Radiant Historia (and misc rant on game industry)

[exdeath]

Too. Much. Awesome.

I've disowned 360/PS3 and their Call of Duty / DLC spam garbage, picked up a DSi XL and started picking up DS games.

Picked up the DSi XL instead of the upcoming 3DS XL because I wanted full screen native DS res and realized 3DS XL would letterbox on all 4 sides and not be any bigger than a DS Lite/3DS.

It's awesome walking into a game store and going to the DS section and not see the entire wall filled with boxes with M4s and dog tags on the covers from floor to ceiling. I'm really just done with that played out genre, I got my "realistic military shooter" fix way back when BF2 was new.

I had heard Radiant Historia was a modern Chrono Trigger released in 2011. Been playing all weekend. Not sure if it's quite as good with Chrono Trigger, but it's definitely got my attention on the DS as a viable game platform with games of the thoughtfulness and quality that are lacking on the mainstream casual shooter boxes like PS3/360.

Atlus is the new Square apparently and by that I mean the new old school Square. Nice to see small companies putting their hearts into games and going out of their way to please fans even knowing up front they will only sell in the 100,000s. EA and Activision can be erased in a nuclear holocaust for all I care.

Probably need to pick up a 3DS XL anyway just for Tales of the Abyss and Kingdom Hearts in 3D. In the mean time just completed Golden Sun Dark Dawn, currently on Radiant Historia, and have a stack awaiting me including every DS Dragon Quest game I haven't played before, Suikoden Tierkreis, and a few others. It's been too long since I've played any decent RPGs, no thanks to current gen consoles and their ability to seemingly only be technically capable of first person arcade military combat simulators. Are the graphics registers in the 360/PS3 GPUs hard wired to fixed function hardware accelerated M16/M4 and explosion rendering? Seriously.

Of course I have Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy games, etc, on DS too, but those are remakes and I've played them before. Radiant Historia is prob the first new good RPG I've played since PS2. Unless you count Fallout 3 or Borderlands, but those are more "shooters with inventory and skills" more than story heavy RPG. And don't get me started on Long Tunnel XIII. I like my RPGs to be like a 10,000 page fiction novel.

 

[crisium]

Radiant Historia my game of the year 2011. If any part of you once liked mid-90s RPGs, you need this game. It's actually the first JRPG I have had the muster to finish in over half a decade.

 

[Sulaco]

Thanks for the post!!

I'm also a big fan of JRPGs...at least in the bygone days of 16 and 32bits. I'm not 100% sure (still early now), but I think the last JRPG I might have finished all the way through is Xenogears (which I played for the first time in 2009). Before that, maybe FF7?

And I play quite a few, just haven't ever been gripped quite enough, even the ones that were good and I enjoyed, to play all the way through. Recent ones I've played:

-Lost Odyssey (enjoyed, never finished)
-Dragon Quest VIII (enjoyed, never finished)
-Chrono Cross (meh, couldn't get into)
-Dragon Quest IX (meh, couldn't get into)
-Albert Odyssey (enjoyed, never finished)
-Shining the Holy Ark (Meh)
-Final Fantasy XII (decent, never finished)
-Final Fantasy X (awful, but still forced myself through 90%)
-Final Fantasy IX (See above)
-Final Fantasy VIII (See above)
-Secret of Evermore (meh.)

..So...yeah. I was actually thinking maybe I just outgrew JRPGs and their format and style just didn't appeal to me anymore. But I have such fond memories of them I just always keep trying them, hoping one will recapture my imagination. I'm actually replaying Chrono Trigger on the DS right now, and enjoying it far more (even on a third play through) than any of the RPGs in my list up there, but that speaks more to the brilliance of CT than anything else.

Anyway, I'm going to give RH a try should I see it around. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[exdeath]

I thought it was me too. Until I picked up some older games I missed when they came out (eg Xenogears).

Nope, definitely not me. The games just aren't there today.

 

[Aikouka]

The last JRPG that I was able to finish was Blue Dragon. The biggest hang-up for me is that I tend to like things the way they are. An example of that is... don't go messing with the battle system. I like the standard Final Fantasy menu junk. I don't mind if you add a little bit of extra fluff to it to make it fancier like how Blue Dragon has charging. However, I don't like the systems in some games like Tales of Vesperia. I talked about it in the ToV thread, but it feels like a bastardized fighting game, which I don't want.

Blue Dragon could have been a fantastic game if I had a better story. It also needed to be a bit more difficult in some cases, but it wasn't too bad. I did actually die to the King Poo, but once I readjusted my skills, I had no problem with it.

Speaking of hard fights, I did have this epic battle against one of the five dragons. I went into it not knowing what it would cast, and turns out... it can put your entire party to sleep. Well, all of my melee characters were using a Kelolon necklace, which will normally turn you into a Kelolon (creature that deals weak normal damage but high crit damage). However, I equipped those characters with some sort of relic that makes them immune to all status ailments. So, they weren't affected by the sleep, but all of my casters (i.e. my healers) were. It got to the end of that fight and I had Shu, Marumaru and Zola up. Shu had maybe 200/999 HP and the others had maybe 100 or less. I decided to sacrifice the other two and have them use my strongest healing item (+250 HP) on Shu. The dragon used an AoE attack that killed my other teammates but left me with enough health to survive, and I ended up killing him. Pretty sure that without the triage, I would have wiped.

I've never played Radiant Historia though. The reason I commented on the battle system is that Radiant Historia's system sounded weird from what I read on the Wikipedia article.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Tales series is awesome.

Just finished putting in 130 hours in Tales of Graces F. Haven't even started a second run through (probably won't do it as i'm burnt out of it atm).

 

[exdeath]

The battle system in Radiant Historia is fun as hell. Screen shows next 10 turns, you can change turns with enemies to let enemies attack and save your turns until all 10 slots are your chars, then smack them around and bunch them together and hit them with massive combos. It's not required, but it ends battles faster and gives bonus exp. Just smacking two enemies into each other speeds up fight time, saves mp, etc because any attack on that area hits both enemies together, etc. Being able to round all enemies up in <= 3 attacks and then AoE them down with a single target move is GREAT for grinding speed.

My BIGGEST pet peeve with JRPGs is missable items and points of no return. Sorry but making me miss items is a cop out for "replay value" and I'm OCD on having the best items, max stats, etc. I'm going to be pissed if I have to restart a game I just put 200 hours into maxing levels and stats only to find out later I can never have the best weapon in the game anyway. FUUUUUUUUU

Not so in this game. Missed a treasure because a place collapsed? Jump back to a point in time before it collapsed! Rare unique item that you can steal from a boss? Travel back in time and fight the boss multiple times and steal it again!

I just hit the final chapter and had the end game story dumped on me. Shit just got real! So. Epic. It's a game based on time travel so of course a lot of things that didn't make sense before are that way on purpose and you get to find out why. Great continuity. Level 81 with 208/236 nodes completed, on the Final Chapter, about 40 hours in. Not bad for a DS game.

 

[exdeath]

Finished it. Wow.

236/236 lvl 99. Next game.

 

[rayfieldclement]

Too. Much. Awesome.

I've disowned 360/PS3 and their Call of Duty / DLC spam garbage, picked up a DSi XL and started picking up DS games.

Picked up the DSi XL instead of the upcoming 3DS XL because I wanted full screen native DS res and realized 3DS XL would letterbox on all 4 sides and not be any bigger than a DS Lite/3DS.

It's awesome walking into a game store and going to the DS section and not see the entire wall filled with boxes with M4s and dog tags on the covers from floor to ceiling. I'm really just done with that played out genre, I got my "realistic military shooter" fix way back when BF2 was new.

I had heard Radiant Historia was a modern Chrono Trigger released in 2011. Been playing all weekend. Not sure if it's quite as good with Chrono Trigger, but it's definitely got my attention on the DS as a viable game platform with games of the thoughtfulness and quality that are lacking on the mainstream casual shooter boxes like PS3/360.

Atlus is the new Square apparently and by that I mean the new old school Square. Nice to see small companies putting their hearts into games and going out of their way to please fans even knowing up front they will only sell in the 100,000s. EA and Activision can be erased in a nuclear holocaust for all I care.

Probably need to pick up a 3DS XL anyway just for Tales of the Abyss and Kingdom Hearts in 3D. In the mean time just completed Golden Sun Dark Dawn, currently on Radiant Historia, and have a stack awaiting me including every DS Dragon Quest game I haven't played before, Suikoden Tierkreis, and a few others. It's been too long since I've played any decent RPGs, no thanks to current gen consoles and their ability to seemingly only be technically capable of first person arcade military combat simulators. Are the graphics registers in the 360/PS3 GPUs hard wired to fixed function hardware accelerated M16/M4 and explosion rendering? Seriously.

Of course I have Chrono Trigger, the Final Fantasy games, etc, on DS too, but those are remakes and I've played them before. Radiant Historia is prob the first new good RPG I've played since PS2. Unless you count Fallout 3 or Borderlands, but those are more "shooters with inventory and skills" more than story heavy RPG. And don't get me started on Long Tunnel XIII. I like my RPGs to be like a 10,000 page fiction novel.

Why don't you buy a Wii and play Xenoblade Chronicles or the Last Story.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Finished it. Wow.

236/236 lvl 99. Next game.

Play any tales series game.

The latest one released for the US is Tales of Graces F for PS3. Yes there are a few missable items in the beginning, but 99% of the stuff is not missable.

You will easily put in 100+ hours trying to be a completionist.

 

[Aikouka]

The latest one released for the US is Tales of Graces F for PS3.

Is there a demo? I'd like to see if the battle system is like Tales of Vesperia, since I didn't like that system much.

Also, is it necessary to play Tales of Graces? The Amazon page says that it's a continuation.

Does it have a Japanese voice track? I recall hearing that Tales of Vesperia for the PS3 did, so I'd be hopeful of this.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Is there a demo? I'd like to see if the battle system is like Tales of Vesperia, since I didn't like that system much.

Also, is it necessary to play Tales of Graces? The Amazon page says that it's a continuation.

Does it have a Japanese voice track? I recall hearing that Tales of Vesperia for the PS3 did, so I'd be hopeful of this.

I don't want to hijack this thread too much but I'll answer your questions:

No demo that I know of.

Tales of Graces F is the exact same game as the Wii version except that it comes with an extra arc, hence the "f" (which stands for future). So you actually get more game than the wii version.

I don't know what exactly about the ToV battle system you didn't like, but the battle system of ToG F shares some similarities with ToV and some differences. The biggest difference between the battle systems is that ToG F uses something called "Chain Capacity" where certain skills use a diff # of CC points. ToV uses the TP system. You probably just need to look it up or watch some youtube videos to compare.

There is no Japanese voice track on ToG F. The English voice acting is ok and annoying at times.

 

[pathos]

Is there a demo? I'd like to see if the battle system is like Tales of Vesperia, since I didn't like that system much.

Also, is it necessary to play Tales of Graces? The Amazon page says that it's a continuation.

Does it have a Japanese voice track? I recall hearing that Tales of Vesperia for the PS3 did, so I'd be hopeful of this.

I'm going to guess you probably wouldn't like Graces F to much then. It is improved over Vesperia, and flows better. It does, however, have the same sort of feel to it.

Well, let me restate it. If you had some nitpicky things in vesperias system you didn't like, then it's possible you'll like Graces F. If, you didn't really like anything about Vesperia's system, then you probably won't like Graces F either.

Oh, and putting aside the battle systems (which Graces F is superior), the Vesperia characters are alot better than Graces F (Yuri, Judith, and Rita are great). The story between the 2 is a toss up.

Overall I probably prefer Vesperia over Graces F just for the cast. I do like Graces F too though.

Oh, and back on topic, I really need to finish Radiant Historia. I really liked it, but never finished, since I dont game on hand helds very often.