They say that first impressions are everything, and Solatorobo initially has everything going against it. For one thing, it’s got a strange name (one which apparently means “Sky” and “Robot” in Japanese), which makes it sound like a hyper-generic JRPG. Secondly, screenshots of the game look absolutely terrible, making the whole thing look like an ugly, pixellated mess.
They also say never to judge a book by its cover though, as further investigation reveals a game which is very pretty and anything but generic.
In a world consisting of flying islands and inhabited by races of anthropomorphic dog-people and cat-people, Red Savarin is an odd-job fox who’ll take on just about any paying job to keep fuel in his ship’s tanks and food on the table. There are the usual tropes such as a quest for magical McGuffins and a Big Bad who wants to blow up the world, but the game is surprisingly blasé about those elements. The game is actually a spiritual sequel to little-known PSOne RPG Tail Concerto, but don’t worry if you feel you’re missing anything from not having played that game (we’d be very surprised if you’d heard of it until now); aside from a few cameos there are no story connections.
Red mostly moves around the game-world on his customised mech, which is rather funny as nobody bats an eyelid at it when he rides it down a regular city street. He can also go about on foot, which is sometimes necessary to find objects and activate switches, but as he’s armed only with a pathetic stunner while on foot fighting this way is not advised. Although the game could be considered a JRPG it barely qualifies for the title; while you do gain experience points to level up there’s no inventory management, no powers to unlock and combat is entirely in real-time.
Combat revolves around the mech’s ability to lift heavy objects, and mostly involves looking for a convenient window of opportunity, before grabbing the opponent, flipping them over and tossing them about, repeatedly if necessary. It’s also possible to dash into opponents to stun them, grab them in mid-air to slam them into the ground for a combo attack, and even grab their own projectiles and toss them back. It’s a very simplistic system, but it means that the combat remains, fast, frantic and – most importantly – fun. It’s possible to customise the mech by inserting Tetris-like pieces onto a grid, allowing you to raise the mech’s defences and lifting capability, but given the overall low difficulty of the game we found it largely unnecessary. Puzzles are even more simplistic, being purely based around putting heavy objects on switches.
The majority of your time in the game is spent doing the aforementioned odd-jobs as a series of missions, selected from a special guild in a similar manner to games like Phantasy Star Online and Monster Hunter Tri. This structure seems unconventional in a story-driven RPG, but it works well for the purposes of portable play, allowing for quick bursts of activity. What’s surprising is that there’s a great level of variety to these sub-missions; you can end up doing anything from clearing warehouses of pest infestations to fighting sky pirates and being a bodyguard for a popstar. There’s something rather scary about the way the game introduces a new element, such as using the mech to fly in a series of Mario Kart-style sky races, shoot mounted guns and fish for giant crabs, then almost immediately forgets about it. It leaves you with the impression that the game has left many of its best ideas underdeveloped.
The most bizarre thing about the game, however, is that it’s actually split in two. After the credits roll the New Game+ option isn’t the same as what you would find in similar games; it is in fact an entirely new story, complete with new locations to explore, new abilities for Red and his mech which aren’t even hinted at in the first half, and even some deeper development of the characters and the backstory (which is good as development is very light in the first half, which isn’t helped by some slightly dodgy translation work and noticeable lack of care with proof-reading).
The graphics are simply gorgeous. They look much better in-action than they do in blown-up screenshots. The works of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are clear inspirations for the art style, with its lush use of colour and varied, imaginative environments. There’s a terrific level of detail, with both the background and foreground containing nice little touches such as vehicles moving around and locals chatting and arguing in a busy market. It’s little touches like these that really help to keep interest in the game world alive.
One other thing to mention is that the aforementioned sky races are available separately from the main menu, and support local multiplayer. There’s no ability to play this mode online, but new missions can be downloaded for the main game.
In the end, we can’t help but suspect that CyberConnect2 didn’t have much faith in this game, and so were actively trying to sabotage any chance of success. However, we urge people to give it a chance. While the game is trivially easy and it’s frustrating that so many of its mistakes were easily avoidable, the fun combat, huge variety of missions, great graphics and instant likeability make this a little gem of a game that comes recommended.
