Every now and then, a game will fall below the radar that deserves more attention than its destined to get, Radiant Historia is definitely that game. While not making any noticeable ripples in the RPG community, this game takes aspects of classic role-playing games from the Super Nintendo era and introduces a host of new ideas to keep the gaming feeling current and not tied to tradition.
The story centers around a theme of time traveling back and forth to influence certain outcomes and events to change history. Instead of allowing you to freely move between expansive environments in several different time periods like Chrono Trigger, this game offers two parallel time lines, with minor deviations, and a mostly linear progression. The entire world is not opened up to you during the chapters, so exploration is almost non-existent. There's also a fair bit of backtracking through certain areas and events when you go back to change history. Backtracking also means going through the same conversations and scenes again, but thankfully, all conversations and scenes are skippable until the moment where you need to make a decision. Its at these decision points where you choose how the future will unfold, and there is only one right answer, while the other answer leads you to a historical dead end; this removes much of the sense of influence one might feel during Fallout 3 or Oblivion.
Since you'll be moving around parallel time lines, the game sets up certain points during each timeline you can travel to called Nodes. These act as checkpoints along the timeline and usually indicate when its decision time. So if you're curious enough to see what happens when you choose another route, you can immediately go to the point and make it.
Battles are fought turn-based style. Enemies line up on a 3 x 3 grid and can be moved around the grid by either by your special abilities or their own accord, however, your characters stay outside the grid and remain stationary. Each character has a set of special abilities that can move enemies around or attack entire rows or columns. If you manage to push an enemy into another enemy, the next ally attack will hit both enemies, effectively adding more damage for your turn. Turns are displayed out for you Final Fantasy X-style on the top DS screen while the action plays out below. Each ally turn or group of ally turns are bundled together, so you have to pick the actions for each ally before the action is executed until an enemy turn comes up, and those actions will be enacted after the final ally action has been made. This means what you do and the order with which you do it carry the same amount of importance. In this regard, Radiant History becomes mostly a strategy game of getting the most out of each turn. Both bosses and enemies will give you a good challenge, but the game never seems impossible.
Radiant Historia boasts one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in gaming. Not since Chrono Cross has a soundtrack created such a presence in a game. Almost every score beautifully compliments its accompanying scene. Looking into the composer: her name is Yoko Shimomura, and if you're as familiar with gaming as I am, here's a short list of other games she's worked on: Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, Kingdom Hearts / II / Birth By Sleep / Re:Coded / 382/2 Days, Super Mario RPG, Tobal No. 1, Street Fighter II, Final Fight and Breath of Fire. And Radiant Historia is one of her best works to date.
Graphics are wonderful, areas are beautiful and the sprites animate very well. The presentation is very solid. Areas run the range of industrial city to sacred forest and pull them all off consistently well.
The game will run about 30 hours without indulging in too many side quests. Overall, this is definitely a game that lifts the Japanese role-playing genre out of the slump that it's been in for a few years. It's a shame that this game will probably be buried in the sands of gaming history.
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