But then, Solatorobo was probably never going to be a best-seller anyway; it's the spiritual sequel to a little-known PS1 RPG called Tail Concerto, which was released 13 years ago back when Namco Bandai was just plain Bandai, so it can hardly rely on brand recognition. It's a lovely game, though, and a beautifully crafted one, an action-RPG with an abundance of good ideas and charm and personality in spades.
Solatorobo stars a sky-pirate fox-dog who rides around on a robot called Dahak, and is set in a world of floating islands inhabited by anthropomorphic cats and dogs who all speak French. (Already, that should pique your interest.) With his sister Chocolat, Red the Hunter roams the skies in an airship in search of adventure, which comes to him in the form of a magical medallion stolen from a battleship that sets a whole fleet of baddies on his red-brown tail.
What begins as a rather predictable RPG tale of magical artefacts, mysterious orphans and an Evil Threatening to Destroy the World soon spirals off in unexpected directions. The plot ambles along at an unhurried pace, leaving you free to take on random quests in towns and villages to build up Red's Hunter Rank – quests that range from air-races to a cute little crime mystery over a stolen diary to more conventional item-hunting and baddie-bashing. The characters are a lovable group – the sharp translation helps out a lot, here – and Red himself is a likeable boy-hero who manages to successfully walk the line between loveable rogue and cocky know-it-all.
There's a lot of dialogue – which scrolls across rather too slowly for quick readers – but over time, the banter and character exposition lead you to develop a slow-burning affection for Red and his compatriots that will take you by surprise five or six hours into the game. Smoothly-animated cutscenes punctuate the most exciting points in the story, but the absence of voice-over leaves your imagination to breathe life into Solatorobo's characters on its own.
At the heart of the game is a simple but effective robot combat system that involves picking things up and throwing them on the floor again like a petulant two-year-old. Dahak, Red's big orange robot, has huge arms for lifting; after getting behind an enemy and latching onto them, you hammer the A button furiously to heave them up in the air and chuck them down again, catching them again on the rebound for extra damage or throwing a particularly huge enemy robot at its mates to obliterate both of them at once.
Red can also hop off the robot and wander around on foot to solve simple puzzles, though not much is ever made of this. It would have been good to see a more creative approach to dungeons; Solatorobo seems to have routed most of its creativity into side-quests, character design and its lovely artistic design instead.
Dahak is upgradeable - you can play simplistic Tetris with differently-shaped upgrade modules to pump up its attack or mobility – but the combat system never changes, and it does get old after a while, especially as new Dahak models and forms don't unlock until over halfway through the game. Thankfully the leisurely pace doesn't put inordinate strain on the simplistic battling; there are many hours where you'll be off doing other things.
There's a lovely feel to Solatorobo's world. The artistic direction, which flows comfortably between 2D and 3D in a hand-painted, cartoon-shaded style, contributes to a sense of craftedness that really endears you to the game. The many different locations that Red visits all have their own quirks and visual idiosyncracies, from an island made mostly out of the giant shells of shipwrecked airships to a sprawling, expensive-looking cultural centre to an island that's basically a giant fungus.
It's just got so many ideas. Unlike so many RPGs, particularly handheld ones, Solatorobo's quests aren't just umpteen half-heartedly re-skinned versions of the same thing. When you hear about sky-fishing, you think it'll be a tranquil affair, but then you end up following island-sized hermit crabs covered in airship wreckage as they dive through the clouds, attempting to reel them in with a giant harpoon. Late in the game, Red suddenly develops the ability to transform into a human. There are arena battles, competitive air-racing contests, photograph collecting side-quests - all sorts.
A lot of these ideas appear for twenty minutes and then disappear again forever, which is a shame, but at least it has some ideas. There's even a four-player competitive air-racing mode that's so fully-featured with different courses and flying robots that it could almost be an independent game.
Solatorobo is a longer game than it initially appears, too; without wanting to spoil anything, it's basically two entire stories in one. Its main problem, though, is that it's never challenging. You're unlikely to ever die, even once, and the puzzles and quests will never outfox you, which means that it's not that engaging on a moment-to-moment basis. It's something to be enjoyed at leisure rather than barrelled through.