Review #280: Rogue Galaxy

 On a galaxy, far, far away...

 Rogue Galaxy is a JRPG that takes place in outer space. Kinda. From what I can gather, Sony expected the game to sell well and become a franchise, but, probably, due to the time of its release, it didn't manage to sell very well. But hey, it's getting a second chance on PS4!

 Meet Jaster Rogue, the hero of the story. An every-day hunter-for-hire on the Desert planet Rosa. Then meet Simon and Steve, two robots searching for the legendary hunter, Desert Claw. Long story short, these two mistake Jaster for Desert Claw and take him on Dorgengoa's Space Pirate Ship, on an adventure through the stars. Kinda. See, the game is set on the future, with space-travel and what-not... but besides lasers and a few robots here and there, most of the game feels fairly... medieval. You'll visit jungles and its ancient ruins, you'll visit a fairly run-of-the-mill city and its non-futuristic mines and then go through its... underwater ruins. Then there's Zedran, the most futuristic city in the game, and you'll get to go to a robot factory in there, and then the... fairly non-futuristic prison and it's... non futuristic ruins. Basically, it's a non-futuristic game set in the future. With a lot of swords, magic, golems, and what not. Even the 'aliens' are unimpressive for the simple reason that... most aliens in the game are anthropomorphic animals like sharks or dogs! Still, only four party members are human, there's also two robots, a lizard-looking alien and an anthropomorphic dog-alien which make for quite the colorful cast. All in all, the plot isn't too bad, but I wasn't impressed or particularly invested on it. You'll see every plot twist coming before the fact! Every member in the cast gets his or her chance to shine, and while none are particularly original or deep, you'll grow fond of them.

 Once you get into the Dorgenark, Dorgengoa's ship, you'll be able to travel to different planets. One of the game's most impressive feats is how well it hides loading times, so that every planet, which hold 2-3 dungeons each, features no loading screens or 'separated areas'. That means that each planet offers a ton of areas to explore, and as you go along you'll find Save Spots which double as 'teleporters', which can teleport you to any other teleporter on the planet, making backtracking a cinch. One thing that may grate your ears is that party members don't shut up as you explore, and they'll repeat the same lines over and over again. Ok, Deego, I get it, you want to rest, whatever the hell that means on a game like this. And Kisala, shut up, this is the ONLY route towards the objective, so there's no possible way that this route is wrong, so shut the hell up.... Yeah, it's fairly annoying. And since I'm at it, this may be a nitpick, but usually when you go into an RPG's menu, you expect to see the status of your party, as well as your money. Not here. Wanna see your levels, and how your HP is doing? Gotta go into the 'Allies' sub menu. Want to see your money? Gotta go into the 'items' sub menu. And after you reach the arbitrary maximum of a certain item, but you find more in a chest or after a battle, the game takes a second to load the menu and force you into the 'Items' sub menu to choose what to do. Would've been much better to just let you choose what to do with the item on the 'results' screen. But hey! Planets look beautiful, and there's a bunch of treasure chests everywhere, so exploration is always encouraged.

 Meet Jaster Rogue, the hero of the story. An every-day hunter-for-hire on the Desert planet Rosa. Then meet Simon and Steve, two robots searching for the legendary hunter, Desert Claw. Long story short, these two mistake Jaster for Desert Claw and take him on Dorgengoa's Space Pirate Ship, on an adventure through the stars. Kinda. See, the game is set on the future, with space-travel and what-not... but besides lasers and a few robots here and there, most of the game feels fairly... medieval. You'll visit jungles and its ancient ruins, you'll visit a fairly run-of-the-mill city and its non-futuristic mines and then go through its... underwater ruins. Then there's Zedran, the most futuristic city in the game, and you'll get to go to a robot factory in there, and then the... fairly non-futuristic prison and it's... non futuristic ruins. Basically, it's a non-futuristic game set in the future. With a lot of swords, magic, golems, and what not. Even the 'aliens' are unimpressive for the simple reason that... most aliens in the game are anthropomorphic animals like sharks or dogs! Still, only four party members are human, there's also two robots, a lizard-looking alien and an anthropomorphic dog-alien which make for quite the colorful cast. All in all, the plot isn't too bad, but I wasn't impressed or particularly invested on it. Every member in the cast gets his or her chance to shine, and while none are particularly original or deep, you'll grow fond of them.

 And then comes the combat system, where it's easily where the game squanders most of its potential. Battles come out of random encounters, but they take place in real time, you take control of one party member and the AI takes control of the other two. Each character comes equipped with their own unique main weapon and sub weapon, assigned to X and Square, respectively, there's also a charge attack by holding X, jumping with circle and R1 to block. You can also use spells or items or change your equipment by pressing triangle, which pauses the action while you do your stuff. Funnily enough, items don't have 'use animations', so you can use as many items as your stamina allows! Ah! Yes, what you can do is governed by a stamina bar, and after it runs out, either wait a while or block one enemy attack in order to instantly refill it. And you can also pick up enemies(Or objects) and throw them, if you are so inclined. So far, so good.

 But the devs realized that the combat was fairly shallow. It was fine, but shallow. So they introduced different enemy types. Some come with shields that must be broken with a charge attack. Fine. A select few(One enemy type and its recolors) need to be jumped on before you can hurt them. Ok, whatevs. Then come 'huge enemies' that can only be damaged by attacking them while jumping. Firstly, these make no sense since you can basically shoot at their 'weak spots', but nope, it has to be a jumping attack. But the issue comes with how jumping attacks work, these are very limited and these enemies may just attack through your attacks or fall midway through your aerial three hit combo, making them a bore to deal with. And early in the game you are also introduced to 'barrier' enemies. These barriers can only be dispatched by one specific gun that only Jaster can use. These enemies are not frequent enough as to justify equipping the useless Barrier-breaking gun for the entirety of the game, but are frequent enough to make it a chore to switch your sub-weapon mid-battle just to deal with these enemies, so if you see that the dungeon has this type of enemy, just keep it equipped. Oh, and to make matters worse, this gun has one of the worst cooldown counters in the entire game, so if you run out of energy, you have to dance around these enemies, pray your AI buddies don't die(HA!) until it refills. And I haven't even gotten into the technical aspects of the combat. There's another type of attack, the 'downward stab', done near downed enemies. This is a very slow attack, that leaves you open to attacks and takes a long time to get out of... and your character will attempt it every time he is close to a downed enemy, EVEN if you are not targeting them. As a matter of fact, I'm fairly sure my character tried to do it to standing enemies. It's an annoying, useless attack that I never, EVER wanted to do and ended up with me receiving unwanted damage. Oh, and the targeting system? The camera doesn't track the enemy, that, you have to do yourself, but hey, at least you know that even if the enemy is off-camera, you are aiming at it, and that's always nice to know, right...?

 Speaking of the AI, it's atrocious, your allies don't know how to block or dodge attack, so expect them to die. All. The. Time. Hilariously enough, when it comes to 'jumping attack' enemies, sometimes they will go straight for their heads, and others they will try futile normal or distance attacks. I also came to at least two instances of an enemy and an AI partner doing staring contests. Hilarious. And for whatever reason, the AI also adores picking up and throwing enemies, are you too good to use your normal attacks, my dear, stupid AI buddy? And, by the by, you can somewhat give them 'general strategies' to follow during combat, but none of them are very specific. Either 'Attack the same enemy' or 'attack different enemies', stuff like that. And they can't use items or spells by themselves(And seeing how dumb they are, good riddance), but they may suggest use of their skills or items during battle, which you answer with L1, L2 or L3 to ignore them. Listen, buddies, if I wanted you to use a spell or item, I would've told you so, so stop insisting! Another thing that needs to be said, is that the game isn't particularly hard, technically, but normal enemies deal a ton of damage, and most of the time, their most damaging moves are unblockable, so carry a lot of healing and reviving items, all the time. You will need them.

 To the game's credit, the 'crafting' system is fantastic. Any weapon can be combined with any other weapon of its same type. No combination offers no result, and in the case the combination will offer a weaker weapon(Which happens when you try to mix, say, a level 20 weapon with a level 45), the game will warn you. There's dozens of weapons, and different colored variations of each, which encourages you to keep combining weapons and see what you can get. It also means that you can craft some very powerful weapons early on in the game, but seeing how much damage enemies can dish out, its only fair. Each character also has a 'Revelation chart', in which you use items to clear and learn new spells or passive skills, which is also fairly engaging.

 There's quite a bit of sidequests to fulfill as well, from gathering all the Legendary Swords, finding the 'rare items'(For bragging rights only!), challenging the bonus bosses and the... Hunting subquest. The 'hunting' subquest is a chore, basically you have to defeat 20-30 of each and every enemy in the game. Considering that some enemies only appear on 'rare encounters', and each of these may come with 1-2 of this rare enemy, this will take a while. If you decide to do this quest as it comes up, which I did(At least until I got into the #1 spot on the ranking, which nets you arguably the best alternate costume for Jaster) you will end up horribly over-leveled. By chapter 6 I was level 40 and sporting the strongest weapon in the game. And I wasn't grinding intentionally, it just happened as I tried to fill this quest's log. But, once again, enemies can deal so much damage, that it doesn't quite 'break the game'. And look, I'm not one to complain about optional stuff, but this sidequest is a drag and you'd be insane to fully complete it(And for what? An extra costume for Kisala?), I spent more time than I'd like to admit doing it in order to get enough points for Jaster's costume, and at times, I got sick of so much 'grinding'. It's a chore, it's not fun!

 Look, Rogue Galaxy is a fine game, but I don't think that the end result quite matches with the scope of the game's ambition. It was a great attempt, and it has a ton of great ideas, like the huge non-segmented planets, the weapon crafting and the Revelations charts. The combat system too was a great idea, but marred with poor design choices.
 7.5 out of 10