Playing A Game Radiant Historia NDS

Radiant Historia is impressive, imperfect, fun, and awe-inspiringly ambitious. It's the kind of game that reminds me of how creative the seemingly-rote turn-based RPG genre can be.

In its prologue chapter, the game does a fine job of establishing its setting, main cast, and primary gameplay gimmicks. The protagonist Stocke is a talented special-forces agent in a country at war with its neighbor, while the world around them is increasingly being transformed into barren desert. It doesn't take long for some god-like entities to introduce themselves to Stocke, who then clarify that this desertification is an imminent threat, and that he is the chosen one only one who can stop it. To do this, he'll need to use the White Chronicle, a book that catalogues history and allows its owner to drift through time itself.

This initial explanation of the chronicle is a little misleading; Radiant Historia isn't some souped-up, "open-timeline" game. Breaking through the facade of lore and exposition, it would be more clear to say that the game's script - independent of character stats, inventory, treasure chests, and what have you - can be explored like a video seek bar, wiping the play-head of current time back and forth. The catches are that the White Chronicle can't see "the future" (though it can rewind events that have happened once), and that only "important" junctures can be traveled to. Although many events get recorded in the game's Story screen, only a few key ones are valid time-travel destinations.

Where it starts to get really interesting is that, as the prologue chapter ends, a key decision given to Stocke causes two distinct timelines to develop. One choice leads to a "Standard History," while the other creates an "Alternate History;" Stocke can travel between key points in both histories at will. And this becomes necessary to the plot in a really creative way, as obstacles in one timeline can sometimes only be overcome with a skill, or some knowledge, attained in the other timeline.

Just don't worry too much about the fact that it doesn't make logical sense. Effectively, this means that two distinct stories - with the same cast of characters - play out in alternating shifts. And while most characters in the story are unaware that such a power might exist, Stocke can take control of time to his full advantage in both stories.

On top of the creative (if slightly confusing) time-travel premise, what really sells Radiant Historia's story is its excellent character writing. Stocke is a well-characterized, stoic semi-hero -- neither innately righteous, nor overwhelming with personality. His story is an easily-relatable one, like the blank-slate archetypes of a Zelda or Elder Scrolls game, while also having enough of a character to play a part in scripted dialogs and events.

Meanwhile, other main characters have stronger personalities, but aren't wacky or exaggerated as is so common in story-driven games; almost every named character behaves in a believable, smart way. Not only does this make the cast admirable and impressive, but it's also a vehicle for keeping the plot sane -- rarely does some event go sideways because of a retarded character choice or some un-questioned deus ex machina. Characters analyze their situations, come to rational conclusions, and intelligently plan ahead. For my money, these characters do a better job of stringing story events together than BioWare's tend to.

So, that's the story. Radiant Historia's combat and RPG mechanics are a whole other topic, and an interesting one in its own right. For starters, the game's battlefield resembles Mega Man Battle Network's grid-based encounters: in battle, enemies dot a three-by-three map, and will both deal and receive more damage as they're positioned closer to the friendly party. There aren't very many row- or column-oriented attacks as there are in MMBN -- however, what Radiant Historia brings to the table is the idea of temporarily stacking enemies for concurrent damage.

The earliest and most basic example is a "push" move. When an enemy is in the front row, a party member can use a "push" skill to both attack that enemy, and move it into the back row. This has the side-effect of reducing that enemy's damage-dealing (and -receiving) capabilities, until and unless the enemy moves itself back to the front.

Now -- if there is another enemy positioned directly behind that enemy, the "pushed" enemy will collide with it. Until the end of the party's turns, both enemies will occupy the same space. Attacks which target either the pushed enemy, or the collided enemy, will hit both. Once party member turns are interrupted by an enemy turn, colliding enemies will be separated into adjacent empty squares; so it's vital that party members take their turns while enemies are bunched together.

And to that, the final wrinkle is a "Change" ability, which allows a party member to swap turns with an ally or enemy. Why would a party member swap turns with an enemy? Well, to get a turn in sequence with other allies' turns, of course. If an enemy has a turn inbetween two party members, swapping the earlier party member's turn with that enemy's will allow the party to act in direct sequence, taking advantage of those aforementioned enemy-collision mechanics.

This effectively encourages strategic use of Changes to risk enemy turns against the party's, and sequences of pushes - of which there are also leftward and rightward skills, as well as a couple of "pull" skills - to pile enemies together and strike them all with optimal efficiency. It's a very cool risk-versus-reward mechanic, and pulling off a massive pile-up and simultaneous strike is immensely satisfying.

There are, however, a few unfortunate quirks to the game's battles. The first is that there are some enemies who ... can't be moved. While it can be an interesting tactical twist to try and move enemies on top of an immobile one, having multiple immovable enemies at the same time just sort of sucks.

Status effects also don't feel correctly-executed. Most enemies can't do them at all, and most of them miss more often than they hit, but their effectiveness seems too unbalanced. Poison effects deal really significant damage. Paralyze and Sleep effects need to be cured with an item or skill from another party member, effectively reducing the three-person party to 1/3 strength. And when an enemy uses an attack- or defense-boost on itself, it becomes unreasonably dangerous or effectively invincible, respectively.

And there are some enemies that are just way too fucking annoying. In the last chapter I kept encountering a mushroom enemy with a "Summon" skill that would just drop another mushroom into the battle. Leaving even one mushroom alive meant that it could multiply at a rate just about on par with my ability to continue killing them. Summoned enemies don't yield any bonus experience points, either, so I would just end up wasting minutes of whittling them down for no meaningful reward.

Like status effects, Radiant Historia's equipment and skill selections feel under-developed. At first, each character seems to fit an easily-understandable archetype -- that is, a clear point on the spectrum of physical attacks or magic support. But as characters level-up and new skills are unlocked, these points become very blurry. Stocke has most of the best push moves, but lacks a forward pull; while allies with pulls lack left- and right-pushes. One of Stocke's allies starts with most of the best healing moves, ... but Stocke gets Recovery (clears status ailments) and Greater Heal much earlier than he does. Another ally has some of the best physical attacks, but also the most powerful magic attacks. This one, especially, becomes a problem when selecting equipment, since weapons usually favor either of physical or magic attacks; not both.

Party instability is also a slight problem. So far the vast majority of my game has been played with three characters (Stocke, and two others who are introduced early on). Rarely, an additional character will join the crew, allowing me to slot them into the three-person battle party; but why would I?, when that character is a lower level than the others I've built up, and their equipment isn't as up-to-date as the others'. These additional characters almost always leave within a handful of story events, so investing effort and money in them never seems wise.

Except in one circumstance when my regular party was gone, and their replacements were a new under-leveled character, plus one returning ally who - due to my previous neglect - was even lower-leveled. And building on my skill-unlock complaints above, it's not like each of these characters feels unique enough to invest time and attention into -- for the most part, equivalently-leveled characters are interchangeable.

But I'm mostly just digressing and nit-picking. While it's regrettable that the lack of clear "classes" makes characters largely homogenous in battle, and some specific enemy types have annoying abilities, combat is refreshing and fun on the whole. It's a nice way to split up text-heavy story sequences, which are themselves full of intrigue and suspense.

Oh -- and the soundtrack is excellent. Thank you, Yoko Shimomura, for being such a consistently-incredible composer.

Progress: Standard History chapter 3, Alternate History chapter 3, 79/236 events

Rating: Good