Radiant Historia

But the chronology isn't so perfect

The DS and 3DS were both home to many JRPGs in their time, especially from Atlus, best known for the Persona series. And Radiant Historia was one of them, releasing on the DS and later getting an update for the 3DS as Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology.

Desertification threatens the entire continent of Vainquer, with the nations of Alistel and Granorg warring over the remaining fertile land. The plot is set in motion when Stocke, a member of the Alistel Special Intelligence unit, is given a strange book by his superior Heiss. This book, the White Chronicle, soon reveals its true nature as a magical artifact that grants the holder the power to traverse time.

From there the game branches into two distinct timelines that Stocke must jump between, the initial point of divergence being if Stocke remains in the SI or joins the frontlines of the war. There will be many points where progress in one timeline is barred until you do certain actions in the other, as well as a variety of dead ends if the wrong choices are made.

The story that unfolds as you jump between the two timelines is one that had me hooked. Which led to me being a bit underleveled for some bosses, as I was skipping random battles because I wanted to see what happened next. One of the driving mysteries is the realization that Stocke is being sabotaged by another time traveler who uses the Black Chronicle, the White Chronicle’s counterpart.

I like Stocke for being a proper stoic, rather than the emotionless strawman kind. While not the most social or expressive he cares deeply for his friends, and when faced with a problem turns his mind to what he can do about it and then takes action. He’s able to keep a cool head most of the time precisely because he cares too much to screw up a chance to save someone.

Watching the two timelines diverge as the plot develops is also interesting, with the war going differently in each. It lets the plot alternate between focusing on Alistel or Granorg, each offering a different set of antagonists to confront while the Black Chronicle manipulates both timelines.

Stocke isn’t in it alone however. Like most RPGs you lead a small party of characters in battle, able to field two members in addition to Stocke. Your available party members depend on where you are in the timeline, as only Stocke can time travel. But levels and equipment stay consistent regardless of which point in time you’re at.

These party members include: Raynie and Marco, Stocke’s fellow special intelligence agents who provide offensive and supportive magic respectively. Rosch, Stocke’s best friend, part of the Alistel military, and a tough physical attacker. Aht, a young girl from a race of beast people who is also a shaman and makes up for her frailness by being arguably overpowered. Eruca, the princess of Granorg who is armed with both powerful magic and a gun. Gafka, a man from another beast like race with barely any plot relevance who also joins a little too late to put his physical attacks to good use.

Jumping between timelines unfortunately means that some characters will be put out of your party for long stretches of time. Rosch is the biggest victim of this, signing on almost immediately in one timeline while taking a long time to join in another, meaning he misses out on many battles and will inevitably fall behind other party members unless active effort is put into preventing that.

Perfect Chronology offers a slight remedy to this by introducing the Vault of Time, an optional area that lets you use every character who has joined the party regardless of timeline status. But it still doesn’t change the fact that some characters will require more effort to invest in than others.

Combat itself is turn based, with turns allocated to each individual character based on their speed stat, as opposed to each side getting their own collective turn. Because of this some combatants might get to take multiple turns before others get even one. You also have the ability to move a turn further down the line by swapping it with another.

This is important due to the combo system, where consecutive attacks on the same enemy become stronger based on the number of hits already dealt, stopping when the enemies get a turn. So swapping your current turn with a later enemy turn could pay off heavily if it means a longer combo.

Enemies are placed on a three by three grid while your own characters remain stationary. Certain skills move enemies around the grid or target certain parts of it, and sometimes parts of the grid will have certain effects on them. Repositioning enemies into the same tile mid combo will let you damage all of them with single target attacks.

I mentioned earlier how Aht is arguably overpowered, and it’s because of these mechanics. She has a skill with low damage but a high hit count that will essentially double the damage of any attack comboing off of it, and a variety of powerful magical traps that other party members can knock enemies into, which in itself will count as a combo. So she’s strong in a good way, where you need to engage with the game’s mechanics to realize how devastating her set up potential is.

Which is why I’m not keen on how some bosses take up the entire grid for themself, shutting down all of the reposition based strategies that help make the combat unique. Though the game does at least let status effects be used on a good number of bosses. I was able to get past a few while being underleveled thanks to poisoning the boss and stalling.

Similar to Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei games and their myriad branches, each enemy and character has elemental weaknesses and resistances that influence how much damage those attacks do to them. Each status effect has its own section in the list, so you’ll know outright if you should bother trying to use them, which encourages using them when you know for sure if they have a reasonable chance of working.

Lastly your party members have a mana gauge that is filled by attacking or being attacked. Once full it lets them use powerful attacks known as mana bursts. Or you could delete an enemy’s turn outright, which is extremely powerful on its own. But the attacks are cool.

(The video above is not mine in case it wasn’t clear.)

Perfect Chronology adds special skills that party members on the bench can use to help out. They can’t be used manually, so don’t build strategies around them, but they’re a nice addition. It helps the entire party feel a bit more involved in battle, even the benchwarmers.

There’s another very noticeable change to Perfect Chronology that needs to be discussed, the art style. I found these scans from the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu demonstrate it best. Below is some character art from the original game.

And below this is the art for Perfect Chronology. From left to right in both images the characters are: Stocke, Raynie, Marco, and Eruca.

As you can see it’s a completely different art style. Not only that, but Eruca’s design had some rather obvious changes to it. She’s still recognizable, but it goes well beyond simply being drawn by a new artist.

While I’m not the biggest fan of the original art style (Marco creeps me out a little in it), replacing it was a mistake. Art style is a major part of a game’s identity, and the original Radiant Historia’s marked it as something different. Meanwhile Perfect Chronlogy’s feels more typical, less distinctive.

There was DLC to use the original character portraits in Perfect Chronology, before the 3DS eShop went offline. And it only changed the art for the party members, so all the other characters are in the new art style no matter what. Which means that using the original art DLC will have your party members clash with the rest of the game.

Now, here is where my discussion of the game enters spoiler territory, because what I want to talk about the most with this game involves heavy spoilers. Those who prefer to have minimal spoilers and want to play the game should consider this the ending of the post. I’ll even throw in the cover for Perfect Chronology to stop your eyes from automatically jumping to the next paragraph.

The twist behind the Chronicles is that they’re part of a ritual to stop the continent’s desertification. The Chronicles are given to a pair of siblings in the Granorg royal family, with the holder of the Black Chronicle killing the holder of the White Chronicle, then splitting their own soul in two so half of it can be used to revive the White Chronicle’s bearer.

This resurrection is only temporary however. The power of the Chronicles to travel through time is used for the sacrifice to reach enlightenment, so that when they return their half soul and die, the ritual becomes powerful enough to protect the entire continent.

Heiss, the game’s main antagonist and holder of the Black Chronicle, was supposed to be a sacrifice, but fled to Alistel to avoid his fate. Then when his nephew was set to become the sacrifice instead, Heiss abducted them mid ritual and erased their memories, giving them the new name of Stocke. Heiss’s goal is to end the world as retribution for needing his sacrifice to survive, and to convince Stocke to carry on that apocalyptic work.

In the true ending of the game Stocke is all set to finally finish the ritual by sacrificing himself. Heiss, confronted by the complete failure of his plans to prevent the ritual, steps in and sacrifices himself in Stocke’s stead. The villain who placed his own life over the entire world finally chooses something over himself.

I doubt it’s intentional, but the cosmology of the game’s setting and the events of the plot make me think of Mesoamerican religions. The necessity of sacrifice, the sacrificial victims having divine power, the hero being a willing sacrifice while the villain is anti-sacrifice. It appeals to me as someone interested in Aztec religion and mythology more than the average work of fiction based on Aztec mythology that shoves complex gods into simple roles.

Notably the game does not completely solve the desertification problem. While completing a certain side quest leads to the discovery of plants that can stop and undo the desertification, it’s a gradual process. It’s not entirely out of the question that Stocke may have to sacrifice himself eventually so the plants have time to work, but Stocke himself would accept that.

Then the 3DS version of the game happened. I already mentioned the art style change, but to me the true defanging of Radiant Historia that Perfect Chronology represents is found in the new story content added to it.

In Perfect Chronology a third chronicle, the Red Chronicle, is introduced, letting players explore brief what-if scenarios. By completing some you also unlock new outcomes for parts of the main story, which can all be summed up as a villain seeing the light and repenting. Even if there was hardly any sign of a better nature before the newly added content. It feels random above all else.

But what does far greater damage to the narrative is the new endgame. The ending of Heiss sacrificing himself is undone so that he can join the cast to fight a giant monster causing the desertification of the world whose death will stop and reverse it. Naturally they win. It’s an absolute feel good ending where everything is resolved immediately.

While Perfect Chronology does have some nice gameplay features I wouldn’t want to lose, most of its significant alterations to the game serve to remove exactly what made the original unique and replace it with something more bland and marketable. That’s the danger with all of these reboots and remakes and updates. This isn’t the first game Atlus watered down in a rerelease, I could do an entire separate post on Persona 3’s ironic defanging.

If you’re interested in playing the game it’s still worth considering Perfect Chronology to judge the new story yourself and for the gameplay changes, it’s the version I played. But keep in mind that it is not a faithful representation of the original, that in a large part appears to have been approached with the mentality of ‘how do we make this more marketable.’

Radiant Historia is still a wonderful game that stands apart. It’s the kind of game that’s niche precisely because it knows exactly what it is, even if Perfect Chronology at times pretends to be something else.

Optional Response Prompt: What are some rereleases and remakes of works you like that deeply bother you? Favorite time travel story?