Okay so this was a pretty rad RPG. I'm not going to carefully discuss every stupid minutae of this game, because let's face it this is more about me mulling over the game to better understand it than finding the JIN SAY QUOI of the menu system (which I will say was amazingly well-done, aside from deciding to hide a character's skills in the stats section, or giving any real indication of how powerful said skills are though it's not like the game punishes you for using them in any way). So, what made this game so rad?
1) Stocke. Stocke Stocke Stocke. In a modern era where RPG protagonists are either embarrassing pastiches of Shinji Ikari and John Wayne, tilting towards whichever extreme best suits some retarded storyline, Stocke is one of the very few RPG heroes I actively rooted for. How does he do it?
a) A personality capable of intelligent thought. I think we can agree that most RPG main guys, despite their central role in the plot, tend to be pushed through things. OH NO THE ORC KING HAS ATTACKED OUR VILLAGE QUICKLY YOU ARE THE LEGENDARY HERO. While Stocke also has destiny thrust upon him, he reacts to the news with a "whatever okay let's fix this shit." He considers ramifications, but also actually does things without needing player input. I still kind of like Persona 3 a little more than Radiant Historia, but going back to the former took a fair bit of time getting used to my character being less a fleshed character of his own and more of a depressing simulacrum of what a lonely nerd would imagine a true high school experience to be like.
b) He's such a fun character. Radiant Historia manages to avoid the "BUT THOU MUST" yes/no dichotomy that usually suffices for character development by plainly characterizing Stocke as an asshole that gets shit done. I'm sure there's some hardcore RPG players that were mad they had no input in how the character they were controlling was going to react, but holy shit fuck these guys right they probably smell really bad. It's fun to see an RPG, let alone a JRPG, where while all the other characters are going "WHY MUST WAR BE SO PAINFUL HOW CAN WE SURVIVE," the guy you're controlling responds with "jesus christ let's kill some bitches and be home in time for dinner." It's a good thing too, because the game is so fucking chatty with its story (though people complaining loudly about this detail have clearly never played Golden Sun or its sequels, which featured 50% more talky and 300% less plot advancement per word GOD YOU'VE REPEATED THE SAME CONCEPT TWENTY TIMES DUDE LIGHTHOUSES STONES I GET IT CHRIST)
2) Other characters aren't so bad? Honestly, it's like a 50/50 deal. Some guys, like the starting healer sword guy, are pretty generic and lame, but Historia does get a special award for making the 9-year-old girl character genuinely likeable and not OH GOD DIE. Which is pretty good, because she's also by far the best character in the entire game, thus allowing me to bypass the conundrum present in alot of RPGs where a really good character on paper is ruined by having a personality so wretched you can't bear to deal with them. Yeah, fuck you too Ken. But there's no characters I really actively disliked, and even the lame healer sword guy revealed some surprising sides if you bother with sidequests, so hurray for that. Even better, the worst character in the game is also the one you'll see the least of, so you won't even have to worry about not using him in any point ever!
3) The battle system! While I have alot of issues with the battle system, it's vaguely creative and is much more often fun rather than not, and occasionally is an utter blast to use. Without getting into things, every battle has the enemies arranges on a 3x3 grid, usually, though not always, with each enemy taking up a single spot in the grid. You have a regular attack, but generally you will be using MP-consuming skills (as there is almost never a point where you will run out of MP provided you don't play like a spaz, not to mention that I was drowning in items by the end of the game). Skills are not just magic, but also include abilities that either move the baddies around on the grid, or target specific sections of the grid regardless if there are enemies there or not. The big trick with the game is using skills to bunch enemies together, culminating in one final nuke attack to deal massive damage to everyone you swept up in your combo. Generally, when battles don't have any added issues, the system is simple and fun to use, especially as you get new party members with new ways to explode shit. So, what are the issues?
The primacy of magic is probably the biggest problem I have with the game. The position an enemy occupies on the vertical part of the grid plays a major role in the effect of physical attacks on both you and the enemy. If an enemy is on the furthest column, any physical attack he gives will be severely reduced versus if he was on the front row, but any physical attack you make will also be horribly reduced. But hey, guess what kind of attack is completely affected by distance? Boom. Alot of battles against things that I couldn't immediately kill with a first round combo usually resulted in me pushing them to the back row while whatever mages I had slowly ice spell'd him into oblivion. It also doesn't help that generally most trash enemies attack purely physically, and even if they use spells, usually the best party members in the game follow a pattern of having terribad defense and physical attack, but godly magic offense and defense. As a result, two of the three physical characters in the game are unbearably gimped, with the third being useful only for two moves that literally break the game in their power. So, are there any problems with the magical characters? Not really, except for the
Randomly placed grid spanning bosses. It's definitely a curious decision on the part of the game maker: "I've made a battle system that rewards strategic thinking over simply mashing the attack button, now let's add a ton of bosses that cannot actually be moved!" Also, by ton of bosses, I actually mean recolors of the same fucking giant spider. Battles with these spoiler not really bosses are easily the worst part of the game: Suddenly, my game has transmuted into generic RPG turn-based combat where I hit and heal and hit and heal, which wouldn't even be so bad if the game was built for that sort of thing, but generally enemies tend to hit like trucks if you don't dispatch things quickly, so the fights tend to go hit heal revive revive hit revive get hit by random aoe fuck you spell get pissed restart game cheese fight by using limit break ripoff abilities to remove boss turns and amass giant combo to kill.
Finally, there's a pretty weird ass difficulty curve. The first quarter of the game is pretty basic stuff, though featuring some tricky fights if you aren't properly leveled. The second quarter is EASILY the hardest section of the game, where the game suddenly places you in battles against like six enemies at a time, all of whom are pretty good at murdering you while your own characters have basically learned nothing useful for the past ten levels, culminating in a boss fight that is nearly impossible to beat unless you break under pressure like me and realize that you need a character that you will never use again. The last half of the game, however, gets progressively easier as you unlock the skills you should have had like eight hours ago and suddenly you're killing everything in a single round and bosses just cry to message boards about you. The final boss especially is only a threat if you haven't learned that getting combos in battle drastically increases your damage.
4) A pretty good game length. I finished Radiant Historia in about 30 hours. Part of that length was based off me using faqs to locate sidequests, though I didn't complete them all (my reaction to the optional bosses was a "NO THANK YOU SIR"). I echo a complaint from another blogger critic (whose sidequest guide I gleefully used) that the game drags towards the middle, though by the end everything reaches a satisfactory pace. Still, compared to the tactic of many rpgs in just forcing endless circles on you to reach some magical gameplay length mark (fuck you golden sun seriously), this was pretty damned good.
5) The ending was so great. Especially the (spoiler not really) super secret ending you get if you complete certain sidequests, which I am not going to spoil because it is seriously worth getting and made me grin so goddamned hard.
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