ere we are. Finally, one of my most anticipated games of the year is finally available. Produced by Yuji Naka of Sonic Team fame, this purported smooth, blended mix of classic Sonic the Hedgehog and NiGHTS: Into Dreams had been in development for something along the lines of five years or so—that's longer than games like The Last of us, and that game was pretty sweet, from what everyone tells me.
But you know what's not sweet at all? Not even a little sugary; not even, like, an artificial sweet-n-low kind of sweet? If you guessed NIS America's Rodea: The Sky Soldier, then you did it, you won. Moreover, the whole ordeal almost breaks my heart.
What was supposed to be an amazing, classic-style 3D adventure with all of the hallmarks of some of the best gaming from the 16 and 32-bit eras, has ended up a collapsed, hollow shell of what could have been. It's the equivalent of that flat pop you just bought at the store, the stale cake that cost you eight bucks, or even the seventeen pokes you got when you got your bloodwork done. It could even be the foot you had amputated only to have found out you didn't need the procedure after all—in short, Rodea is bad.
Well, we need to get this review on the road, so let's get the good stuff out of the way. Because despite its atrocious elements, there's still stuff to like about Rodea. First off, the art direction is incredible. One look at the promotional art will definitely get you interested, if not smitten with the overall aesthetic of a world in the clouds.
The anime-styled visuals are clean and interesting and the mechanical design throughout is almost Miyazaki-level at times, especially in the concept art. Having both English and Japanese voice-overs is welcome too, as the English delivery does leave a lot to be desired.
Another thing I rather enjoyed was the leveling aspect to Rodea; using collected parts found through enemy destruction and stage exploration, you can upgrade Rodea's flying, speed, attack power, life and so forth. More or less, that's the end of it—it all falls apart from there.
The controls in Rodea are perhaps the worst I've yet encountered on the Wii U, no contest. In fact, Rodea's controls could be the worst I've ended up muddling through this century.
This includes the clunkiness of The Wonderful 101 and even the rage-inducing frictionless-feeling handling of 3D Pixel Racing. It's truly hard to fathom how things could have gone so very wrong when it had gone so right in the past; Playing Sonic Adventure was miles, even lightyears better than Rodea. NiGHTS: Into Dreams came out nearly 20 years ago on a system that had a terrible time with 3D games and still ended up handling better than most on the system. It's baffling how things have gone so awry in Rodea, especially considering the time it was left in the oven, not to mention its developer pedigree.
I never really come to grips with the controls since they are so completely unintuitive and sloppy. I think the idea is that you can fly by tapping the A button, and you'll make your way to a location marked by a reticle that you aim with the right analog stick in the air. Stuff can also be semi-auto targeted for attack, which is enabled by the B button a-la-Sonic, but since the camera is complete garbage, this is never a sure thing. Rodea also gets a gun, which can be aimed fairly well from a static point on the ground, but not at all in motion.
Game progression takes place over the course of several sonic-style courses in which Rodea runs, jumps and flies NiGHTS-style. Gems known as Gravitons can be collected, and traveled along by using the attack function at the right angles, which, half the time, fail anyway.
Bells act as checkpoints in the event of death and various warp points get Rodea to other subsections of the stages in question. Throughout it all, there's a fetch quest here and a boss fight there to spice things up but in the end, it's really just about collecting as many Gravitons as possible and getting through as quickly as you can. Of course, the stage design is almost as bad as the controls, so frustration is bound to mount very quickly as a result of all of these negative factors; I can't play more than an hour at a time if I'm hoping to come out of the session without a stress and frustration-induced migraine.
The music doesn't help either. It's repetitive, boring and comes off as a poor attempt at emulating Sega's signature style from the 90's. AM2 and Sonic Team had pieces that were simply astonishing. Meanwhile, Rodea's OST is pretty much rubbish.
We only got access to the Wii U version for review, so the 3DS release or special Wii version that can bundled with the physical release might actually play better than this one... but I'm not especially confident. There's probably a very good reason Rodea never went to the original Wii and, if the results on Wii U are anything to go by, maybe we should have been spared this monstrosity for better or for worse.
It truly pains me to say it, but Rodea: The Sky Soldier should never have been released and should probably have been canceled, especially if this production quality is as good as it could possibly be after over five years. NIS America is definitely better than this; games like The Witch and the Hundred Knight demonstrate that they can produce and publish highly polished, fun stuff. Rodea: The Sky Soldier just doesn't fit that bill though. If you really want to punish yourself with some of the most mishandled content I've seen in a very long time, wait until it hits a price point of $20 or less; as a CAD$75.00 retail release, this is one game that absolutely isn't worth the price of admission.
