This article was originally published in Italian on Thegamesmachine.it in 2015.
Let’s be clear: since Yuji Naka left SEGA, the quality of the series’ 3D installments has slowly but inexorably sunk, to the point of making it synonymous with garbage. It’s no secret to anyone, let’s be honest, and according to the writer, anyone who’s enjoyed the recent Sonic games dedicated to the blue hedgehog, released exclusively for Nintendo platforms, should take a long, hard look in the mirror and reconsider their gaming taste. Many believe that SEGA’s decline is directly tied to the disappearance of the team members who first nurtured the development of the 2D classics and created its colorful heroes. That legendary Sonic Team that many still turn to when they want to make a critical point – as if comparisons were even necessary – against products that are clearly released to the public after a rushed development process, like the recent Sonic Boom for Wii U.
That said, even Naka-san hasn’t exactly been living the dream since he founded Prope in 2006. I mean, he developed Let’s Tap for the Wii, which was charming and clever but forgettable and as insignificant when compared to other franchises Naka’s worked on in the past. What was needed was a new hero, someone to become the mascot for Naka’s second, independent life with his team. Enter Rodea: The Sky Soldier, a game that on paper was supposed to take players back to the good old days of video games, with its super-deformed characters and dreamlike atmospheres set in a world suspended between the clouds. In practice, it turned out to be a heap of unfulfilled promises, balancing between embarrassing technical execution and gameplay so riddled with issues it was broken.
The protagonist is essentially a mix of Sonic’s cool personality and the grace of Nights, the androgynous hero from Nights Into Dreams, the 1996 Sega Saturn cult hit. And just like the Nightmaren that gave the 32-bit classic its name, the platinum Rodea can glide through the air using temporary propulsion. It’s on this ability to take flight, with its limitations, that much of the gameplay is based, with mandatory platforming sequences and aerial combat that imitates Sonic’s recent PEGI 3 disasters all too closely. Perhaps out of solidarity for SEGA’s blue mascot, most of the mechanics proposed in the game are rendered unplayable by assorted technical issues. From scripted sequences that won’t start to sudden, inexplicable deaths, we also get the usual homing attacks from 3D Sonic games, clumsily reintroduced as the camera stumbles through a flurry of dramatic zooms and polygonal glitches, always hoping that the theoretically guided strike hits its mark.
Each level presents a path to follow, collecting glowing spheres and beating enemies of various mechanical shapes, and in this sense, it’s easy to see the design the developers had in mind, especially when one realizes that the level design isn’t so disastrous, polygonal rendering aside. The problem is that, at its core, Prope and Kadokawa Games’ latest creation is a rollercoaster of frustration due to the abysmal control system (by the way, the gamepad’s touch controls are unused) and the rage one feels when a particularly tricky section is ruined by bugs and unforgivable technical issues, even today. It’s truly absurd to think that such a product made it through the playtesting phase, where, at least in theory, it should have been sent back with practical advice to make it more enjoyable or at least playable in its entirety without encountering mortifying glitches.
But Rodea couldn’t care less; it prefers to shoot itself into vast empty rooms connected by huge, sketchy polygonal structures, covered by low-resolution textures, while the FPS counter stumbles and the virtual age on its back becomes ever more apparent. Because it’s true, there were a lot of things that could have worked on this disc, starting with the colorful, well-designed characters and the aforementioned level design that, if the game worked, could’ve actually rewarded the player holding the controller. Unfortunately, the unlockables after completing the twenty or so levels and the occasional (and simple) boss fights scattered here and there, just to tie things to the narrative setup, don’t do anything to justify the production’s glaring problems. For example, even the Nintendo 3DS version isn’t enjoyable as a whole, and it can at least hide behind the credible hardware limitations.
I understand that the programmer behind Sonic’s glorious past insists on social media that players try the original Wii version, which was included in the Wii U retail version, but I believe that my experience with Rodea will end here, after a flight on the Nintendo 3DS and a glide on the current Nintendo flagship. That the game was mistreated by the producers and forced into an adaptation for the Wii U by those who held the publishing rights is clear, after all, it was supposed to be released on the Wii back in 2012, but I doubt that a different control system could really revolutionize what’s broken and poorly done in the two versions I tested. After the dreadful Devil’s Third by Itagaki, we now have to talk about the disappointing Rodea: The Sky Soldier by Naka. Now, let’s just hope Mighty No.9 by Keiji Inafune is better!
