TOKYO – If you believe the rumors, Solatorobo is the sequel to a game that was never supposed to have one.
In a corner of its Tokyo Game Show booth this weekend, Bandai Namco is showcasing a playable demo of Solatorobo, a Nintendo DS action role-playing game that will go on sale in Japan on October 28. Solatorobo, which means "sky and robot" in Japanese, is developed by CyberConnect2, creators of .hack. It is the story of Red Savarin, your average cheeky young 17-year old and the misadventures he gets into with his powerful robot Dahak. Like almost every other character in this game, Red Savarin is an anthropomorphic dog, which is as likely to scare some players off as it is to attract others.
It's also quite likely that this game is the spiritual successor to Tail Concerto, a 1998 game for the original PlayStation that was developed by CyberConnect2. Bandai has repeatedly rejected pitches for sequels from CyberConnect2, but seems to have finally relented.
Solatorobois basically the same formula as Tail Concerto – plucky dog people run around piloting long-armed mechs and getting into hijinx. "Sky" seems to be the theme this time around, however, as in both versions of the demo I was surrounded by nothing but blue horizons and clouds.
The first demo demonstrated the story, and I navigated Red in his mech through an airship while reading through the occasional dialogue scene. Red can jump in and out of his mech at any time in order to access smaller passageways, operate machinery, or stun enemies with his pistol. In the mech, Red can lift heavier items as well as enemies and toss them around. It was fun for the ten minutes I was playing it, but it made me wonder – will there be any kind of special techniques or magic in the game, or other ways to fight? There was no menu I could access to check, but a lot of the concept art has Red wielding a sword, so it's certainly possible.
There were also anime cut scenes interspersed with the first adventure, produced by anime veteran studio Madhouse, famous for titles like Trigun and Death Note. From what I can tell, the story seems fairly standard – brazen youth gets wrapped up in saving the world, along with a colorful cast of characters and a mysterious cat-boy.
The other part of the demo featured th game's flying mode, where you have to collect six lost cargo boxes on floating islands using Red's mech. Jumping once and holding down the B button activates the boosters on his mech, allowing him to coast through the sky and slowly rise up and down until the turbo runs out. Since the islands were fairly spread out, I ended up dying a couple of times for badly estimating the distance I could cross without first landing and recharging.
The flying would be fun and simple, if not for one peculiar mechanic. On the screen, there was a marker noting R as the camera button, so I kept pressing the trigger and expecting it to re-orient the camera in front of me. However, what I really had to do was hold down the R button and then use the directional buttons to rotate the camera.
This was extremely annoying, as the camera had the tendency to suddenly get messed up in mid-flight, leaving me blind. By the time I rotated the camera enough, however, I'd wasted a ton of turbo, so I had no chance of getting to the tiny little island that I couldn't see. And since the directional buttons are necessary to rotate the camera, it leaves you immobilized and unable to steer or move up or down for the second or so it takes you to tweak the viewing angle, which is a lot of time when your turbo only lasts a few seconds.
I wouldn't mind if the flying required me to keep my wits up and be careful, but this just seems like shoddy design. Either way, the game seems interesting and unique enough, and even though I'm not really a fan of the character design, I'd be willing to give it an extended play just to see where the game goes in terms of mechanics.
As Solatorobo is CyberConnect2's first Nintendo DS game and the long-awaited follow-up to the first game it ever produced, I hope the team is pouring their collective heart and soul into it.
Images: Bandai Namco
