Radiant Historia

Late in high-school, early in college, there was one rule of thumb that I usually followed when buying video games. If Atlas published it, I would love it. Now in recent years, that always hasn't been true, but for Radiant Historia, Atlas is showing my some love that I'll never forget. Some people will call this game a Chrono Trigger clone. I would call this a challenge to Chrono Trigger.

The game's time travel took into place the idea of multiple timelines. One big decision you make on early in the game makes two separate worlds, that you can travel back and forth from, learning from different perspectives. The game also ends about thirty different times. Sometimes you make a decision and everyone dies or the world ends or the world ends and everyone dies. So you have to travel back to 'nodes' or important parts of your personal history. When you go back, you're the only one that knows the future events, but all of your party retains the experience of those events. So travel to the beginning before the final boss, and you'll be tearing up enemies like no one's business.

The turn-based style of RPG is pretty unique. Instead of selecting enemy 1, 2 or 3, you actually fight them on a 3x3 grid. Your attacks push them or pull them or shift their positions, moving creatures onto the same square in the grid. Their you can perform combos and cast magic that will hit everyone. I've seen this before in Megaman Battle Network, but that was real-time, and you had a 3x3 grid you needed to move and dodge on. This one was way more chill, and make it a puzzle to plan and think out your future attacks.

The story isn't new at all, hero, princess, some bad guys destroying the world through evil blah blah blah. But the characters really wow'ed me because no one fit in a technical stereotype. There was no healer, no all attacker, no all magic user. They all were spread very evenly across the usefulness rainbow. Some healed stronger than others, some used more magic and some had unique abilities that moved the enemies around or laid traps. It was nice that I didn't have to pick my favorites and only use them, because everyone brought something to the table.

There is a lot more to say about this game, but I really don't want to. Instead I'm going to leave it like this: If you're a fan of RPGs, this is a game for your library.