So far, so good. About 19 hours into the game, so I’m probably more than halfway through, but I’ve been playing Radiant Historia really late at night when I’m super sleepy, so half of that time might consist of nodding off, haha.
I’ve learned even more field abilities now that help you to get all sorts of goodies on the field, not to mention you usually can’t pass some arbitrary roadblock in a certain part of the story unless you learn them. What are field abilities? Well in Radiant Historia, it’s stuff like the ability to pull those barrels in the picture over to the rocks on the left and then blow them up to create an opening. It can also be the ability to slash at vines in your way, or to see invisible treasure boxes and barrels.
That last ability was a real treat when I got it, ‘cos I went back to my old haunts and made out like a bandit. Unfortunately there’s a tiny number of locations in this game and a sickening amount of backtracking, so it’s not as exciting as it would normally be. There’s your city Alicetel, Lazvil Hill (dungeon), Alma Mountain(dungeon), Sand Fort, the roads to and from it (dungeon), Granorg, some pointless village whose name I can’t remember, and Celestia, village of the Saturos. Only that, in 19 hours of playing. And I thought Ar Tonelico 2 was bad. Well, at least Radiant Historia has the excuse that it’s on the DS.
Oh, I got some new party members too: Ath, some huge guy whose name I shockingly can’t remember (hold on while I check…ah, Gafka). And one other spoiler character whose name I won’t mention. Okay fine, it’s Elca. It’s not that big a spoiler, I guess. I’ve had them for a while, and the same thing happens to them as happens to Rainey and Marco – when they level up in one timeline, they automatically get stronger in the next one. This is because, as I said in my first RH post, what happens to them in one line directly affects them in the other one, if they die in one, they die in the other. This actually spoils part of the story in-game, when certain characters are missing, presumed dead in one line, but are just fine in the other, so you know they’re not really dead. All well and rational, right?
NOT! Those cheating writers, they’re giving favoritism to certain characters! XYZ just died in timeline A, why is XYZ still perfectly fine in timeline B? No fair! The only explanation I can think of is that you’d progressed a little further in A than in B, but in that case if you progress with B without fixing A, XYZ should drop dead pretty quickly. I’ll progress a little further tonight and what tell you happens when I get there (as if those nepotistic writers will let that happen).
