Rogue Galaxy

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An action RPG for the Playstation 2 developed by Level 5, released in 2005 in Japan and 2007 elsewhere, Rogue Galaxy can basically be summarized as a combination of Dark Cloud and Skies of Arcadia IN SPACE.

The story follows Jaster Rogue, born and raised on the desert planet of Rosa amidst the sprawl of galactic turmoil: purportedly for the protection of the people, the Longardian Federation has set up an occupation of Rosa, much to the locals' displeasure. Rosa, being a resource-rich world, has practically been enslaved by Longardia for the express purpose of combatting their rival, the Draxian Empire. Not caring for any of this, Jaster wishes to leave the planet in the dust and explore the galaxy, with the ultimate goal of becoming a space pirate.

Cue attack by rampaging monsters.

Not wanting to stand idly by, Jaster joins the fray, only to be outnumbered and conveniently being given aid by Desert Claw, a legendary bounty hunter. After repelling most of the attack, Desert Claw parts ways with Jaster after giving him his sword, and immediately afterwards Jaster is mistaken for the bounty hunter by a group of space pirates who invite him into their crew...

Rogue Galaxy was released to positive critical acclaim, spurring the release of a Director's Cut, which was also made the normal version for North American and European releases, subverting the general rule of the updated rerelease only being distributed in the original country. While it is a fairly solid RPG, the game still suffers from recurring RPG clichés, such as an overall weak plot, an unbalanced battle system, and laborious dungeon crawling.

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Tropes used in Rogue Galaxy include:

• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The unlockable outfits do manage to avoid Cosmetic Award status by providing a minor defensive bonus.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Three.
• Are We There Yet?: Many characters complain about the long distances required to get from place to place. Jupis actually spouts the phrase.
• Artificial Stupidity: "Block, you sons of- Great, they're dead again. *sigh* Solo Character Run, then?"
• Awesome but Impractical: The Burning Strike attacks. Yes, they're exceptionally powerful, but none of them can be used on any bosses: the most ideal target for them are the Mimics mentioned below, and you don't fight them that often to begin with.
• Badass Longcoat
• Bare Your Midriff: Lilika is more Stripperific than midriffic, but Kisala's default clothing is. Jaster too, in one of his armors.
• Beehive Barrier
• Better Than a Bare Bulb: Several of the worst cliches are lampshaded by the cast. Including Gladius Towers status as a Scrappy Level.
• BFS: You can't miss the weapon used to defeat the True Final Boss.
• Block Puzzle: The gate to Eden is presented in FMV cutscenes as a massive puzzle of giant, floating, glowing blocks. The player is never actually tasked with solving it; the Big Bad engineered an artificial lifeform to do so, complete with Ominous Latin Chanting as the blocks go whirling all into place. What do you mean, it's not awesome?
  • Of course, all the awesomeness is rendered moot when it turns out that he can't solve it. Though that arguably just makes it more awesome when Star King Jaster solves it on the first try.
• Bonus Boss: No self-respecting Bonus Dungeon would be caught without one.
  • And, to a lesser extent, some of the game's Quarries are more difficult beasts than others.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Ghost Ship, a large dungeon with several bosses. After completing it, the player can participate in a Pop Quiz for access to the "extreme" version, which is a 100 floors of randomly-generated dungeon crawling.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: If Kisala is in the active party, she may comment about how long the player has been playing, or how long it's been since they used the Save Point.
• Camera Lock On
• Captain Obvious: If you talk to Steve upon returning to Zerard for the Towers, he will comment that Jupis joined the party on that planet.
• Cel Shading
• Chest Monster: If a treasure chest appears to have a lock on it, better put your affairs in order before trying to open it; Level-5 has always loved their Mimics, but these are so Nintendo Hard they're almost Boss in Mook Clothing. We're not kidding; these things will eat you if you aren't prepared.
• City Planet: Zerard.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Jupis.
• Combination Attack: Every character can learn at least one.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Not only Standard Status Effects, but bosses are also impervious to your Limit Breaks, too.
• Cool Ship: The Dorgenark is pretty cool, being a traditional pirate ship that flies through space and has THE BIG GUNs.
• Copy and Paste Environments: You could cut any given dungeon to one-third its size just by cutting all but the first instance of a layout.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Valkog.
• Cosmic Keystone: Literally.
• Disc One Nuke: Jaster's Level 2 "Desert Wind" attack packs enough wallop to One-Hit Kill just about every last random encounter up through Chapter 6.
  • A few Level 3 attacks can even one-shot enemies in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Doomed Hometown: Okay, it's never completely destroyed, but it does come under attack twice, and there are always more Random Encounters popping up all over town.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Deego.
• Duel Boss: Lots of 'em. Including: Gale, Zegram, Seed, Johanna and, annoyingly, the Battleship Raid on the final boss.
• Earthshattering Kaboom: The animation of Jaster's combination attack "Supernova".
• Eldritch Abomination: Mother and the Demon Ship.
• Endgame Plus: The Bonus Dungeon appears on the Galaxy Map after defeating the Final Boss.
• Expy: A major antagonist named Mother, who is insect-like, her first form being similar to a cocoon, and who considers herself as a supreme being, with World Eater tendencies... I could swear I saw something like that elsewhere...
• Facial Markings: Jaster's birthmark the mark of the Star King.
• Friendly Fireproof: Unless they're confused. Then their attacks pack just as much hurt as the enemies' do.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: After defeating Mother, an evil alien that's very tenuously connected to the first two thirds of the game... Valkog arrives in his new ship out of the blue, and the evil Rune energy takes hold of their ship and transforms it into a hideous monster.
• Guns Are Worthless: While some of them do pack decent attack power, almost all of them run out of ammunition if the battle starts lasting long enough (but at least you always start a battle with a full clip).
• Hidden Elf Village: Arguably Burkaqua, Johannasburg the Illusory Oasis is a more traditional example, and there's also the lost planet Eden.
• Hopeless Boss Fight/Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Any battle against the masked man, Jaster vs. Zegram in Chapter 9, or young Dorgengoa in the Bonus Dungeon. The game cuts the battles short after a few minutes, assuming you aren't dead by then.
• Hot Amazon: Lilika.
• Idol Singer: MIO.
• Improbable Weapon User: While the characters' equipped weapons are fairly logical, Jupis's arsenal of special attacks includes eating hot peppers, really bad karaoke, breakdancing and more.
  • Simon has a few as well, including landing a big fish, and his Combination Attack where Jupis fires him out of a cannon.
• Infinity+1 Sword: Multiple, in fact.
• Interspecies Romance: Deego is a bulldog-man. Angela is a not-really-an-elf. They're an item.
• Item Crafting: Toady will eat and combine weapons to make new ones, but insists that they are "seasoned" by being levelled-up first. There is also the Factory, which allows the player to create new weapons and items for purchase in the shops.
• I Was Quite a Looker: That handsome young space pirate you frequently met in the post-game Bonus Dungeon? He's DORGENGOA from many years ago!
• Large and In Charge: Captain Dorgengoa, almost played for laughs with the big build up.
• Lazy Backup: The game clearly warns you in Chapter 2 that if your three party members fall it's a Game Over, but the Lazy Backup doesn't manifest until Chapter 7 when you get the ability to switch out party members at any time, even during battle.
• Leaked Experience: Experience is divided equally between all party members, with reserve members receiving about 2/3's a share as the active members.
• Level Grinding: Not so much for the character levels as for the weapons and monster data (you get... new clothes for Kisala for collecting all). In some places, it's a good trick to just fix the DualShock analog sticks in place with a rubber band and let the characters do the grinding themselves.
• Limit Break: The "Burning Strikes".
• Limited Wardrobe: While there are five costumes for each character, they are hard to find.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Genre Savvy players will anticipate this one all the way from Chapter 1.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Simon, wielding a rocket launcher, does this with some attacks; Deego calls in a helicopter assault that uses a barrage of lasers to the same effect, not quite Beam Spam.
• Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequest: You have to kill a certain number of almost every enemy to get a particular achievement/prize/what have you.
• Mini Game: Insectron, a combination of chess and Pokémon. It actually requires quite a bit more skill than the main quest (and most likely a guide to find the best insects).
• Money for Nothing: Averted; with no spells to heal your wounds, you will be constantly purchasing recovery items at shops.
• Mons: The Insectron tournament in Zerard.
• Now Where Was I Going Again?: The game recaps recent events while loading a save file and sometimes hints at what the protagonists are supposed to do next.
• Only Smart People May Pass: Occurs as a plot device, sorta, and again in the Bonus Dungeon, of all places, in order to access the extreme version of the Bonus Dungeon.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Simon might as well be one, he has the stature, the accent and almost the attitude, there's already people with pointy elf ears, so why not? There's even a dark elf, silver hair, dual-wielding, seriously.
• Petting Zoo People: Quite a few, such as the bulldog Deego, and all the fish/dolphin/shark people of Altaria.
• Pirate/Space Pirate
  • Pirate Girl
• Plot Coupon: A good collection of items are used to solve exactly one puzzle then forgotten about. This includes the "Power Glove" the player acquires early in Juraika, which supposedly grants greath physical strength to the wearer. Too bad.
• Rain of Arrows: Lilika's "Wild Thing" attack.
• Random Encounters: But without the Fight Woosh. A simple "Warning!" flashes on-screen, then enemies drop into the field.
• Recurring Traveller: Burton the obligatory hyperactive archaeologist, and Miyoko and Chie, both of which turn up in dangerous places.
• Ridiculously-Human Robots: M10.
• Save Point: Free healing, teleportation to other Save Points, and access to item storage.
• Scenery Porn: Alistia.
• Shout-Out: Steve is, looks-wise, almost a dead ringer for the robot in Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa, as well as The Iron Giant.
  • And he sounds a lot like C3PO in the English dub....
  • Additionally, the name Steve is a Shout-Out to various other Level-5 games, particularly the Dark Cloud series: in Dark Cloud, Steve is a talking slingshot, and in Dark Chronicle, Steve is a steampunk robot.
  • The Jupis Robot is essentially Gigantor.
  • Dr. Poccachio has the same giant schnozz as Dr. Ochanomizu.
• Single Biome Planet: All of them.
• Solo Character Run
• Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Averted with Jaster's "Seven-Star Sword" the Desert Seeker, which you get at the very beginning of the game and which stays far more powerful than anything except the Infinity Plus One Swords provided you upgrade it through crafting every once in a while. Averted further since you can also search for the other Seven-Star Swords but they're at most as powerful as the Desert Seeker, making them completely useless.
• Space Is an Ocean
• Space Sailing
• Standard Status Effects: But at least they're fairly effective on enemies too. The Mimics would be all but impossible to defeat without 'em.
• Stripperific: All of Kisala's and Lilika's outfits.
• Super Mode: Jaster's alter ego, being a descendant of the Star King, but it doesn't offer any in-game bonuses other than looking vaguely cool and maxing out his HP... which comes out to a 150-200 point increase at most at the point of the game it's initially triggered.
  • And his sword acts like a long-range attack whenever he's facing the final boss.
• Sword Beam: Jaster's "Illusion Sword" skill creates this. The skill doesn't cost much, either, but it wears off quickly compared to his other skills.
• Talking Animal: The Dorgenark's first mate is a talking cat.
• Those Two Guys: Henry and Robert, a pair of bumbling guards who are also creepy members of MIO's fanclub.
• Troperiffic
• True Final Boss: After a climactic, two-phase Sequential Boss, Valkog arrives in his battleship and tries to collect the Rune Energy. Instead, it sucks up him and the entire battleship, creating a gigantic, demonic monstrosity. The party must then split up and perform a Battleship Raid against the True Final Boss.
• Turns Red/Super Mode: The boss of Chapter 5, the Jupis Robot DX, is more powerful than its standard form, bears red armor, and Jaster's first comment is "Does he think turning red is going to help?"
• Useless Useful Spell: The Monography Shot is a gun that creates platforms to stand on, but is used only against the game's Warmup Boss and the first stage of the final boss.
  • You also need to use it with after freezing the waterfall on Juraika in order to advance the game.
• Valley Girl: MIO, annoyingly, in the US version.
• "Wake-Up Call" Boss
• Warp Whistle: Teleportation between Save Points.
• Wave Motion Gun: "THE BIG GUNs" is not an exaggeration, too bad they're only used once.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Seed, as well as Steve, a sentient robot who struggles with the notion of being his creator's "son" while simultaneously serving as an avatar for the creator's actual son who is actually dead.
• You All Look Familiar: NPCs, of course, have limited models, but most of them have their own unique names, oddly enough, at least in the English localization.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle
• Zettai Ryouiki: Kisala and MIO.