Yo Ho D'oh
Rogue Galaxy offers inter-planetary swashbuckling as only Level-5 can do it -- for better or worse.
Published: February 21, 2007
The latter of the two is the more game-like diversion and actually ended up being my guilty pleasure. After you've gone a few planets into the game, you'll unlock the ability to start using your own factories to craft items. The catch is that different parts of the factory build stuff at different times, so you have to use a strategy to create your template for certain types of items. Where you place the machinery along the way will determine how quickly or slowly items arrive at their final crafting stops, so there is some definite thought that goes into how you build things. If you're successful, shops scattered all over the game will then start selling that item, negating the need to sit through it all over again.
Newly added for the US are Insector tournaments -- or at least more interactive versions. You can now tweak the AI in addition to doing the usual monster rearing stuff that you'd find in something like Monster Rancher, but it's not quite as deep. Still, the ability to upload your monsters via memory card while at a friend's place to have them do battle is certainly cool, but I'm not ashamed to admit I honestly didn't spend too much time with it, as I've had my fill of bolted-on monster raising bits in my RPGs. No offense to the folks that toiled away adding things in, but Rogue Galaxy offers plenty of stuff to do on the site already without needing another maxi-game.
Stuff like the Revelation Grid, which allows you to drop common items looted from enemies (as well as particular stuff you'll pick up from chests or during the story) into a simple board with pre-set slots for item types. Fill up all the slots and all adjacent sections of the board connected by arrows will open up. These can range from HP boosts to new attacks to spells and the like. Comparisons will inevitably be made to the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X, but that's not a bad thing in my eyes. Also available are Hunter Bonuses, simple objectives like killing off a particular number of enemies in an area that help you fetch some serious cash later in the game and push you up the ranks of hunters (think the bounty type).
All of this, mind you, is in addition to the stuff you'll be doing in the main game, which is a whole lot of exploration and more than a little random encounter combat. The difference here is that RG is something of a quasi-real-time fighting system. After a short warning, you're thrown seamlessly into combat at which point you have a couple of options. No matter what you decided to do, be it attack with your secondary (and usually long-range) weapon or go in for a melee strike, use items or unleash a special attack, it'll all whittle away at your Action Meter. When it dips to nil, you have no choice but to block or run around a bit while it refills (if you successfully block an incoming attack, the meter maxes out instantly, so blocking isn't a bad idea, but some enemies can still mess with you).
Early on, you also gain the ability to suck up jewels spit out by enemies to kick off your Burning Strike attacks, moves that have you using timed face button presses to unleash more powerful attacks. The meter fills fast enough that you can use BS attacks fairly often, though since the pattern doesn't change every time, it can seem a little tedious, especially considering the damage that's done. Luckily, damage and healing can both be augmented with help from your party, who are constantly shouting out item or attack recommendations that you can activate by just using the shoulder buttons. Since you can tweak your party member's AI but not control all of them directly, it's a fairly cool way to allow or ignore coordinated strikes.
