"Rogue Galaxy" is a game I first heard about via YoVideogames ranking of PS2 games. It was a footnote in that lengthy video, but the way they talked about it made it sound like something I could absolutely see myself getting into. And it was a time, earlier this very year, when I needed something to distract me, but not something I could necessarily invest a lot of emotional energy into. What I got was sort of a buffet of PS2 RPG tropes and trappings, and as Max himself said about another game entirely: "what's your favorite kind of food? Mine's 'buffet!'"
The game starts simply enough, almost too simply, as it essentially recreates the beginning of "Star Wars" almost beat-for-beat. A young man with blonde hair receives a legendary sword from a mysterious old man, who implies he's been watching over and guarding the young man for a great deal of his life, while a pair of bumbling interlopers, one tall and effete, the other stout and blunt, search for a mysterious person who's brought them to this desert world. Only when they meet and hire a shiftless mercenary (who is sadly lacking a tall, hairy sidekick) to get off-world do things truly begin to pick up. And pick up they do!
A larger party is formed out of the pirate crew, and while each character can be seen coming from a mile away (there's a plucky young woman full of smiles and pep, the jaded mercenary man voiced by Steve Blum, a taciturn warrior woman, bumbling hacker shark fellow who's driven by money and emotionally stunted, and a shamed ex-soldier looking for his place in the galaxy), both the vocal performances and character designs do a lot to endear the player to them and make the motley crew come together as people you understand would gravitate toward one another. Everyone wants something, they take steps to get it, it's simple but it's surprisingly well-executed for the time-and-place it came out as the player hops from planet-to-planet (each one having a single biome, like 99% of sci-fi) and searches for pieces to unraveling a strange mystery of a lost civilization. All while being pursued by shiftless, greedy corporate interests that seem to be puppetting things from just barely behind-the-scenes. It would take entirely too long to go into all the details of this stuff, suffice it to say: there's a surprising amount to digest and unlock just in the characters, and that's not even talking about all the side stuff.
While the characters were surprisingly compelling, the motions of the plot itself are firmly in the territory of 2002. The plot is broadly fine, but the moments within said plot are an absolute hodgepodge, and seem to be taking the tack that if something was cool in one context, it will be even cooler in this one. The best example I can think of is: a friend of the above mentioned ex-soldier has had his moment of reflection and introspection, realizing the path he's on is a dark and ultimately wicked one, and goes to make things right. He does this in what I can only describe as "the moment when Spike and Vicious fight in the church in Cowboy Bebop," but done without any of the panache nor the build of that encounter. It feels like it was transplanted here wholecloth, but without any of the structure that made that moment resonate. Like the glut of Tarantino impersonators that came out of cinema through the late '90s, the writers of this game seemed to think they could just lift moments they'd seen in other media and transplant them here with no concern for build up. A small village of children is discovered in a sewer, you're introduced to their benevolent beast guardian, said guardian turns out to be from a long-lost kingdom, and the guardian and child leader bid a tearful farewell to one another, and this all happens in the space of less than an hour. The game feels entirely too much like it's in a rush to get through it's own story and onto the next thing, and very few of the big moments have time to breathe or sink in, but there's nothing of an unrelenting or breakneck pace, and the characters never seem to be exhausted or in-distress because of all the stuff that's happened that they need to process. It's just onto the next tragic, introspective moment, sometimes for a party member, and sometimes not, but that too leans into this notion that the game is a buffet: just go back for more sweet and sour pork once you're done with your egg rolls!
This is one of the most "buffet" games I have ever played, and that's not just about the gameplay itself. The gameplay itself is a fairly straightforward semi-realtime combat system based on waiting for a meter to fill before acting, but also being able to move around freely in a small arena space, the combat is one of the biggest surprises of the whole package as it has an unrelenting quality that is more evocative of FromSoft games than Squaresoft ones. Even late into the game, combat isn't something you can just shrug off by hitting "confirm" until all enemies are dead, the enemies pack a surprising punch and can very easily overwhelm the party if not kept in-check. And that's something I hated at first, but grew to love: the game's language is clear as if offers healing items at ludicrously low prices early in the game, you are supposed to use them as much as you possibly can. This game doesn't reward hoarding the best stuff for boss fights.
There's also a bug-catching sidequest, this being the era where everyone was trying for their own pokemon clone, and the bugs can be pitted against one another in turn-based battle, though it's less an arena and more "chess with abilities and stats," and while I loved the idea of it, I unfortunately found that, like a lot of aspects of the game, there's a hidden depth that doesn't really need to be engaged with, nor are the rewards for engaging with it all that rewarding. The opponents' bugs tend to be incredibly powerful, and the best way to power up yours are by feeding them various foods and trying to breed them with each other, but all that was the part I found time-consuming and with very little feedback about what certain stats or items actually did, it felt a great deal more like trial-and-error.
Which is also the best way to describe the item crafting. Far from the modern convention of slamming two things together at a toolbench, or even in the field, the party at one point inherits a whole-ass factory that they can then use to craft items out of materials. So far, so simple, but the way the factory is actually arranged is more akin to a rather complex puzzle game in and of itself: the materials start at one end, and then a conveyer belt must be constructed to get them to where they'll be combined at the other end. But items also need to be refined, and the pieces that do this have their own lengths of realtime that they take, and if they don't arrive at exactly the same moment, the entire process falls apart. And once again, if the reward for this were something that changed the game, or something that you couldn't get anywhere else, it might be worthwhile, but the game almost feels afraid to lock content behind its puzzles, and so I often found that by the time I'd gotten the right materials, the weapons or items I could craft were completely obsolete.
All this might not sound like I enjoyed the game very much, but there is something guileless and charming at the heart of it. It's also important to remember that this game came out in 2002, and in that context: I couldn't shake the feeling that it would be a favorite of all time with the benefit of nostalgia. If I'd spent a lazy, long summer playing this in high school, I wouldn't have been able to stop talking about it with my friends when school resumed, it would have been the talk of the anime club and I couldn't fully discount the moments that really worked. Near the narrative's end, every character is confronted with a great fear or a great longing that they've been carrying with them for the entirety, and while some feel like they had to be thrown together at the last minute, the ones that hit are surprisingly effective. The above taciturn warrior woman's especially, I found incredibly moving because it recontextualized a moment that even the player thought they knew all the details of, but didn't do it for the sake of a twist or a subversion, rather to illustrate just how awful and traumatic that moment had been for the character.
There are large swaths that haven't aged well, the tall robot's creator is a repugnant villain that the game treats as a misguided, tragic, grieving old man. It felt like there could have been so much more, especially the moral ambiguity of what he does, but the game comes down on his side so hard, it almost feels like I'M the asshole for daring to question his motives or his methods, and I think a big part of that is how we've begun to look at our elders and the decisions they made in entirely new lights, which is not something the game's creators could have predicted happening in the 20+ years since the game's release.
Ultimately, if you want a PS2 JRPG experience: this might not be the best, but it is absolutely the most. The combat is engaging throughout, the side material could fill its own games, and the characters come out far more likeable than not, even if the plot they are operating in could use another coat of paint. Or polish. Or updating.