I finally won this game so now I must review, I bought it when it was originally released in the United States, but I did not play through it the first time. On my initial play through I got annoyed and ended up playing something else, however this time I persevered and won the game. A game that is a notch or two below another of Level 5's Playstation 2 games "Dragon Quest 8" which was an absolutely amazing and beautiful game to look at. This one retains some of that games beauty, but it is a bit hampered by some of the game play elements and a few story ones as well. This game is about a young man on a desert planet named Rosa. His name is Jaster Rouge and his dream is to fly into space. Well he soon gets his wish as he is mistaken by a strange man named Simon and a robot named Steve as a famed monster hunter known as the Desert Claw. Well Jaster ends up on a ship called the Dorgengoa, a pirate ship where he meets even more people that he quickly develops friendships with as they have to fix the ship after a brief fight with monsters as they soon crash land on a jungle type planet. Yes, there are many planets with different environments to explore in this one. Even after it is discovered that Jaster is indeed not the Desert Claw he has made such ties that everyone who knows him talks the captain of the ship into letting him stay. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg as the crew will have to go from planet to planet trying to find clues that can help untangle the mystery of the planet of Eden, a planet said to hold unbelievable treasure. As I said for the most part the game was fun, fighting is done in real time, you have your side quests and you have a rather expansive story. The graphics are rather good, the characters look really good for Playstation 2, however I found some of the environments a bit lacking compared to the more lush "Dragon Quest 8". Fighting at times is a bit of a bother as some enemies you have to use different techniques than the norms just to inflict damage. You have your main weapon which usually consists of a melee weapon and a sub weapon that usually consists of a firing weapon though some characters have shooting weapons as their main and sub and in the case of the warrior lady from the jungle planet her main is shooting and her sub is actually a melee. They all learn abilities by collecting items. When you collect a certain set of items you gain new abilities. There are also sub games featuring collecting insects and creating weapons and items in a factory, but I never really scratched the surface of these things as there was enough to do without having to worry about these things and it is easy enough to win the game without creating the things in the factory. So another problem is that there is a bit to much to do as the side quests prove to complicated at times. The main story is good, but the ending of the game focused a bit to much on the daughter of the pirate Kisala rather than Jaster who is titled as the only one who can save the day at one point. The villains are somewhat interesting, taking the form of a corporate boss and his rather cute secretary and a mad scientist type. However, there is a lot of mention of Rune energy at the end of the game and the way it is mentioned one would think that this was mentioned throughout the story and was common knowledge, however other than the end I cannot recall it ever getting a shout out. Still, overall it was rather fun, fix some of its shortcomings and it would be up there with "Dragon Quest 8".
