Radiant Historia
At first glance, Radiant Historia harkens back to a brighter era for the JRPG Genre. A time when sprites were the norm, and storytelling was more important than pretty graphics. It was a time when somewhat rigid turn-based gameplay and save-the-world plots were not only expected in a console RPG , but practically seemed required. It was also the 1990s.
For those of you who were turned off by that first paragraph, there is some very good news regarding Radiant Historia. This game not only bucks a lot of those trends, it also takes the genre in some very fun and inventive new directions.
The story focuses on Stocke, a special intelligence agent from the country of Alistel, which is at war with the country of Granorg. The fued has been going on for quite some time now, and the battles have been fierce. However, Stocke ends up holding the key to not only ending the war, but saving the entire continent — time.
You see, Radiant History isn’t a linear RPG by any means. The player is given the ability to move through the entire game’s storyline via ‘nodes’ (certain pivotal points during the story) that unlock once you’ve seen them occur. At any point in the game, you can teleport through time all the way back to the very beginning, or anywhere in between. There are several branches in time created by making different choices, as well. All of the choices seem very well thought out, and unlike in most JRPGs the characters don’t get stupid or annoying (with a few exceptions).
That isn’t the only new punch that Historia packs. The battle system is robust, streamlined and fun. The enemies the player fights are arranged in a 3 by 3 grid. Depending on how close they are to the player, they can deal more damage with attacks. Many of your characters have abilities that can push the enemies around that grid, and even into eachother for devestating combo attacks, which can make battles a lot of fun, rather than something to be annoyed with.
It isn’t all sunshine and awesome though, there are a few drawbacks. For one, when you travel through time to a node, you have to sit through any conversations, cinemas, (START skips these first two, merficully, and ‘X’ speeds up the dialogue) dungeons, and batles you fought afterwards before progressing on to new story choices and the like, and while you can often prevent enemies from attacking you in dungeons, there are a lot of fights. Making things a little more frustrating is the sheer number of special attacks some characters have, which leaves you scrolling for quite a while before finding the one you want.
All in all though, Radiant Historia is exactly what old-school JRPG fans have probably been waiting for. A fun, playable RPG with a thoughtful story, and a new, exciting twist, and throwback graphics. This is definitely not one to pass up if you’ve always been an RPG fan, or are wanting to try out the genre.
