In January 2007, Level 5, the company that made Dark Cloud (awesome) and Dragon Quest VIII (even more awesome), came out with a game called Rogue Galaxy.
This was an RPG in the Japanese Style but it had a lot of little things that set it apart: instead of going up levels using experience points, you put items into your “revelation flow” and the items in there helped you level up. (Of course, as you progressed in the game and beat particular bosses, you’d get awesome items that would help you develop new and awesome powers. And, yeah, you wanted to check every single container… you never knew where you might find something that would unlock something gamechanging. Well, they were rare. But you never know.) In addition to that, it did something that they introduced in Dark Cloud. You’d level your weapon instead of leveling your character and, once your weapon maxxed out, you could fuse it with another maxxed out weapon to make an even awesomer weapon… which, of course, then needed to be leveled.
On top of *THAT*, I understand that the game had some of the awesomest side-quests, like, *EVER*.
But I wouldn’t know because the PS3 came out in November 2006 and, while I was able to get my hands on one, I wasn’t able to get one of the backwards compatible ones. So I played Rogue Galaxy for a few hours on my PS2… but then I got my PS3 and my PS2 did nothing but gather dust.
The wacky thing about Rogue Galaxy though was that it came complete in the package. They didn’t do patches for PS2 games. While it was technically possible to connect it to the internet to do stuff like multiplayer, the PS2 network adapter didn’t come standard. So Rogue Galaxy didn’t have DLC. It didn’t get patched. When it came to you, that was all of the game that you were ever going to get.
And, like a fool, I never completed it. (Never, really, got off the ground.)
I always sort of felt like I missed out, though… It was a game I *WANTED* to play. The game was merely overcome by events.
But then my nephews got me a PS4 Store Card for my birthday and, in checking it out, I saw that they had Rogue Galaxy for sale. $20. Wait, $20?!? Isn’t that a hair pricey for a PS2 game? What the heck! Ah, whatever. I have a gift card.
And so I am downloading the last epic RPG that they put out before expecting all games to be able to be patched after the fact. The last epic RPG that they put out before knowing that they could charge an additional $5 or $7 or $10 for Just One More Dungeon. The last epic RPG for the PS2.
I hope it has aged well.
So… what are you playing?
(Picture is HG Wells playing a war game from Illustrated London News (25 January 1913[/efn_note]
I don’t know what the deal is with Dragon Quest. I’ve always thought of it as an Enix series, but I guess they’re just the publishers, and several different companies (Chunsoft, Arte Piazza, Level 5, Heartbeat) have done the actual development. But always more or less the same creative staff. I wonder what the story there is.Report
You got further than me, Jaybird. I never got Rogue Galaxy into my PS2 and it still sits in a big pile of unplayed PS2 games. I just recently had cause to plug in my PS3 for the first time in two years, and took the opportunity to play the Level 5 RPG, Ni No Kuni. Well worth the effort. This weekend I am putting most of my effort into murdering teens in Friday the 13th, The Game.Report
I cannot wait until I retire.
I have so very many games to catch up on.Report
Speaking from my own experience, retirement doesn’t work that way. I am farther behind now than I ever was when I was working.Report
I may need to win the lottery then.Report
I work 84 24-hour shifts per year. I still can’t get through half the games I intend to play. Weird how that works.Report
I suspect that would be even worse, at least for me. Today, the household budget somewhat constrains what can go on the “want to do” list.Report
For me, it’s more of a “with $100,000,000, I could convincingly fake my own death and then never have to leave the house again” thing.Report
Michael,
Gog is good about putting things on $1 sales. Who wouldn’t buy a good game for a dollar?Report
I’m not a gamer. Games are not what the household budget constrains.Report
I am continuing with Dark Souls II, which I decided to pick up after digging Bloodborne a lot.
It’s not quite as good, especially in terms of the atmosphere, and the graphics are slightly enhanced last gen, to boot, but the mechanics and exploration is still a lot of fun, and it does seem to allow for more variety of tactics, weapons, and character builds. Overall it seems easier, but I expect that is mostly just because I went into it knowing how to play Bloodborne and expecting to die a billion times.
I was originally going to get Nioh, which looks really cool, but it was $60 and DS2 was $20 and I’m cheap.Report
Just started Assassin’s Creed: Origins. I think it’s going to be fun. It’s more open world and your character is leveled now, so I probably won’t finish it because I’ll do all the side quests and get burned out. But it will be fun and it looks good.Report