in the long run to properly "season" your weapons before you fuse them.
But that's not all! A bit later, you'll find yourself in possession of a run-down factory. By using a building/construction engine similar to the Georama system in Level-5's own Dark Cloud, you can produce and invent items that you wont be able to find anywhere else. To do this, you'll need ideas. Various NPCs throughout the galaxy have great ideas for items. You'll need to track them down and turn their ideas into blueprints, and then reconstruct the factory in order to adequately utilize these blueprints, and lastly, you'll need to provide the materials needed to create the item in question.
Lastly, and most exhausting, is the Insectron mini-game. Insectron is a whole separate game unto itself. You could easily chop it out of Rogue Galaxy, put it on a handheld system and sell it for retail price with hopes to compete with Pokémon, because in essence, that's what Insectron is. Somewhat early in the game, you're given the the opportunity to begin catching and raising Insectors, cute little bugs that you can raise and do battle with. By setting traps with bait, you can catch all kinds of Insectors which much be housed in a rearing cage. From the cage, you can raise your Insectron by feeding it or dueling it with other Insectrons in your cage. Each type of food you feed an Insectron effects its stats differently, increasing some while decreasing others. However, each piece of food you give it brings it closer to an inevitable brick wall where it will no longer be able to grow. At this point, you'll have to breed it with another Insectron. Breeding a new Insectron will ultimately kill the parents, but the new Insectron will have 90% of what the combined stats of the parents would be. Your new Insector, however, is an infant, and you'll be able to raise it just as you did its parents, with each piece of food you feed it complimenting the combined stats of its parents. After several generations, you'll have a fully evolved monster Insector that'll cut swathes through anything that gets in its way.
Once you've raised a team of at least 5 Insectors, you'll be able to compete in the Insectron Tournament, an epic, 6-tiered contest, with each tier consisting of an endurance test of 5 consecutive matches with fellow Insector enthusiasts whom are obviously affectionate mockeries of Pokémon characters such as Ash. These battles are nothing like those in Pokémon, however. The layout is like a strategy RPG. You can move your Insectors about in a limited range on a chess-board like layout, and order them to attack once they're in range. Each species of Insector has its own special attack, and it's good to have a diverse team of Insectors so that you can exploit any weakness an enemy's team may have. Winning the tournaments will net you all sorts of rewards.
Quite a bit of additional content was included exclusively in the North American release of Rogue Galaxy. One of these is an optional planet with its own little side story and set of monsters and bounties to hunt. The battle system also received a few refinements, most notably a new type of attack for each character called a "Burning Strike". Burning Strikes are devastating counter moves performed while your character is blocking. Once the move is activated, a DDR-like cinematic sequence begins with buttons popping up all over the screen. You'll need to match these buttons with fairly well-timed presses in order to successfully execute the whole attack. If you've ever played the Legend of Dragoon, you'll be familiar with Burning Strikes as they're quite similar to LoD's Additions.
All of these elements add up to a game that provides a highly varied experience depending on how you play it. Most of the content can be ignored. You can survive well enough using store-bought weapons rather than utilizing the fusion system. The rewards from quarry hunting will not drastically change the flow of the game. The Insectron game can be ignored entirely if that's not your thing. If you're just looking to beat the game, you'll be done after about 40 hours. But you'll be seriously cheating yourself. The bonuses and rewards I've gotten for spending extra time with the game account for a great deal of the enjoyment and satisfaction I've had playing Rogue Galaxy. Exploring every nook and cranny and exhausting every facet of the game's content will take you upwards of 150 hours, and easily more, but you'll walk away with quite a few goodies, like the half a dozen or so alternate outfits for each character and insanely powerful weapons. Replay value is also through the roof, as beating the game unlocks a whole new massive area to explore with its own story arcs.
I don't think it needs to be said at this point, but Rogue Galaxy is massive, exciting, and dripping with personality and style from every pore. It stands as one of the best RPGs I've played this generation, if not THE best. For $39.99, you couldn't ask for a more satisfying experience. My eternal thanks to Level-5 for spending so long localizing and tweaking this game for us North American gamers to enjoy.
Visuals: 14/15
Sound: 19/20
Story: 12/15
Gaming Experience: 50/50
Overall: 95/100 - Masterpiece
