Finished Radiant Historia

Aurongroove

I found the game sticky and undesirable at times with the biggest gripe being not "quiet" being able to time travel as you may think.

you may only travel to "important nodes"
and some of these nodes are put in aweful places, like right at the beginning of a big dialogue section, followed by more dialogue sections followed by a battle, followed by a trek through a dungeon followed by more dialogue, before you're "free" to explore the intended village/area.

The time travelling has LOTS of holes, you really have to forgive the game for a lot of time travelling nerd-alert inconsistencies they swept under the rug with both story and development system.
One of the biggest being the the entire battle system, items, EXP earned, etc dosn't follow time travel; you go back in time, you and your team mates {who HAVN'T gone back in time} keep all EXP, skills learned items etc, they didn't yet earn.


I have to say the game had very little other problems,
Music: brilliant, amongst the best I've heard.
Story: endlessly charming and both regular and "perfect" endings are well written
Battle: I've played better and I've played worse, but it is very good once you get the hang of the grid. the turns and combos function a bit like FFX slash BoF IV.

Sidequests: funny, typical Jrpg nonsense, item deliveries into the past, also collecting all the different "game overs" is kinda cool (these are the various dead ends where you make a bad choice and **** everything up, some of them are a laugh!)
they also add up to make a FFX-2 style perfect ending.

Best localization win:

Stock; "All right, let's take their uniforms before anybody sees"
Raynie; "I-I'm gonna leave you two to have at it"
Marco; "huh? why?"
Raynie; "er.."
Marco; Oh!, S-sorry...I sometimes forget that you're a girl at all..."
Raynie;"you forget...? You'll pay for that one later, buster"

Aurongroove

oh yes, and to conclude, I though the entire game was in the "very good to awesome" category.

unless JRPGs take off again in some sort of revival I'm betting this will be last very good JRPG were gonna see for a looong time.

Retr0gamer

Rubbish, atlus will pull something out of the bag, they always do!

Aurongroove

After that, I hope your right!:D

ghostchant

How many hours did it take? I'm still only 14-15 hours in , it's dragging a little bit at the moment but I'm still liking it

Aurongroove

I did about... 70% of the side quests? you know which ever ones presented themselves to me as I enjoyed going through the game, and beat it in about 45 hours.
i'd say without the detours you could wittle this down to 30 hours, with a speed run maybe being 20-30 hours area.

at about 51 hours I got a perfect game (at first just doing **** I didn't fancy doing straight away, and then checking a guide for stuff I missed).

Oh but by "perfect game" I mean (as any normal person would) best ending, all cut scenes viewed, all major encounters experienced.
I do not mean I item checked that I found every last stupid steal item or accessory bought in a shop in the middle of nowhere.


I'd say the slowest bit of the game is slap bang the middle, the beginning hits quiet hard and the ending scenes are wonderful. but where you are now, your being tossed about the two timelines zipping back and fourth and not getting any decent plot payoffs.
the side quests also thin away visibly in the middle on the game, and are far more plentiful at the beginning of the game (chapters 1 and 2 perhaps) and with a bit of a resurgence as the game nears it's conclusion.

the battle system too gets sticky in the middle, at the beginning the enemies are weak enough that a few combos sort them out, and at the end you've got the extra skills

every character has a way of learning 4 or 5 decent enough skills from items gained in side quests

to give you a little boost.

it's a combination of the enemies getting tougher and your players not learning the better skills yet that the fighting gets a little sticky, and this also happens right in the middle of the game.


once I got a perfect game, I though it might be fun to play

the standard history timeline and the Alternate History timeline through straight without needing to jump from one to the other.

but wither by fact that I was sick of the game after all the intense hours of play near the end, or wither the ending left a firm enough full stop for me not to want to, I ended up not bothering.

A "new game plus" type thing but played form the

point of view of two "already fixed" timelines i.e. Stocke can already sword dance, use chi, knows of betrayals, has the notes etc and you the player are like "wtf?" but find out by doing it after in the other time line

would be a really funky addition I think!.