This is my first short review, so please bare with me while I work out a format for these.
Radiant Historia is a game produced by Atlus for the Nintendo DS. After going on a spree looking up DS RPG’s, this one kept popping up a lot, and it looked really really good, so I snagged. Well good thing my research was right, it was really really good. Something Atlus never disappoints in, is releasing very unique RPG’s that other companies just don’t have.
Radiant Historia is big on alternating between two different timelines. Early on in the game, it seems like a simple decision on what you want to do, and then you realize that choice is what splits the game into two major timelines. Sadly the game will initially think all of your choices will be like this, but with the choices in the individual timelines are all choose your own adventure style, where bad decisions send you to a dead end, and good routes progress the story.
Sometimes that both of the choices you’re given are bad routes, this is where the two timelines come into play. Basically what you’ll do, is pick a timeline, then keep playing until you reach a roadblock in the story (both choices are bad endings), and switch over to the other timeline, rinse and repeat. What will happen, is that you’ll learn or do something that more or less unlocks the good choice in the opposite timeline.
The battle system is quite interesting. Everybody is on a gid system, and everyone is restricted to their individual square. These grids work in two fashions: one is where there’ll be attacks that can attack multiple squares, and the second is where strategy comes in. When you have a chain of your party members attacking one after the other, you can smack an enemy into the square of another, and the rest of your party in the chain will do damage to both of those enemies. You also have freedom to change the order of attack, including switching the enemy’s turn with yours. Though this will have a penalty of having lowered defenses until the end of your turn. This makes the battles much more interesting, and so much more strategy.
The music is also friggen fantastic and adds to the mood when you’re adventuring through the game. Also the graphics are reminiscent of some PS1 RPG’s where the buildings and such are polygonal, and the characters are sprites. The only difference is that it’s just straight top-down, and the backgrounds aren’t pre-rendered.
Radiant Historia is a great game, and is definitely a game that will take up your time and dedication. If you can find a copy, definitely go out and grab it.
Released in 1990 in Japan on the Famicom (Japanese NES), and for the longest time was known as the “lost” Final Fantasy, as it was the only game in the series to never get released outside of Japan. Finally in 2006, it was remade for the very first time, and also finally released to the rest of the world. Despite being praised by professional critics, there were many fans that were disappointed in the game. Many had incredibly high expectations and were expecting something akin to the recent Final Fantasy releases, and were heavily disappointed to find basically an NES game with 3D graphics. So for the rest of the review, you must keep in mind that this is a NES game with a few modern updates.
Story:
An earthquake opens up a cave, and young Luneth goes and explores the insides of it. He comes across a crystal and he’s instructed to find the other warriors to be granted the crystal’s powers, and thus begin the quest to restore balance to the world. He recruits his friend Arc and they visit the nearby town of Kazus, which has been cursed by the evil Djinn. After a series of events, they are joined by a blacksmith’s daughter Refia, and castle guard Ingus, and then save a Princess kidnapped by Djinn. The crystal sees them as worthy of being the Heroes of Light, and they then begin their journey of restoring balance to the world.
The beginning of the game has been slightly modified for the DS remake, as the original game was similar to the original Final Fantasy of having 4 blank heroes that you could name yourself. It seems that Square was trying to add some personality to the characters. So it only adds to the beginning of the game, and some random scenes here and there, but you almost forget they have anything going for them.
Gameplay:
This is a pretty traditional RPG with not much different from the original game. A lot of the mechanics haven’t been really updated that much, except for some minor things, like unlimited inventory space, and auto-targeting monsters. So expect a traditional turn-based RPG with lots of grinding.
One facet of the game that gets attention, is the job system. While the original Final Fantasy had a job system, you were basically stuck in those jobs for the entire game. This game is the first time where you get to change the jobs on the fly. This is partially due to the fact that there are some dungeons and boss fights that are much easier if you have certain job classes in your party.
The game does kind of penalize you when you change your jobs though. First you must accumulate a certain amount of points to change your job. This is only kind of annoying in the very beginning of the game, but as the game goes on, you forget it even exists. Also when you do change your job, if it’s to a job your character never used, your stats go down to the level 1 stats of said job. While this sounds like a massive hit, it’s not really that bad, as all you have to do is grind a little bit to more or less “grow” into your job as you level the job up to not get you killed. Another thing that can get you killed, is running away from battles. When you select run, and you’re at a lower level, your defense is pretty much non-existent, and the enemies do much more damage to you.
The magic system may seem a bit foreign for those who’ve only played the modern FF games, but for those who played the older versions of the original Final Fantasy, it’s nothing new. There isn’t a traditional magic points system, but instead each magic level has it’s own separate “MP” system. In some ways you can cast more spells with this system, as when you cast 3 level 5 magics, you still have a ton of the previous level spells in your arsenal.
Like the original Final Fantasy, this game features a lot of grinding. With how the game can be at times, it’s definitely catered to a more veteran RPG gamer, and can be quite unfriendly to a newbie. It’s not necessarily a crushingly difficult game, but this isn’t really a game you’ll rush into.
Visuals:
While this is advertised as a 3D remake, it’s really a 2D game with 3D styled graphics. So it’s still largely unchanged from the original game. It does definitely breathe a lot more life into what the original NES game looked like, and it’s nice seeing what the monsters actually look like, rather than botched sprites.
One complaint about this game, is that they don’t really utilize both screens. Many times the top screen is not only unused, but it’s also black. It really only comes into play when you’re in the overworld and they show the map. They fixed this problem with FF4 by adding in maps for everywhere, but for FF3, you forget there’s a second screen.
Music:
The music in the game is pretty good. While not as amazing or super memorable like the later games, this one doesn’t disappoint in the soundtrack.
Verdict:
Final Fantasy III is definitely a fantastic game to add to one’s collection, especially for an avid fan of retro RPG’s. It’s best to go into this game with an open mind, and not expect a modern experience, but as an updated classic.
If you felt that the later Final Fantasies are straying too far from its roots, then this game is for you. It brings back many story and gameplay mechanics from the olden days of RPG’s. The premise of the game is not unheard of for the franchise: four young heroes go out on an adventure to rescue the world from the evils that plague it.
Story:
You begin as the boy Brandt and it is his 14th birthday and you have just been summoned to appear before the King. He mentions how Princess Aire was kidnapped by the Wicked Witch of the North and he wants you to rescue her. You are then joined by your friend Jusqua to go save the princess. Then you meet up with the castle guard Yunita and together, the three of you save Princess Aire by defeating the witch, only to return to your hometown to discover it has turned to stone!
The four of you must search for a way to save the kingdom.
/spoiling the first hour of the game
If you’re expecting an in-depth, or very story driven game, then look far away. This game harbors back to the NES and SNES days where the story is a bit “episodic”. You visit a village, discover there’s a problem, someone in the town tells you where to find the dungeon, slay the boss, save the village, and then be off to the next town. There’s very little connecting the various mini-stories together outside of the main mission of figuring out how to save your hometown.
Characters:
While there is a cast of characters, and have a bit of personality, they’re not really that interesting individually, and don’t display much character growth. They’re mostly just vessels to play through, and it’s kind of struggling to remember a damn thing about any of them.
Brandt: He’s the first character you play as, and is the typical adventurous hero character. He has a bright personality and is loyal to his friends, yadda yadda.
Jusqua: He’s primarily the opposite of Brandt. The king sent Jusqua to check up on Brandt, but his job in the castle is never really explained.
Yunita: she’s a knight of Horne. She’s Aire’s bodyguard and is a great fighter, but she lacks confidence in difficult situations.
Aire: The youngest princess of Horne. She’s the typical spoiled princess, and has little knowledge of the outside world.
Gameplay:
The game largely follows a basic template for JRPG’s, from the overworld, and random encounters, but it does add a bit of a twist for the battle system. While the battle system is largely a traditional turn based system, it has a system of action points. There are no magic points in this game, and any action uses these points. Everybody in your party has 5 action points, you never gain any more. Each action takes up one or more AP, and you regain a single point each time it is the character’s turn. So if you use a move that takes up several AP, then you must plot out how to conduct your next moves, or risk getting in trouble. A faster way to regain your AP is to use the Boost option, as you can regain two points, but at the cost of not doing anything on your turn.
One aspect of the battle system that many would find a bit cumbersome, is that there is no targeting system. You are unable to target any of your opponents or your party members. This is a bit annoying at first, but if you have a party member low on HP, the cure spell will automatically target the member with the lowest HP, so luckily it won’t just randomly select any character.
Next is the return of the popular job system (called crowns) from classic Final Fantasy games. With this there are a few familiar faces, like the white and black mages, monk, and paladin. There are a few that are fairly pointless, like the party host, and musician crowns… Some crowns are more helpful than others, especially when it comes to magic, as casting fire 1 as any other class takes two AP, but casting fire as a black mage now only costs 1 AP. So if you want to be a magic user, then it’s highly advised to equip a mage crown.
Unlike Final Fantasy III, where you had to have a certain number of points to change jobs, this one allows you to change them on the fly with largely no penalties. This is quite helpful, as you spend the first half of the game with your party split up. So you don’t have to relegate one character to be the healer, and one to be the magic user. Also unlike the other Final Fantasies, the jobs don’t level up from battle like your character does, you level them up by filling their slots with the respectively shaped gems, and the max level for a job is level 3.
Speaking of gems, they are very valuable items, and you need them for basically EVERYTHING. At the beginning of the game they seem pointless. You grind your characters and you collect these gems, and they don’t do anything, but you can sell them at the stores for money, as they’re basically the only way to earn money, as you don’t earn gil in battle like normal FF games.
As the game progresses, and you gain more crowns, you discover that you can use these gems to not only level up your crowns, you will also gain access to a shop that allows you to use gems to upgrade your weapons and armor. So now these gems are more valuable than ever. You now must figure out which is more important, buying new equipment, or leveling up your equipment. Luckily the game makes you change your equipment to something that is strong against the upcoming area boss, so you at least are forced to buy equipment instead. Only near the end of the game is leveling up your armor important.
One minor gameplay issue, is limited inventory space. In this day and age, it seems a bit silly that there isn’t a party inventory, and your inventory is limited to a certain number of slots the characters hold, and that includes your equipment. This isn’t too huge of an issue, and is only a problem when your party is relegated to a single person, but of all the modern conveniences, did they have to revert the inventory down? Luckily your key item inventory is separate from your characters’ individual inventory, so at least that issue is taken care of.
Visuals:
The visuals are pretty fantastic for a DS game. Instead of using Final Fantasy III and IV’s engine, they use a different engine, and a drastically different artstyle. It has a nice chibi storybook aspect of it, and gives you a nice nostalgic feeling of reading a children’s storybook.
For a game on the DS, it does an okay job utilizing both screens. Most of the gameplay is on the touch screen, and you can use the stylus to control your character, but the D-Pad works just fine, and in battle, the menus are also on the touch screen. Outside of battle, the top screen really only shows your party’s HP and AP, and is really only useful when you go to the world map, and the map is viewable on the top screen. It would have been nice to have a dungeon and town map on the top screen, but it’s not a necessity, it does use both screens better than Final Fantasy III.
Music:
For the soundtrack, it’s fantastic. It’s like your typical old school RPG soundtrack except they mix between the bleeps and bloops of the NES days and with the modern midi sounds of the DS. The end result is a unique experience.
So if you’re looking for a game that caters to your nostalgia needs, but with a new twist, Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light is the game for you. Just don’t let its cute exterior fool you into thinking this is a stroll through the park
RPG's Suck 