Solatorobo: Red the Hunter Reviews

Does this case ever happen to anyone like you brought one game that you just happen to see in a store and for so reason. You didn't played it for awhile, then you start to feel more interested from looking at it’s cover. Lastly the last straw appear when you look up info or a track on it and you said to yourself “This is what I missed for awhile? I got to play this now.” This happen to me when I got this game with Pokemon Black 2 back two months ago, than a week ago finally playing it for the first time. I regret not playing it earlier but I’m glad I did play this game called Solatorobo Red the Hunter. It is part of the lesser known series called Little Tail Bronx whose first game was called Tail Concerto a cult classic on the PS1 from what I heard. Originally Concerto was going to get a sequel but never got the green light due to poor sales, but however after 7 years after Concerto came out with CyberConnect2 wanted to continue the series. They finally got the thumbs up to start another game which this game was born in 3 years of development. Before I start, I haven’t played Tail Concerto so I can’t compare it to Solatorobo to talk about its similarities and differences.

At the sky of floating Islands in the Shepherd Republic where it’s populated by dog like people called Caninu and cat like people called Felineko. Our main character an Caninu named Red a optimistic hunter who’s on a mission to get important files from a huge ship called the Hindenburg. After beating anything in his path and getting the papers, he also finds a medallion. However events get more chaotic when a giant titan like monster appear out of the bottom of the sky damaging the ship big time. Before escaping he also takes a Felineko child that passed out in the ship. Red and his sister Chocolat put the child in one of the bed in their ship while heading to Airedale to report back. They told what happen but they didn't get paid due to the files being burned during escaping. After doing a random quest to earn rings, you learn that the Felineko child name is Elh who ask about the medallion. Elh looks at the medallion to find that its already activated due to Red touching the center of it back at the Hindenburg. Afterward the Island is being attacked by mysterious creatures which Elh calls them Shades. After taking the one commanding all of the Shades. Elh tells Red that they after the medallion and they came out of the giant from earlier called Lares. Elh then makes a deal with Red to have him help Elh out on sealing Lares for a billion rings.

At the many Islands in the sky, you are able to interact with the NPC’s in town while accepting a quest from the Quest Broker to complete. These quests revolved around helping out a certain character or someone else with a task like competing in a contest, racing, saving people from someone and other types. Quests are very important to do not because of earning rings, but most of them are for increasing your hunter rank. The higher your rank is the more quests you can do like lets say you at rank 5 and it means you can do quests from rank 1 to rank 5 until you increase your rank to 6. Not all quests offer points to level your rank up and some of repeatable after completing them. At every Island, there is a parts shop to buy parts for you robot to customize the stats you want. Another shop at the first Island in the game lets you buy cutscenes after you see a specific one during the main story to view at your ship. At your ship, you have the option to head to the other locations your unlock so far, customize your robot if you like while you could customize even during battle, check where to go next, or head to the cabin. At the cabin you can check the library to learn more of the universe of the Republic and it’s history. To unlock more content for each subject in the library, you have to do a certain action when you play like you need to get tons of rings to read more content for culture and another one needs you to break tons of things to learn more of it’s lifestyle. Lastly there options to watch the cutscenes you brought, photo to look at, and composing music which you need to find music notes around the world to listen to any piece.

In customizing, you see a grid like system where you set any part for a certain stat for any slots you have. To unlock more slots, you use P crystals you find during your journey to have more room for what you have in mind. The stats in question are attack, defense, hydraulics that increase the speed of lifting enemies for quicker action, mobility for more movement and revive just in case you die and if you do the part dissolves after you check it during battle. Later in the game, you get more customization on your robot and the rest I can’t mention in this review due to spoilers.

In the gameplay and controls, moving around is self-explanatory using the D pad. The A button in non battle mode is used for a action if you find a switch or open a treasure chest if Red is off the robot. B button is used for jumping or tackling to shun a enemy battle wise. The Y button is for Red to get off his robot to move around to search for anything in the ground like rings or P crystals, and has a stun gun to stun any enemies to get away when he’s not in his robot. During a battle you can grab an enemy at front or behind to give you an advantage and repeatedly tap the A button to lift it up to throw it to the ground for damage. You can also do a mid air combo where you jump after lifting it and throw it right to the ground. Another thing to note that you can also grab anything that the enemy fires at you and you can throw it back at them. However there also different parts to play other than running in a robot. Some moments let you fly in a map. After jumping, you move forward to set it in flying mode with the option to do a spin around to move faster but you need to watch the gauge and if it reach zero you fall down which sends you back to where you last land until of dying. It restore when you land in a small platform to continue flying. Speaking of flying, there also a racing mode that has the usual commands like ascending or descending by down and up respectively, L and R buttons are used to turn where it needed to keep up, and pressing B to gain more speed in a boost until you lose what you collected from random energy balls in the course. Lastly others mode are crab fishing where you follow the commands from the top screen and the mine segments where you jump to dodge anything upcoming and garb any box that might have anything inside it.

Now lets dive into the good and bad aspects of this. I will give the game this, it has a really nice atmosphere to it. Solatorobo has this joyful feel to it that silently takes you into their world when you’re playing it for the first time and I couldn't stop playing it after the first day. It also helps quite alot that the overall story while having its cliche moments is well thought out with interesting characters, background information on their world from looking at the library and some interesting twists to throw one unguarded during their play through. It also helps that on visuals wise, it looks pretty good with each location looking different and interesting to the eye with really neat looking 3D cutscenes to watch with some animated FMVs in the openings. The gameplay isn't perfect and those looking for a challenging game will be disappointed because this is on the easy side and puzzle wise the normal cutscene straight out tell you what to do without you think about it at all. Despite that it oddly work in a way that I have fun toying around with your enemy and it never annoyed me about the easy side of the game throughout but however this still might turn off the person wanting to play this. The flying works in both in a map/ racing type, and the crab fishing is neat time to kill then not doing any quests. Thankfully the controls works while one point it felt odd using the D pad when you are trying to move perfectly during a time limited non flying race in one of the quest which you need to make the most of the time you given. I also wish they could've added more to customizing your robot like different weapons to use while still having the option to grab and throw them to add different tides to the table in battle. Lastly the music by .hack composer Chikayo Fukuda is pretty good with memorable themes and it get bonus point to the opening and ending song. Explaining why these songs are good won’t do these justice so I post the link of the opening song at the end of the review if you are interested to take a look on.

Overall while there are flaws that might ruin it depending on the POV of the person playing it. It works oddly thanks to a surprising neat story, a great atmosphere to it, fun characters, and the music making a good impression. Definitely give this one a shot if you are interested about this or want a play an interesting game on the DS.

The song from the opening with link below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJthgbSQqBY