I’ve heard a lot of great things about Radiant Historia, but it never managed to get into the zeitgeist as much as games from more popular series like Final Fantasy tend to. Developed by Atlus for Nintendo DS, it was first released in 2010 in Japan and got a Western release in 2011, so it’s had a decade to achieve mainstream popularity, yet never quite reached it. I’m partially to blame for that. When the DS was in its heyday, I dismissed JRPGs for the platform because there were too many to choose from, I thought of them as of lesser quality than their console counterparts, and I wasn’t big into JRPGs in the first place—at the time anyway. (My, how I’ve changed.) Still, Radiant Historia was frequently brought up by friends and fellow forumgoers when discussing JRPG recommendations—some even calling it one of the best JRPGs ever—and it’s been on my list for years. I‘ve finally played and finished it, 100% in fact, and I’ve got plenty to talk about.
I’ll start with the overall structure, as it’s unique. The game focuses on time travel, where the main character, Stocke, is given a tome called the White Chronicle early on, which allows him to travel through time to specific “nodes”, which are unlocked as you play through the story. What I love most about this is that it’s more than a plot device—it offers an in-universe explanation for a lot of the tropey mechanics found in JRPGs. NPCs in a town don’t have anything new to say? That’s because you visit them during a short period of time. When you visit the area later, time has passed, and most NPCs have brand new dialogue. While this is common in JRPGs, the neat bit is that if you missed some of their old dialogue, you can travel back to an earlier node for that town and hear what they had to say at that time. Want to heal after a tough battle, or before a boss? You can use items for that, but they’re costly. A better option is to jump back in time to a node near an inn, stay for an inexpensive heal, then travel right back to where you were. This feels good because you’re using the base mechanics of the game to accomplish something that might otherwise feel “cheap”—running back to town to heal.
With all this said, the game doesn’t rigidly follow the standard rules of time travel when they would make the game less fun. Characters remain at their current levels with all their equipment and items, no matter how far back in time you travel. Besides being less frustrating than the alternative, this has the added benefit of turning repeated enemy or boss encounters into quick affairs you can steamroll through, on the few occasions where you need to replay certain story sections to accomplish a new goal. There are only around three times where you need to re-play significant portions of the story, however, which was a good choice by the developers, and a handy feature introduced early on—the ability to turn yourself invisible to avoid battles—makes this painless. More common is the need to go through story-heavy scenes again; however, every cutscene and most dialogue in the game can be skipped by pressing Start, so this is a non-issue. There’s also never the chance to accidentally miss new turns in the story by doing this. The developers were careful to design the game to perfectly fit the time travel mechanic.
The White Chronicle’s powers are also integral to the way the story flows. Early on, the story branches into two paths, called “Standard History” and “Alternate History”, and the goal is to progress through one until you can’t go further, then jump to the other path to find a new item or ability, or have a particular conversation, to help advance in the original path. This is a ton of fun, and the game does a good job of giving you plenty of information about what happened at each node, so you rarely feel lost. At the same time, the way to progress isn’t always obvious, and the game rewards experimenting with jumping back to different nodes both to figure out what to do next and get optional items and quests. Now, since Stocke meets the main party members at different points in each timeline, I was worried that the dialogue would get repetitive when Stocke is introduced to the same characters for a second time, but the game avoids this through clever writing, which I appreciated.
The story itself deals with a war between two main factions on a continent, with other cities getting caught up in the action. Radiant Historia plays this seriously—there’s very little comedy here—which was a good choice. The music and artwork fit this heavy tone perfectly, and in true JRPG fashion, the reasons behind the war and other worldbuilding eventually reveal an even more fucked-up premise and world than I expected during the first chapter or so. The dialogue, situations, and characters for the most part are fleshed-out and interesting, although the first few chapters are slow to the point where I started getting bored. By chapter 3, though, a few character revelations and new combat options had me hooked until the end, while the plot hit the accelerator and never let up. It’s a good thing, too, as this is easily a 40-hour game if you’re looking to do all of the events.
Doing optional events, or sidequests, is fun — you never have to replay too much, and being able to skip all cutscenes makes them a joy rather than a grind. None of them are very involved, but nearly all include some bit of interesting story with an NPC, such as finding them an item much later in the game and returning to the point you met them to hand it over, then watching how they become more relevant in the main story later. This kind of thing is best done in a game about time travel, and Radiant Historia takes full advantage of that. There’s a few quality of life features that improve the experience compared to many other JRPGs, as well. Often, the game takes you right to the next plot-relevant area and skips making you travel there on foot, particularly if you’d be backtracking over recently-covered area. The aforementioned invisibility ability is a godsend, as while there are no random encounters, enemies wander the overworld as in many other JRPGs.
Combat, too, is unique compared to other JRPGs, but I don’t have a ton to say about it. Enemies are on a 3x3 grid, with most normal enemies taking up one square, while bosses tend to occupy more. Enemies in the front row take more damage from your attacks, while those in the back take the least, but front-row enemies also deal more damage, so there’s an obvious trade-off. Each party character has skills that move enemies around in different directions (in addition to doing a bit of damage), giving you lots of strategy, such as deciding whether to move an enemies or attack. The real gem of the combat system is the turn order: it resembles Final Fantasy X, in that you can see which characters—party and enemies included—have upcoming turns for about 12 turns in the future. On top of that, you can switch the current party member’s turn with any other character’s turn at any time, including enemies. This means you can delay all your characters’ turns for a round and take damage right away, but after enemies attack, you’ll get double the turns for each party member. Because the game includes a combo system, where successive attacks from your party increasae your combo count and deal increasing damage based on how high that count is, this is the most effective strategy for dealing with bosses—if you can survive their initial attacks.
My interest in the combat waxed and waned throughout the game. At first, it felt fresh and exciting, and I enjoyed strategizing in every battle. After around 10 hours, however, I started to get bored by how involved most battles felt. Instead of being able to tap A a bunch of times like in most JRPGs, I had to go through the same rigamarole of moving enemies around. It wasn’t difficult nor required any thought, it was just tedious. Once I got new party members and skills, however, I started enjoying the combat again, and this didn’t change for the rest of my experience. Eventually, the core mechanic of the grid system becomes somewhat irrelevant, as you get area-of-effect spells and can focus on swapping turns, building combos, and hammering out powerful attacks. This made for a good mid-game shift in combat focus and shows mastery of what makes JRPG combat fun on the developers’ part.
I’ve been avoiding it until now, but I’ve got to comment on the music. In short, the compositions are great, fantastic even, but there’s not enough tracks, and they become tiring and repetitive after 15 hours or so. I didn’t want to seem so negative about what’s often my favorite part of playing a new game, but that’s my takeaway after spending over 40 hours with Radiant Historia. For the first few hours, the music is magical—every track is fresh and fits the dark mood of the game and its war-torn cities and fields. These are some brilliant compositions, nearly all of which I love, and it’s no wonder why—Yoko Shimomura, who I’m a fan of from her work on Kingdom Hearts and the Mario & Luigi series (Hoohoo Village from Superstar Saga gets stuck in my head every so often), composed all the music. She did an excellent job, as usual, so I suspect the budget prevented the game from getting the amount of tracks it deserved. Nearly every city has the same theme, which is common in many JRPGs, especially older ones, but there are only a few cities in Radiant Historia, and giving each a unique theme would have gone a long way toward making the game more enjoyable. The same is true for story beats and cutscenes throughout the game. For the first several hours, everything feels fresh, but it quickly gets tiring hearing the same few seconds of music every time the game stops for a cutscene.
In 2017 (2018 in the West), Radiant Historia got an enhanced remaster for the 3DS called Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology. I haven’t played this version, I’ll quickly comment on a few changes I’ve read about. For one, the artwork for character portraits was re-done in a more anime-esque style, and having seen it on the web, I’m not a fan. While I enjoy anime-style art, I think the style of the original game fits Radiant Historia’s serious story better. There is also a new timeline called “Possible History”, and from what I can gather, I’m not missing much. The original game left on a world-scale cliffhanger of sorts, where the main threat to the world was prevented for a long time, but not permanently removed. While I suspect we won’t see a sequel, room for one is there, while the story told by the game was also fully wrapped up. Beyond that, there’s an easy mode which removes almost all combat and turns the game into a series of cutscenes—this doesn’t interest me, for what I hope are obvious reasons. For those reasons, I’m glad I chose the original version to play, and it’s the one I would recommend.
That’s all for Radiant Historia, and we’re now officially halfway through the second year of this JRPG Journey. Join me next month, as I stay in handheld land to discuss Breath of Fire, a SNES classic.
