Radiant Historia – Final thoughts (may contain spoilers)

After my last post, I went back and did the last two quests I was missing (Garland’s “Moon Bracelet” and Rainey’s “End of the Journey” quests) and got the best ending. I think Rainey’s was the one that did the trick. I also switched Ath out for Rainey for the final boss battle this time. I hate to admit it but Rainey worked out even better because of Ath’s aforementioned weakness against screen-filling bosses. The “true ending” wasn’t very different from the other one except one last, very important scene, which I won’t spoil. Definitely worth getting if you can.

I’ve made a ton of posts about Radiant Historia so far, so I don’t have much left to say about it. It was great fun in the beginning, slowed down a lot and got rather dull and draggy towards the end, but ended on a high note so I’m pleased with it. If I had to play it again, I’d find a couple of days when I’m not playing anything else and just blast through RH without slowing down or pausing for thought.

Final thoughts? Firstly, anyone who’s looking for the “next Chrono Trigger” will have to keep looking. Radiant Historia is nothing like Chrono Trigger. If I had to compare it to another game, it would be a cross between Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy X, but even then not exactly. That doesn’t mean there’s no time or dimension travel in it, but it’s not as far reaching as CT’s. The game takes place over a maximum of one year and you can only go back and forth in that timespan. I haven’t played Radiata Stories, but as far as I know it’s not related to this game.

Secondly, Radiant Historia is not that intellectual. If you’re looking for a deep, thinking man’s game with lots of philosophy or discussion of life, the universe and everything, forget it. As I’ve documented time and again, the time travel plot is full of holes, and as for the sidequests, don’t even go there. They have their own continuity and trying to merge them into the main line is just asking to be made insane.

Time and dimension travel is extremely simplistic because the game runs on rails. You have to do a bit of thinking for the sidequests, but the main game story itself is 100% linear. You always know exactly when to go to the other timeline and when to come back. And just in case you don’t, the twins Tio and Lipty will usually show up and outright tell you or hint heavily as to what you should do. If you make a wrong choice, you see the consequences right away and then the twins bring you back to try again. Thus you bounce between the two continuities like a ping-pong ball, fixing what went wrong until you uncover the whole plot and bring the two timelines together again.

Speaking of which, trying to mentally reconcile the two timelines at the end will make your head explode (wait, so X died there, but is alive here, so is s/he alive in the combined timeline or not? Shouldn’t s/he be dead? But oh look, s/he’s not. So did event ABC happen or not? And which Character Y was taken into the combined timeline? Which memories does Y have, timeline A’s or B’s? Aaaarrrghhhhh *splat*), so I don’t recommend it.

The game doesn’t take place on a very grand scale either. Theoretically you’re trying to save the world, but in actual fact the game involves a few locations on one small continent that you visit repeatedly. As the game goes on, new locations are revealed, but they’re usually things that were there all along but you just didn’t have access to. There’s no overworld map per se, either, just dungeon-like places connecting one city to another (like FFXII, I guess). The enemies are also on a small scale, with a ton of palette swaps and very few original designs.

Don’t expect much by way of different endings either. Completing certain quests will give you certain extra scenes in the ending, and completing all of those certain quests will give you the “True” ending. In other words, apart from the “True” ending, each ending only varies from the others in terms of the number of scenes you get to see. It’s not like in say, Chrono Trigger where all the endings are different enough to make them each one worth seeing. Furthermore there’s nothing like New Game-only content or New Game Plus. The only good thing is that if you save after the ending, you can go back, fill more sidequests and aim for a better ending without restarting the game. Here’s a list of all sidequests (in Japanese), don’t ask me about them (update, I made a list in English). There are almost no missables in this game so don’t stress yourself out too much.

If you can bring yourself not to expect too much from the plot and the time travel mechanic, though, there’s plenty to love in Radiant Historia. The game soundtrack is fantastic, for one thing. I thought it matched the game exactly, and it didn’t sound like the average generic RPG BGMs that I’d heard a million times before. There was a medieval-and-yet-modern feel to it that matched the medieval-and-yet-modern state of the game world. The tunes never grated on my ears either, in fact sometimes I even turned the sound up. The “Bad Ending” tune was the best for me, but I loved the soft opening theme as well. Oh, and the Historia music. And the battle themes. And the Alicetel music. In fact I liked everything!

The visuals are okay enough, for a DS game. I liked the character designs (Ath!!) and I liked the sepia-toned palette. If I had to complain about one thing, it’s that the character portraits never change. No matter how happy or sad or angry a character is, they will always look exactly the same on the screen. When you couple that with the lack of voice-acting, it can be hard to get into the spirit of a scene sometimes. Especially when they’re obviously trying to elicit some emotion from you, they really should have made the visuals fit the mood.

The characters are pretty likeable. It’s a minor point of discontent for me that the game never went much into their backgrounds, though. When I don’t like a character, I don’t care about their childhoods and where they came from, etc, but when I do, I can’t get enough of it. I would have liked to learn more about anyone other than Elca, Ath and Stock. I mean, you do get some comments here and there, but not nearly enough to satisfy your curiosity. There are some great side characters like Viola, Keel and Raul that you never really get to know much about. At the very least a character profile list or glossary or something, updated as the game goes along, would have been nice.

Gameplay was, of course, lots of fun. Because of the massive amounts of backtracking, you will usually be overleveled. Most normal battles aren’t much trouble, but a couple of sidequests will make you weep (Master Vancule, I’m sorry! Don’t hurt me any more!), though they can usually be beaten in one or two tries once you reevaluate your strategy. It’s nice to see things like Poison and Sleep working on many bosses, and your playable characters have different skillsets and abilities that make them unique, unlike the cookie-cutter fighters many RPGs tend to have. Not to mention I haven’t seen the grid thing outside of isometric SRPGs, so it was really fresh and new. Pushing enemies onto Ath’s deadly magic traps, oh, how sweet the satisfaction!

No gameplay system is perfect, though. Fighting does get a bit formulaic after a while, and it’s annoying when weak enemies chase you when they have no chance in hell of winning. There’s an ability that you can use to avoid battles, but you can’t use field abilities with it on so you have to take it off sometimes. Moreover this is one of those games where you’ll accumulate a ton of items you haven’t used by the end. Not because you’re being stingy, but because most fights aren’t challenging enough to force you to use them. Oh, and some of the items are just weak and useless. I’d like to see a Radiant Historia with a ‘Hard’ option to force me to bring out the depths of the battle system. If I ever do a replay, I’ll skip the sidequests so I can keep my level down a bit, then we’ll see.

Aaaannnddd… that’s it. I’ve blogged a ton about this game because I was looking forward to it. It came out, I got it, I played it, I really liked it and now it’s over. When it comes out in your area (Feb 22!), give it a shot, don’t expect too much and hopefully you’ll enjoy it like I did. Until then!

Radiant Historia – Playable characters (minor spoilers)

I finally finished Radiant Historia today. I got the semi-best ending, I believe. When all the ending scenes were played out, I only had 232/236 of all events complete so I must be missing a sidequest or two. Note that you don’t have to finish all the events to get the best ending, just certain important ones. Right now I’m torn between going back and getting the True Ending or just not bothering. The ending sequence I got was a decent ending to the game, I could accept it.It was also really, really long and filled to the brim with Deus ex Machina, but in a game with rampant time and dimension travel, I’m not going to quibble over minor points.

In the meantime, this is a good time to talk about my party. There’s a total of 7 playable characters, but you can only use 3 of them in battle at one time. Luckily this is one of those games where just about anyone will do, but certain characters will still make things much easier for you than others. Plus some characters are better for boss battles while others are better for ordinary battles. Not to mention they learn new battle abilities as they go along, so each character goes up and down in the usefulness ranking as the game goes along. And then on top of all that, there’s things like character availability to consider, so there’s a lot to think about. Without further ado, the playable characters of Radiant Historia, starting with my final party. This post will contain minor spoilers.

Stock – The hero of the game. You can’t take him out of the party so you’d better get used to him. If I had to describe him in a phrase it would be “Jack of All Trades, Master of None.” He learns some attack magic, some healing magic and lots of physical attacks. He also has all of the grid-moving attacks except Pull. Unfortunately his phys attack is lower than Gafka’s and (probably) Roche’s, and his magic stat falls behind all the girls’, so he’s not quite as strong as you might expect. Early to mid-game he’ll be your main tank and attacker but by the end of the game he was largely playing the “pusher”, shoving enemies onto Ath’s area traps. He’s a solid all-round member of the team though, no question about that.

Ath – My beloved Ath. Isn’t she cute?! Her bad points first: low defence, low HP for much of the game very weak physical attack, no grid-moving attacks, no direct magic attack until very late in the game, rather useless in boss battles that fill the whole enemy grid. Her high points? First and most importantly, disgustingly powerful area traps. I discussed the battle system a while back, if you need a reference. See those blue spots? Ath can set traps on one or two of them for the enemies to step on. They won’t willingly step on them, which is where Stock comes in handy to knock them right onto the sweet spots. I took 2200hp off a late-game boss in one attack, and that was without using any magic boosting items! And for some reason many, many bosses are weak against poison so I just set a poison trap to begin with and watch it sap their lives as I pound away on them. And she can steal their items too! Ah, sweet Ath, what would I do without you? But as I said, she’s useless against bosses that fill the whole screen, because then there’s no space for her to set her traps. Such bosses are rare, but they’re usually pretty tough.

Other reasons why Ath pwns so hard: her crazy speed. She’ll be getting two or three turns in a row by the end of the game, even without any speed boosting accessories (which I foolishly equipped on Gafka and Roche. Next time I’ll go for speed overkill with Ath, nyeh heh heh). Stock is the only other character who regularly gets more than one attack in a row. More turns equals more opportunities to set traps, mug enemies and help your party. This is where I should mention that she’s the best healer in the game, learning Super Heal and Area G Heal very early on. And did I mention that she’s CUTE?!

Elca – Officially her name is Eruca I think, but somehow that sounds like a skin disease or something so I call her Elca. Elca is an awesome addition to your party once she starts learning her more powerful abilities. She has two that hit every enemy on the battlefield for a goodly (and often godly) amount of damage, which is fantastic for random battles. You can wipe the whole field clean in one turn in many cases. She also has one called Divine Light, which makes a party member invulnerable for two turns. There are items that duplicate that, but they’re rare, and Elca takes only 10MP to do it. Plus she learns the standard G Frost, AND she has the highest magic attack in the game. She also learns the Trans-Turn ability, which means she can give her turn to another character on the rare occasion that you can’t find anything to do with her.

I’d almost rank her higher than Ath except for several serious flaws. First, she only joins halfway through the game, and on one route only at that. Secondly she’s missing a lot of the time, especially for many crucial battles in the late game. These two factors combined will leave her underleveled compared to your other characters. At the end of that game Stock was 70, Ath was 68 and Elca was 59. Thirdly her HP is ATROCIOUS, under 500 when characters like Gafka were kicking it around the 800s at the same level. Her defense isn’t much to speak of either, and forget about using physical attacks with her. Fourthly, as a story character she annoyed me a lot. Her good points more than make up for the above though, so she was an indispensable member of my team when she was around.

Gafka – That’s Tank McTank to you, bub! Highest HP and strongest physical attacker in the game. Slow as molasses, which sometimes makes chaining hard, but nothing that can’t be worked around. I especially liked his final attack that gathers every enemy in the screen in the middle so that other characters can whale on them and racket up the hit combos. This one time I got a turn with Gafka followed by two turns from Ath, a turn from Stock and some other stuff I forget but anyway, I smacked a dying boss and his cronies into the middle, used Ath’s Dancing Death repeatedly and racked up a Lvl 41 combo (“Brilliant!”) by the end. Sweet!

Since Gafka hits so hard and so late, I often adopted the strategy of having Ath steal from the enemy on her first turn, Stock steal again on his turn and then Gafka put the enemies out of their misery. Much like Elca and Roche, Gafka has poor availability (not as bad as theirs, though), but he’s strong enough that he can hold his own very quickly. His defence is not that good, but since his HP is so high you usually won’t notice it. His MP is terrible, but magic-refilling items are a dime a dozen in this game so no biggie. If I hadn’t taken Elca into the final battle I would have taken Gafka instead.

Rainey – She’s a useful physical attacker in the beginning and gets powerful magic attacks (all the G magic) really quickly. She also joins your party right at the beginning and is available almost constantly. Unfortunately, through no fault of her own she is quickly outclassed by the characters above in every significant respect. For some screen-filling boss battles I restarted and switched Ath out for her, but after a while I didn’t bother any more. You won’t go wrong using her, but she doesn’t have much apart from that G magic. A solid dependable team member nevertheless.

Roche – I’m certain he’s strong. He’s gotta be strong, given how important he is to the story. Plus he has high HP and attack stats, always a plus. But! His availability is even worse than Elca’s! By the end of the game he was only level 55 because I couldn’t bear to bench better characters for this slow upstart. To be honest I have no idea what most of Roche’s attacks do, and while his HP and attack are high, all his other stats are pretty terrible. I found him a dreadfully boring character storyline-wise as well, so that didn’t help.

Marco – As with Rainey he has the best availability in the game. He also has a gentle personality and he’s sorta kinda cute, isn’t he? Unfortunately his physical attack is crap, his defence is crap and his magical attacks are almost non-existent. He’s a support character, but there’s nothing he does that other characters don’t do better. Stock can Resurrect before he can and Ath learns Area G heal long before he does. He does have some good buffs, but battles where buffs can make or break you are usually so tough that Marco would just get in the way regardless. His main use would be healing and then using Trans-Turn to pass his turns to an actual damage dealer, but even then you’d still have to try and keep him alive. That’s why he’s at the bottom of the list, poor thing.

And there you have my character ranking. As I said at the top you can use just about anyone and get away with it in this game. I’m pretty sure I could have taken the final boss down with Stock, Roche and Marco so this is all very much my own opinion. If you haven’t played Radiant Historia for yourself yet, you’ll get to try it out when Atlus brings it to the West in February. Look forward to it!

Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 3rd Story – Taiyo GET!

Secret character Taiyo Kasuga. The only character that makes me feel like more of a pedophile than Oosako-sensei. Even though you meet him halfway through your second year, you only start to have anything to do with him in your third year, which makes the first two years of that route very boring. Fast moving, though, since you can just join the baseball club and use that command ad nauseam until the end of the game. As with all the other secret character routes, you don’t get to go on proper dates or trips with Taiyo so his route is very dull.

Taiyo doesn’t care about your stats, he doesn’t care about bombs, he doesn’t care about Rose Queen or anything. As long as you join the club by 2nd Year 9/25 and use the club command repeatedly, you shouldn’t fail his route. The correct answer to give in each case is blatantly obvious, and much of the time either option works just fine.

His route takes precedence over the other secret character routes, so what you can do is take a save from one of those towards September of 2nd Year and use that as your Taiyo route then proceed with whatever else you were doing. Be careful not to date any of the regular guys though. Kouichi came after me on this route and I was hard pressed fending him off, but I made sure I didn’t give him the least bit of encouragement and that worked out fine.

As a character Taiyo is a complete crybaby with a huge crush on you, his sempai. He grows up a little over the course of the game but he’s still a big baby by the end of the game. Dating a guy like that would be a huge drag in real life, and I get the sense from the ending that the main character is just playing with him as a boytoy until someone better comes along (Konno-sempai!!!). Well, whatever. That’s how you learn about life, Taiyo-kun!

Now then, I’ve done all the secret characters in Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 3 except Oosako-chan (ugh…that predator…do not want…), and I’m right before the last boss in Radiant Historia so hopefully my next update will be about one of these two games. Oh, right, I’m also right before the final boss in Suikoden III, I’d forgotten about that. Lots of games to play in this new year but so little time to do it in. I’ll give it my best shot!

My World, My Way – Finished!

Let’s keep this short and sweet, shall we? My World My Way is a simple game so I don’t see the point of writing too much about it. Basically I got tired of playing Radiant Historia and picked something else up to while away the time. 25 hours later, My World, My Way is done and RH is still languishing in limbo. I really need to push myself to finish that thing, but…

Well, anyway, I’d had my eye on My World, My Way for a while before I actually started it. Mainichi Japan’s website did an article on it just before it came out in Japan and it sounded great to be able to affect an RPG world. Enemies too weak? Power them up! Landscape boring? Change it! Not enough item drops? Demand more! Not enough EXP? Pout till you get some more. It sounded like great fun.

Having played it… it’s not half-bad at all. It’s nothing special either, I think they could have done a lot more with the world and the story than they actually did, but I got a fun 25 hours out of it so it’s all good. Plus RH is dull and heavy going now that I’m near the end, so the simple, extremely linear story of MWMW was a much-needed breath of fresh air to me. The humor fell flat a lot of the time, but at least they were trying to be funny and I appreciated that. If I’d played it at another time maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed it too much.

The extreme linearity and repetitiveness may be a problem for most RPG veterans, though. Princess Elise goes to a village, gets a quest, fills the quest, goes to the next village (filled with the same villagers), gets another quest, finishes the quest, goes to the next…etc. Eventually she gets to a dungeon, kills the dungeon boss and goes back home, for a while. It doesn’t get much deeper or more involved than that.

Furthermore being able to affect the world so freely does, as you might expect, make the game extremely easy. Even the bosses were easy, but if they aren’t easy enough for you, you have the option of lowering their levels by ten. I think I did that for the Ice Dragon or something, but I beat everything else fair and square, including the final boss. Well, “fair and square” doesn’t include Paralyzing her (“Hey, stand still will ya?”), but it does include spamming Angelic Might with my maxed Wis, using Clear when she used Magic Might and having Pinky heal repeatedly with the Recovery Staff. Easy final battle was easy!

Come to think of it, this would be the perfect game for an RPG noob. I’ve been trying to get my friend into RPGs, but she keeps whining about all the talking, and all the convoluted storylines and battle systems, so she’d probably love this. No complicated storyline to memorize, no unwieldy gameplay or fancy level up system to deal with, just go out, fight to your hearts content, warp home when you get tired, rest for free, etc, etc. And even veterans like me who need a break from the heavy stuff can enjoy it. This was worth my time, definitely. Sequel any time soon?

Radiant Historia – The cracks begin to show

Have you ever started a game and really liked it, and then the more you played it the less you liked it? I’m experiencing serious Ending Fatigue with Radiant Historia right now. It’s a good game, but I really, really need it to end soon. Luckily I’m on the final chapter of the alternate history, so hopefully it’ll be over before too long. A few of the things that are bothering me this late in the game (some mild spoilers, beware):

1. Timeline shmimeline. I complained a while ago about a character dying in one timeline and staying alive in another. I thought it was a one-off, but they did it again! A bad guy was killed and we had to go get something from them in another timeline, further on. But shouldn’t they be dead in that timeline as well? I’ve given up trying to make sense of how time/dimension travel works in this game.

2. The story is actually kinda slow. Since most of the game consists of backtracking to fix what went wrong, most of your time is spent going to the same places and doing the same things two, three or more times in a row. When I look back over the course of the game, very little has actually happened.

3. The timelines are all a blur now. In the earlier stages, very different things happen in each line and you do very different things. However right now I have all the characters, I’ve unlocked all the areas, and I’m doing pretty much the same thing in each timeline (beating up the bad guys and liberating the continent). Whenever I come back after not playing for a few days, it takes me a while to remember what’s gone on when and where.

4. You can’t fix the things you really want to fix. You’re limited to doing what the “correct history” requires of you, and that means you can’t kill anyone or save anyone unless the story allows you to. At one point someone sacrifices himself because of a trap, and because you were too weak to do anything about it. Once you’re stronger, shouldn’t you consider going back and saving that person? It’ll mess up the timeline, of course (‘cos then you might never meet Gafka and Ath B), but they should let you try and give you a Bad End, at least. Furthermore, there’s a mad scientist that’s responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and soldiers. You should be able to go back in time and use your stealth attack to kill him before that happens. He’s already done bad things then, no need to hold back. Like killing Hitler while he was a nobody, you know? Again that might lead to a Bad End, but the game should at least consider it and give you that choice.

5. You almost never get to kill the bad guys yourself. Of all the major bad guys so far, I’ve only killed one personally (and he wasn’t even that bad). All the others? Killed by someone else / killed offscreen / killed in a cutscene / was let go and, in one ridiculous case, spontaneously combusted before I could deal the finishing blow — and died with a smile! Roche had the decency to comment on that one, at least. What’s worse, the game actually made me kill a good character I really didn’t want to kill, then didn’t give me the chance to go back and try to change things. I feel cheated, very much so. This is bothering me more than anything else I’ve listed so far, because what makes the crimes of the bad guys bearable is the hope that I’ll pay them back eventually. When that revenge is taken away, it robs me of catharsis and leaves me feeling empty and dissatisfied. I am not happy.

6. I’m sick of the cryptic comments. You know, when characters make all those mysterious, unfinished comments: “Stock no, if you do that, you’ll be…”, “Ath, you really are…” “Elca, so you do know…” What? WHAT, DAMMIT?! Tell me already, stop dragging things out! What’s that ceremony all about? What will happen if we carry it out? Why is this all a big frickin’ mystery? Tell me already, arrgh!

7. I’m sick of sidequests too. For story backtracking, the timewarp usually drops you close to the point you have to change. For sidequests, you usually have to play a long bit of story over again before you get to the exact point. Even being able to skip cutscenes with the Start button doesn’t really help. Thanks to that at least, my characters are sickeningly overpowered, but I’ve still had enough. I want to give up on the true ending, but I’m fairly certain I won’t want to play this game again, so maybe I should just soldier on. Hmm.

Phew. Getting all this off my chest makes me feel a little better. Just a little. I think I’ve got it in me to finish the game, at least, if not the sidequests. Wish me luck!