Despite its Japan-only release, Record of Radia War is one neat little Famicom RPG that deserves more attention. Wait, did I say little? Released in 1991, I’d forgive you for thinking this rather expansive RPG is an early SNES game—it’s not, but that makes it all the more impressive. Radia Senki, as it’s known in Japan, looks and plays more like a title from the SNES era, probably because it’s from that era—the Super Famicom came out in 1990, after all. We poor round eyes never got it here in the West, though, so I’m grateful for the fan translation done by Dreamless, Jair, and CX. You guys rock. Most importantly, this translation seems to be super well done, at least from my English-only perspective.
It’s worth noting Radia Senki’s Japanese title translates roughly to “Chronicle of the Radia War: Dawn Volume” if you’re taking it literally. Though since the back of the Japan release’s box translates the title into English as Record of Radia War, I’m sticking with that. If you’re curious why a Japan-only release would even have an English translation of the game’s name in the first place, well, the Japanese love using English in their marketing material—it’s more of a decorative or fashionable thing. The meaning ain’t as important as the fact that it’s written in English, as anyone who’s ridden the Tokyo subway could tell you. To them I guess it looks cool, Just like how Westerners get kanji tattoos cuz they want to look bad-ass. Anyway, just a fun bit of cultural trivia for ya. Cosmetics aside, we’re not all that different.
Alright, before I gush about this gem for the rest of the video, let’s get some negatives out the way. No game’s perfect, after all, and I’d have to call out Radia Senki’s music if I am going to complain. Music’s a big factor in a game’s quality to me, and Radia Senki falls a bit short in that department. The soundtrack’s a bit grating and altogether unmemorable, though by no means bad. The tunes are fine; they’re just not Final Fantasy level. Video game’s music’s funny: the best stuff is so good that it becomes the comparison bar even when that’s not necessarily fair in the grand scheme of things. Luckily, I don’t have to take the grand scheme of things into account and can confidently say that while Keiji Yamagishi and co. pumped out some decent tunes, I won’t be whistling any of them in three weeks while standing in line at the grocery store. That time’s reserved for the kino stuff, like the Romancing Saga 2 theme… MMM! I will at least call out the healing jingle you hear after spending the night in a bed, one of the better ones from the era for sure.
I’m also lukewarm on the combat. I know, seems like a fairly major hangup given how much time’s spent in combat in these old RPGs, but here the problem’s more with the UI and general clunkiness than the actual combat itself. See, while outside of battle Radia Senki’s set up as traditionally as JRPGs get, fighting works a little differently than you might be used to. All the action happens in real time, reminiscent of Final Fantasy Adventure or Secret of Mana, but you’ve got five party members and only control one, leading to a lot of navigation issues. The Famicom’s resolution just ain’t high enough to comfortably accomodate all this movement, and since enemies can spawn anywhere on the screen, in many battles it can be tough to so much as reach an enemy before your allies kill them all. This results in a lack of agency for the player that makes battles feel longer than they are, since you’re not doing much—I’d rather mash through a standard turn-based battle than traipse around while my AI-controlled teammates do all the work.
Other times, a straggler enemy or two will spawn up on some random cliff or on the other side of the screen, forcing you to awkwardly maneuver around your allies while dealing with the NES’s clunky 4-directional movement, just to deliver a final blow to end the battle. It’s a time-sink with no upsides that leads to the combat feeling tedious within the first few hours, pretty disappointing for a 12+ hour game. Compare that to something like Dragon Quest 1 where I never got bored. Somehow, having to think and put effort into movement and positioning ends up making battles LESS fun, since they’re never a challenge; they’re all about tedious execution. I never thought I’d say it, but this makes me actually appreciate games that let you mash A to get through most battles—that’s a popular mechanic for a reason. I like to step back and try to examine a game’s quality from a “big picture” perspective rather than analyzing each mechanic’s merits on its own, and Radia Senki’s doesn’t quite balance its combat in a way that’s fun.
Where it does excel, however, is in its storytelling. It’s got by far the best and most modern JRPG story I’ve played on the NES, period. And by that I mean traditional medieval heroic stuff; I won’t try to compare this to something like Mother; they’re going for completely different vibes. Radia Senki’s quest centers on your hero, named whatever you like, who wakes up with amnesia in a random forest in the land of Lemuria. Yeah, not exactly an ambitious plot even in 1991, but it does get us right into the action. You meet a mage named Darus from a land called Samara, and after the pair helps out with a rescue job at the closest town of Elfas, Darus joins up as your first party member, asking for help in getting revenge on Nova, the wizard who killed his father.
Not a bad intro for 1991. We don’t quite know who our hero is yet, but the story won’t forget about his amnesia. Hang tight. An explosion goes off at nearby Mt Belzend, so Darus and the hero investigate to find a girl in the wreckage of a… modern looking airplane? It’s weird, but I’ll roll with it. Like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy before it, Record of Radia War blends a medieval-esque setting with some more recent technological feats. I dig it.
The stranded girl in question turns out to be princess Lefis of the kingdom of Ark, who upon waking up lets you know her homeland in trouble. Gadiss, her stepbrother, disposed the king and plans to take over the whole world by using the legendary Tower of Radia! As a side note, an prototype English version of this game called simply Tower of Radia got leaked online a while back but was never officially released. I haven’t checked it out, but it’s an interesting historical footnote. Around this time you also discover the hero’s name means “guardian of light” in the Lemurian language. What’s more, according to the legend of the ancient kingdom of Ark, this apparently means he’s destined to help save the world of Lemuria. Great use of meta-narrative here—no matter what name you choose, in the story it’ll canonically means Guardian of Light. Nice!
No JRPG is complete without introducing its villain early on, and Radia Senki fits the mold. Darus explains how Lord Nova, a creepy bishop-looking guy who’s taken over a nearby town, has subjugated Darus’s people, the Samarans, forcing them to harvest trees to build him an airship. Man, what is it with early JRPGs and airships? Makes me wonder if they’re part of a trend started by some anime or other media from the era. I’m sure my more educated viewers would have more insight, but my knowledge on 80s and early 90s Japanese culture is incomplete, to say the least. The party attends a town meeting held by none other than Lord Nova himself and finds out that one, Nova’s working with Gadiss to access the tower of Radia, and two, the airship’s being built nearby in an underground bunker.
Darus and the hero arrive too late to stop Nova but learn that they need to cross the ocean to reach the Tower of Water, where Nova fled. So, they steal an airship and crash land in the outskirts of the town Guandia, whose residents have been frozen in ice. This ain’t Dragon Quest, though; there’s no time to save them. Instead it’s off to the Tower, where these brutal mage enemies pack the tight corridors and threaten to WRECK your party if you don’t stop them in time. That would be fine if it weren’t so tough to maneuver around your party members, like I mentioned earlier. This is the point I learned how valuable the battle commmands are: you can call party members back to your hero’s location, letting you run out out ahead and take care of enemies yourself. This is always faster than waiting on the AI, so I’m glad the devs at least attempted to provide a fix for this obvious design flaw.
At the top of the Tower of Water the party finds Nova’s airship, where they again meet the princess of Lefis. She claims the hero character, whatever you named him—Leon in my case—is not just named after the legendary Guardian of Light; he IS that guardian. And apparently everyone on the bad side knows it! The princess saw in a dream that he’s destined to seek out the Tower of Radia, which has now solidified as our clear endgame goal. Suddenly Nova appears to torture the party for a bit until Leorina, a heroine from Guandia, shows up to save everyone. Cleverly, she does this by casting Escape—the same spell your mages use to exit dungeons. I appreciate that; I always wonder why those kind of remedies don’t seem to get mentioned during story scenes in many JRPGs. Like, when a character dies, why not use a Phoenix Down or revive or whatever to bring them back? I think some games, like FFVII, do explain why story deaths are permanent, but not all of them bother, especially for the bad guys. Are enemy soldiers, for example, simply incapable of using the cheap healing items your party can freely buy at shops? Why do stores even sell them if they’re only usable by destined heroes? That doesn’t make any economic sense. But this ain’t the video to get too into the weeds on that topic: it’s one worth exploring deeper another time.
I do want to highlight how detailed this game’s cutscenes are for a NES title, though. It’s hard to stress this enough, but aside from the visuals every aspect feels more like a Super Nintendo game than anything. If that’s the generation you’re most familiar with, you’ll be right at home with Radia Senki.
Anyhow, with brave savior Leorina on our side, it’s finally time to help the poor citizens of Guandia, still frozen in ice. The party will need something called the Stone of Flame for that, so it’s off to Bandora Village up north. At this point Leorina swaps into the party to replace a member who was injured, and that’s far from the first or only party shakeup—it’s neat how a Famicom game from ’91 does so much party swapping; that’s typically something I associate more with SNES games. At any rate, after adventuring through volcanic lava lands to reach Bandora, its king tells us the Stone was stolen by a monster called Agira. However, as our party soon discovers within the Cave of Flame, it turns out, Agira’s not one specific monster but rather a species of monster—they look kinda like Chocobo, in fact. Unfortunately, once they get the Stone back, the party comes face to face with Gadiss, the true big boss of the game and the man who’s been pulling Nova’s strings the whole time: classic. He threatens everyone, but otherwise leaves some puny henchmen to deal with them while he makes off with the Stone: even more classic. But in a stroke of good luck or possibly divine intervention, one of the Agira runs in carrying the REAL Stone of Flame. That’s right, turns out the Agira aren’t evil; they’re pretty smart, and the stone Gadiss took was a fake. Phew.
Next it’s back to Elfas, the game’s “home kingdom”, if you will. Rollo, an advisor to the Elfas’s king, explains how the titular Tower of Radia gathers the power of dreams and shapes the land of Lemuria. Gadiss and Nova plan to use it to “remake” the world in their image, but it’s sealed by the treasures of the eight regions of Lemuria. Gadiss has already gathered most of them, but we’ve at least have the Stone of Flame. Unaccounted for are two from regions we’ve yet to visit, the Heart of Iron from the land of Bernard, and the Compass of Earth from Sarejia. Time to get a move on!
After a tough dungeon, our heroes reach the Heart of Iron, just in time for Gadiss to show up and steal it away. Should’ve expected that—nothing comes easy in JRPG plots. Intriguingly, in an omniscient cutscene apart from the party, the player sees Gadiss tell Nova that he’s counting on our destined hero to lead him to the final artifact. What a bum! But also par for the course for JRPGs.
Pressing on, the trip to Sarejia for the final artifact takes us to a hidden country of caverns beneath the desert, where the party manages to track down the Compass of Earth in a relatively uneventful fashion. More importantly, after that it’s finally time to track down Nova in Samara, which as you might remember is the land of the doomed people conquered by Nova as well as Darus’s home. Man, this town’s got a foreboding vibe… must be that killer music—yeah, some of the tracks are great. Most towns get their own theme in this game, and the composers try out other fancy stuff with the music, like how during one dramatic scene out in the field, a tense backing song plays that continues as you go into a nearby town to regroup. This kind of scene transition wasn’t super common on the NES, so I’m impressed.
In a case of severe Stockholm Syndrome, the Samaran townsfolk seem devoted to following Nova and Gadiss, but not all hope is lost and the party soon meets the leader of a resistance group who can help them out. He gives them the medallion they need to enter the Shrine of Moon, where Nova is holed up. After plenty of fighting, navigating confusing level layouts, they reach him ... only to watch him to take off to the Tower of Radia in his airship. Great. Chasing him there, they discover this complex dungeon is actually the Tower of the Moon, not the actual Tower of Radia. It’s one of those “whoops, we interpreted the legend wrong” kind of things. The REAL Tower of Radia would be Castle Elfas itself—turns out the people of Elfas are descended from the legendary kingdom of Ark I mentioned earlier. Nova has a bit of a Darth Vader change-of-heart moment where he reveals all this just before he dies, so thanks for that, bud. Time to stop Gadiss, the real threat.
Not to skip the drama, but it ain’t much of a fight: there’s only so much an action-based NES RPG can do to make combat a challenge; Radia Senki wasn’t exactly causing me to break my controllers. In his dying gasps at the top of Elfas Castle, Gadiss claims that the hero’s very existence is evidence that the people of the legendary kingdom of Ark are still out there somewhere, holed up in a sanctuary. Yeah, a bit out of nowhere, but our heroes decide to roll with it. Somehow—and don’t ask for specifics, ‘cuz the fan translation can only do so much—Princess Lefis realizes the eight treasures of the world are actually our five party members plus three additional companions they met along the way. Their “eight hearts” combine to form the “spirit treasure” that opens the way to the ancient Ark Castle. A little cliche, but kinda cool. I dig it.
Before the party can go there, however, a doppelgänger of the hero shows up, claiming he’s the real hero, even saying he’s got the same name—Leon in my case. He thanks our Leon for opening the gate to Ark Castle, then knocks our main man out before rushing in. What the hell? Thankfully, when Leon comes to he’s awarded the Lemurian Sword via divine intervention, the ultimate weapon formed by the combined power of the world’s nations. Idealistic no doubt, but hey, it’s a JRPG—that’s the whole point!
And now, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re ready for one hell of a twist. If you don’t want it spoiled, go play the game, but it’s kind of an ass pull, so don’t set your expectations too high. Within Ark Sanctuary, you again meet the hero’s Doppelganger beside some big ol’ machine. This shifty final adversary claims the device brings dreams to life, and that’s in fact how the land of Lemuria was created. In other words, our protagonists themselves seem to be figments of someone else’s dream! The sanctuary this all takes place in is a high-tech facility, not some pure fantasy thing, yet the tech there seems to be biological in nature, so I’m unsure if this machine is intended to be some kind of sci-fi simulator or of it truly is a magical, dreams-to-life generation machine. Regardless, it fits that late 80s to early 90s “magical device” trope that’s always a good time.
Anyhow, our bad guy lookalike has begun releasing these bizarre dream monsters, so it’s past time to put this man to rest in what becomes the final boss battle—if our heroes take him down, they save Lemuria. It’s another easy fight if you saved up on heals: I was under-leveled if anything but still had fun dodging fleshy meat shields while wailing on the boss’s head with everything I had. Before the credits roll, Lefiss reveals the doppelganger claimed he was Lemuria’s savior, sent here from a world called “reality”, which the hero realizes he must be from too. He remembers that his world also has a Radia Tower, which I guess acts as the connecting beacon between … realities, I guess? Shit, I’m getting Bioshock Infinite vibes.
All in all, Record of Radia War probably shouldn’t have gotten a Western release for the sole fact that it’s a late-era NES game that assuredly wouldn’t have seen any success here. Nonetheless, it’s worth playing for JRPG nerds like me. You might be surprised by how much heart it’s got, even when the combat grows a little stale.
Thanks for reading this month’s edition of JRPG Journey 2024. Join me next time for a discussion of a lesser-known Shin Megami Tensei spinoff, Digital Devil Saga.
