Rogue Galaxy

My thoughts from playing and completing the American Version.

Okay, so Level 5 produced this game, under the license from Sony, this is done by the people who did Dragon Quest 8, Dark Cloud 1 and 2, and a half dozen other games, including some that are coming to the PS3..

The Game focus"s on a Character called Jaster, Jaster is a young boy living on a desert planet, which is fairly beautiful mind you, till one day, he meets the legendary Desert Claw, when his "town" is being attacked, being handed a powerful sword, he fought side by side with him, till..(well you"l have to wait and see...i wont spoil)

Needless to say this is a beautiful game, i absolutly was impressed with the animation of the characters the graphics, everything about it

It has a Dark Cloud feel to it, you freely control your characters, getting into random battles with partys of 3 allys including yourself, whacking away at monsters, but careful, if you charge in recklessly, you will die(see.. it takes skill..).. you can change your main controllable character if you dont like..

So the story has a rather focused point to it, it ranges from good/epic to silly/fun, but epic and.. needless to say at a certain point in the game towards the end, on this cutscene, i nearly died of laughter at how hilarious in a good way the scene was.

you can upgrade your weapons of yourself and your characters, do weapon fusions, collect rare items for your ship, hunt down legendary swords.. and lastly

you can do something called quarrys, these are hunts posted in a planet which i cant mention as its a spoiler, at different points in the game you can kill powerful monsters and gain points, theirs a galaxy wide ranking system(offline sorry =]) will you make it from rank 100 to 1? and be the best in the Galaxy... who knows?

also you get outfits for your characters.. and other things by searching and doing tasks, also theirs a few mini games and something called, well i wont spoil, but its good

it has everything you want out of an RPG game

completionists will easily speand 60 or so hours on this maybe more, average gamer around 40-50

pre order now, it rocks, in my opinion :)

P.S the Game has something extra after completing, a 100 hundred floor dungeon, which you cant leave, if you leave you will infact have to do the entire thing again..
if you love endurance, imagine a randomised dungeon with samey visuals times a hundred, thats a 6 hour task, well for me it took that long, for a reward no less at the end for a character of mine.. also if you stop and fight itl take longer, for sure

A fantastic RPG in just about every way, with large, varied planets to visit, lots of side quests, a lengthy main quest, unique characters with individual strengths and abilities, great visuals, awesome soundtrack(With some of the best english language voice acting you'll hear in an RPG) and some really impressive design work in the levels and characters.

It's a lot like Kingdom Hearts in it's gameplay, but musch better and with heaps more depth. The combat system is one of the most exciting you'll experience in an RPG I dare say, despite the battles 'almost' being random battles, but nowhere near as annoying thankfully.

Best of all though, at least to me, is the near total lack of loading screens while traversing the surface of the various planets. Where most RPGs would hit you with a loading screen every time you leave an area, Rogue Galaxy has none of that, being mostly unbroken with most loading screens only occuring prior to or during cutscenes and travelling to other worlds. It's a surprisingly seamless experience(For the most part) for a game that looks this good and has such large areas.

Everything here is nigh on perfect aside from some pacing issues with the story and some minor glitches(Mainly tearing) with the visuals at times.

You will love it. Buy it asap. Seriously.

Four weeks ago I hadn't even heard of the Japanese Role Playing Game 'Rogue Galaxy', and it was only after browsing through the RPG PS2 game listings on Play.com that I happen to stumble upon it and watch the trailer.

Not only was the trailer very appealing, but I discovered to my delight it had been developed by 'Level 5', most famous for its work on the SquareEnix title 'Dragon Quest VIII: The Journey Of The Cursed King'. It wasn't the developers involvement with the world-renowned Dragon Quest franchise that got me excited (good though it was), but its previous effort 'Dark Chronicle' (aka Dark Cloud II), one of my all-time favourite Japanese RPG's (not so much for it's storyline but superb gameplay mechanics). After reading a number of favourable reviews I decided to pre-order it (Rogue Galaxy that is).

I'm only nine hours into the adventure (at time of writing) and can confirm its one of the better RPG's of recent times. From the off it may have zero originality but it clearly has a very polished feel to it. The presentation, character designs, menu systems, music and voice acting all whiff of quality. The voice acting particularly is well above average, and Rogue Galaxy actually manages to be genuinely amusing. The visual style is also very appealing, with all the characters cell shaded and resembling that of an animè. The full motion video sequences are also incredibly striking, having the effect of really immersing you into the Rogue Galaxy universe (or should that be galaxy?).

The actual combat system is all in real-time, but without abandoning any of the ultra-traditional elements of the RPG genre (despite being a real-time combat system, it still manages to retain random battles without actually leaving the environment you're exploring). Each character level-ups as you'd expect raising their attributes (even characters who aren't in your three-man party, which is great because it stops an imbalance occurring). New weapons, armour and equipment can be bought at shops, but with a nice twist that Dark Chronicle fans will appreciate, all these items can be "fused" together creating new items. Also, each character has a unique 'Revelation Grid' where items and objects are put into slots gaining them new abilities and techniques (similar in style to that of the 'License Board' found in Final Fantasy XII). This isn't everything mind you. I've failed to mention the insect collection game and hunter ranking system. There is a lot to this game, and I haven't been introduced to all it has to offer.

Don't be put off by that though, because unlike Final Fantasy XII (or the majority of other Final Fantasy titles) it's far more immediate and accessible to get into. Whereas its possible to put in 100 hours in FFXII without even getting half-way through what the game has to offer (more is not always better if you ask me), Rogue Galaxy manages to ease you in quickly but without abandoning side-quests and mini-games as a result. I wouldn't go out and say Rogue Galaxy is a superior game to FFXII, but neither would I say its inferior either.

And that about sums it up. Rogue Galaxy as far as I'm concerned is probably one of the strongest RPG's on the PS2, and I think veterans and new adopters of the genre will both get a lot out of this wonderful game.

ive played a few rpgs in the past although, it seems square enix are losing there touch with final fantasy, they seem to have lost the magic it had with ff7 to ff9,its good to see that level 5 the developers of this and dragon quest 8 are bringing it all back,was a bit wary at first but after the first hour it shines through to be one of the best rpgs ever made,the voice acting is superb,each character has different personalities and bring something special to the game. So much thought has been put it into this game, it branches off at different points in the game with different stories each are either genuinely funny or quite sad...reminded me why i like rpgs after all the rubbish ones i been playing in recent years!

Yep you read right, this game plays alot like FFXII but better, the fighting is more action packed, the story is more easily accesible and the look is, beautiful, i can't belive this is on the PS2! it could easily pass as a next gen game.
Everything about this game screams 'Brilliance' not a single thing is wrong about it, buy now and you won't regret it