Radiata Stories (needs editing)

Every once in a while, Square-Enix will publish a new game, unrelated to any of their Final Fantasy Titles, or other flagship games. Some of them have been horrible (The Bouncer), while others have been so successful that they are the beginning of a whole new series (Kingdom Hearts). Now, Radiata Stories, produced by Tri-Ace (who also brought us the Star Ocean games), has been released, and in the following review, we will see if it is a hit or a miss.

Story
Tri-Ace games are mostly known for their gameplay, not for their deep and elaborate stories, and Radiata Stories is no exception to this. The player takes control of Jack, a young country boy who leaves for the big city, dreaming of following in his father’s footsteps, and becoming a Radiata Knight. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have the talent, and he miserably fails the selections (which makes him even more embarrassed since he lost to a girl), but for the sake of his father’s good name, he is allowed to join the knights, and he becomes a member of the Rose Cochon Brigade, together with Ridley, the girl who kicked his ass, and Ganz, the idiot son of one of Jack’s father’s war buddies.

It looks like Jack’s streak of bad luck has only just begun, when the Brigade screws up on their first mission into Elven Territory, and Jack gets kicked out of the knights. Not knowing what to do, he joins one of the various factions in Radiata, the Warriors Guild. However, this is only the beginning of his adventure, as a war between the humans and elves breaks out, and Jack finds himself forced to choose sides.

The world of Radiata, although it seems to be just an ordinary fantasy world, is actually a lot more interesting, because of one specific aspect; a full time system. Everything that you do is controlled by this, enemies that you encounter during the day are nowhere to be seen at night, villages close their gates and houses when it becomes dark, and most importantly, characters will live through their daily routine, and you better make sure that you follow it if you want a chance to add them to your party, but more on this later on. This is one of the best aspects of the game, but it can also be one of the most frustrating ones, as you can read further down.

Furthermore, around the middle of the game, you have to choose a side in the upcoming war, which will determine the rest of the story, the characters that can join you, and of course, the ending. The thing I liked about the story is that it doesn’t try to look more serious than it is. The atmosphere in general is very lighthearted, which is helped by the colourful graphics, and because of the funny script, it’s enjoyable to see the various situations that Jack stumbles in.

A downside, to me at least, was that it gets more serious near the end, which was pretty much inevitable, but it didn’t really feel right to me. Still, even though it is nothing that you haven’t seen before, the lightheartedness makes up for the clichés. Another flaw is the bad pacing. After Jack joins the Guild, the story will progress with missions, and between these there are a lot of optional quests. Combined with the time spent recruiting characters, The story takes a break every now and then, and I found myself having difficulties getting into again after a few hours of just adventuring.

Characters
There are A LOT of characters in Radiata Stories that can join your party, more specifically 180. To add all of them to your friends list, you’ll be busy quite a long time, and you’ll have to play through the game at least twice. This is one of the most charming things that the game offers, a likeable and funny cast. Jack is one of the better main characters that I’ve seen lately, since he desperately tries to be some hero, but he just ends up being a hilarious moron most of the time. Although it’s basically impossible to give every one of the 180 characters attention, the main supporting cast is developed quite nicely. Once again, this is where the script shines, since the dialogues and the various situations that the characters end up in can be quite entertaining.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t offer a distinctive villain. There are antagonists to be defeated, but because of the bad pacing I mentioned before, it’s hard to remember why character X is doing that, or why character Y continuously wants to give you an asskicking. Of course, you have ONE villain in the end, but he was rather disappointing since he didn’t have enough screentime, and his motivations where not as clear and justifiable as I wanted them to be.

Looks
Graphically speaking, it’s one of the prettiest games I’ve seen on the PS2. The City of Radiata itself is very detailed, the environments that you walk through are filled with colors (especially Elven Territory), and the overall graphics have a very cartoon-esque feeling, fitting with the story. Special effects are nothing really astonishing, and blend in nicely with the world. The only downside is that the battle fields don’t show these colorful graphics, as they are pretty bland and uninspiring.

Character designs are especially worth mentioning, not only are the designs quite eyecatching, the use of cell-shaded graphics is just perfect for Radiata and the overall mood that the game tries to set. The best thing is that changing uniform actually shows on Jack, unlike in other games, were you can wear the most powerful armor in the world, and your character will still walk around in the same outfit that it started in. There’s a great variety of outfits, ranging from the rags that Jack wears before joining the knights, to a fullbody armor acquired later in the game. Some of the other characters, namely Ganz and Ridley will also change armor for some story events, but you can’t change the look of most of the recruitable characters in the game.

Sound
I didn’t find the soundtrack all that appealing. I was never a big fan of the music used in other Tri-Ace games (although Radiata Stories apparently has a different composer than most other games, like Star Ocean). Most of the tracks are ok as background music, but they are worth nothing outside of the game. Voice acting, on the other hand, is terrific. Jack sounds exactly like the cocky idiot that I imagined, Ridley couldn’t be any better, with her haughty noble tone, and most of the important NPC’s have fitting and solid voices. There is some overacting with a few really minor characters, but overall, I find it excellent.

Gameplay
If there is one major weakness in the game, it has to be the battle system, which is just too simple. Even though four characters participate in battle, you can only control Jack, which is a bummer in a game that offers so many characters. Depending on the weapon that you gave our hero (sword, spear, axe, etc), he has a different set of attacks to use, you can change the ones you prefer and put them in a different order, but that’s basically it as far as customizing Jack goes. One other minor thing is the use of Skills. Each character that you recruit has a unique skill that gives it various advantages in battles, ranging from increased luck, to a better hit rate depending on the time of the day. Later on in the game, Jack will be able to use Links, various formations that give you stat bonuses, and enable our hero to learn other character’s skills.

You can’t even do anything about the other characters, they come with their set of attacks, and you can’t change anything, not even their equipment. Jack can control them by learning commands targeting specific characters or the entire cast. Some of these commands can also raise stats, but most of these require the usage of Volty Points, which brings me to my next point. During the battle, every time a character attacks, a point will be added to the Volty Gauge. With ten Volty Points, a character will be able to execute a stronger attack, but it’s better to wait until the gauge is maxed, so that one character can use his uber-attack, which can change the tide of battle.

That’s basically all there is to know about battling. The main problem I had was the lack of customization. Being unable to control your party members combined with the lack of a decent challenge, makes you resort to button mashing rather quickly, which doesn’t really make the battles more interesting.

The main bulk of gameplay outside of battling consists of recruiting characters. As I mentioned before, each character has its unique daily routine, and on top of that, there are various specific conditions in order to get a character to join you. Some may challenge you, while others would like you to search certain items or run other errands for them. Most of these mini-quests can be fun, but unfortunately there are other characters that are just a pain in the ass to recruit. One of them, for example, requires you to talk to him five in-game days in a row, at a specific hour, so you can’t really go out on a quest at the other side of the world because you wouldn’t make it back in time. Because of this, you will spend a lot time doing nothing, since there is no way to speed up time to a specific hour that you want, you can only sleep through the night.

Jack has one skill outside of battle; kicking! You can kick everything that lays loose, tables, beds, dogs, garbage; even the tiniest rock you find on the road can be moved. By doing this, you can find various items, although most of them are nothing extremely valuable. More fun out if this is that you can also kick other persons, which pisses them off most of the time! If you’re not carefully with this, and you kick one of the guild leaders for example, you will be forced into a ridiculously difficult battle, and the likely result is a serious ass kicking. Although I had quite some fun with this, there is one problem here with the controls. You kick stuff by pressing X, but you talk to people or open menus with O. All is fine here, if it wasn’t that you have to navigate through the menus with X instead of O, making it a bit confusing. It takes some time getting used to, and especially in the beginning I started a lot of unnecessary fights because I accidentally pushed the wrong button.

Extras
As for extras, most of the character recruiting can be considered optional, but there are a few other things of course. First up there are the missions. In between story events, you can take on various quests, commissioned by other citizens. These range from simple fetch quests to slaying legendary beasts, and can earn you items, gold, or access to better characters. Second, there are a few optional dungeons that are unlocked after you finish the game once. These would provide a nice challenge if it wasn’t for the boring battle system, but they can still be fun, especially since some of the bosses finally start posing a threat. Of course, since you have the double storyline, replay comes out of trying to get another ending, and finding every recruitable character in the game.

Conclusion
Overall, Radiata Stories is a nice game that can surely entertain one for a while. It introduces some interesting ideas, but I’m afraid to say that it fails at the execution of these. The character recruiting is something that’ll most likely only appeal to the hardcore rpg fan, and the flaws in the battle system can turn off a more casual gamer. This isn’t necessarily saying that Radiata Stories is a bad game, but it could have been polished a bit more. If you can look beyond the flaws that I pointed out above, it can still be a fun experience.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Every game has it's flaws, and this one is no exception, but overall the thing that annoyed me more then any of the other flaws, is the fact that if jack dies in combat, it's game over, even if the other 3 characters are still alive and have the ability to ressurect.

This SO annoyed the hell out of me, especially while doing bosses like Lenneth and Iseria Queen. You would have to be stupidly defensive with jack or be extremely careful and take no risks whatsoever.

Overall I liked the game. It had some cool new features in it. I especially liked that each NPC actually does stuff all day, go to the bathroom, walk to some store, go to bed, etc. It's funny randomly picking a NPC and seeing what he does all day.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yep it seem to be a fun game to play but I grow my disappointment in the story as it progress, which decrease my good feeling towrad it.
I like the gameplay but it very repeative and turn to be tedious in no long time.
The most thing I hate is it's ending(both human and elf path), they're very contrast from the beginning.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.