yet another

I finally started playing Rogue Galaxy, which I bought over a year ago. I’m roughly six hours in and the story is already totally stupid. It starts off really cool, and the first hour was probably the greatest video game hour of all time… but as soon as the ship leaves Rosa, everything becomes retarded. The story reminds me of everything I hated about Golden Sun. Here’s a sample of the stupid plot:

The spaceship crash lands on a jungle planet, and the crew discovers that they’re out of a special kind of oil needed to fix the engine. But COINCIDENTALLY, the planet that they landed on is home to the Fire Fruit, which is where the oil comes from in the first place. So you venture off to find some fruit… except that you can’t find any. MYSTERIOUS. So you figure you’ll go to the (vaguely South American) tribal village to see if they know where the fruit went. Except that they hate all outsiders, so good luck trying to get them to talk. Also, there is a huge rock statue in the way, and for some reason you can’t just walk around or climb over it. So you go see a dude and maybe he’ll know how to move it (and he oh-so conveniently has the exact item you need to move the rock, a Zelda-ish power glove). Then you continue on except there’s another rock in the way, and I guess this rock is different from the other one because you can’t just move it with the gloves you got, you have to blow it up. AUGH. So you hunt down this OTHER dude who JUST SO HAPPENS to make bombs as a hobby, and he gives you a bomb. You know, for no reason at all. So you blow up the rock and go to the village, except that the guards won’t let you in. They tell you not to go to the springs, so OF COURSE that means you should go there. You get there and find two chicks, and you happen to save one of the chicks from a giant monster. The other chick says she’ll talk to the guards and let you into the village. You go to the village but OH NOES, nobody wants to talk about the Fire Fruit right now because there is a plague being spread by the Dark Fruit, and so to try and get rid of this Dark Fruit plague the villagers are going to sacrifice Chick #1 to the Star God and see if he’ll stop dicking around with the Dark Fruit. Except that you, as the hero of the story, can’t just sit back and let this happen even though you shouldn’t give a shit about these people anyway since they hate you and are constantly threatening to kill you. So you venture down the road to try and stop these idiot villagers from sacrificing the girl for GOD KNOWS WHY. Meanwhile everyone seems to have forgotten about the Fire Fruit or the fact that this story is supposed to be about being a motherfucking SPACE PIRATE, not a messenger boy for all these village idiots. AUGH. It just got so tedious and retarded that I saved and quit for the day. I can’t take much more of this “RPG Storytelling 101″ bullshit.

The first hour or so on Rosa (first planet in the game) was so awesome. SO FREAKING AWESOME. Then everything came to a grinding halt with the stupid planet Juraika, which is just a terribly uninteresting planet that doesn’t even fit into the whole “space opera” theme. I mean, the natives are literally jungle tribesmen who shun technology as a kind of evil heretic majick… so there is no technology at all. You’re walking around in a damn jungle. So much for the futuristic, ultra-cool sci-fi premise.

It doesn’t help matters that there is a cut scene like every fifteen seconds. Kill a couple monsters CUT SCENE. Walk forward a couple steps ANOTHER CUT SCENE. Stand in place CUT SCENE. Watch a cut scene CUT SCENE CUT SCENE CUT BLOODY SCENE. It’s even more ridiculous than Final Fantasy, but ten times worse because at least Final Fantasy cut scenes are interesting, add pressure on our heroes to save the world (or whatever epic climax is in store), and develop characters’ backgrounds and personalities. Rogue Galaxy cut scenes are gorgeous but totally stupid. It really is as though they took all of Golden Sun’s tedious dialogue scenes and turned them into beautiful-but-still-ridiculously-boring cut scenes. I’m watching the scene of Chick #2 (Lilika, if you must know, who is most likely going to join my party at some point because WHADDYA KNOW, I picked up some gear that only a Lilika can equip) talk about how Chick #1 is going to be sacrificed and how Boy doesn’t want Chick to be sacrificed because, um, well I guess because he just doesn’t. I’m watching this and going, who the hell cares? I don’t care. I want to be a fucking space pirate. I WANT TO BE A FUCKING SPACE PIRATE. I bought this game so I could live out my long-held fantasy of being the Pirate King Atomsk. LET ME LIVE MY DREAM!

I wanted to GO THROUGH SPACE and do PIRATE THINGS. Hanging out on a stupid jungle planet to keep these superstitious idiots from killing some chick that I neither know nor care about is not my idea of pirate behavior. AUGH. And the worst part is that it’s been going on for SO LONG. Those six hours have mostly been spent watching cut scenes of this retarded jungle drama. NOBODY GIVES A SHIT. I JUST WANT TO GET THESE FUCKING FIRE FRUITS SO WE CAN GET OFF THIS PIECE OF SHIT PLANET AND DO BADASS PIRATE THINGS!!!

Aside from the ridiculously stupid story, everything about this game is perfect. PERFECT. Which is why this game frustrates the hell out of me, because if only this game had a decent storyline, it would instantly become my number one favorite game of all time. Graphics are GORGEOUS. Character and monster designs are GORGEOUS. Battle mechanics are BEAUTIFUL. The save points, which also function as HP/MP restoration springs AND teleporters AND an item bank makes for very, very efficient gameplay. Battles actually require strategy, as opposed to button-mashing, so don’t go thinking that this game is super easy just because of these magical save points. The whole Star Wars theme is bloody awesome. The revelation system, the weapon fusion system, the bug raising system is all exceptionally awesome and are the kind of wonderful extra touches that Level-5 is known for putting in on their already great games. Just the fact that they crammed in tons of new content and features for the North American release, after the game was already a bestseller in Japan, shows how much time, money, and effort they’re willing to put into their products, and the quality really shows.

But that story… AUGH the story. It really is Golden Sun all over again. DAMMIT GUYS, I JUST WANT TO BE A MOTHERFUCKING SPACE PIRATE.

FUCK THIS JUNGLE. FUCK IT!!!!!

SPACE PIRATE, BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!