Some people will say that the late 1980s to mid 90s was the ’golden era’ of RPG video games, where a relative inability to use fancy graphics
forced developers to provide players with a good story, appealing characters, and great music. This isn’t to say that modern RPGs are worthless or lack these qualities, but the classics certainly have their fans to this day. Radiant Historia apparently tries to emulate that older style, giving players a ’save the world’ plot centered on the creative use of time travel. It’s more linear than this makes it sound, so players shouldn’t expect a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger... but Atlus has nonetheless found a great game to bring to western audiences and fans of the genre will be thrilled.
Players primarily take control of Stocke, a young man working in the intelligence division of an army that is a mix of high-fantasy (swords and magic) and steampunk (bulky but fantastic technology abounds). Initially just concerned with winning the war against an enemy nation for control of what little remains of the world’s arable
land, Stocke soon finds himself juggling that concern along with finding out why the world is falling apart and putting a stop to it. This would be a nearly impossible task since a single mistake can either end the world or see his homeland conquered, but Stocke quickly gains the ability to move back and forth in time. His choices can even create alternate timelines, and he’ll have to travel between them in order to fully set history right.
Stocke is an unusual RPG protagonist in that he is the strong and quiet type, but not hostile; there is no "...whatever" or "who cares?" from him for no good reason. He’s a generally nice and heroic character, and is joined by several others who range from genuinely likable at best to tolerable at worst; as their various issues are reasonable and most of them behave intelligently so that the player will be sympathetic to them. They cover a variety of character designs, and are used to explore all sorts of story tones though heroic idealism, militaristic pragmatism (they are fighting a war, after all), and political intrigue are the major ideas involved. Having time travel involved means there are some inevitable stumbles and plot holes, but the game does not ask for too large a suspension of disbelief in order for the story to make sense.
Radiant Historia deserves praise for its turn-based combat system, which is easy to learn yet has enough depth to keep fights from being played on mindless ’auto-pilot.’ Enemies are arranged on a 3x3 grid, and will attempt to maneuver themselves into stronger positions or even assemble special formations that increase their power. The player must balance dealing damage to them and healing their own characters’ wounds with using techniques to push enemies out of alignment, or else be overwhelmed. Ideally players will force multiple enemies into a single square, where they will remain until one of them comes up in the turn order; that’s your chance to tear into all of them at once, and will be important for winning many battles. It is relatively traditional beyond this however, asking players to track HP and MP, pick out the correct spell or technique for the situation, buy new weapons and armor, and so on.
While this is an excellent RPG, there are a few noteworthy flaws. The most significant is that you cannot save whenever you like, and must instead find save points. This would not be a big problem for a console RPG, but this is on a portable system so who knows when you might be interrupted or need to stop playing? There are also a few times where you are sent on fetch quests to find very small items, often with only the most basic of clues on where to look for them. Said segments are thankfully rare, but not much fun. This is particularly annoying if you end up doing time travel while only half done with said fetching, since when you return you may find the quest has reset to square one... very odd when several other quest items stay with you when found, no matter what timeline hopping you do afterward.
