Rodea the Sky Soldier (Wii) Review

[Zera]

Sonic the Dream Soldier

Greetings, folks. This is my review of Rodea the Sky Soldier, a game released for Wii, Wii U, and 3DS worldwide in November 2015. I'm here to review the Wii version specifically. For those of you who've never heard of this game, I've collected a few good videos about it to save me some explanation.

A comparison of the Wii and Wii U versions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZd5CGZJRdU
A review of both versions by Briareos Kerensky - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEwnpJzPsA
An official interview with the creators - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rs64fdd9Nk
A good speedrun of Chapter 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txMu5HqUER8

The reason I'm reviewing the Wii version is because I've heard that the Wii U version, based on the 3DS port, is significantly different. And by different, I mean worse. I haven't played it yet, but apparently...

-The framerate is worse.
-The colors are desaturated.
-The controls are more complex and less intuitive.
-The power-up system is replaced by an upgrade system that requires destroying enemies for materials (i.e. grinding).
-There is a flight meter that limits your flight. In a game about flying. Think about that.

For these reasons, the Wii U and 3DS ports developed by Kadokawa games (and not the original developer Prope) have mixed to negative reviews and scores of less than 50 on Metacritic. Having played the Wii version, there is no way I could rate it that low. With all that out of the way, let's enter the review proper.

Intro: Rodea the Sky Soldier is a 3D flying action game - a genre which, as far as I can tell, doesn't really exist outside of simulations. It was made by Yuji Naka, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog and NiGHTS Into Dreams, and bears some resemblance to those games. Rodea is similar to NiGHTS in that it tries evoke the feeling and freedom of flight, but the actual gameplay is closer to a Sonic game, due in large part to several mechanics being ripped straight from Sonic Adventure.

Flying: To fly to an object, simply point at it and tap the B button. If you hold the button and swing the remote, your flight path will arc in the direction you swung. The game doesn't actually use motion controls for this but the pointer itself. While flying, you can cancel your flight by initiating a new one or press and hold the A button for a boost. This boost is a spinning move that drastically increases Rodea's speed and acts as an attack. It's similar to the spin dash in Sonic or the drill dash in NiGHTS, but more useful than either because it is continuous, yet not limited by a meter. Once I got a hang of the controls, I started holding the A button by default in the same way I hold the run button when playing a Super Mario game. I didn't just want to fly anymore - I had to fly FAST.

Items: Gravitons are collectibles like the rings in Sonic games. Flying into a path of them will have Rodea follow the path automatically - just like the light-speed dash from Sonic Adventure. Item capsules (also from Sonic) can contain gravitons, an extra life, or a round shield that protects Rodea from one hit. Destroying enemies earns gravitons as well, and you'll earn more if you create a combo by destroying them consecutively without touching the ground.

Power-ups: Rodea has a health based power-up system comparable to that of Super Mario Bros., with the main difference being that power-ups appear in fixed locations and respawn 15 seconds after being collected. The Power Wing is by far the most common power-up. Collecting it will improve the wing on Rodea's tail and turn his hair neon green. In this form he can fly in wider arcs and deal double damage by boosting. If Rodea takes damage, he'll revert to normal. If he takes damage again, his wing will break and collecting a Power Wing will instead repair the broken one. Without a wing, Rodea can only fly for one second at a time and can't boost at all. Yep, this form sucks. I'd actually prefer it if the game killed you outright, as breaking your wing in the last couple boss battles usually leads to an unavoidable death.

Rodea can also equip one of three "gears" that grant him additional abilities, which are only lost when Rodea's wing is broken. The Machine Gun Gear lets you fire rapid 3-bullet bursts by tapping the A button. It has a cool down gauge, but the cool down is so fast that you can almost fire as much as you want. It's range is the same as your flight range, so if you can't fly to it, you can't shoot at it. It's kind of strange to have a gun in a colorful, kid-friendly game about flying through the sky, but it's a good power-up.

The Slide Gear is my favorite power-up, as it takes Rodea's insane mobility and improves it even further. Normally when you fly to a surface you just stop (or automatically jump if it's a wall), even if you were boosting. With the Slide Gear, however, you can continue boosting for a full second, enabling you to slide across surfaces and launch yourself off level geometry. This is incredibly fun to use and a fantastic tool for speedrunners. Unfortunately, it only appears in about half the stages in the game.

The Lock-On Gear lets you lock-on to multiple targets before boosting into all of them consecutively. It's just like the light-speed attack from Sonic Adventure. Without a large group of targets it offers little benefit, so it's the least common power-up.

Stage design and structure: Stages are built as a series of floating islands with gravitons, enemies, power-ups, other mechanics, and most importantly, the terrain itself. Most of the time your mission will be to move forward, but at other points you may have to collect objects, hit a switch, destroy a group of enemies, etc. Each stage has 9 hidden medals to collect - 5 bronze, 3 silver, and 1 gold. Each stage also has three doors that can be opened with enough gravitons to enter a 2D-style bonus room. These rooms always contain some gravitons and an optional challenge for a medal. They can only be entered once and do not contain power-ups, so carefulness is needed.

After each stage, you are given two rankings - one for how fast you were, and one for how many gravitons you collected. I like this decoupling of the speedrunning and exploration aspects, so you can enjoy whichever you prefer. Getting all the medals unlocks an alternate costume for Rodea, and getting all S ranks unlocks the ability to play as the other R-series robots you fight throughout the story.

Rodea also features some enormous boss battles that I'm 90% sure were inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. There's no puzzle to beating them, though. Just avoid the dangerous parts of the boss's body, attack all the weakpoints, and that's it. These battles are enjoyable and feel quite epic due to their incredible size.

Multiplayer: The Wii version of Rodea has an exclusive split-screen multiplayer mode, where up to 4 players race through original courses to reach the end first. I didn't have anyone to play with, but I played the courses alone and it seems like this mode could be fun.

Story: The game's story follows Rodea, a robot soldier who is sent 1000 years into the future and loses his all his memory except his order to protect the sky kingdom of Garuda. Meanwhile, the leader of the Naga Empire, Emperor Geardo, decides to take over the world with robots because that's what bad guys do. During his adventure, Rodea is accompanied by Ion, a skilled mechanics with an airship who follows him around. The story is fairly simple, but enjoyable nonetheless. It can't seem to decide if it wants to be serious or comical, so the overall tone is a mix of both. I would have liked a bit of extra clarity on certain plot points (Why did the Naga Empire have to wait 1000 years for their new invasion?)

Presentation: Rodea has a nice colorful art style, and good music. In terms of polygons and textures, it doesn't look any better than a good PS2 game, but it has massive worlds with a great draw distance and generally smooth framerate. Most story scenes are presented through animated character portraits talking to each other, a dated but functional method. There are some CGI cutscenes, which basically show you what the game could look like on more powerful hardware. The game also has dual audio, so you can switch to the Japanese voices if the English voices are too campy for you.

Length and Replayability: The length of Rodea heavily depends on your playstyle. If you try to speedrun it and basically skip all the content, you'll be dying on the final boss in just a few hours. If you really sink your teeth into the stages and try to find all the collectibles, the game will last much, much longer. My initial playthrough took about 15 hours, and I tripled that for total completion.

Camera: The camera is pretty good for the most part, but it could be noticeably improved. Pointing at the edge of the screen turns the camera like in Metroid Prime Trilogy, which is great. However, the actual turning speed feels too slow sometimes, and I wish there was an option to increase the sensitivity. Thankfully, there is a lock-on feature that helps a lot when fighting a group of enemies. If you point offscreen at all, the reticle completely deactivates, which is really unnecessary.

Conclusion: Rodea The Sky Soldier is very fun game built on an original mechanic. The stages beg to be explored with their large scale, which really makes you feel like you're flying through a large world. But like a classic Yuji Naka game, Rodea is designed to be highly speedrunnable as well. Most importantly though, the main mechanic is inherently fun and the freedom of movement is refreshing. If you like Yuji Naka's classic works, arcade style action games, or simply love games at their most unique and interesting, I would heartily recommend this.

9 out of 10 (Awesome!)

Edited August 1, 2017 by Zera

[Radiant head]

Huh, didn't know they still released games on the Wii.

[Rxmonste]

Huh, didn't know they still released games on the Wii.

At 2015 no less.

This game's essentially Sonic but you get to fly, interesting.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Rxmonste

[The Envoy of the Beginning]

Huh, didn't know they still released games on the Wii.

At 2015 no less.

The game was completed in 2011 (i.e. the Wii U wasn't even released), but the publisher did not want to release it at that time.

Edited December 6, 2015 by BLS