Alright, gonna give a short review of this game. Beat it like a little over a week ago and I have to say it's an RPG that I enjoyed very much. Compared to new RPG's in recent years. It gave me a very similar feeling as Skies of Arcadia did when I first played it and as anyone who knows me at all could guess, that's a very good thing. So, I'll just go down the line highlighting some different aspects.
Music: Excellent soundtrack. Now I'm even more glad the game came with a bonus soundtrack with quite a bit of music on it from the game. Doesn't matter either way because you can listen to any piece of music in the game itself. You can unlock them as you progress though you need music points to do so. Which aren't that hard to find if you explore well. Anyways, many tracks remind me of Skies of Arcadia music as well. Especially ones like To the Blue Sky. That is very reminiscent of the intro to Skies of Arcadia. So, put simply, this soundtrack is pretty awesome. Good stuff.
Art Style: Also excellent. I love the world design and characters designs of this game. Also the anime cutscenes of the game were done by animation studio MADHOUSE which worked on anime like Trigun and Death Note. Tis good stuff there. The world is comprised of floating islands, each one with different environments and themes. Also pretty reminiscent to Skies of Arcadia whose different continents were similar to real life countries and continents. The people of the world resemble different breeds and species of dogs and cats or Caninu and Felineko as they're called in game. And their ancestors being wolves and lions. Pretty interesting concept especially as the story of the game unfolds.
Characters: Wonderful and lovable. Like Skies of Arcadia once again. The only characters you really won't like are the villains but that's how it's supposed to be xD From the main characters down to just small side quests characters, they tried to develop every single one of them giving you a background story and a wide variety of personalities. It was obvious that someone put quite a bit of effort into really making the world of this game come alive.
Game Play: Very fun and fast paced. You do most of the exploring with Red on his robot and there's lots of stuff to explore on each island. If you're trying to collect everything anyways. The battle system mostly involves picking up and throwing your enemy with your robot or throwing projectiles back at them. You can customize Red's robot to your liking. Focusing on attack and defense or other stats depending on what you like. You can do combos with your throwing and special moves as you progress through the game too.
Story: Definitely interesting and pretty good. Nothing earth shaking or anything like that. Unless you count finding out that the world you've been exploring the whole time is pieces of earth. You explore one last piece of old earth below the clouds at one point and find out how it was destroyed. Humans got a hold of technology they weren't ready for. But yeah, it's similar to Skies of Arcadia here too where you have someone who wants to basically reset earth and let it restart from scratch. Interesting what species took the place of the humans after all this. But anyways, Red, the main character stops the guy wanting to reset the world and makes a promise that they won't let the world go back to the way earth once was. And if this generation can't do it then their children will and so on. Basically, as long as they don't give up trying then they haven't failed yet.
So, there you go. That's Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. An excellent RPG that could very well get a sequel if you play it all the way to completion and do the final quest, which kinda hints that there could be one. Will be interesting to see~ But until next time.
