Rogue Galaxy (PS2) (gamespy)

- gamespy -

After quite a few hours of exploring Rogue Galaxy, it looks like a great way to start the New Year. Set across several massive worlds, Galaxy's excellent combat and character customization grounds the game, while the careful changes to developer Level-5's award-winning RPG formula uplifts it. The story starts off a bit too much like "Luke Skywalker Background v2.0" for comfort, and I'm concerned about how well it will play out after dozens of hours, but those are minor quibbles. Find out why this is one of the games I'm most excited about in the upcoming year.

Level-5 defined old-school RPGs for the current generation with Dragon Quest VIII and the quality of presentation here easily meets that game's high standards. The beautiful cel-shaded style exceeds them, if anything. It's a very different look from the current 800-pound RPG gorilla -- Final Fantasy XII -- but depending on your taste in art direction, it's better. Maps are seamless, with no load screens as you step from area to area or from a city street to a shop's interior. It sounds like a minor thing, but being able to explore freely without having to wait out the seconds as a shop or new zone loads makes exploring much more rewarding. Combat manages to stick to this goal of seamlessness as well by not allowing enemies to clutter your view.

When traveling through an area, warnings will flash to indicate combat is about to begin. Enemies can either spring from the ground or descend from the air, but there are no swirling load screens or change to the fundamental interface you're working with. Whichever of the three characters in your party you're using to explore the map will be the character you're controlling during combat, and vice-versa. It's an excellent way to retain the old-school pleasures of random encounters while adding the immersion of not being jolted out of exploration for loading or combat. Occasionally you'll be given a "challenge" instead of a "warning" before combat, which means that if you can meet some exotic requirement such as taking no damage or defeating all enemies within a set time, you'll gain reputation as an interplanetary bounty hunter (one of many side-quests).

Combat takes place in real time, and while it's easy to shift from one character to another when needed, it's important to note that the AI is well-qualified to handle itself. When a situation arises that's deeper than "attack or rest between attacks," a pop-up from the AI-controlled character appears, asking you for guidance. Pressing one of the shoulder buttons will let you make them, for example, use a special attack or heal someone in trouble. Press L3, and they'll just keep up the attack. Some monsters require charged melee attacks to penetrate their armor, while others' requirements are different enough that they're almost unprecedented for real-time RPG combat. The best example is the game's early mushroom monsters -- to defeat them, you have to jump on their heads and stomp them open (your AI allies will try to stomp on some heads with no prompting). It's something that can't really be done in a turn-based combat system, and is just one of the great features of Rogue Galaxy's combat system.

The Revelation stream is the game's primary ability upgrade system, letting you take items like resurrection potions or fire extinguishers (used when a fire attack sets you or a party member on fire, naturally) and use them to unlock abilities instead. Early abilities might only require a bracelet or a single fiery potion, but the higher level abilities require more and more items of various types. Different characters will be in competition for the same resources here, which makes it even more satisfying to pick characters and explore their abilities than it would be by default. If you want to focus on three specific characters, you can still end up with a very different party than someone who focused on the same three party members. Weapon skills are based on use as well, so swapping different primary and secondary weapons can create characters with very different skill sets.

Despite the beautiful presentation -- especially the high quality of the cutscenes -- the story is my initial concern for Level-5 fans. Your starting character is a young man with big dreams on an isolated desert planet -- a planet that's been taken over by the white-armored soldiers of an interplanetary power, no less. It's not a bad start, and the fact that he was left there as an orphan baby means his mysterious past will doubtlessly be fun to dig into, but if you've ever seen Star Wars, it seems awfully familiar. I hope that Level-5 has a compelling story here, but I'm afraid that it might have been left behind while trying to create an old-school RPG with some new gameplay twists.


After spending several hours with Rogue Galaxy, my only real concern is that casual RPG fans -- or people who don't generally enjoy the genre -- will be turned off by the unoriginal introduction or a deep distaste for random battles. If that's you, plan on giving it a try anyways, because it's shaping up to be a heck of a game. For traditional RPG fans, this should be a slam dunk.