Rodea the Sky Soldier

released on Apr 02, 2015

A thousand years ago, Emperor Geardo of the Naga Empire sent an army of machine soldiers to invade the sky kingdom of Garuda. Thanks to the efforts of Princess Cecilia and Rodea, a machine soldier who promised to protect Garuda, Emperor Geardo's assault was thwarted. In present day, a spirited inventor named Ion discovers an abandoned robot that has fallen into disrepair in the heart of a scorching desert. Upon completing her repairs, the robot stirs to life and reveals itself to be none other than Rodea. Stunned to find himself in the future, Rodea learns that the Naga Empire is no more and that Garuda has known peace for a thousand years. But this peace was not meant to last, for the forces of Naga have returned to wage war against Garuda. Remembering the promise he made 1,000 years ago, Rodea takes to the skies to defend Garuda from the Naga Empire once again.


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I think every time a weird idea was forced into a Sonic game it's because Naka wanted to make this game instead and just couldn't.
Homing attack? Check.
Gun? Check.
Awkward interspecies love triangle? Check.
Also feels like the story is partially inspired by MegaMan or MegaMan X.

It's a shame that Naka got screwed over so badly by the Japanese and English publishers and the game didn't even turn out that good anyways. It's colorful, it's cute, the gameplay is pretty unique, the world design is a good fit, but as much as the game wants to be replayed for score runs, time runs, and exploration runs, it doesn't really play fair on any of those three points. You never really get a sense for which islands exist beyond the playing area and which ones might have hidden medals. The puzzle worlds are frequently set up in such a way that you can lock yourself out of progressing before you even know that that's possible, and a few of the enemies (spike spinners, ring shields, and especially the ring lasers) feel like casinos rather than honest challenges.

The concept of flying to whatever point you can click on seems pretty great, but sooner or later you'll end up so close to an object that you can't see anything else to click on. You'd better hope that you can tank a hit at that point, cause there's nothing for you to do but fall and pray. Also for some reason the cursor is affected by the depth-of-field shader so aiming at distant objects makes it blurry. In 480p widescreen, the Wii chugs down to single-digit framerates on the second bombing mission where many of the worst enemy in the game are waiting to cheapshot you.

Also wish I could plug in a nunchuk and use that to control the camera so that looking to the left and flying to the right was easier.

Played in Japanese, really enjoyed most of the banter during gameplay. Rodea's VA is Gojou Satoru from Jujutsu Kaisen, and Ion is Tut-turuuu from Steins;Gate.

If I were to try to describe what the game is, or at least at best as I can guess it was trying to be, is a game revolving completely around Sonic's homing attack, except that you choose targets by aiming with the Wii remote, and in which your reach is increased ten or twenty fold compared to that of a Sonic game. When put that way, the way you'd imagine things are meant to go is you homing attack to a faraway target, bounce off it, and repeat to the next destination. Thus most of your gameplay time would be spent in a perpetual attack chain. You're constantly "airborne".

In reality however the thing I most commonly land on is a vertical surface and there's no bounce that follows, which is apparently reserved for only very specific in game objects for some reason. Rather, my avatar simple hangs to the wall Mega Man X style for a moment before plummeting. Even if I manage to find another object in the distance to point to in time, the wall my avatar was hanging on is physically obstructing my avatar from making it to the next surface. At best all I can do is target the same wall over and over, hopefully making up some height in the process. I was at a complete loss as to how the player was actually meant to counteract in these situations. Giving the player a way to quickly turn the camera 180 degrees (such as with a press of a button or a flick of the nunchuk) seems like it would have been vastly beneficial and would certainly have improved flow. (Imagine being able to seamlessly traverse across ruins in a zig zag pattern like a wall jumping fucking ninja.) I found it incredibly laborious to use the pointer turn the camera all the way around to find something new to homing attack to- I'd start falling before I get a chance to complete such a maneuver. More often that not, I am so hurried that I inadvertantly veer my pointer too far to the edge of the screen, which as we all know causes the Wii to forget the Wii remote exists in the first place and requires a good five seconds or so to recalibrate. By that time, you've probably ejected the disc from the console.

The flight mechanics and roomy Angel Island esque environments tease me with the notion that there is something godlike to be experienced if I had both enough patience and an obliviously unreserved lack of standards to figure out a play pattern to make the game function somewhat as it was intended, however that may be. On the surface, at least, the game is completely unplayable.

A charming adventure as to be expected by my homie and now-convicted felon yuji naka. The game makes fun use of the wii remote to kinda make a free-flying 3D platformer type beat and it's honestly pretty solid all things considered. The vibes are also good and the characters are fun, just good times all around. Not really an all-time great on the wii, but for one of the last games to come out for the system it's a decent sendoff and I'm glad I played it.

The story of this game's release is so weird like the fact that this version only comes with the WiiU version because the publishers decided they only wanted to release a shitty WiiU/3DS port rather than the original game is such a damn shame, because the game itself is quite a fun game that makes excellent use of the Wii's unique control scheme

Rough around the edges in places but a very good game that excellently takes advantage of the Wii's excellent AR sensors without waggle shit. Some parts near the end are rough and it's kind of a one and done but it definitely didn't deserve the awful treatment from its publisher.

The swan-song of the Nintendo Wii implements free-flying exploration & action, gorgeous visuals, interactive dialogue, and simple yet intuitive controls, if the localization team did a subpar job.