I liken the J-RPG to the Amish. It's a style that almost refuses to advance and evolve with the world around it. Yes, the developers make tepid gestures, throw in some pretty pictures, bigger monsters, and attempt to make their menu systems seem more enjoyable than filling out a tax form. But in the end, how far has the genre really come? Most all of them star a bright-eyed androgynous village boy embarking on an accidental quest that will eventually have implications for the entire world and/or universe. The boy, dressed like a backup dancer for Cher, teams up with a mysterious girl who possesses unknown powers, and some sort of gay robot/pirate/man-dog. Once assembled, this ragtag group of adventures have their story told through cut-scenes interspersed between hours of monotonous menu-based battles and forgettable dialog with random townspeople. While walking around one of the dozens of villages, gamers will be treated to such vital quips as, "I'm excited for the carnival!" and "The chief is worried about the recent monster attacks around the village."

It wasn't long into the 32-bit era when I said, "Enough's enough" and wrote off the genre altogether. It seemed that I had played out every story that Japanese RPG developers had to offer, whether they took place in space, in medievil times, or a combination of the two.

And along came Rogue Galaxy. I'll admit, I was dazzled by the beauty of the game, not to mention that the entire game is based on space pirates. I don't mean space pirates in the Metroid sense. I mean pirates who fly around in space using bad ass wooden pirate ships, complete with sails. And then I discovered that the battle system was all real-time. No menus! I wouldn't have to go through the arduous task of selecting the character I wanted to use, then selecting "attack", then selecting the type of attack, then selecting the enemy I wanted to attack, then waiting five minutes until I was able to repeat the snooze-inducing procedure all over again. In Rogue Galaxy, when I hit the "Attack" button, my character will actually swing his fucking sword. Imagine that!

But Level 5 giveth, and Level 5 taketh away. The most gruesome of all J-RPG game mechanics was still intact: random battles.

I'll give them credit that the battles actually take place in the actual gameplay field, rather than magically transporting the characters to some arena made to look similar to the area s/he is exploring. But they're still random-fucking-battles, the laziest form of game design I can think of. And it's not just the laziness that offends me. It's the blatant psychological abuse. Imagine this scenario: I've gone through an entire dungeon and have defeated probably two-hundred giant spiders, three hundred poisonous mushrooms, and a handful of electric blobs, all of which pop up out of nowhere in this industrial building, which, by what I can tell, seems to be clean and clear of any sort of bug or fungi infestation. Finally, with low health and only one potion left, I see the final save/heal point at the end of the hallway. Freedom. I grab my mysterious healer girl and my gay robot/pirate/man-dog both by the shirt-collars (or man-dog collar), and start hauling ass towards the heal point. I'm almost there. I'm going to make it.

BAM!

Down drop a half dozen spiders and some of those blobby things who instantly crush me and send me back forty-five minutes.

And I use "minutes" here, rather than saying "the last checkpoint" because what I've done is essentially wasted nearly an hour of my life in a game that has very little to do with skill, and more to do with the fact that I didn't receive enough gold coins from the corpses of those fucking spiders to buy the amount of potions I'd need to make it through that gauntlet of sadistic torture.

So, do I like Rogue Galaxy?

It's got some great things going for it, sure. When you leave the first desert planet - which is far too similar to Luke Skywalker leaving Tatooine - you get the impression that you're embarking on an incredible journey. And for those who haven't been burned out by these games like I have, you may just have that incredible journey. But what I've experienced in the first twenty hours is more run-of-the-mill, garden-variety RPG cliches.

The combat can be truly exciting, especially when you feel as though it's a fair fight. Level 5 has done a masterful job of making it easy to manage your party by having them call out when they need something and mapping the item or action to a hot-button.

The almost complete lack of load times is also something that amazes me with an adventure this size. Being able to enter and exit buildings without pausing keeps the game flowing nicely. Which is all the more unfortunate when the random battles don't allow the gamer to play the way s/he wants to.

In the end, I suppose Rogue Galaxy's an above-average title that could have been made better by breaking out of the mold. But keep in mind that I'm a pretty jaded guy when it comes to J-RPGs. If you're happy with the way these games play out, there's a ton to love in Rogue Galaxy. It's a beautiful game with surprisingly fantastic voice-acting and spectacular scenery. It just doesn't add enough to the genre I grew weary of a decade ago.



Article By: John