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| Radiant Historia is the Planescape: Torment of jRPGs *nonspoiler review* by Mischief Maker 06/26/2012, 6:34am PDT | ||||
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| Remember how I said that playing a jRPG for anything but the plot is playing the worst game ever created? You know how Anime and jPRGs are usually just a series of preposterous setpieces linked together by the flimsiest of story excuses? Radiant Historia is the best written jRPG I've ever played, displaying a level of restraint that floors me. It's like the game's writer looked back over the history of the jRPG and said, "ugh, let me show them how it's done." It's not that the story's setting or overall arc is anything new, it's that every character has clear goals and motivations, even the final boss, and that the whole story folds together in a neat package in the true ending. Instead of an idiotic child spending the whole game going , "huh? me? destiny?" the protagonist of this game is a cool and calm secret agent who takes his newfound time travel powers and the responsibility to save the world in stride. Now let me step back and throw up the disclaimer that this is a great plot "for a videogame."
The combat engine is pretty nifty too. Enemies are spread over a 9x9 grid and your characters all have SP-cheap abilities to reposition the enemies on top of one another. Attack a square with 3 enemies on it, they all take damage equally from your attack. Essentially this turns every encounter into a mini puzzle game, to which I say that Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes is now obsolete on the DS. The only reason you would really need to do any serious grinding is if you abuse an ability you get halfway into the game that allows you to skip every regular enemy fight. The price you must pay for the great story and enjoyable combat system is some seriously ass graphics with a predominantly browned-out palette and an incredibly clumsy 3D effect applied to buildings and environments. Enemy sprites are low in number and subject to many, many palette swaps over the course of the game. The music is actually really good as far as SNES chip tunes go, but there aren't that many tracks and the weakest one (the outdoor song) is the one you'll be listening to the most. There is also a questionable decision where the game has tiers of characters to bring on your party. Two of them are almost always available to you throughout the game, and therefore likely to compensate for their lesser abilities with higher levels. The rest are much more powerful but only are available occasionally in the story, so their levels will be lagging. I guess it's a way to add replayability to the game, because the whole time travel concept would make a New Game+ redundant. If you're gonna play a jRPG in the near future, make this the next one you play. You won't have the latest and greatest CGI nutting all over your screen, but you may find yourself sinking way more hours into it than expected to see what twists and turns the plot is going to take next. Protip: When you time travel in this game, all the cutscenes are replayed each time you return to that chunk of time. The game tells you that X will fast forward the cutscene, but doesn't mention that "start" will skip the cutscene entirely. Many sub-plots have one-time cutscenes, so be careful. And if you aren't playing this game for plot, jesus, what's the point? |
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Radiant Historia is the Planescape: Torment of jRPGs *nonspoiler review* by 06/26/2012, 6:34am PDT  And here's the spoiler addendum to that previous review. by 06/26/2012, 6:36am PDT And when you get around to it, here's my true ending thoughts.*MASSIVE SPOILERS* by 06/26/2012, 7:11am PDT Posted this in gamefaqs under title "True Ending Musing" *no spoilers in this* by 06/26/2012, 4:05pm PDT Is it easier or harder to get banned from gamefaqs than Qt3? by 06/26/2012, 5:05pm PDT You should be instantly permabanned for mod sass NT by 06/26/2012, 10:12pm PDT 2 months after playing the first hour of Xenoblade and I still havent touched it NT by 06/27/2012, 1:08am PDT Same. In my case Dragon's Dogma ruined everything. NT by 06/27/2012, 5:38am PDT I don't have an excuse by 06/27/2012, 12:12pm PDT |
