Radiant Historia

Time travel: headache inducing, full of paradoxes and generally built on a ridiculous foundation of words that were almost certainly made up on the spot. Radiant Historia takes those things and throws them out the window, settling for a quantum line of logic that goes something like this: Why? Because, that's why. Deal with it. And it works.

Here is a story focused on two warring countries, set against the backdrop of a world that is slowly dying. Lush forests and grasslands are deteriorating, leaving only an empty desert covering the continent in a phenomenon called desertification. Arable land is a precious commodity, and the politics of a dying world are cutthroat; leaders let their armies do the talking, and the horrible ends always justify the equally horrible means. Like all good stories of warring nations, Radiant Historia is filled with intrigue and betrayal, noble heroes and scheming lords, secrets and mysteries and hidden meanings and all of the poor common folk caught in the grinder; like all such good stories, Something Must Be Done.

And it is a good story. It begins with the apparently unironically-named Stocke, an elite special agent for the country of Alistel. Alistel has been put on the defensive by the opposing country of Granorg, which is poised to invade with an overwhelming military advantage. Stocke is given a mission to gather intel that will hopefully stave off the approaching army—and he's also given the White Chronicle, a book of blank pages and mysterious origin. Shockingly, his mission does not go according to plan, and Stocke discovers that the White Chronicle is more than just a good luck charm—it grants him the power to travel through time in the realm known as Historia, allowing him to alter the past in order to benefit the present. More than that, it allows him to split history into two parallel timelines, each of which can impact the other. As Stocke lives through these two timelines, he learns more about the history of the world, the motivations of each nation, and just what he and his companions are expected to do about it.

It's a satisfying journey. There is, of course, more going on in the world than what is seen on the surface, and Radiant Historia is generous with the twists and turns that make such a story work. The characters are for the most part strongly presented. Stocke plays something of the stoic anti-hero, but not to the point of cliche—he's driven by duty and weighed down by the responsibility of ensuring that the world does not succumb to desertification, and when he leads he does so because he believes in his cause. The supporting cast skirts the edge of falling into RPG stereotypes, but there are more hits than misses. Each one is endearing in his or her own way, but the key word is 'supporting'—this is Stocke's story.

Stocke's two stories, actually. The parallel timelines diverge early in the game, and from that point on Stocke is living two very different lives. You can travel to different points in each timeline nearly at will, and you will regularly come across roadblocks in one where the solution can be found in the other. Things are further complicated by the fact that there's someone else out there doing exactly the same thing as Stocke—another time traveling book wielder with a very different agenda. Stocke will end up traveling the length and breadth of the continent as he attempts to keep the world from falling apart, and traveling even further up and down the dual timelines as he tries to keep up with his mysterious opponent.

Let's get this out of the way: whatever you do, don't dwell on the word 'paradox'. Just don't. The game handles it about as well as can be expected in a story where time travel is a device rather than a focus—you get one quick, shaky explanation, and then are basically told not to worry about it. You don't have to worry about murdering your own grandfather or stepping on the wrong ant, and if you make a bad choice then you don't spend an hour playing onward until you realize it. Indeed, making the wrong decision (sometimes blatantly, sometimes not) is entertaining in itself, as you immediately see the long term consequences as a broken node—a point where history has been irrevocably set in place by your choices. Stocke simply goes back in time to rethink his decision, but the nodes hold hints about the underlying story, and drive the point home about how small decisions can have big impacts. I often found myself making the 'correct' decisions, and then going back to see what would have happened if I had taken another path. Open nodes, broken or otherwise, are also tracked in Historia, allowing you to keep tabs on how many nodes remain to be discovered, as well as indicating paths that contain additional story content and side-quests. It's simple and well done, and encourages you to make decisions without over-thinking them.

The timeline concept is also deceptively generous. It allows the developers to railroad the storyline while still letting you explore at your own pace . It is especially well suited to completionists—enjoy a session of pure storyline, watching the world around you become completely reshaped by events, all the while secure in the knowledge that you can revisit every side quest in the past whenever you like. Indeed, most quests can only be completed by jumping back and forth in the timeline, or by skipping from one timeline to the other. Sound complicated? Maybe, but the writers did an excellent job of creating intuitive goals. A few of the more convoluted—and rewarding—side quests require a bit more thinking and exploration, but all of them are doable, and there are very few that don't leave some sort of bread-crumb trail to follow throughout the timelines.

Combat is built on the bones of a fairly typical turn-based system, but Radiant Historia adds enough variation on the theme to keep it engaging. The enemies are placed on a 3X3 grid, and your characters have the power to push them around to gain a strategic advantage. Push several enemies into the same hex and your subsequent attacks will hit them simultaneously. Place magical traps on the grid and you can shove the bad guys to their fiery doom. Attacking in succession builds a combo meter, further boosting your damage. The system isn't particularly nuanced, but the result is more entertaining than simply choosing who attacks whom. Unfortunately, however, you have a bit too much power. Eventually you will gain enough control over the board that the tactics lean towards brutal domination rather than fun times—the strategy is no longer 'defeat the chicken monsters' so much as 'prevent the chicken monsters from even taking a turn'. Such tactics tend to be mana intensive and are probably less efficient than a more measured approach, but, hey! Screw those chicken monsters. They don't deserve turns.

They try to balance this by throwing in a few additional kinks—enemies that can't be moved, enemies with combat formations that grant them additional power, and enemies that take up the entire grid—but not much comes of it. While it's an improvement over traditional turn-based fights, I felt that the developers wanted to give the impression of a much more complicated system without introducing particularly complicated mechanics. It certainly gets the job done, and it's fun to view each combat scenario as a miniature puzzle (move this guy back, push this group to the right, drop a high damage spell, and shove the lot of them into a fire trap—a one turn win!) but once you grasp the basics there's not much reason to alter your strategy. It's definitely not bad, and it keeps things moving quickly enough to suit a portable title, but there could have been more.

The game does well on the DS hardware. Style trumps detail for graphics, and you will travel to a wide variety of locations, each with its own distinct visual design. From the vaguely steampunk Alistel to the more classical Granorg, the Beastkind forest haven of Celestia and the desert city of Cygnus, the game does a good job of immersing you in the world. Enemies get the palette swap treatment a bit more often than I prefer, but basic combat moved quickly enough that I didn't linger on it. The music is well orchestrated, although nothing got stuck in my head—the game comes with a CD compilation of several of the scores on piano, if you can't get enough from actually playing. The production value is high, and the translation deserves mention—this is a very text heavy game, and the translators never dropped the ball.

All said, the story is the true star here. Once it gets going it just doesn't stop, and between plot points I found myself resisting the urge to bypass all of the filler fights in order to see what happens next. Even the fact that the story is doing double duty between the two drastically different timelines isn't detrimental—both timelines revolve around the same fascinating core, and each one tells a story well worth the cost of admission. It's a fairly long one, too—I put in around 40 hours, and while I'm a stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of player, not much of that was wasted time. Be warned: once picked up, the game is hard to put down.

The Rant:

There's very little in this game to rant about. I promised myself that I wouldn't go down the dark rabbit-hole of overthinking paradox, so that's off the table. Combat became a bit tedious when all I cared about was the next story point, but that was mostly due to my own impatience. Radiant Historia is simply an excellent game from every angle, and well worth the time for anyone looking for a solid RPG on the go.