An amazing game, and definitvely worth the few months of wait.
You are a young man named Jasper, you live on a desertic planet, with a priest that took you in when he found you as a baby on his church stairs. Your dream is to travel through space. One day, pirates came looking for you : "Desert Claw, the greatest bounty hunter ever" (which you obviously are not), and hire you to work for them. You decide to accept the offer, to fulfill your dream and leave the planet you were stuck on, despise the fact you might get discovered soon. From then on, your great adventure starts.
Let's continue with the outward appearance.
- Graphics :
The game is beautiful, the different planets are very differents in looks, climat, and population. Maybe it's a bit too much though, as they all have one characteritic... Watery... desertic... icy... greeny... What are the chances a planet is one big jungle, one big desert, one big ice land ? And what are the chances all of those you visit have a different characteristic?
The characters are very well modelized, and they have a nice look. (the girls are cute too). The character design is really nice.
- The interface :
This might need a little time to get used to. It's simple, but you might have trouble using the equipement menus. It is not easy to compare the stats between different weapons and the one you have equiped.
The equiped weapons/equipements remains in your bags, and since you have at least 6 characters all the equiped weapons and armor are still in your bag mixing with unequiped weapons, it also means you will see weapons a certain character can not equip. So it's confusing and messy.
The sound :
- Background music :
The music is either really good or okay. It won't bother you. If you happen to dislike a particular song you won't hear it long, since each planet has it's own theme song.
- Sound effetcs :
They are good, I don't know what else to say... A sword slash, sound like... a sword slash... A gunshot... like a gunshot.
- Voices :
i was actually surprised. The voices are good. In fact, Jasper's voice is better in english than in japanese (this is quite rare, and it is of course only my opinion). And more generally, every character's voice sound great, and match his/her behaviors.
There IS a bad point though. When you roam around the world, from time to time (every few minutes, sometime each minute) one of your party's character will say something. It's nice at first, but, it happens way too often, and the coment quickly start to repeat themselves. Those coments change with the situations and what you just accomplished but they are limited in number and after a few hours you'll have heard them all, and the few new ones will not make things easier on your patience.
The gameplay :
- Mouvements:
You can run around (not walk though, only run), the maniability is good. You can jump, so you have a few platforms sessions, with jumping on moving platforms and stuff. It adds more depth to the gameplay. The addition of the ability to jump is quite refreshing actually. You can jump from stairs, balcony, you can take shortcuts that way. You are not "stuck to the ground".
You can also swim, so you are not forbiden to walk in 30 cm deep rivers.
Camera:
The camera can be changed between 2 viewpoints. One close to your character, the other higher. You can modify the angle with the right joystick, and align automaticaly the camera behind you with R1. It works weel.
- Fighting :
You fight with using X or square, you can slash almost as fast as you press X, or shoot as fast as you press square, however, when shooting with a long distance weapon each action will use your amunition gauge, the gauge won't refile if you stop attacking and there is no reload button, you will have to deplet it completly, and then wait for it to refil once it's empty, it might get annoying some time, since after a fight you'll often have to empty it just to fill the gauge for the next fight.
The fighting is in real time so you will only control one character. The others will fight on their own, but they are quite good, they use enemies weak points (like some need to be jumped on before doing any damage, so you'll see them jumping on the enemies and then attacking). They won't always decide alone. For potion, and special abilities, they will ask you in combat, and you will have to confirm with L1 and L2, or just ignore.
You only control one character in combat but you can switch whenever you want, even while fighting.
- Special abilities (revelations)
A board more or less similar as FFXII one (in appearance only) is available for each caracter. Each "revelations" need a items to be completed. Items that you can buy/loot. By puting the item on the board you will lose it, but when all the items for the revelation are inserted on the board, the revelation will be available for use by the character, and all near revelation will become available for completion.
You will have to be carefull, since using an item for a character board is the same as "loosing it", you will have to find it again for others characters or others revelations that might need the same item.
- Extra :
There is a LOT of other stuff to do in Rogue Galaxy.
You can catch insect and feed/train them to get them stronger, and then fight in the insector tournaments, one of the most popular competition in RG world.
You also have a factory (you don't get it directly obviously), in which you can build stuff that once built (using the blueprint and the materials), will become available on the market later on.
You will need to model your factory to build those items. "here something to melt metal, here something to carry it etc etc". It's fun once you get used to the system.
You also have a bounty hunter ranking. When you kill special mobs (they are harder than the usual enemies), you gain points, that will increase your ranking. You can gain point also by killing a certain number of similar mob (exemple : if you kill 30 tarentulas you will gain 1500 points). This will make you come back to previous planets to get the remaining numbers in order to become the #1 hunter.
You also have from time to time, a challenge at the begining of battle
-> Finish it in 20 sec, with jasper only.
-> Finish it without using any items/abilities in 30 sec.
-> Finish without taking any damage.
-> etc...
If the challenge is complete, you will gain a medal that you will need for your hunter license.
There are a lots of other extras, that can be found everywhere in the game.
All of that to say that Roge galaxy is a very complete game, with lot's of possibilities. The story is original, and the space pirate thing, spice things up a bit. You can get this game without hesitation if you are a RPG fan. You will most likely enjoy it.