Nintendo Okie

The DS has had a great run but if you haven’t noticed, it’s slowly being phased out.  Kirby Mass Attack is probably the last DS title Nintendo will produce.  Third party support will linger on the system for another year or so but once the 3DS hits some big sales numbers this holiday, the DS is going to become a ghost town.  It’s sad but it has to happen eventually.  All things must pass; not even the dragon balls last forever… Sorry, a little DBZ leaked out there.  Anyway, the DS isn’t dead yet and Solatorobo: Red The Hunter is here to prove it.

What You Need To Know
Solatorobo is the spiritual successor to Tail Concerto, a PlayStation game from the late 90’s.  Solatorobo tells the tail (you’ll get that in a minute) of a world of islands floating above the clouds.  The story follows an anthropomorphic dog (get it now?) named Red.  Red is a hunter, which is basically a bounty hunter that does less killing and more warehouse cleaning.  With the help of his sister, Chocolat, Red flies across the cloud sea looking for adventure.  During a shady job to retrieve some documents from the Kurvas (the military power of the game) Red manages to recover a strange medallion and rescue a mysterious youth, Elh.  After a narrow escape, Elh informs Red that he is now linked to the medallion which he will have to use to save his world from a mechanical menace, Lares.  What follows is an adventure big enough to satiate even Red’s hunger for excitement.  You control Red and his robot transport, Dahak, to explore areas and fight enemies.  Combat consists repeatedly pressing A to pick up and throw enemies and using B to introduce some combo attacks.  Exploration and combat are the majority of the gameplay but there are some flying levels as well as some fishing and air racing mini-games.  Solatorobo uses some RPG elements in which your character gains hunter rank which dictates the quests you can accept.  You can upgrade the Dahak by buying tetris-like pieces which fit into your upgrade panel.  You can also open more slots in your panel by finding special crystals scattered throughout the world.  The game is played on the touch screen and a map is constantly displayed on the top screen.  Due to this, there are no touch controls in the game.

High Production Value 
The first thing I noticed of Solatorobo was its impressive production quality.  The game opens with an animated intro with fully orchestrated music.  Throughout the game, you will see beautifully drawn backgrounds and hear even more original music.  Each location you visit has its own visual style and color scheme which makes you feel like you are traversing a living, vibrant world.  Each area is populated by NPCs, some with quests and others with funny things to say.  While some of these characters stay in one place through the whole game, others you will meet in several places along your journey.  All this gives you a sense of a world much bigger than what you are see.  Often times, when confronted with the limited size of some mission areas, I got the sense the universe was simply too big to fit on a DS cart.

Poor Fighting System
My biggest complaint about Solatorobo is the repetitive nature of the fighting mechanics.  As I mentioned, to fight an enemy you push A several times to fill a meter and pick them up, then you can throw them with another push of the A button or start a combo by using B then A.  After 10 hours into the game I finally gained new abilities that widen my combat options; even then I could just use the d-pad to execute a couple different combos.  It’s sad the fighting is so uninteresting especially since there are unused buttons on the handheld that could have spiced things up.  If not for the review, I would have stopped playing Solatorobo after only a few hours due to the lackluster combat.

Great Story
Thankfully though, I was reviewing the game and I got to experience the game’s entire story.  While it may hit the beats of every other Japanese developed RPG on the market (androgynous character, amnesia, destiny to save to save the world, dark hidden past, betrayal and redemption) the story arc and quirky characters really drove me to finish the game.  I first thought Red, Chocolat and Elh were going to be the same cookie cutter characters I have seen hundreds of times before, but I really ended up connecting with them.  Solatorobo was able to make me both laugh and cry; if that isn’t a sign of good story telling then I know nothing about writing.  The story is told through written dialogue and the only voice acting is the expressions that accompany the changes in character emotions.

Forced Side Quests
I don’t mind side quests but if they are required to finish the game, then they ain’t really side quests.  Several times during my play through I was unable to start the next story mission due to my insufficient hunter rank.  I was then forced to take on several side quests to boost my hunter status.  On the up side, the side quests do have their own set of story arcs and interesting characters that could compel one to seek them all out.  However, forcing me to play them was an unnecessary roadblock on my path to the credits.  It was a rare occurrence but when I did fail a quest, I would have to play it completely over since there were no mid-mission saves.  Then again, the side missions never took me longer than five minutes.  What was most annoying about side quests, the dialogue setting up the quest was sometimes longer than the quest themselves.

Conclusion
Soloatorobo is a game that doesn’t know how to introduce itself.  I was initially surprised by the opening cinematic and accompanying music but then quickly bored with the first few hours of gameplay; even frustrated at times.  Overall the game is a slow burn that can drag in parts.  The world seems very large but due to some mission areas only spanning two or three rooms, I got the sense the DS isn’t the ideal platform for the game.  The high production value and surprising story are very strong, but the parts where you actually play the game are fairly weak.  The way Solatorobo was presented to me, I feel it would work better as an animated cartoon.  If you are interested in grand adventures with anthropomorphic animals, the story of Solatorobo has a lot to offer; if you are willing to put up with the simplified combat.  If you aren’t willing to invest some downtime between story beats, then this isn’t the game for you.

Final score –  
Total play time – 16 hours
Completed the story and some side quests
Review copy provided by Xseed Games