Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II - Rogue Leader is a blast from the past that still delivers exhilarating thrills. As a member of Rogue Squadron, you'll dogfight TIE fighters, recreate the Death Star trench run, and battle AT-ATs on Hoth. The graphics, while dated by today's standards, were groundbreaking for the GameCube and still hold a nostalgic charm. Intense missions, smooth controls, and unlockable bonuses will keep Star Wars fans engaged and excited. This slice of Star Wars space combat is pure joy in a digital package.

Review in progress:
Very impressive graphics for the time. There's a good amount of variety in the mission design. As far as arcade flight games go, this is fairly well done. Captures the Star Wars atmosphere well.

Unfortunately, Rogue Squadron II is incredibly difficult, and not always in a hard-but-fair way. Mission objectives are often unclear. The tutorial mission does a poor job of preparing you for the rest of the game and only goes over the basic mechanics. You'll frequently be killed in 1-2 seconds by enemies off-screen with almost no time to react (especially in the squishy A-wing). There's a ton of trial and error involved, and victories often feel unsatisfying as a result.

The difficulty is wildly inconsistent between missions, which is poor design. Instead of a gradually increasing difficulty curve, there are often very hard missions followed by laughably easy ones. The AI partners are completely useless. I never felt like they were helping me out and giving them different commands never made a tangible impact on the mission's success. The lack of a health meter on structures you're trying to defend is very frustrating and leads to many unexpected mission failures. If having a visual indicator for damage is too "gamey", then they could've at least had more frequent radio chatter indicating that something is going to be destroyed soon. That only happens for some of the targets.

I can't help but wonder if the brutal difficulty was a way of artificially padding out the short completion length. Rogue Squadron II feels like an NES game in that respect. It would've been nice to have a "normal" difficulty option. The difficulty doesn't feel integral to the game design in the same way as something like Dark Souls. At the very least, they could've done a much better job of communicating with the player. I shouldn't need to consult a guide to figure out what I'm even doing wrong. How was I supposed to know that the B-Wing needed to be closed in order to avoid taking insane amounts of damage or that the air balloons could be taken out by aiming at the top part? The targeting computer doesn't even highlight it!

With one of the most impressive launch titles of its time coupled with one of the most impressive first levels in gaming, Star Wars: RS2 remains as one of the must-haves games in the GameCube library and a must-play for Star Wars fans.

Graphically, this game set the bar for a new generation of consoles and still managed to look great years upon years after its release. This game it's an overall improvement over the N64 Rogue Squadron game. Level and mission design is not super consistent, there are some frustrating missions and design decisions that sour the experience in a couple of areas but the overall package of this game makes it one of the most fun pilot-fighter games out there.

A game I've had since the day it was released, but I'd never beaten, until today. I was listening to a podcast covering Star Wars games and it mentioned the Rogue Squadron series. I thought I'd stick the first game on and have a crack at that. A good excuse to stick the N64 on. I had a good time. After a few levels, I thought I'd stick the GameCube on and give Rogue Leader a go.

This is the first time since the mid 00's that I'd played the game on a CRT with a scart, and it was like the bit where Milhouse enters his name into Bonestorm. It blew my socks off all over again. This is one great looking game.

The opening Death Star level has to be up there with one of the greatest opening levels in any game I've ever played. It looks great, it sounds great and it's as close as you're getting to experiencing the thrill of the iconic finale in the film. We'll, unless you're one of those fancy folk with their vr helmets.

Unfortunately, it's not all as thrilling from there. There's a range of levels that contain some great dog fighting and set pieces, but there are also Y-wing levels.

Hoth is there, we've also got the battle of Endor and the bullshit last level of the Death Star II. A lot of the time I was playing, I was having a great time. Blowing up ties, walkers and various other imperial ass holes, but some of the levels really take the wind out of your sails, and are very difficult. I don't expect to finish a level perfectly on my first go, I don't want to be trying 20 times just to beat the level, let alone meet the criteria for gold. But I guess that's where the replay value comes in.

Repetition means familiarity, and improvement etc. Then bonus levels. A few of them I really don't have any desire to revisit, but those replicating the set pieces from the films are special. Even the last level that took many, many attempts. Once I'd finally beaten it, I was already looking at how I could improve on it. However, it's the first time I'd beaten the game since it came out, so I'm not gonna get cocky.

It can't be overstated how great this game looks and how fun it is to play. It's just let down by a few shite levels and a really steep difficulty curve. It's good to finally tick this one off.

This is a stunning launch title that still holds up visually. I was surprised and a little disappointed revisiting this overall, however. The game looks stunning but actually playing it is frustrating more than anything else. The controls are very squirrely, and the ships themselves feel more like floating cameras than vehicles. The real killer though is the mission design, which outside of a handful of classics everyone remembers (the trench run and the first Battle of Endor level) ranges from forgettable to outright malevolent.

Prisoners of the Maw asks you to ignore everything exciting happening to do drivebys in the Y-wing. The Battle of Hoth really wants to show off its Snowspeeder cable tech, and makes you reenact tripping the AT-ATs a mind-numbing amount of times. There's an Ace Combat-esque canyon stealth run to hijack a shuttle that feels like the beginning of a wild escape mission that never builds to an exciting twist. And then there's Strike at the Core, which clearly wants to feel like a sadomasochistic gauntlet for players to overcome with all the skills they've learned, but it's so full of seemingly random lasers and enemy behavior it feels more like a miracle than a challenge to finish.

I have fond memories of playing this thing over and over, but revisiting it without that launch title sheen reveals a lot of flawed design. I hate to do the direct comparison thing, but Ace Combat 04 came out at nearly the same time and is easily the better arcade flight game. This is still absolutely worth playing just to experience the attention to detail and enthusiasm for the source material, though!

This is a definite improvement over Rogue Squadron 1, but this still has a good heap of problems. The main issue is that the game is terrible at directing you on your missions. There are so many missions where the instructions given to you just aren't clear enough, or are confusing. I like trial and error, but there's way too much of that here, and I don't think that fits this particular genre very well. Pretty much everything else here is luckily improved. The GameCube controller is a godsend compared to the N64 controller. This game is worth a shot, but it isn't anything amazing.

Still holds up as one of the GameCube's best and might just be the greatest Star Wars game that's ever been made. Rogue Leader is a graphical powerhouse for the purple lunch box that easily holds its own amongst the best looking games the system has to offer, despite being a launch title. Missions aren't overly long but are incredibly well-crafted and fun to replay as you fight to obtain each level's gold medal, a challenging but rewarding feat. Ships handle exceeding well and the arcade-like flight controls are something I have been desperately searching for in another Star Wars game since. Sadly, two decades later, none really come close to matching Rogue Squadron II.

If I had to sum up this game it would be like a dream come true. The levels based upon the films are probably the closest recreations to playable versions of those battles as we'll likely ever get. No attention to detail was spared and the result was an instant classic. Phenomenal game.

One of my first Star Wars games and one of personal all-time favorites. God, this game is such a marvel, and despite being a launch title for the GameCube it looks absolutely stunning to this very day, to the point that even modern PC's can't emulate this game properly. That being said, God do I wish this got a rerelease so bad, or at least an HD collection of all 3 Rogue Squadron games to be put on modern platforms. I'd love nothing more, to be honest. But until then, this game will always hold a fond spot in my heart.

La secuela de uno de los mejores juegos del Nintendo 64 hace honor a sus orígenes y supera a su predecesor, ofreciendo acción, dificultad y una experiencia sobrecogedora en todos los aspectos de su apartado jugable. Rogue Leader aparte de contar con unas gráficas impresionantes y una banda sonora envidiable, también logra simular de la manera más real posible el control de todas las naves espaciales que tendremos bajo nuestro control (con un control de Game Cube, lo cual es excelente) y que forman parte del gran universo Star Wars. Es una compra obligada para todo seguidor de la saga, para todo aquel que haya disfrutado de la primera parte, y para todo aquel que guste de un buen simulador de combate aéreo. Factor 5 sigue demostrando que es muy bueno en lo que hace, con la compañía de Lucas Arts.