Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology

Radiant Historia is a fantastic JRPG that offers not only an innovative and complex battle system but also a great story, packed with tragic characters and interesting twists, that is only marred by a bit of bloat in the 3DS version.

The setting is “a decaying world in which everything is slowly being engulfed by sand,” which leads its two greatest nations, Alistel and Granorg, to war over the few fertile lands that there are left. Stocke is an intelligence agent of Alistel who one day is assigned to an extraction mission by his supervisor, the Machiavellian Heiss, who entrusts him with an enigmatic book called the White Chronicle. When the mission goes awry, Stocke finds himself in Historia, “a world nestled in the gulf of time,” and discovers that the chronicle records history and gives him the ability to travel to specific points in time.

Stocke, living up to his name, is a stoic young man, who is reserved but resolute. He rarely shows, but Stocke cares deeply about the people under his command – which puts him in direct opposition to Heiss – and he’s always doing whatever is possible to keep them alive and well. The extraction mission, however, marks the deaths of his new colleagues, Raynie and Marco, which pushes him to use the powers of the White Chronicle without thinking twice: the protagonist’s initial goal is to alter history so they can survive. As the events unfold, this motivation will become a recurrent one: Stocke will be traveling through time constantly to prevent the deaths of those dear to him, trying to stop increasingly devastating situations from happening.

We have two troubled kingdoms in Radiant Historia. Granorg is a monarchy that is suffering from the rule of a self-indulgent, egotistical, vain ruler. Queen Protea – with her striking purple hair – is depicted as a cruel person, who enjoys gladiators tearing themselves apart for sport and doesn’t hesitate to make her subjects pay with their lives for even the smallest failing. The disdain her own generals show for her is telling: on their first scene, Selvan and Dias keep referring to their queen as “wench”, showing how her political power is rapidly vanishing.

Meanwhile, Alistel is a theocracy, governed by the words of the elusive prophet Noah, who doesn’t make public appearances, having his orders conveyed by his mouthpiece, the ambitious general Hugo. When Hugo is called a “politician” at the beginning of the game, the word is being used in its most pejorative sense: he’s being described as cunning, treacherous, and self-serving – a man capable of crafting schemes to undermine even Alistel’s greatest soldiers if that is going to lead to personal gain. He’s directly opposed to Stocke and his friends, especially the young captain Rosh, whose first concern is always his nation and his comrades.

Radiant Historia is deeply concerned with the mindset of a soldier. When asked what war means for him, Stocke’s answer is a simple but alarming one: “War is my job,” he says. And he’s not alone: Marco quickly agrees with him while Rayne adds, “My country is dear to me, and this is the only way I know how to show it.”

These characters talk about patriotism as if it is the act of repaying a favor: their country was good to them, providing food, a roof, and a purpose, and now they think it’s only right of them to feel grateful and enlist. The story keeps framing this feeling as tragic, showing how it was easily manufactured to be now easily manipulated. People like Raynie and Marco are actually bred to be disposable, being fed the notion that war is a noble and patriotic thing just so they can fight and die to make people like Heiss, Protea, and Hugo more powerful. The war between Alistel and Granorg, then, is not framed as a fight against injustice, but a fight that is by itself unjust.

As soldiers, they are to obey and stay silent because, as Raynie puts it, “We’re agents, not researchers. What’s to think about?” The ability to travel through time and the painful process of reliving the same situations – and deaths – over and over again, however, start to have an effect on Stocke, who in turn starts to hear what his targets have to say instead of just eliminating them. This makes his soldier mindset gradually fall apart, opening his eyes to the fact that their war is far from being for a noble cause. So, when Raynie eventually questions him about his actions, suspecting betrayal and desertion, and threatens to leave if he doesn’t come back to act like a normal soldier, his advice to her is a simple but excellent one: “Start thinking.”

Stocke’s best friend, Rosh, is just like the protagonist was at the beginning of the game, in the sense that he follows orders, never questioning them, with the simple, black and white mentality of “Alistel’s enemy is my enemy.” If he is told to assassinate someone, he will do it no matter the consequences to the whole world. If his orders put him against his friends, that’s where he will stay. This blind loyalty to one’s country is framed as not only tragic but also dangerous, as the war is making the process of desertification increase.

The whole story revolves around how patriotism can blind people to the problems of the world, functioning basically just like tribalism on a grand scale: it limits a person’s vision, making them fight tooth and nail for the abstract thing that made them feel like they belong. Granorg and Alistel are at war, but time travel allows Stocke to realize that all scenarios in which one nation is triumphant over the other end badly: no matter who wins the war, the world still loses as the desertification becomes uncontrollable. The victor in the war doesn’t matter because the war itself was never about the world, but the ambitions of a select few.

In other words, their nationalism blinds the characters to the problems of their planet, which will make it inhabitable for future generations: while they fight for powerful people to get even more power the world ends. To avoid this future, then, Stocke must distance himself from his country, making his duty to protect all the people in the world and not only his country – and he’ll find out that this is not easily achieved and may require some personal sacrifices.

One of the greatest oppositions between Stocke and the game’s main antagonist is that the latter puts himself before the world, with their needs and desires coming first. Their individualism is what pushes them to be the villain of the story, while Stocke becomes the hero precisely because he’s not hesitant to make sacrifices if that means stopping – even if momentarily – the desertification.

Time travel in the game is handled in a practical manner: most events in the story are marked in a timeline, which also highlights the points in time to which Stocke can jump. This timeline is divided into pages and chapters – it’s a record in the White Chronicle, after all, – and it offers a brief description of each event to remind the player of what happened, which is helpful when they need to find out when they need to go to solve a specific issue: quests in the game are usually structured so the player needs to jump in the timeline to find what happened to certain people and acquire certain skills or items.

Radiant Historia also boasts a great turn-based combat system that, although fairly complex, is nonetheless easy to understand and very engaging to master. Here, enemies are positioned in a tiled grid, and manipulating their position is usually the key to victory: not only there are attacks that only hit specific rows and columns, but there are also ones that push and pull enemies in all sorts of directions – and if you manage to put two or more enemies together in the same tile you can hit them all with a single attack.

You also have a combo meter to work with: your attacks get stronger as you land hits on an enemy in sequence. You have two ways of using that in your favor: the first is the great risk/reward ability to switch turns with the enemy, making them attack several turns in sequence because it means that – if your party survives – they will be able to hit back with force. The other way is with attacks that deal little to no damage, but hugely increases the combo meter, so you can focus on landing just one very powerful blow.

Enemy design, in turn, makes these systems more dynamic, preventing the same strategy from being employed all the time: there are enemies that can’t be moved, while others need to be moved constantly, for example, as there are special tiles that make them stronger. There are huge enemy monsters that take the whole grid for themselves, and enemies that get deadlier when locked in a specific formation. Add the particularities of your party members, elemental weaknesses, and status effects, and you have a combat system that often pushes you to change your strategy and try new things.

The icing on the cake is Yoko Shimomura’s masterful soundtrack that taps into the tragedy of the characters to offer an emotional and memorable score. Its only problem is its length: the tracks, although excellent, are few in number, which makes them a bit repetitive by the end of the game.

Imperfect Chronology

The 3DS version of Radiant Historia proves the maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. First, it changes the characters’ portraits to a different art style, impacting the mood and tone of the story. The old ones were very expressive, perfectly capturing the personality of the characters, while now they are more anime-like and generic. Heiss, for example, had pale, lifeless skin, and a prominent nose marked with a wart – add his crimson clothes and everything in him screamed “villain”. Now, he looks like a normal guy. General Viola, meanwhile, looked austere, with her pointed armor and slender face, living up to her reputation as a stark commander who will obey orders even when she finds them unjust. Now, she looks too young for her job, too nice and gentle. If Stocke was forever locked in a stoic, but ambiguous countenance that could look serious or sad depending on the situation, now he looks just like your typical hero. Before, the portraits were not only more unique but also helpful in building the foreboding atmosphere of the game. Now, they are neither of these things – and to make matters worse, the original portraits are locked behind paid DLC.

Another problem is that this version also has new content in the form of the character Nemesia, proving that “more” is not always better. She’s a mysterious woman that sends you on missions that take place in parallel universes.

Nemesia is by herself an annoying character, full of repetitive quirks: she seems unable to speak, for example, without making any reference to being a teacher: “A+ for your hard work!” she usually says after Stocke completes a mission. “A for effort!” she says when he is just speaking to her about anything. Besides being repetitive, this is also jarring: in a more lighthearted game, Nemesia could have worked, but her silliness simply doesn’t fit Radiant Historia’s overall tone. The original game had no time for silly characters; the humor was not only rare, but also dry, such as when Stocke stoically commands some guards to hand over their clothes to him – the scene is funny, but the writing never stops taking itself seriously.

One of the problems is that Nemesia’s missions do nothing but pad the length of the game, breaking the perfect pacing of the original experience. Worse still is when these missions effectively work against the original’s narrative. In the main story, there’s a great mystery surrounding the Prophet Noah, a messianic figure that dictates what happens in Alistel – but one that hasn’t shown up for a long time. It’s general Hugo who works as his mouthpiece. So, a mystery is formed: is Noah alive? What does he look like? Are Hugo’s words really Noah’s? Does Noah even exist? All great questions that are now basically ruined after one of the early parallel missions shows the actual Noah giving a speech in Alistel.

These new missions also have the bad habit of refusing to let the characters have a tragic arc – they always must have the last say on it: after a character meets their end in the main game, you always unlock a mission with Nemesia where they manage to redeem themselves in some way. This only hampers the narrative, removing the dramatic weight of the main events.

Finally, this part also introduces a new boss and ending: while the original game never proposed a permanent solution to the desertification, framing it as an ongoing problem that people would always have to deal with, now there’s an explanation for the event, a permanent solution, and a new storyline related to it that has nothing to do with the themes of the main game. It’s not only unnecessary and tacked on, but it also misses the point of the original: taking care of the world is a process, it’s something humanity should always worry about.

Luckily, you can select to play the original experience when starting the game and forget that Nemesia and her storyline exists. The only real benefit of the new version is the voice-acting, which is fairly good and perfectly matches the seriousness of the original story.

Radiant Historia is an excellent JRPG that manages to make great use of time travel to develop tragic characters and discuss the problems of patriotism and war. The new 3DS version has its own share of problems, but the original game remains a real gem.

January 12, 2020.