Radiant Historia

Two months ago, I put the fortieth and final hour into Final Fantasy IX, the oldest game in my backlog by a number of years. Not only was the game a blast, but the act of vanquishing a game I'd had for half of my lifetime was a true triumph, as far as the backlog's challenges go. Today, I've just completed another forty-hour JRPG that I had a lot of fun playing, and yet that same triumphant feeling is almost entirely lacking. This makes sense; while Final Fantasy IX had been in my backlog for well over a decade, Radiant Historia barely spent a hundred days there. So while in the case of the former I was thrilled to overcome a true milestone, the latter left me feeling little more than, "oh, great, back to where I was three months ago."

This is just an observation. It isn't meant to criticize the game itself or the accomplishment of beating it. (New or not, it was one of just three games in my backlog projected to take forty or more hours. Huge!) I first had interest in Radiant Historia after reading Brian's glowing review right here on Back-Blogged. In fact, he described the key components of the game - the parallel timelines, the time traveling, the grid-based combo-heavy combat system - so well that I'll link to his article right here in the interest of saving time and being lazy.

One area where I'd have to disagree with Brian is his claim that this Chrono Trigger clone challenges Chrono Trigger. While the similarities are abundant and obvious - seven playable characters, spatial relevance in combat, time travel - I can't go that far on the praise. Whether I simply liked this game less than he did, liked Chrono Trigger more than he did, or some combination of the two, I can't say. Frankly this game just didn't have nearly as many memorable scenes or characters or moments as that one did. The characters are diverse and endearing here, but they're all cut from a similar cloth compared to Chrono Trigger's gallant talking frog-man, futuristic fighting robot, dorky inventor, et al.

Of course, Chrono Trigger is an absurdly high bar to shoot for, and for all this game's comparable "shortcomings" I can't help but imagine the comparison is a disservice in some ways. After all, Radiant Historia is very much its own game with its own charms and shouldn't be thought of as an attempt to recreate Chrono Trigger on an Atlus budget. In short, if Chrono Trigger gets five stars, this game gets four. And that's something!