Radiata Stories

Reviewed by Leland Bonaparte
October 13, 2005

Developer: Tri-Ace Publisher: Square Enix Consoles Available: Playstation 2 Players: 1 ESRB Rating: T (Teen) Website: Click Here

Radiata Stories takes place in the human kingdom of Radiata . The people of Radiata live in a harmonies world and are full of joy. Humans share the world with dwarves, goblins, and fairy creatures and they all live very different lives. Although they are not the best of friends, they live side by side in peace and harmony. A young boy name Jack lives in a small village with his sister. He dreams about becoming a great knight like his father once was. One day he decided to set out and try to be a part of the Royal Radiata knights.

The battle system is similar to the Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Precise, easy-to-use controls allow you to add strategies to real-time battles. You control Jack, but you can give commands to other players. The AI controls the other players, which is actually pretty good. Jack has to learn abilities before he can give out specific orders, or use special leadership abilities such as emergency healing. Links are battle formations that have various effects during game play. Unfortunately, the AI for most of these links is sub par, so some of them are effectively useless. The characters share special abilities in links and Jack can learn most of these if enough battles are fought in formation. Jack can only equip one ability at a time, but they can be very useful. One thing I noticed is Jack's fighting style can be customized before battle. His weapon type and combo setups are taken care of outside of battle. All of this can be done without complex button presses.

Thanks to careful layering, the battle tutorials made battles very easy. Jack can carry a lot of items, but won't need them until boss fights. I found boss fights to be very intense and hard, which is not a bad thing. Money for items and equipment are very limited as monsters rarely give up the good stuff, and few yield large quantities. This forces gamers to make difficult decisions. The only thing that makes the battles difficult is also one of the game's few flaws: the targeting system. The targeting cursor will randomly zoom across the screen and choose another enemy for Jack to engage. Unless you lock on to an enemy, you will find it hard to attack what you want. The controls are intuitive, the shortcut menus are easy, and the main menu is designed very well. In addition, the localization is also excellent and there aren't really any noticeable errors.

The replay value of this game is very high because there are over a hundred different characters and a lot of side quests to complete. You cannot obtain all 175 characters playing the game one time. You will at least have to play the game twice to complete it. The game will branch off depending on which path you take. If you decide to beat the game without completing the entire set of side quests, it will take 20 to 30 hours to complete. If you decide to complete everything, we are talking about 100 plus hours to finish. Hard-core RPG players will enjoy this and find it fun to play. With a decent storyline, great music and excellent visuals, it is worth any gamer's time. Radiata Stories is one of the best RPGs of the year.