Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1705 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2007-09-07
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: PlayStation2
• Dimensions: .98" h x 3.35" w x 3.74" l, .9 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
Level 5, renowned creators of Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle, are again, set to push the boundaries of the RPG genre with the unveiling of Rogue Galaxy, the third title in the series.

Fusing fantasy with reality, the setting is the Milky Way Galaxy, home of numerous planets. It is a place where rivalries and conflicts between worlds never settle; a place where arms dealers prosper behind the scenes of great wars, and a place where buccaneers venture forth across the cosmos, in search of great treasure.

Rogue Galaxy tells the story of the adventures of one band of space pirates who would one day become legends of Milky Way lore. Using top of the range technology to create epic battle scenes with an anime style, combined with incredibly detailed backgrounds, Level 5 has developed a games that challenges the traditional perceptions of the RPG genre, creating a unique world unlike any other.

Customer Reviews

Another winner from Level 5? I'd say so.
Rogue Galaxy is a rather typically plotted RPG in which you play as Jaster Rogue, a boy living on a desert planet who dreams of heading into space who ends up falling in with a gang of space pirates and going on an adventure across the universe to find an ancient treasure. Nothing terribly original or exciting here, but the game itself more than makes up for the relatively unremarkable plot.

With some stunning looking visuals that are reminiscent of earlier Level 5 titles Dragon Quest VIII and Dark Chronicle, you explore lush, richly detailed worlds that are not only huge, but have practically no loading times at all to break up the action, which is a huge plus in a game like this, as you won't be waiting for the (sadly, random) battles to load up. The battles themselves are quite nice, played in a sort of Kingdom Hearts real time manner as opposed to turn based combat as you'd usually get in Japanese RPGs, they do get rather samey after a while, but the boss battles are usually quite nicely done and challenging with it if nothing else.

It's a large, rewarding game that is a lot of fun to play through, with some interesting sub quests and diversions from the main plot to keep you going for up to 100 hours as promised on the box easy.

If you like Level 5's prior games, you'll get a blast out of this. If not, you could still do a lot worse than get this.

Best of recent times...
Having played nearly every top rated RPG of recent years, I was expecting this to be just another title along the same vein, after all, it's difficult to be truely innovative in what is essentially a well-worn format.

However, I was pleasantly surprised, and not just because of the scope of the gameplay. Sure, it can get annoying retracing your steps in an attempt to level up or chase down enough beasts to fill you hunt log, but the envionments are well rendered and much more varied than other RPGs.

The basic idea revolves around following checkpoints through dungeons to your ultimate goal, but whilst this may sound a bit monotonous (and sometimes is), there is a completely non-linear style to this title where you can break off play and focus on something else at any point you want.

On that note, the "mini games" are completely immersive - training your own battle insects to fight in tournaments, creating items in your own factory (where you have to contruct your own factory line in a sims-esque manner) as well as a beast hunting sidequest similar to finanl fintasy 12(but no where near as large). As well as that you can fuse weapons together, track down each and every item to unlock abilities and create new weapons and generally have fun exploring massive areas and fighting a large variety of monsters.

I'd say it's well worth the money, and it will easily soak up 60+ hours of playing time (over 100 if you try to complete everything).

A crash course in copy and paste gameplay
It's been a while since I played this through (I bought it on import, excited as I was about it...) but I still think I can remember why it really isn't worth the 5 stars so many people seem to be slapping on it.

Firstly, good points. It looks pretty enough, the characters particularly. The environments are also easy on the eye, but study them close enough and you'll realise that towns are composed of the exact same buildings over and over, identical, featureless streets... Sorry, we're still on good points, aren't we? Um. The voice-acting isn't too bad, and the fighting system is satisfying enough, at least to start with...

So, bad stuff. It's hugely monotonous and repetitive. Seriously, if I played a two hour demo I probably wouldn't notice, but soon after starting Rogue Galaxy, particularly when the dungeons start to get longer, you'll realise how unimaginatively designed they are. A prime example is later in the game when you tackle an enormous dungeon comprised of two interlinked towers, each with several floors. You'll spend hours in that place, no question, so it doesn't help that you'll be hacking at the same enemies over and over and seeing the EXACT SAME architecture repeated again and again. It's not a good sign when you realise you've seen the same crumbly staircase 5 minutes before... aesthetics aside, you lose all sense of where you are.

The monotony stretches to the battle system, which is fun in short bursts but quickly grows tiresome because it's just too basic. Hack hack hack, shoot shoot... perform special move to kill everything when you get bored. No need for strategy here, just an energetic thumb. Bosses are rarely anything more than an endurance test against a number of extended health bars, others are over in about 2 seconds.

The charming-enough characters are nevertheless the usual clichés - you have your hero with untapped abilities, your female lead with a mysterious past and your gruff mercenary type, all present and correct. There's even a shameless rip-off of the robot from Star Wars in here, complete with simpering British accent. Even in the RPG genre, which is famous for ripping off every other of its kind, Rogue Galaxy manages to set the bar for unoriginality. Nothing much of note happens story-wise until the very end, when the clichés come so fast and furiously I had to laugh to keep from crying.

This game brings nothing whatsoever new to the table - even the weapon synthesis and inventing elements are rehashed from Level 5's own previous games (Dragon Quest and Dark Chronicle respectively). I maintained through the endless hacking and slashing through identical corridors hoping the story would pull the game through, but it just didn't. Rogue Galaxy is competently made, which means a forgiving gamer will be more than able to see it through to its conclusion and gain some sort of satisfaction from the combat, but that really is it. If you want something with the slightest hint of imagination, look elsewhere.