Target: Solatorobo: Red the Hunter

Solatorobo: Red the Hunter

Nintendo DS

By: CyberConnect2

Genre: RPG, Adventure

     From the same minds who bought you great RPGs like the .hack// game series comes their most unique title yet - Solatorobo: Red the Hunter.  Before we begin, lets get out some facts - this game is actually the "spiritual" successor to an old PS1 game CyberConnect2 released called Tail Concerto.  While these two games may share very similar traits, Solatorobo manages to retain an identity of its own.

STORY:

The story of this game revolves around an area called the Shepherd Republic - a group of floating islands above the sea of Plasma.  On these islands, there lives two different races - The Caninu (Dog people) and the Felineko (Cat people).  As you may have noticed, this game's world revolves around anthropomorphic animal characters, just as its predecessor Tail Concerto did.  Humans are non-existent in this world (no worries, it'll all be adequately explained in the game's story).  

Anyways, back to the story at hand:  You'll start out your journey playing as Red - an ambitious and brave 17 year Caninu teen who makes his living as a Hunter (basically a mercenary-for-hire sort of job).  He drifts around the floating islands looking for jobs along with his sister Chocolat (who is a Felineko) on their airship to make a living for themselves.  They eventually receive a job requesting Red to recover and important stolen document that has been stored on the huge airship Hindenburg (...no relation).  As Red infiltrates the airship with his trusty piloted robot DAHAK, he soon finds that there are no documents to be found - but instead he finds and acquires a mysterious medallion.  

Suddenly, a strange creature called the Lares bursts forth from the very clouds and attacks the Hindenburg, sending it into flames (STILL NO RELATION).  As Red makes his escape, he runs into a young fainted child and rescues her; though he may find that their chance encounter with this child may be more trouble than its worth...

Overall, not a bad story - simple sure, but it fits with the tone the game sets.  While the game's animation style and anthropomorphic animal characters may remind you of any Disney flick - do not be fooled, the twists and turns the story takes are actually pretty dark.  This game actually separates itself from its predecessor in that CyberConnect2 took a chance and went with a light hearted story with very dark undertones - a risky move considering they wanted to keep the E rating, but in my opinion, they succeeded.

Main Characters :

Red Savarin :

 

Always energetic and optimistic, Red always carries on with a smile on his face.  Despite the constant nagging and insisting from his sister Chocolat to be more careful, he always prefers to make things a bit more "exciting".  Although not very refined, he is very honest and kind.  With no memory of his own past, he grew up in an orphanage, where he met Chocolat - where the two became almost inseparable, eventually to the point where they became adoptive siblings.  After growing old enough, he and his sister left to make their living as Hunters and, thanks to Chocolat's fascination and love for all things mechanical, managed to scrounge together for themselves and airship, and even a robot for Red to pilot on his missions.  Aside from using the DAHAK as his main combat weapon, he also uses a stun bayonet for emergencies.  But as with every bright side, Red unknowingly has a dark past of his own...

Chocolat Gelato :

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As Red's 13 year old adoptive sister, Chocolat has a very tiring job of keeping their air ship and Red's ZAHAK in order - as well as the pilot himself.  Despite her age, she is very brilliant in fields of mechanics and engineering, justifying her role as the airship pilot of the duo.  Though Chocolat is a kind and sweet girl, she has an authoritative side she often uses around Red to keep his mind on the goal - making them more money.

Elh Melizee :

 

A child with a mysterious past and even more questionable goals.  Elh often has a cold disposition towards others, which often ticks Red off to no end.  Elh actually plays a huge role in the scheme of things, which earns her the attention of corrupt individuals who wishes to use her powers.  Red might think he knows her, but delving into her past may come off as quite of a shock...especially Elh's gender! 

GRAPHICS:

Now, true to most of CyberConnect2's games, this title uses beautifully colored cel-shaded graphics.  The area designs of this game are a mixture of both 3D models and 2D environments - a combination that actually meshes well together.  With fluidly animated 2D backgrounds to accompany you as you travel the world in your DAHAK, its hard not to stop once in a while to see just whats going on around you - it literally feels like you're moving through a living, breathing art piece.  With no problems of graphical pop-ups, the beautiful colors and vivid animations keep their charm throughout the game.  The cel-shaded 3D models are impressive as well, keeping the feel of 3D, while being animated like actual moving 2D art.

GAMEPLAY:

When talking about the gameplay, it can be a bit of a mixed bag.  The game basically centers around a quest system.  As you progress through the story, you'll get campaign quests that'll advance you to the next chapter once you've done it - and with each interval, different set of side quests become available.  Now, there's no worries of missing a side-quest or having to scramble to find out where to get them, because the game will tell you when new side quests appear, and where you can take them.  For the side quests themselves, they're not too challenging, and by that I mean that it almost borders on too easy - like there's this one mission, where all you need to do is get to this warehouse, and defeat all the cockroaches there (easiest enemies in the game by the way).

     Aside from that, you'll also find very little variation on the type of quests you take.  A racing quest here, a few fetch quests there, and even a couple of arena missions from time to time.  Now variation may be low, but its quickly solved by two factors - amusement and fun.  When doing these quests, you'll meet new sets of characters and NPCs that, even by themselves, have enough personality to keep you hooked on doing the quest.  You'll even get a cameo appearance from the heroes of Tail Concerto from time to time if you choose to do the side-quests.

   

     Now we get to the combat system: as you may have guessed, with the inclusion of robots and airships, its a mech battle styled system.  Not to say that this game rips off any other existing Gundam or Zone of the Enders game, in fact the style of combat in this game is radically different considering the mech-battle style.  Instead of wielding laser swords or guns or even giant cannons or burning fingers - you'll be duking it out the old fashioned way...by picking your enemy up and tossing your enemies like they're yesterday's trash!  Hell, you can even do an Air Suplex move on your unsuspecting enemies - never expected moves like that from a robot, did you?  Now, the enemies and mobs themselves are simple to beat once you get into the rhythm of the game, but then there are the bosses.  The Bosses themselves can be considered the most challenging part of this game - constantly testing how fast you can adapt to their ever-evolving battle techniques.  Basically the goal here - is to find an opening that would allow you to do your awesome suplex and completely own the enemy, or in some cases - throw a projectile back at them.  Trust me, sounds simple enough, but the game throws certain..."complications" down your road to keep it interesting.

Now, there is the choice of using the stylus to guide the DAHAK and Red's movements - but I highly suggest against it.  The game was basically made to be played by using the buttons and D-pad, so as you can guess, having to use a stylus would certainly be a problem.

There's also the added twist of Customization in here - as in you have the choice of buying new parts and additions to the DAHAK.  Now when I say "parts" I don't mean an equipment system like any other RPG;  each "part" would be a Tetris-styled arranged cubes that would fit into the core of the DAHAK.  When starting out, the DAHAK has very limited core space, which also limits your stat enhancements to the DAHAK (which is bad).  However, throughout the game, there are hidden treasure chests and invisible spots that will net you Power Crystals, which can be used to upgrade the DAHAK and open up more slots in it's core.  This might seem like a cheap shot at trying to squeeze more play time from gamers, but having to search for these crystals in the most unsuspecting of areas forces us to explore and deride from the main path - allowing more chances to take in the art and atmosphere of each area (the devious little game developers they are).

As a fun little tidbit - the main language of the Shepherd Republic people is French! So don't be surprised or confused when NPCs start saying French greetings or phrases to you ( I know I was at first...).  Probably the only instance where you'll see dogs and cats speaking french in a video game, folks.

REPLAYABILITY:

After you've finished the campaign of this game (which should take you about a week or two to finish, there'll be a second epilogue campaign waiting for you.  The second campaign also contains its own sets of side-quests and challenging bosses, as well as even more Power Crystals to find.  Now, the bad thing would be that after you've done both campaigns, you're pretty much done.  There's an extra boss rush challenge mission to try out after you're done, but nothing much other than that (unless you need to backtrack to find any P. Crystals you've missed).

However, if you happen to have a stable Wi-Fi connection with your DS, you may, from time to time, download the Downloadable Content Quests that will be released from time to time - furthering the story for the game for quite a bit.

MUSIC:

From the same composer (Chikayo Fukuda) who did the music for the .hack// series, its no surprise that the songs would sound very similar to the .hack// games.  However, thats not exactly a bad thing - the music for the .hack games were always very atmospheric and added to the tension and drama of the story, which is no different for how it is in Solatorobo.  With a dark and endearing story - Solatorobo deserves music like this.

FINAL VERDICT:

8/10  "This Job Was Pretty Fun"

Now, even with the faults this game has - it still deserves to be commended for it's pros.  What this gave me, was an unexpectedly dark story that had me hooked with its music and atmosphere (along with the relationships of the characters), a fun and unique style of combat, and challenging bosses.  While the anime-styled graphics and anthromorphic characters might turn some people away, I highly suggest giving this game a try.  Once you get past all of its faults, you'll find that there's a lot to love about this game's story and characters.

In fact, I almost wish this game was an animated movie instead, because of its great visuals and concept arts - its just that good.

And for those of you who are interested, but  worried about the monotonous side-quests...well, its an RPG, playing enough of those eventually grants you some kind of weird immunity against it (fact).