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Radiant Historia

darksnowman

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darksnowman Enthusiast

darksnowman

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From this weeks Famitsu info has emerged of a new Atlus title for DS. :bouncy:

 

1.jpg

 

Radiata Stories Makers Making Radiant Historia (added 10:30)

 

Did you think "Radiata Stories" when you first heard the name Radiant Historia? Then your intuition served you correctly. Radiant Historia is a completely new RPG from Atlus, but it's being made by members of the Radiata Stories stafff. Hiroshi Konishi is listed as character designer and art lead. Tetsu Takayashiki listed as original work idea and world setting.

 

The game's music is being headed up by Yoko Shimomura. She didn't work on Radiata Stories as far as I know, but she is working on pretty much every single other game coming out of Japan right now.

 

Little is known about Radiant Historia at present. The story promises to be massive, with the player traveling back and forth into the past and future.

 

andriasang

 

Details have emerged of Atlus latest DS RPG.

 

The lid has been lifted on Atlus newest DS offering, Radiant Historia. If the title is giving you a sense of déjà-vu then its because it reminds you of the 2005 offering from Square-Enix and tri-Ace: Radiata Stories. The reason for this is not to try and steal some brand recognition, but rather because Atlus have some of the staff from Radiata Stories working on Radiant Historia.

 

Information is thin on the ground at this point but what we know is that the lead character is a spy named Stok. The game world is an arid land called Vancule within which two nations are at war- Aristel and Granorg. Stok is from Aristel and the game opens by charging you with infiltrating Granorg with a view to rescuing a comrade. From here, you earn the ability to travel through time and between two parallel worlds, setting the rest of the game up as a time travel extravaganza where you will not only bring peace to Vancule but also deliver the land from its barrenness, returning some balance to the environment.

 

Battles are turn-based and will play out on a grid. Monsters who are at the front will take more damage than those at the back, a concept that shouldn't be too difficult to get to grips with as we have been arranging our own RPG parties into front and back lines for many years now.

 

Tetsu Takayashiki spoke to Famitsu and had the following to say:

 

"This game is a collection of stories based around the concept of time travel. When you look at something from a different point of view, everything can seem completely different. In this way the hero learns that his bitterest of enemies was just doing what he had to, among other things, and every cast member has a deep background to back up that storytelling. You aren't an impartial observer, either -- the player's actions have the power to dramatically change history. We're devoting just as much care to the boundless amount of side stories as we are to the main plot, so I hope you take the time to seek them all out."

 

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Hero-of-Time Experienced

Hero-of-Time

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A guy over on Gaf has posted his imported impressions.

 

I got this today and I've put in about 4 hours so far. Game is really intriguing, but may not be for everyone.

 

The overall mood of the game is very, very adult, dark, serious war title. The writing feels like the SMT guys doing their best Matsuno impression. Tons of 40-50 year old gritty generals, backstabbing kings/queens, religious sermons, assassins, spies, characters deaths, politics, world ending looming, and that's just in the prologue! The more realistic character portraits and Yoko Shimomura's wonderful dramatic and heavy soundtrack keep the tone very epic war drama in the best of ways. If you are a fan of these rare kind of rpgs, you'll be hooked.

 

The gameplay is kind of crazy. In a way it's a combination of budget and high concept ideas. From a story perspective it's unique to say the least. You are a guy who comes into possession of a time travel book that has special rules. At certain points you have to make hard decisions and these are "keypoints" in the game. Depending on your decision the story branches in very different ways like a good wrpg. Sometimes you're decision will even lead to a BAD END like old adventure games. The screen will go dark and tell you how your choice led everyone to doom. But this is ok! Because at anytime in the game you can warp to any of the keypoints and because your character is in control and aware of the time travel you keep all your stuff. It's just like going from one town to another but you're traveling through time. But these timelines aren't totally independent. This part is a little iffy according to official time travel rules, but what happens in one path branch can affect the others. So for instance in one branch you might get to a wall and you need to wait for the guy with the key. Unfortunately he's been brutally murdered by an assassin hours ago. But you can take a different branch at the last splitting point, meet this key holder and save him from his assassin and then warp back to the original pathline and he'll get there on time with the keys. Is there some messy time travel logic in there? Sure! But oh well, it makes the branching more interesting :) Sometimes you won't be able to take a branch early on until you accomplish something way later in the game, so there's all these paths along the way you can come back to.

 

The combat is just as crazy as the plot progression. You fight enemies turn-based on a 3 x 3 grid so 9 spots for them to stand:

 

[][][] YOU

[][][] YOU

[][][] YOU

 

The closer the enemies are to you the more damage they do and more damage you do. What's more interesting is that the combat is about moving the enemies around. You have moves that push the enemies in certain directions like PUSH LEFT or PUSH FORWARD or PULL TOWARD. This is important because if you knock an enemy onto a spot where another enemy is, they share the spot and then when you attack one you do damage to both and it combos. So if you move 3 enemies onto the same spot you'll hit all 3 at the same time and get a 3x combo which will kill the enemies quick. The higher the combo multiplier the more damage you do, more exp you get, more money, better drops, etc...Also a lot of special attacks hit in a certain way like in a horizontal straight line. So moving the enemies into that line is a good idea.

 

And that's just the first part. You get combos for having characters attack in a row. So if all 3 characters attack a 3 enemy spot one after another you'll have a 9x combo. To accomplish this, RH has the most interesting queue system I've ever seen. One of your commands is CHANGE which lets you reposition yourself to any spot on the queue. This actually switches the person in that spot to the immediate turn where you are. This means now you can move not only allies around and immediately grab your healer and have them heal or keep switching to your best attacker, but you can also grab enemies and make them attack right away. So if you're fighting a boss and your DEF shield is up right now you might want to move him to the immediate turn so he wastes his attack now while your DEF is up and then goes back to the end of the queue. Or you might want to put your healer to the queue slot right after the boss attacks so you can heal. Or you may want to move the enemies around so you can lineup all 3 of your character turns in a row for maximum combo damage. The change option adds a ton of strategy. But I wouldn't have expected less from SMT guys doing a battle system.

 

So yeah, the plot is interesting & adult and the battles are fast & deep. So why isn't this for everyone? Well, in the 4 hours I played, I think there was about 30 mins of gameplay total. Maybe less. The game is extremely story-based. Possibly more than any rpg I've ever played. 10 min political conversations are the norm. You'll watch scene after scene of story. In a lot of ways it's more of an interactive novel with a kickass battle system for the gameplay that fills the gaps. Luckily there is a super speed text skipper button provided that instantly blows through those conversations since you're going to be going through the same scenes several times as you travel through time and have scenarios play out different. But it doesn't change the fact that the game focus is obviously on the storyline.

 

Also to give an idea of the size and amount of plotting in the game. After four hours my timeline has 11 events that have happened across the branches, 11 out of 236 :P If you want to fully explore all the branches and ways the story could have gone and probably if you want the best ending it looks like it'll be a long, loooong game. Though I wouldn't be surprised if you could stick to the "normal path" and straight shoot it without time traveling much and it'd probably be a normal rpg length.

 

Anyhow pretty good stuff so far. Definitely is living up to Atlus standards. Though it seems to have nothing in common with Radiata Stories at all ^^;

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darksnowman Enthusiast

darksnowman

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I thought all RPG's weren't import friendly.

 

Maybe my summary was too summarised. :heh: Here's a direct quote:

 

Historia seems like a highly tactical game that offers a unique take on the concept of branching storylines. It's also a very chatty game, meaning it's a poor choice for casual importers.

 

I guess you have stuff like Etrian Odyssey that isn't bunged to the rafters with text, conversation and story which with basic/ casual knowledge of Japanese, you could import and enjoy. Any other questions? Don't shoot the messenger, take them straight to Jeremy. :p

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Ganepark32 Newbie

Ganepark32

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I watched the preview this morning and although I hadn't really been paying attention to the game previously, I'm definitely interested after watching the preview.

 

Unfortunately, it's going to be one of those Atlus titles that never comes to Europe, just like Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey which I really wanted. I'll consider importing but I really wish more European publishers would bring some of these RPGs over to us here in Europe. Even if it was only in small shipments to test the waters, because most of these DS RPGs are going to be niche, but at least they'd potentially expand the audience who'd be interested in playing the games.

 

Nintendo's been on a roll helping developers/publishers bring their games to the US and Europe so perhaps they could step in and help bring it over. I can dream at least :red:

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Magnus Newbie

Magnus

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So did anyone other than Tales import this? I'm about four hours in and really enjoying it so far. The story is interesting and I like the time-travel mechanic. The combat system is different enough to feel somewhat fresh, but not so complicated that it gets in the way.

 

Games like this is why the 3DS being region-locked bugs me so much. :blank:

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