Video Game / Rogue Galaxy

Second star system to the right, then straight on 'til morning.

"An eternal voyage through the murky blackness, sprinkled with billions of points of light. Each with its own history, written there in the dark. This is a story inscribed upon one such point of light. A story... of heroes."

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 happy 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.

Not to be confused with Rogue Legacy, or with Rebel Galaxy.

This game contains examples of:

• 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 spouts the phrase.
• Artificial Stupidity: While other party members thankfully prioritize using recovery items when making suggestions to the player, they're likely to get themselves killed in fights by often failing to block or dodge attacks.
• 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.
• Beast Man: Quite a few, such as the bulldog Deego, and all the fish/dolphin/shark people of Altaria.
• Beauty Is Bad: MIO jails the party not two minutes after meeting, because Lilika is a bit scary.
• Beehive Barrier: Some bosses and several monsters start off with a barrier. A gun Jaster acquires on Zerard will take them out, for a while.
• 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 tasked with solving it; the Big Bad engineered an artificial lifeform to do so, complete with OminousLatinChanting as the blocks go whirling all into place. Of course, all the awesomeness of the setup 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 Dungeon:
  • Altaria, the water planet level that was added to the international release, is a special planet that becomes available once Zerard is completed for the first time.
  • 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, with a boss fight every 10 floors.
• Boring, but Practical: Standing back and emptying a clip into your enemies is a viable method of handling random encounters, at least until your gun has to reload.
• Bottomless Quiver: Lilika's Bow and Arrows.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall/Fourth-Wall Observer: 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. This might be Fridge Brilliance, since she's not from the same dimension as everyone else.
  • After encountering a rival treasure hunter for the second time in the Ghost Ship, talk to Zegram.
  Zegram: Next time we see that long-haired punk, let's wring his scrawny neck. There ain't enough room in this game for two smart-aleck characters.
• 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.
• Chainmail Bikini: Kisala's costume that provides the highest defense is a two-piece swimsuit.
• Character Customization: The "Revelation Flow," which is similar to the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X except you need items to unlock new skills instead of sphere levels or tech points. Each character has their own custom Flow, with some shared skills and some unique skills.
• Chekhov's Skill: Fighting and defeating the final boss(es) is dependent on your familiarity and ability to handle not just Jaster, but ALL EIGHT of the characters of the party... Alone and without any support.
• 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.
• Combination Attack: Every character can learn at least one.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Not only 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.
• Dark Reprise: Valkog's Theme / The Beast Battleship.
• Developer's Foresight: A Plain Edge sword is used up as part of the weapon synthesis tutorial. To make sure the player has one on hand when they first meet Toady, the Plain Edge that Jaster starts out with is unable to be sold or put in storage.
• 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 Six.
  • 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.
• Dual Wielding: In addition to Kisala's dual daggers, Zegram can use his Twin Sword ability to temporarily create a second copy of his current sword.
• Duel Boss: Lots of 'em. Including: Gale (which requires a lot of blocking), Zegram, Seed, Johanna, and, annoyingly, the Battleship Raid on the final boss.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The animation of Jaster's combination attack "Supernova".
• Eldritch Abomination: Mother and the Demon Ship.
• Endgame+: The Bonus Dungeon appears on the Galaxy Map after defeating the Final Boss.
• Epic Fail: Millions of the game's currency, years and years of time spent not only decoding the Great Tablets, but also in developing the "perfect being" from genetic code, they finally manage to activate Eden's entrance and have the means to solve the Block Puzzle... and he can't solve it. All that time and money down the tubes for a being that can't solve the puzzle because he isn't The Chosen One.
• Eye Beams: Steve's Icy Eye Beams attack, fired while spinning his head around to blast all enemies.
• 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.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Some of the items used to unlock skills end up being visibly used by the character in the skill animations, such as the bell needed for Kisala's "Tones of Purity" skill.
• 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.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The Factory. It involves plugging things in... or something. You need the required items too, but the list is usually incomplete to add to the awkwardness of setting up your own assembly line. Between this, the fact that items have to be processed, and the fact that there are at least three ways the assembly can go wrong, including "materials did not reach assembler on time."
  • On a related note, the Frog Log can be pretty tedious to finish as well. While the player has to only create 50 weapons and analyze 100 to obtain a reward, they have to travel to the other planets quite often to get some of the weapons Toady wants the player to combine and it's quite unlikely that you'll remember which merchant sells the weapons you'll need. To add insult to injury, the player can't travel to planets freely until after chapter 5, so obtaining certain weapons is impossible for the first couple of chapters. To add more salt to the wound, sometimes Toady will want the player to combine a weapon with a weapon that can only be obtained via combining, which takes even more time as they might have to max out four weapons just to create one which means a lot of time spent on Level Grinding.
• 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.)
• Great Offscreen War: For the most part, the war between the Draxian Empire and Longardia goes on in the background, with the exception of a few skirmishes our heroes get dragged into. Despite this, it serves to drive several major plot points, including the backstories of several major characters, and the development of Valkog's battleship, which gets possessed and transformed by the Rune into the Final Boss.
• Hero Killer: Seed. Thankfully, the boss battles with him have a time limit, or you'd have a problem.
• Hidden Elf Village: Arguably Burkaqua, Johannasburg the Illusory Oasis is a more traditional example, and there's also the lost planet Eden.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Valkog, Norma and Izel arrive on Mariglenn with their battleship, and try to extract Mother's Rune for monster creating and profit. They end up falling into the Rune, turning into a giant monster, and get killed in the final battle.
  Zegram: Man, they've had THAT comin' for a while.
• 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.
• Human Aliens: Many characters resemble humans, even though the game is set in a completely different galaxy from Earth.
• 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.
• Infinite Stock For Sale: Many shops have limited quantities of certain items, and they are indicated by a quantity number on the shop screen. (This doesn't stop other shops later on from stocking the same items in unlimited quantity)
• 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 leveled-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!
• Lack of Empathy: The three major antagonists of the Galaxy Corporation:
  • Valkog is perfectly fine with extending war through the galaxy, as long as he turns a profit. And he blows off Seed's failure and later death as a failed experiment.
  • Norma is in charge of Valkog's dirty work. She taunts Rosencaster for wanting to use his experiments to bring his wife back from the dead. And after Rosencaster fails to stop Jaster and co. from escaping the prison, she personally puts a bullet through his head.
  • Professor Izel is one of Daytron's top researchers, and has no moral or ethical code to what Valkog assigns him to invent. He's able to rope Zegram into helping Daytron out by promising to resurrect his girlfriend, knowing full well he can't. And in the side quest on Alistia, it's revealed he's done horrible experiments on his own brother, Golba, who's left as nothing more than a head and torso in a robotic casing. And the mission Izel sent Golba to do on the planet was completely pointless other than to make Golba feel important, and ends up getting him killed.
• 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.
• A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Players will anticipate this one all the way from Chapter 1.
  • Red Herring: That man is definitely Jaster's father. But, the revelation is actually nowhere near as relevant to the story as who his mother is...
• 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.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Jaster and co. hunt down all three of the Key Pieces, only for Zegram to steal them and bring them to Valkog. If that wasn't bad enough, when Jaster and Kisala arrive to take them back, they put them inside slots that open up in the Tablets in a bid to keep them away from Valkog...only to activate the giant ancient puzzle, which is exactly what Valkog was about to do anyway.
• 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 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.
• New Game Plus: Any costumes you unlock during the course of the game (and in the bonus dungeon) will be available at the start of a new game.
• Nintendo Hard: Enemies dish out insane amounts of damage and there is no real way to heal yourself.
• 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.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: "The Relic's Song", which plays during the block puzzle mentioned below and during the final boss fight.
• Only Smart People May Pass: Occurs as a plot device, sorta. Valkog runs under the assumption that Eden's ancients created the giant puzzle so only the brightest and best may visit the ancient planet. In reality, it's a puzzle that only a descendant of the Star King can solve, as only somebody with that bloodline can defeat Mother.
  • Played straight in the Bonus Dungeon, of all places, in order to access the extreme version of the Bonus Dungeon.
• Optional Boss: Altaria, the Ghost Ship, and Ghost Ship Extreme each have unique bosses. Each planet also has Quarries, powerful monsters that must be hunted down in a certain part of the planet and then defeated.
• 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.
• 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 great physical strength to the wearer. Too bad.
• Rain of Arrows: Lilika's "Wild Thing" attack.
• Random Drop: You need items to unlock new skills, and at least for the early parts of the game the only source for many of the necessary items is random drops from enemies.
• 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.
• Required Party Member: Until chapter 6 is finished, the player is unable to switch out their party members due to them being important to the plot. This also applies despite the fact that starting with chapter 6, they can go to any previously visited planet yet the current party members are still required.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: M10
• Save Point: Free healing, teleportation to other Save Points, and access to item storage.
• 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.
    • Dark Cloud also happens to be the name of one of the Seven-Star Swords (once it reaches its final form, anyway).
  • In the Burkaqua Village there is a large bird with a somewhat familiar shape with an even more familiar cry: "Kweh!"
  • The Jupis Robot is essentially Gigantor. Jupis also unleashes it while shouting "Heerree'sss Joooohnnny!"
  • Dr. Poccachio has the same giant schnozz as Dr. Ochanomizu.
• Single-Biome Planet: All of them.
• 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: Traveling through space is basically the game's equivalent of sailing through the ocean that you would probably do in medieval Role Playing Games.
• Squad Controls: The game allowed you to set one of four "Team Commands" in battle ("fight separately", "pick same target", "go all out", and "step back") when you weren't confirming ally suggestions or issuing orders from the combat menu yourself.
• Status Effects: But at least they're fairly effective on enemies too. The Mimics would be all but impossible to defeat without 'em.
• Stripperific: The majority of Kisala's and Lilika's outfits.
• Super Mode: Jaster's alter ego, being a descendant of the Star King, in-game bonuses include: 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 and Gun: Most of the playable characters use close-range weapons for their main weapons and long-range weapons as their sub-weapons. Simon skirts the line (using flamethrowers as his main weapon), Lilika reverses things (using long-range bows for her main weapon and close-range hatchets as her sub-weapon), and Kisala averts it completely (using knives as main weapons and kicking with her boots for her sub attacks, though the boots serve similar functions as other long-range weapons, getting her close to distant enemies and providing effective anti-air attacks).
• 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
• 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: 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 Warm-Up 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.
  • The Monography shot can actually be used to deal a Percent Damage Attack to mooks by jumping on the platform over their heads. This is a good way of dealing with the otherwise difficult Mimics if you don't have a Burning Strike ready but is completely impractical in every other situation.
• Warm-Up Boss: The two giants, who can only be harmed by jump attacks.
• 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 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.

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