Across the Stars

The story behind Rogue Galaxy will be immediately familiar to fans of Japanese animation as many of the characters and conflicts within it bear a striking resemblance to the genre's best known conventions. This can make it seem fairly predictable, even to players who aren't fans of the genre, but an oddball set of characters and an upbeat presentation help, making the game feel like a fairy tale story of adventure and heroism set in deep space. Veterans will find plenty of things to do within the game while newcomers may find that Rogue Galaxy's friendly approach to gameplay is the perfect jumping off point for getting into their first action RPG.

Rogue Galaxy's story takes place in the Wilherser Galaxy, home to the Longardian Federation and the Draxian Empire, both of which have been locked in war for the last century. Rosa, a desert planet at the edge of the conflict, is drawn in when the Longardian Commonwealth occupies it in order to keep its rich resources from falling into the hands of the Draxian Empire. Under the Longardian's oppressive rule, the citizens of this world are restricted from leaving while its resources are used to support the war effort.

Jaster Rogue, a young, local hunter, hopes to see the stars and yearns for the day when he will leave the dusty streets of his home behind. A brief moment of mistaken identity will change Jaster's life after he manages to defeat a terrible beast that had come to invade his home with the help of two unlikely allies. Eventually drawn in by space pirates convinced that he is the famous hunter they were looking for, Jaster and his new friends will take part in a quest that will see them plunge into the secrets of the past on a chase for the greatest treasure ever known.

Landstalker

With the experience gained from developing Square Enix's Dragon Quest VIII, Level 5 has made changes and tweaks to the tested formula to create an action RPG loaded with plenty of options with which players can experiment. One of the game's most noticeable changes is its seamless transitions; such as going from indoor to outdoor locations breaks with a cinematic only when the player decides to travel to another planet. Combat also shares in Final Fantasy XII's real-time implementation by driving another nail into the "loading encounter" coffin as every fight takes place in the same space the characters are exploring, although it still depends on random encounters. As a result, the player is continually focused on being within the game as opposed to being pulled out, creating what can feel like a truly cohesive world.

Everything is viewed from third person with an adjustible camera, which can get a little cramped in closed quarter spaces or come across as limited when faced with battles that tend to go offscreen. A radar helps keep track of both party members and monsters, but being able to zoom the camera out further would have helped. For the most part, though, players won't be required to battle the camera system as they pan it around to take in some of the remarkable vistas offered on each of the worlds.

Level 5 has given its characters the ability to jump, climb up onto ledges and platforms, or swim across what would have prompted a side quest to find a friendly fisherman to take them to the other bank of a stagnant river. These moves not only make it feel as if the player has more control over his characters and is less limited by what appear to be puny barriers requiring a sub-quest to solve--they can in some cases also be used in combat.

While many systems raise the amount of experience needed to reach the next character level, Rogue Galaxy only raises it every few levels. When it does go up, it's usually a pretty big leap. The experience earned is also determined by how powerful the party is, so battles that once garnered hundreds of precious points may give the player only one for his trouble much later in the game. By that point, though, many other places will become available to clean out and as the quest develops, new monsters will also be unleashed.

Saves are handled by activating special teleportation pads located throughout each area. The player can save at these spots and activating any of them by touching the pad will also heal the party up and reload any of their firearms that need recharging. They can also use these as warehouses to store extra items that their already spacious inventory can't hold, such as potions or extra weapons. Players can teleport to other pads that they've activated on the same planet, making travel extremely easy to manage. As they get involved with hunting, they will also be able to trade in their quota of kills for points at these spots to help their hunter's rank and eventually unlock some nice prizes.

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Battles are all in real time and the AI will control the two other party members that will accompany Jaster on his adventures. The player can issue limited party commands, such as in telling everyone to go all out which will allow them to use healing potions and special attacks at will, or tell everyone to stand back and let the player handle the fight themselves. Each character can be selected on the fly during battle with items and orders easily delivered through the menu system that pauses the action when it is brought up.

Jaster and his motley crew of nice-guy pirates can dish out damage either by using their melee weapons or by blasting away with ranged shot from a secondary weapon such as a gatling gun, rocket pod, or drawn blaster. This easily gives the player plenty to work with, especially if they need to help out a fellow ally that is in trouble in the distance. That is, until they pull out their sidearm and unleash a stream of burning plasma in their direction. Who said pirates play fair? Ranged weapons, however, have their own limited ammunition and will need time to recharge when spent. These weapons can only be reloaded so many times in one battle, although it was never a problem since most come packed with plenty of extra shot to buy enough time to get in close for the real killing blow.

Most every action that the characters perform, whether it is dishing out an attack or using an item, will draw points from an action gauge that limits them from simply button mashing their way through. When the gauge is depleted, the player has to wait until it refills or guard themselves against attack. Successfully blocking a strike immediately replenishes the gauge allowing the player to continue swinging, shooting, or use their special abilities. As long as they have points available to them in the gauge, characters can perform any action that they are capable of doing even if they are sent flying by an attack. Jumping doesn't cost anything and given the realtime environment, is useful for getting out of sticky situations in order to catch a breather. In some ways, the action might remind some players of the frenetic chaos found in Raven's Marvel Ultimate Alliance or X-Men Legends franchises, or Grandia without the restrictions of its timed attack system. This helps to make every battle an exciting experience as it burdens the player with little else other than in making sure that the rest of their party is doing well.

Now, players are able to swap out a character's weapons on the fly thanks to a new option on the sub menu that the player can access at any time during battle. This feature becomes more critical considering that the party will encounter monsters protected by a field that they can't break unless Jaster uses a specific weapon. It's also useful in switching between weapons in order to add more experience to them when battle ends. The player can also use potions and other goodies in battle by calling up the same sub menu and as long as any character has action points, that character can be used to dole out what the party may need. Abilities are also accessed in the same way.

Combat flows quickly and is extremely generous to players who have enough potions. Unlike other RPGs that replenish small amounts of HP through the use of potions, Rogue Galaxy's cheapest potion delivers a whopping fifty percent when it's used with many other types healing everyone in the party, completely restoring a character's ability point pool, or resurrecting a character to full health and AP enabling the player to immediately order them into battle without delay. One of the reasons for this overwhelming generosity is that none of the characters have any real ability to heal, as with a spell, and that monsters can deliver some brutal damage rendering much of the party unconscious when the player least expects it.

Another edge that players can use in combat are the Burning Strikes characters can unleash. These are powerful combination attacks that dish out immense damage as long as the player can keep up with a series of sequenced button presses. By gathering orbs that are occasionally dropped during battle by monsters, a character's gauge starts to fill. Once it's ready, the player can activate it to smash whatever they are facing. Previously, this precedure had been a random occurrence, but it was redone for its release in North America to place it in the hands of the player. But as dramatic as these attacks can appear and as powerful as they can be, they're not all that useful especially when characters begin learning more and more brutal attack abilities along with discovering better equipment. This is especially true against the bosses in the game, when the Burning Strike gauge is disabled for the duration of the fight.

During combat, the other characters may also yell suggestions on which the player can immediately act as they are displayed onscreen. These suggestions usually refer to potions that they would like to use, or an ability that might help tip the scales in the party's favor. The player can ignore these, or select one before they disappear from the screen to help save the party from certain defeat. Although it is just as easy to go into the submenu during battle and manually pick out what you need to do, these on-the-spot suggestions help keep the player in the battle flow without interrupting what they might be doing.

And if the heat gets too much for the characters to handle, running away is as simple as...running away. There's an invisible edge to the actual battle that will end it if the player decides to leave and unlike Final Fantasy XII's system, in which the enemy can ruthlessly chase the character to the end of the dungeon, Rogue Galaxy will end the fight if it is possible. The game will ask if they want to quit the current fight, so players won't run the risk of accidentally stopping a fight. This can also cause one or two problems as the fight can occasionally chase around the area where it is actually taking place, causing run-ins with this invisible frontier.

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Just as in Final Fantasy XII, characters won't earn their skills by leveling up. Instead, the player will be able to guide their development as they unlock different abilities on a unique chart that each character follows. While it might seem intimidating at first, especially to players that are expecting their party to simply learn what they need as they go through the game, the abilities that are opened up are always helpful in some way and are there to help augment what the characters are already good at. Although learning more of these skills with help make many of the battles easier by providing much needed buffs and special attacks, there is no one 'right' path to follow as there are plenty of opportunities to start new paths to discover additional skills.

Each character has what is called a "Revelation Flow" that is broken up into small sections, each pointing to a series of others or just to one. For example, when one section is unlocked, it may open up two more skills that the player can develop. In a unique twist, unlocking each section requires the use of collected items that the player will find throughout the game as they fight monsters or find them locked away in chests. Some of these can also be purchased and used on the chart, while others will have to be discovered elsewhere.

Although there are plenty of skills to unlock and use during the game, the downside is that there is no real way to know what the next section might have. There is also no way to know what certain skills actually do until they are unlocked, and given some of the ambiguous names that many of these skills have, it can be a matter of trial and error before the player decides that it is worth sacrificing the only Stella Crystal they have in order to give Kisala that extra ability. While it isn't as extensive or as descriptive as the license board used in Final Fantasy XII, it also avoids the potential of turning each character into carbon copies of each other as each one has a variety of unique attacks and special skills that pertain only to them, or introducing the kind of surprise that buries itself deep within a sealed part of the chart.

Crafting a Better War Machine

The crafting system is easily one of the best parts of the gameplay and is, perhaps, the most innovative part of the title as it adds an additional layer of purpose to the many battles that they will be fighting through for most of their adventure. Players that enjoy mixing and blending together items to create unique toys of their own can easily lose themselves in the system that Level 5 has put together. At one point in the game, the player will gain the ability to merge two weapons together in order to create a more powerful variant, but only after it has been seasoned in battle.

As a character continues to be equipped with a weapon, it earns its own share of experience until it is maxed out. A weapon will then start to earn experience that goes towards several of its attributes to help strengthen them and when these are filled, the weapon is mastered. Fortunately, players only need to max out its default skill level so that it can be analyzed to see what a suggested match for it might be. A handy log is kept of all of these suggestions for the player to reference.

The player can also blend together whatever weapon they wish without following any of these recipes in order to find out what the result will be. Rogue encourages experimentation and the combination of most weapons will usually result in something that is better than either one. Players can easily spend hours upon hours fighting in order to simply improve their weapons to max them out in order to simply try and experiment. Although it can easily feel like grinding, the good part about leveling these weapons is that the amount of experience any one weapon earns is fairly consistent no matter what encounter the player fights through. Boss fights and peon battles will dish out the same experience to whatever weapon the characters have on them, almost urging the player to try out as many combinations as possible.

One other thing to remember about all of this is that all of the weapons are level based. Fortunately, it's not as despised as it could have been. Most weapons available to the player will scale with them as they proceed through the game and here, it seems to be used as a control in order to keep the player from creating weapons that would severely unbalance the game early on by allowing the player to create godly weapons while they are still level ten. It also adds an additional layer of detail for would-be inventors to be careful in putting something together that they might not be able to immediately use. The system will warn you when this is going to happen, though, including if the combined tool is going to be worse than what the character already has. It may not be the best solution and I'm not much of a fan of this particular mechanic, but it works here and really didn't get in the way.

Research and Development, For a Better Tomorrow

To add even more crafting goodness to the game, Level 5 has included a factory that the player can use to create some unique items that can eventually be purchased in stores throughout the game. It won't satisfy aspiring Rockefellers, but the amount of gold thrown around in many of the later battles makes it an option not to be missed. But before the player can use it, they have to have a schematic for an item that can be made--and then they need to build the factory.

Blueprints can be found by talking to certain people throughout the game as they share their knowledge on what they think might be able to make what. Once you learn what is supposed to make up a new item, you can remote into the factory from the party menu and start building it. By placing a variety of devices to deal with the ingredients you want to process on the factory floor and plugging them in, you can start making it. But it isn't easy as that.

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Ingredients are another thing that the player will need to be careful with, especially when several of them are used in the Revelation chart for skills. Some can only be found on monsters, others can be bought and stocked up, and some stores only have limited supplies of the rarer items. But without enough electric eels to feed the factory, you can forget about blending it with a space compressor to build that new toy.

There are plenty of schematics to find out there for weapons, new potions, or items, and the game keeps track of them in the factory screen, listing everything that you can try and make. Many schematics are fairly simple, requiring only two ingredients to make what they advertise. Others may need four ingredients requiring a variety of special processes to build out the item, and some of those may only be listed as vague hints of what they might be.

Universe of Discovery

The world of Rogue Galaxy is filled with a variety of mini-games and side quests apart from the main storyline for when the player wants to take a break from piracy among the stars. They can take part in the Insectron Tournament, trapping insectrons during their travels to build a winning team; this can add many hours of exploration to the game as the player attempts to capture the beasties with lures and traps. Certain locations will also have special insectrons that can only be trapped with special bait. After trapping an insectron, it can battle another to try and build up its strength, or it can be bred. There are also special traps that can be built in the factory to improve the odds of catching the game's more elusive bugs.

The player can also try and help Jaster become the best hunter in the galaxy by fulfilling kill quotas the party is given, earning points that can be traded in to improve Jaster's rank. There are also hunter coins that can be collected by fulfilling certain combat challenges, whether it be to survive a battle unscathed or to kill every enemy within fifteen seconds. With enough coins, they can earn licenses granting them a discount at stores or opening up special items available only to card holding members.

Further into the game, the player can also purchase--for a king's ransom in points--bounties on powerful monsters to send Jaster's rank flying. But while finding out where these beasts may be hiding out may be easy, figuring out what can be used to draw them out can be a challenge. Many of these are extremely brutal fighters and often demonstrate how challenged the party AI can be, leaving it up to the player to survive on his own and try to bring them down. As the player continues to climb in the rankings, prizes such as unique weapons or hunter coins are awarded for passing certain milestones.

As for the dungeons and other places that the player will be exploring, vast doesn't even cut it--and not just in terms of physical space. The game is huge in several ways, so huge and so filled with stuff to see and do that it can easily take hours to get through one dungeon. Some are truly massive. "Colossal" can't describe some of the architecture in the game, such as the Gladius Towers on the planet of Zerard. Even before the player reaches the point where they can start blending weapons together, build their first factory, or hunt their first real mark, hours upon hours may have passed, especially if the player wants to try and avoid missing any chests that may, or may not, be filled with unique items.

Skulls and Crossbones

Rogue Galaxy's cell shaded, anime flavored look brings the planets that Jaster will visit to vivid, playful, life with a large variety of colors and whimsical character designs. Much like what Level 5 did with Dragon Quest VIII, the environments and the creatures that the player encounters share a look that helps to create its unique presentation. It may not have the cosmopolitan kaleidoscope of detail that Final Fantasy XII has and the characters may not move their lips when they comment to each other during the game, but the animated settings and inspired environments work in creating a playful feel that is felt everywhere.

From Jaster's appearance as an eager adventurer, to Simon's mysterious, masked facade riddled with technology, to Zegram's distinctive longcoat and eyepatch, each of the characters stands out from one other with a host of colors and animated attacks. The animations even extend to their abilities, which can play out in a small, skippable special effects laden sequence. Even when idle, little details such as stretching or tapping an idle foot add to their personality in the game. Every planet and dungeon also has its own look. From the hi-tech systems covering the walls of Daytron's spaceship factory to the vast, open vistas and natural wonders of the water world Alistia, Level 5's artists have done a great job in lending everything its own unique appearance.

This attention to detail extends to the helpful screens that walk the player through the title's key features, to the new weapons are shown off as they are equipped, and the costumes hidden throughout the game help to make the characters look their pirate best. The in-game cut scenes do show off a bit more detail between the characters, but the full cinematic cuts look exceptionally good with the cell shading and help to tell the story as it unfolds.

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The comment system is has each character randomly say something while exploring, and it is especially extensive. Depending on where the player is geographically or in a quest, the characters' comments will change. They won't wear out your eardrum by chatting every few seconds, but for players that would rather explore in silence, an option is available to turn this feature off. Of course, they will then miss out on much of the game's colorful banter. It's an interesting aspect that helps in making it not only fun to play, but also fun to simply explore. Although some of the dialog can sound a little repetitive, most of it continues to lend a bit more to their personalities, from Zegram's gravelly cynicism to veteran soldier Deego's occasionally offered cautious, paternal advice. It is one of the game's aspects that makes it feel like an actual story rather than a dungeon crawl.

Supernova

Rogue Galaxy is packed with a lot of action oriented fun which might not appeal to RPGers expecting some degree of round by round pacing, especially when the action may involve the player having to find and hit a monster's weak point. While it's no platformer, combat can certainly test the reflexes of players hoping to keep their feet firmly planted on the ground, especially as enemies occasionally swarm around the party, killing its members before they even know what might have happened.

This is due mostly to the party AI. It works reasonably well and makes for somewhat capable fighters, but especially brutal enemies can turn characters into instant cannon fodder as they don't seem to guard all that often while running headlong into certain death. Often, especially when fully surrounded, party members can't deal with attacks from multiple sides and quickly die. Unfortunately, this happens frequently, especially against bosses that can dish out massive amounts of damage in the space of only a few seconds. The team command mechanics are extremely simplified, perhaps in keeping with the general tone of the title, but this also means that the player doesn't have as many options to play with while honing the party. I'd often find myself telling my party to simply back off from bosses and let me handle the situation myself, knowing that they would die often. Doing this at least kept them alive long enough to use a few buffs to help out as support. Unless you want to start juggling in between all of your characters during battle, don't expect much help in these climactic confrontations.

Some action RPGers may also find the game a little too easy. With the ability to teleport to any other pad on a particular world, players can easily zip back to a store to replenish their stores of potions before heading back to fight a difficult boss or take on the next leg of a new dungeon. It will never force the player to run through potions like water by throwing out massively difficult fights, and the system works well for what it does, keeping the player focused on enjoying the exploration and the battles.

A few other issues concerned the actual menu system. Inventory can get cluttered and it can be difficult to find certain items even when automatically re-arranged, since it's shared by all of the characters. There's also no way to load the game from within a game, forcing the player to exit out to the title screen and then select 'Continue' to start from another point. This can get annoying, especially if one is experimenting with the crafting system and would rather not keep the results.

Beyond the Stars

From the moment players start the game to when they begin building their first factories, one may easily gain the sense that Level 5 wanted Rogue Galaxy to be as accessible as possible to newcomers while providing challenges to action RPG veterans--and to this end, they've succeeded, filling the with a host of improvements and extras that can make easy to believe that it would consume the hundred or so promised hours in order to simply explore it all. This is truly a game of galactic proportions, with plenty of adventure shared through an exciting combat and crafting gameplay system that continues to feel fresh many hours later. Much like what Skies of Arcadia had done in sending would-be pirates into the clouds above a shattered continent of discovery, Rogue Galaxy steals the hours away with an exciting quest alongside the most unlikely band of pirates to race the cosmos in a quest for loot. Filled with crafty villains, sinister secrets, and plenty of engrossing action spread across five worlds, Level 5's trip beyond sky has something to offer everyone.