Beware the Atlus Remake Mystery Girl. Let's Play Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology

Hey kids!



Let's play Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology!

Released in 2010 or 2011 depending on how close you were to Atlus' head office, Radiant Historia was a game for the DS that was a bit of a cult classic. It garnered enough of a following to not only secure a reprint after the original print ran a bit short, but this entire remake several years later. Radiant Historia has a really good story considering the JRPG genre, and very interesting, if unpolished, gameplay. Of course, that was Atlus back then, and a remake in this day and age might be enough to cause some people concern, and for good reason.



This remake, assuming you play it in Append mode as indicated here. If you do this, with only a few exceptions, you are playing a very improved version of the original good game. Perfect mode includes all of the new content, which I will be putting off until the end of this LP. You'll thank me later, unless you want me to play in Perfect mode from the word go, which I flatly refuse to.



First thing the remake does that people like: difficulty settings. Combat in RH tends to require a lot more involvement than most people would like, even for opponents you vastly outlevel (which will happen a lot). Personally, I wasn't that bothered by it, but I can understand why people would be, and the Friendly setting is a very elegant solution to this that lets you still maintain the level curve necessary to fight the bosses while also relieving the tedium of random encounters.

I'll be playing on Normal, because I can handle Hard mode but I want low pressure for the LP.



AND THEN THERE'S AN ANIME VIDEO THING but nah you can watch that on YouTube it's probably super easy to look up. Radiant Historia Perfect Chronology intro movie. Ten bucks says that search pulls up what you're looking for. (It'll probably also sidebar spoilers or something.)



Anyway, let's get introduced to the setting:



Desert waste hellhole.

(For this update and this update alone, I will be including both screens of the 3DS in my screenshots, just to indicate how little this game makes use of them. Most of the time, only a single screen has anything worth looking at. Yes I'm being lazy while I get used to the 3DS LP shenanigans.)



Nobody here but us mystery children.



We will be properly introduced to the mystery children before long.



For now, though, let's just bask in the confusion.



Not with that kind of gumption. World-saving children have a gumption quota they must meet, and you are well under that threshold, bucko.



You are passing. BARELY.



And then time travel happened.



Here's our setting!



The big overwhelming problem is a vast desertification covering the entire continent.



Caused by an ancient civilization that has since died out.

Hm... this seems oddly topical somehow.



Anyway, in the present day, so to speak: WAR.



We'll be playing as a Special Intelligence agent working for Alistel.



So, while the script in the remake is mostly the same, some lines here or there are different. This line, for example, is far more literal than the original script, which I haven't played in a while, but it was considerably more poetic. Most of the script is still intact, but a good number of the changes just kind of feel like "why?"



The important part is that this guy is who we're playing as.

Stocke is a pretty solid protagonist as far as they go in JRPGs. He's on the reserved side, and is as resourceful as you'd expect a SpecInt (as they called it in the original, here it's SI) agent to be. And while he doesn't act like it, he's always trying to watch out for other people and help them out. But you'll get to see more of him as we go.

Oh, one more thing: all of the characters in the remake got their artwork redone! This allows for them to have more emotive portraits in dialogue, but the art style loses a little something if you ask me. Here's a side-by-side of Stocke with his original version:





And, of course, the story.



Meet Heiss, our superior.





There's a lot of words in this game, and like hell I'm gonna transcribe everything. I'll be doing the main plot Sword of Mana style with screenshots + summaries, and the towns Golden Sun style with bullet lists of important stuff. Backlog LP edit spoilers: Hell no. I'm transcribing updates after a point. Thank me when we get there.



Stocke is not really a people person. He doesn't really hate people or anything, he's just not good at talking with them.

Anyway, let's get down to business. The current situation: Alistel is in a war with Granorg, and they're losing, hard.



One nice thing the new artwork has over the old: slightly varied facial expressions. It's hard to see on Stocke here, though.



Yadda yadda yadda setting-establishment.



Anyway, Heiss has been trying to crack the nut of Granorgite intel for a while now, with little success.



The mission we have is to extract his best possible shot at learning something new.



Not too bad, right?



Would it? Maybe? I dunno man.



Lazvil Hills, of course, would be the first immediate area outside of Alistel, just to drive home how close the war is to destroying Alistel.



In any case, Heiss has some beef with the military, so he doesn't want them mucking this up and taking the glory.



Listen man keep me out of your workplace politics okay.



Anyway, go retrieve the spy, do it without the brass finding out, and be quick about it. Got it.



Stocke doesn't balk at this mission at all. He's confident, for sure.



Party members, you say?



Stocke expresses some apprehension, not wanting to be "the sole survivor again". Beyond that, though, the dude doesn't really elucidate much about his backstory.



Sorry, Stocke, you get party members.



Hm yes good normal advice thank you.



When Stocke asks what their talents are, Heiss brushes him off. We'll meet them shortly, though, so no pressure.



ONE MORE THING!



Heiss retrieves a book from his desk and hands it to Stocke.



Probably nothing important, but hey, some light reading for the journey's pretty thoughtful. Not that there will be time to read.



Is this some kind of joke, Heiss?



?????????????????



Whatever you're weird but okay we'll take a blank book with us on our spy extraction mission.



Heiss tries really hard to play off the White Chronicle as no big deal, and while it feels a little weird, Stocke elects not to press the issue for now.



Anyway we have a book.

With that, we have overworld control. Stocke has access to the mystical powers of "walking around" and "swinging a sword" in this mode. The maps are supremely unhelpful despite existing in this game where they didn't before.



We have a menu with a bunch of stuff on it, most of which is pretty self-explanatory.



Stat screen for Stocke!

Like Mario in Super Mario RPG, Stocke is always in your party, and is able to fit in with any team composition with minimal fuss. He's good at a little bit of everything, and since he'll gain more levels than everyone else for Reasons, he'll also enjoy high enough stats to stay competitive with basically everyone. He is a very good character at the fighting.

He also starts out with the Push Assault skill, which doesn't sound too exciting but is one of the most central skills in the game. You'll see what we mean once we get into a fight.



YOU GUYS LIKE SPLASH ART RIGHT WELL HERE IS A VIEWTHINGY FOR IT OKAY COOL



Anyway, Stocke leaves and Heiss has a baby monologue as he does.



Yeah they definitely have the look of hired goons to me.



Hello!



Artwork comparison time below.





And in the green corner...



The other guy!





I AM LEVEL TWO. YOU ARE LEVEL ONE. THIS MEANS YOU ARE INFERIOR TO ME.



It is easy to look at Raynie's design and what she says here and assume that she's some kind of spellsword sort who can fight equally well with both of these things. This is a lie. She is as straightforward a caster as it gets.



Marco, on the other hand, is exactly right. His primary use is support and healing, and while he can swordfight, he will not ever be a damage monster.



Okay I get that the game is trying to establish Stocke as a badass, and he is, but somehow getting a reputation as a secret agent feels a liiiittle incorrect.



Stocke just kinda lets Raynie say stuff here, but his quiet attitude doesn't bother her any.



I have no strong opinion one way or the other on this matter.



YOU ARE LEVEL ONE! THIS MEANS YOU CANNOT ATTACK ME, BECAUSE I AM LEVEL TWO!



Let's get that out of our system real quick.



That thing Heiss told Stocke? Stocke now tells it to Raynie and Marco.



It'll be fine, probably.



Hey, we have to establish these characters quick! Gamers lack patience these days, y'know!



Probably!



Complaining aside, this isn't a half bad scene for laying out the story. Sure, we're going over the same stuff we just did, but relaying it to these characters lets us get a handle on both the state of the world and how they each interact. Marco demonstrates that he's cautious and has a good grasp of what's happening, and Raynie gets to be characterized as confident, but quick to act without thinking.

This also helps cement just how badly Alistel is losing the war and needs this intel to stand a fighting chance.



Once Alistel gets that intel on their armaments...



Well, it's no Death Star plans, but it'll definitely keep them in the game.



By necessity, I'd say.



you ever killed a man before, marco



Y'know what, this conversation's getting too stale.



LET'S MIX IT UP.



THANKS FOR THE HAUNTED BOOK HEISS YOU'RE A PAL



The White Chronicle glows with a mysterious power, and...



We see a rain-soaked road, and two faces that have only just become familiar.



Meet the party! HERE'S HOW THEY DIE.



The vision lingers for just long enough to really make an impact, and then its back to the real world.



The goons appear to have not noticed any changes while this was going down.



In fairness, Shulk didn't figure out how to do this one either until Reyn helped him figure it out.



One last thing and we can head through Alistel proper.



This is frankly insulting. Heiss may as well have given Raynie a slip of paper that said "believ in urselves! :>" for all the good this will do us.



There is nothing we can buy with this money that is worth buying. Which I guess makes it nice that they don't immediately force you to invalidate your starting gear with menu futzing?



Right, that's enough dialogue.



Now for looting junk.



Oh, and I guess we can break down what's going on in Alistel.

• The entire city is incredibly worried about Granorg busting down their doors, but despite this, the soldiers remain in high and patriotic spirits.
• In particular, the ruler of Granorg, Queen Protea, is apparently really reviled, making a convenient villain to rally against. In comparison, the major leaders of Alistel, specifically the Prophet Noah, General Hugo and Field Marshal Viola, appear to be well-liked.
• Thaumatech appears to be fairly common in Alistel, and less so in Granorg. The castle's medical wing also contains a laboratory for thaumatech experiments. Y'know what they say about sufficiently advanced technology and all that.
• On top of the problems posed by the war, local travelers have to worry about goblin attacks and a bandit group known as the Desert Crows. Despite this, the Desert Crows appear to be a hit with the kids, and are seen as somewhat heroic.

Right now, we're in the castle, just outside the elevator leading to the bigwigs' offices (including Heiss). The glowy blue circles let us save our game, just like they do in real life.



Oh, yeah, new friend stats.

Do you see how Raynie has access to Thunder? She didn't start with that in the original. The remake refined the skill progression list, so you start with your essential skills for a given character and get your new moves more regularly. This is a very good improvement. And while it looks like Raynie's stats might not be built for magic, this is one of those games where if you're not using your special skills as often as possible you're doing it wrong. Thunder will be her bread and butter move for the early game.



Another important factoid: healing strength is fixed and cannot be improved with stats. Marco's Heal will be just as strong now as it will be at the end of the game. Which means that it'll fall off in usefulness as we gain levels and enemies start hitting harder. Marco lacks any kind of magic attacks whatsoever, so you're best off disregarding that stat for him and using solely physical swords. For now, though, he'll do the job just fine.



There's a good few rooms to explore in Alistel, but not many. The map isn't very good, but neither should you be getting too lost as you meander about.



Most of the treasure we're finding is consumables, and we already start with enough of the basics in our supply to get by.

Immediately outside of the castle is another save point. Save points in this game are especially frequent unless you're in a dangerous area of some kind.



Most of the townsfolk just have normal chatter, but this guy in the weapons shop seems to have a riddle for us, which we lack an answer to. MYSTERY.



Okay but consider: what if we had money?



Remember how I said this is a game where you're using skills every turn or you're doing it wrong? Tea items let you restore SP. SP lets you use skills. You see where this is going. The game is not even slightly shy about handing these things out, and you should always have a big supply of them on hand.



There's also two Charms to be found around town. Every character can equip one weapon, one armor, and up to three accessories. Charms are not very good, but these ones are free.



Even the item store is too expensive for us.



Okay I hate Alistel let's leave forever now.



Haha no. It'll prolong it slightly longer before we get stomped.



One last thing, for real this time, before we head out (also this is on the long side so I'll be ending this post shortly.)



Mystery!



The big guy is the mystery!



Look at this giant armor man.





WE GET IT STOCKE YOU'RE NOT GOOD WITH PEOPLE.



Thankfully, Rosch appears to be used to this, and doesn't take it personally.



Rosch is awfully curious about our mission for some reason!



What could this reason be?



Well, sure, but that's war for you, innit?



Whaddayagonnado?



For some reason, though, Rosch is really worried about this one.



Rosch is canonically 21. Disregard all official JRPG ages. It's as true now as it ever was.



Point being, Rosch's soldier instincts have led him to be able to predict when his comrades are going to die, or so he claims.



And right now, he's getting some major alarm bells about whatever Stocke's going for.



That grey part of the armor isn't just a style choice. That's a Gauntlet, a thaumatech artificial limb.



As far as Rosch is concerned, the Gauntlet's not too bad, but he could have it a lot worse, and he's trying to make sure Stocke doesn't end up like that.

Which would be fine on its own, but also we just saw our new subordinates dying in the rain, soooooo



Rosch worries that he might've gone a bit too far with his warnings, with Stocke trailing off in thought there.



Stocke tries to reassure himself and Rosch.



Well, that's how it is.



Gotta go do the thing because war.



Despite the subject, Stocke and Rosch both seem to hold a pretty fair amount of respect for each other.



Anyway, we're not gonna die.



This line also got changed a bit in the remake. Rosch originally responds to Stocke's claim with, roughly paraphrased, "As a soldier, I'd hope my intuition isn't wrong, but for both of our sakes, let's hope so this time."

This version, at least, flows a little more cleanly, I think.



We'll learn about that guy later.



Don't you go dying either.



The goons eventually notice we're not following them.



Okay that seems fair.



Raynie you don't just say that about a guy.



Aaaaaargh introductory posts for LPs are always so long.



We'll end this with the world map.

We'll reveal more and more of it as we play, but we don't actually have free reign to go back to anywhere we like on it on account of the pressure of the war.

Also: this will be another backlog LP because HAAAUUUAAAUUAAAAGGH that was exhausting and we didn't even get to the part where the game actually games.

Next Time: getting visions of my co-workers being destroyed online but why cant i get visions of earning severals dollar

Opening movie: Check.
New character artwork: Check.
Voice acting: Check.
Some new sprites for Stocke so his shield doesn't keep switching arms: Whoa, now. Slow down there, buster.

Eagerly awaiting the introduction of Locke and Barrele.

I can't get over how much I prefer "bag of cats" to the new version.

I disagree basically 100% with your Raynie art comparison.
The newer version cleaves really heavily to what "moe" was and is than the previous version. Which reads more like cool 90's action girl than late-aughts mid-teens moe fodder. Both have a lot of the same eye-rolling gender politics going on, but by the same fucked up standards that suggest Lina Inverse has a "small chest" Raynie is almost meant to be read as kind of plain. More exceptional in her martial prowess than her looks. I also really chafe at the decision to make New Raynie's pose less aggressive or proud. I also don't like that they drew New Raynie's hair blowing delicately in the wind.

I guess what I'm saying is the only things I even kind of like about New Raynie were the things I thought were failures to commit to the concept that Old Raynie was inching toward, like how framing her exposed thighs are things that SUGGEST it might have been armor at some point and big-ass rugged looking boots. Bracers that look, bracer-y. And, actually, now that I look more closely I'm annoyed that they made her leather gorget shorter.

So far all your other stuff is on the money.

I mean, she is the love interest. I don't really expect more out of most modern anime artists.

I also prefer old Raynie.

They're both kinda obviously horny but the new one seems like the artist was leaning more towards "Cute" and less towards "Hardass".

All the female characters seem to have been redrawn with the face of a smiling porcelain doll. It's a bad look on Raynie, but I'm saving most of my bile for what they did to Eruca.

One annoying part of making a backlog is that I can't really take feedback into account for how I'm handling this thing, so any changes for these first few updates will mostly be just me being bugged by my own implementation, like this. Behold: single-screen shots only!

I still have a monstrous amount of screenshots to work with while only covering a small amount of gameplay. Ughghghg I'm probably going to have to just do transcriptions by hand again aren't I.



In the meantime enjoy screenshots of speech bubbles, FOREVER.



Anyway, when we last left our heroes, we were just about to go to the far end of Lazvil Hills to recover a spy with valuable intel on Granorgite armaments.



In the interest of saving time and avoiding potential soldiers, Raynie and Marco offer a shortcut.



Sounds legit to me.



Yes good let's get a move on.



You don't get much freedom to walk around the map for this prologue area, it just kinda ferries you from place to place.



OH NO A FLAME CHICKEN



Most of the early fights are scripted, with optional tutorials in them. I refuse.



The flamechicken gets to attack first, but the damage isn't anything to sweat.



Anyway, we don't need tutorials, because I'm here.

On each character's turn, they can choose from the following list of things to do. Five of these six work exactly like you think they do.



For the one that doesn't, we turn to the other screen. This is the listed turn order of the fight: Stocke's turn is right now, then the Dodo will act, then everyone else gets a turn, and so forth. Easy, right?

By using the Change action, we can swap whoever the active character is with any character below them in the turn order, effectively forsaking their current turn to have more capability to work with teammates later. This isn't gonna do a whole lot now, but this becomes a central part of the gameplay later.



For now, we do this, which puts Stocke in what was originally called the Baroque state, but it's been changed to something else in the remake and I forget what it is. You're more likely to take critical hits while Baroque, and it lasts until that character actually takes their turn. It's not a big deal, though, provided you're even halfway careful.



Next, let's look at the playing field. The three protagonists take up their one row on the right, while the enemy field is a 3x3 grid. The closer enemies are to you, the more damage they deal and take. Any enemy can, rather than attacking, move to another part of the field, which is almost always a waste of their time.



Almost every character has access to skills that let them move enemies around the field as well. Stocke's Push Assault, for example, will force whatever it hits back as far as possible.



Hope that looks like a good heal number to you, because that's as good as Marco's gonna get at healing for right now.



The real advantage to bunching up teammate's attacks together is combos. The more hits you deal in sequence, the higher the number, which also applies a slight damage boost. Alternating between certain types of attacks and characters tends to be better at increasing the number. I don't super know the details of it, but I do know that it's valuable to increase.



WheeeeEEEEeeeEEEEEee.

(The bottom screen displays money and items gotten, I will only display it if we get something worth showing off.)



"My, that was invigorating! He wasn't very strong, though..."



Depicted: a grizzled veteran of combat-for-hire.



Storywise, Stocke's meant to be more experienced at fighting than Raynie or Marco, but the stat difference isn't that significant between them. As the game progresses, though, Stocke will very quickly outpace Raynie and Marco as a fighter.



Maybe someday camaraderie whatever.



Marco notes the change in weather, likely heralding an approaching rainstorm.



I feel like we saw some rain fairly recently. Probably not a big deal though.



Anyway, off they go.

The rain picks up, and only a few yards away we have a pair of mystery warriors crossing the bridge forming the main path.



Ah, these must be the Granorg force leaders.



Dias is the only one of the two to get a portrait, which hey, why don't we do another artwork comparison?





Our other guy doesn't have a portrait, which I'll complain about in a bit since his name will be revealed shortly.



One note I want to make about the game's writing is that while in broad strokes it can be seen as classic JRPG, it's conveyed a lot more smartly than usual. The villains aren't hammy scenery-chewers, and make what they consider the best possible choices for them at the time, as do the heroes. This is really important to nail down in a setting like this, where a military conflict forms the core of everyone's motivations.



Anyway, this is Palomides the Executioner.

In the original, it's clear that a lot of characters were intended to be more major players than their lack of portrait indicates, since they make regular appearances in the story at several points, and Palomides is one of these characters. I dunno if it was due to development restrictions of what, but there's a large amount of those characters that didn't get portraits in the original.

This wasn't attended to in the remake either, although you can see that they intended to get to it at some point. Palomides' sprite here has modifications to it not present in the original, particularly the spikes and darker grey armor color, and he's got a unique VA (although not with fully voiced lines like everyone with a portrait. He just has a handful of sound bytes that only sorta line up with what he's saying. If you've played basically any Atlus game you know what I mean here). I kinda wish they'd have given him and a handful of other characters a more indepth revamping with a portrait and full VA work, but I understand that development hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of ambition.

With one exception, I am broadly okay with this. That exception won't come up for a while, though.



Anyway, these guys are our opponents and it's probably fine.



Enough about them, though, what about our protagonists?



No sign of the spy for now.



No sense sticking ourselves in hot water on a fishing expedition, right?



I mean, you're right, but what are we supposed to do about it?



Whoa watch where you're slinging that tragic backstory you could put someone's eye out.



Marco opts to get the whole brooding secret thing out in the open quickly, even though Raynie isn't happy with it.



I mean, I'd be happy leaving her past alone, but eh, narratively we have time to kill.



Anyway, Marco recounts the tale of their days as mercenaries.



Huh, okay. Wouldn't have expected that of him.



But hey, can't judge a book by its cover. Sometimes it's literally blank inside???



"Come with me, and let's write history together. History as it should be." What a goofball.



Fair enough.



It's probably nothing. Hey, y'know what sounds like fun? Distractions.



It's the spy, at last!



Let's go home and eat cakes.



Okay, no cakes yet.



Let's protect the spy!

GIVE IT UP! YOU CAN'T WIN!



THEY'RE ON ME! I'M GETTIN' CARELESS!



The spy recognizes us by the red cloak, and the group moves to protect him from the pursuing Granorgite forces.



Another script change I recall here: ordinarily, Stocke's order is "the spy's life takes priority!" It's a change you can make, I guess.



Haha losers get the hell out of my way.



One other mechanic that moving enemies can do is that you can stack enemies on the same space as long as you're comboing them. So the easiest way to do that is to do something like this: Stocke pushes the frontliner with Push Assault...



And they get sent to the space with the other guy behind them...



Where Raynie can hit both of them with a single Thunder.

Most fights in this game eventually just become you turning all the enemies into a katamari and then unloading single-target damage on them, but for this to get real stupid you need to line up your turns so your team all acts together, which can mean giving the enemies opportunities to hit you'd rather not provide.



Did you know: Normal mode starts out as a cakewalk? It's true.



Level 2 brings newish techniques: Raynie can now get in on the pushing, while Stocke can use Left Assault to move them sideways.



Dudes: roughed up.



Oh no the spy is injured whatever will we do.



Y'know how it's hard to have healers in fiction sometimes, because then you either run the risk of them undermining the threat of all possible deadly encounters or end up showcasing them as constant failures? Radiant Historia manages to find a nice middle ground, I feel.



Marco's only got the one bottle of Good Stuff left on him, though.



But it is very much Good Stuff.



Anyway, yeah, the operative Heiss assigned to escort the spy this far is, of course, dead as hell.



The good news is, we have more than enough intel here for Alistel to start fighting back.



All we gotta do is bring this guy back alive.



Operation "Teamwork and Friendship" is off to an excellent start.



But it's just like the heist movies. Getting in is the easy part.



And, of course, we've got the brute squad right behind us, too.



Don't worry, Stocke's not gonna try to solo the reinforcements or anything. He's not that crazy and/or powerful.

Yet.



Anyway, let's get going.



Don't get too intimidated by the savepoint. It doesn't mean a boss or anything, Radiant Historia just throws them around like confetti.



More junk!

Didn't we come back this way?



Well, that's true, but consider...



Yeah, we go that way and we pretty much lay down and die.



Yeah, like I said. We just take the shortcut the other way.



So what's the problem?



Oh, something down there is the problem.



A hail of crossbow bolts flies through, and one of them hits the spy dead-on.



Yeah this place was deserted on the way here, that's weird.



Stocke hurries up and takes point...



But despite having a clear path to where the shooters were...



Nobody.



Well, that's annoying.



What's more, there's a huge barricade in the way, so the shortcut is out.



No kidding. You guys only barely got to the rendezvouz point, and it's like a snare trap closed around you.



Stocke heads back to the others, but...



Looks like the spy didn't make it.



If only Marco had brought one more bottle of the Good Stuff...



Stocke's right, though.



Even letting them know that the spy was killed in action is important.



Motivated to protect Alistel, Raynie regains her spirit a bit.



Anyway, nothing for it but to go north.



It'll be fiiiiine.



Oh come ON!



Probably one of the spy-hunting teams.



To where?

Exactly. We stop them here, or never.



Nothing slows you down, does it?



This formation is pretty rude. You're honestly better off focusing fire on a single guy rather than trying to push them around.



If you ignore that, this is a good tutorial for Change, since all the enemies are spread out in their turn order among your own guys. Done right, you can chain like six turns together.



I attempt to do the pushy nonsense. Here's Left Assault's trajectory.



The healthbar displayed during a combo is, if I recall right, for whatever enemy you originally selected with the attack if at all possible. As long as whoever you selected is part of the combo at present, you're still good.



Don't use Autobattle unless the fight is in the bag already. Right now it's fine, because the only thing that hits harder than a regular attack is Thunder, but later on it's not gonna do anything.



Hnnnnngh



We can walk around a little bit now, but not enough to really get a feel for Lazvil Hills. We'll get to explore the area a bit more later on, though.



More boxes, rude.



For the very small remainder of this area, Granorg soldiers will be random encounters on the map.



On this difficulty, doing this knocks the enemy out, letting you get a preemptive. On Friendly difficulty, doing that automatically defeats the enemy, and I think it awards XP and such for doing this. In the original, this would only knock out the enemy SOMETIMES. It wasn't great.



Anyway I hit the guy.



Haha you fools are facing the wrong direction!



Look at all of those turn panels we have.



Yeah that looks fine.



Level 10 combo!



Higher combos also give better money and XP rewards.

Grapple lets Marco pull an enemy towards him, so it's the opposite of Push Assault.



These plants are too powerful to strike down for now.



Just gotta cross this bridge and we're



Right where our vision took place.



This is probably fine, right? We fought all the small fries just fine.



Looks like we're not the only side with spies.



Yeah this might be a bit much.



Fair point. We can't just roll over and die.

Palomides opts to handle this, leaving Dias to prep the invasion of Alistel.



One of them left, so we can handle this, right?



Yeah, just one big guy and three crossbowmen. It's fine.



I mean we can do that?



Stocke is not too happy with that.



Raynie makes a good point, though: at least one person needs to return to Alistel so they aren't blindsided by the invasion.



Marco stands by Raynie to aid her.



OH ALSO PALOMIDES JUST KINDA SWELLING WITH BLACK MAGIC OR SOMETHING



Stocke still insisting that nobody tries to play hero.



I dunno man I kinda feel like Raynie's got a point here!



We transition into the combat mode.



Worth a shot, right?



All right, put up your dukes!



DUKES: PUT UP



Palomides just outright slaughters Raynie and Marco with a single strike each before we get a single turn.



Okay, now your turn, right Stocke?



Stocke gets to take a single turn in this fight before the entire enemy team does.



It is not even close to enough.



The firing squad is entirely manageable...



But Palomides himself is another story.

BY THE WAY: we have revive items in our pack! I think you get them in the original too but don't quote me on that. You can't use them here, though, because something something tempo.



Stocke barely hangs on...



And sprints off as fast as he can.



Palomides gives chase, not that he has to. We're still very cornered.



And just like that, our vision's come true, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.



Palomides has chased Stocke back to the bridge.

If we stand and fight, we die.



Palomides is taking his sweet time, though.



Even tries to take a shot at our religion or whatever.



Reinforcements close in from behind.



GUESS I'LL DIE



Palomides makes some grandstanding declaration about Granorgite supremacy here.



Stocke's mind is too busy racing to ways he can survive.



Eventually, he stands up and sheathes his sword.



He drags himself over to the side of the bridge...



And before anyone can react, he throws himself into the river.



Yeah that maybe bought you like 45 seconds there Stocke.



Palomides is taking no chances, and has his underlings search for where he ended up.



They obey, although they're a little apprehensive that they'll find him.



Whether they do or not, though, is no longer our concern.



Because it's not where Stocke washes up that matters...



But who finds him first.



The mystery children telprot him away to somewhere else.



And this place is a WEIRD one.



The mystery children are hanging out on the top screen with Stocke on the bottom. This place is one of the only places that uses both screens at once.



What do you mean the blank book is important.



The mystery children say hello.



Give us your names so I can make another stupid profile image.



They don't actually answer him at first.



Please do this quickly. I am running out of patience to write the update.



Each mystery child introduces themselves in sequence.

Sure, okay.



It should go without saying, but these two are important as hell, since they were in the intro scene where everything was sand.





Explain the staircase void to us.



It is not Histeria. That is a different, dumber place. They say some nonsense words about Flux and stuff here, but I will omit them because it's not especially important or decodable.



I mean, that checks out, sure.



But why tho



Wait did Heiss give us a time machine



Stocke's having a hard time digesting this, not least because the time children are really bad at explaining.



Anyway, baby steps. What happened just before we went to Historia?



Ah, yes. We got absolutely slaughtered.



Raynie, Marco, and the spy are all dead, and Dias' invasion of Alistel's gonna run unchecked.



Of all of those things, failing to save his underlings is wearing down Stocke the most.



Again, it's really easy to take Stocke's usual aloof attitude as being uncaring, but that's far from the truth.



Sure, but south wasn't an option.



Wow rude.



Lippti and Teo take some time hemming and hawing about how Stocke just needed to git gud.



Get on with iiiit



Also yeah we don't have a time machine.



This goes on for a bit.



Skipping ahead: because Stocke is the rightful bearer of the White Chronicle, he can go back in time and mess with things until they align properly, potentially averting such situations as the blockade and ambush.



Understandably, Stocke is skeptical.



But the time children are insistent that this will be possible, so hey.



Haven't you ever wanted that?



Hey, it worked for Chrono Trigger, right? EVERY GAME MUST BE COMPARED TO CHRONO TRIGGER.

Once the possibilities start getting through to him, Stocke asks just one question for now.



Probably? It's time travel, man!



Time travel with restrictions, but that's kind of necessary for it to not break reality as we know it.



But we'll worry about the details later.



For now, there's shenanigans to pull.



Allez-oup!



Huh, would you look at that.



Stocke pops back into normal time and space, real as ever.



Still plenty stabbed, but he can walk okay for now.



This is right around where we found those three balms.



Also: right around where the spy got assassinated.



The conversation is even the same.



Yeah you got like three seconds buddy GO



Stocke dashes over to warn everyone.



Oh hi Stocke WHAT



He shoves the spy down into cover and nimbly dodges the crossbow bolts that follow.



After the volley ends, the spy is alive!



Right, let's get moving.



Having failed, the snipers back off and leave us to the other units.



But we know that they know! And they don't know that we know that they know!



Since the attack came from the south, it'd still seem dangerous, but all the indications are that doing that will get the squad killed, so Stocke leads them south.



Pssst don't let them know you're a savescummer.



Stocke's word choice is a bit weird to Raynie, but she's not about to turn down a viable escape route.



Haauuuaaaagggaaaaauuuugh. I should just up and transcribe these wordy cutscenes, shouldn't I.

Next Time: the only sick gains i need are at the local library

I'm very far behind in this thread but I don't mind that new Heiss gives off significantly fewer Obviously This Is Count Olaf vibes, FWIW. I much prefer the one who looks like he comes from a long family of distinguished snake-milkers.

What's up, nerds. This time, it's transcribed.

Still trying to find my sea legs for this LP. This way took a LOT longer than just playing normally, but I think the quality should be improved again. The writing of this game is pretty good and deserves nice, uninterrupted blocks of text to read through, which screenshots just aren't good for conveying. The only problem is inflating my playtime for these intro sections to a solid hour and a half. My kingdom for a text dump.



Stocke flashes back to Heiss' words at the onset of the mission.



We're bringing everyone back alive, but first we gotta get past these giant steel crates.



Oh hi again.





The glow effect that happens here is kind of hard to see, but...



We now have the supernatural power of BOXPUSH.



Yadda yadda yadda Stocke is now swole enough to tug around big-ass metal crates like its no big deal. None of this part is really worth transcribing.



OKAY BYE



It doesn't seem much, but Stocke's pretty good at playing off these sudden flashes of insight or whatever. I guess in a lot of cases, people just assume he's always quiet.



We can move around crates and barrels on the field without any real trouble now. Good for us.



You don't have to go in a straight line or nothin', you can cart whatever you've got all the hell over the place. I think in the original it was straight lines only, though, but frankly this is a good change I endorse.



KNOCK KNOCK ITS ME



Only these three guys block our path, since they were expecting to corral us north. We take them down and we're home free.



Partway during the fight, they get into a formation! Enemies that have formations available to them will occasionally attempt to move into specific spots on the field, which does cost their action but allows them to wield powerful team attacks. I have never seen what the Light Granorgite team attack looks like and I'm not about to showcase it now. Disrupting a formation is also as easy as using a single move to throw one of them out, so it's a neat concept but doesn't usually play out in practice.



I also show off Marco's Grapple move. It's usually better than Push Assault for setting up combos since closer enemies take more damage, but you need to be careful that these closer enemies don't survive and wield their increased damage against you.



That is the last fight for the prologue!



TOUCHDOWN!



And we saved the this guy!



The spy heads off to Alistel by themselves from here.



Still feel like we're forgetting something, though...



What was it, what could it be...



Oh, right, we pulled a Galuf and tried to ignore our HP meter.



The squad notices that Stocke's about a second away from passing out to blood loss.

I can't believe Stocke is dead



Hi again, mystery time children.



Time travel OP pls nerf.



Because time travel is so powerful, and we are long past the days of Chrono Trigger where "we're time traveling because it's cool!", this is basically laying out exactly how Stocke's time travel powers work. As they say, he can only go back to specific points, which he has to have been there for, and he can't undo anything that happens to him.



Mysterious. I can understand the time children here, though, even if they're hiding things.



And that'll do it for Historia today. See how much more quickly this went now that we have transcribed text? And how it has actual content to it?



We'll check back on Stocke in a bit.



He's okay, but there's more than just Alistel to look at.



For example.



For those who've played the original: No, this is not the dreaded phantom we call the Atlus Remake Mystery Girl. While she is present in this game, I have banished her and her foul magicks to the postgame by playing in Append mode.



Instead, this is an added bit of artwork with Eruca, the Princess of Granorg, in a different outfit from her usual.

That's it, really. She just says a bit about "What would Ernst do?" and then a soldier calls her into the next scene, which was present in the original game. This scene is created solely to showcase this artwork and then be ignored forever.

Why no, this outfit looks nothing like her actual wear.



That's more like it. ...Sort of.





Anydangfreakinway, welcome to Granorg! That gaudy lady on the throne, naturally, is Queen Protea. The narration makes a big deal about how her short-sighted and callous policies have been the driving force behind the war, but we'll get into the nitty-gritty of it.



For now, all you need to know is that Queen Protea is the evil queen.



Speaking of!





This is kind of cutting pretty close to modern-day politics, innit? Like, even outside of the main threat of the setting being effective climate change.



Anyway this game does not try to make its villains particularly nuanced or with any real redeeming features, for the most part. I'm okay with that, sometimes.



Like, take a second to digest this. Eruca comes in with actual legislation meant to support her nation's people in a time of war and with desertification fast approaching, and Protea just no-sells her with "listen. I need this opulent junk, okay. if you were smarter you'd understand this". Raise your hand, but say nothing, if this sounds like anything you've heard recently.



Eruca storms out in frustration while another courtier rolls in.



We're only gonna see Selvan for this little bit for now, but we'll come back to him. He still gets an artwork comparison.





Eruca gets a bit more scene here but for the most part I don't care about transcribing it. So this one just gets screenshots.



We don't know who Ernst is yet, but we might someday!

Rip that very good short hair.

Oh, see? She has her own ninja. It's fiiiine.



Enough about them, back to the main event!



We aren't told exactly how much time has passed here, but Stocke has been out of it for a while.



His first visitor upon waking is none other than Heiss.



It's a little odd that Heiss is acting so friendly to Stocke if he's just his employer, but hey, lots of good news.



At the very least, Heiss' compassion seems genuine.



But then there's this.



Stocke plays this off really well. If he denied outright that it was useful, Heiss would get suspicious. Putting the ball in Heiss' court for what to expect from a supposed "don't worry about it" thing is about as safe a play as you can get.



For now, at least, Heiss drops the matter.



Anyway, we'll go see him about that mission later.



For now, just us.



But yeah, Heiss was very insistent on giving us the White Chronicle, and on finding out if it helped us. Which it ultimately did, but we don't know WHY he's doing this.



Pretty much.



Anyway, we can explore the lower level of Alistel Castle a bit. This is where the infirmary is, as well as where thaumatech experiments are run. That area to the left is sealed, and will remain so for much of the game, but...



In here we can find Fennel, the chief engineer of Alistel. He tells us to piss off. We'll be annoying him a ton later on, though.





Out in the hall by the infirmary, we bump into the doctor who's been taking care of us.



This is Sonja!





Sonja's character is a little predictable for her role, but that's not always a bad thing, y'know? She's another doctor who's sick of the senseless loss of life from the war.



Who's this guy, though?



Rando McGavin pulls to a stop in front of Stocke.



And draws his sword!



He radiates the same kind of malevolent force that Palomides did, but before he can get close enough to do anything with it...



He gets interrupted by a lance thrown from further down the hall!

Hi!



Good timing, buddy!



It's probably no surprise that Rosch is playable later down the line.



Having ensured that the crew is safe, Rosch accosts the soldier.



But before we get any more out of him, he collapses into a pile of sand on the spot.



Well that sure ain't normal.



So in this setting, mana isn't what fuels spells, but rather it's closer to... I dunno, elan vital or whatever that nonsense was.



Sounds good to me. Sand Plague outbreaks (is it even contagious? Doesn't sound like it) are the sort of thing that could easily cause a panic.



Huh. Rosch offers an interesting choice here.



But before we can get into what each of the options would mean...



Oh, another vision, is it?



This area isn't in Lazvil Hills...



Oh. That's not just a dead Rosch. That's a dead Rosch with Stocke standing over him sword drawn.



Stocke's seen a lot of weird stuff lately, but seeing him responsible for killing his best friend is a bit of a bridge too far.



Rosch, of course, doesn't have a clue.



So yeah, we have a bit of a split in the story we can go for here, but we'll cover that later.



It might sound unlike me, but I will not be accepting votes for which of these we do, and it's not just because this is a backlog LP.



Let's check in with the time children again.



Also: from here on out, all save points will have the White Chronicle in them.



Now let's get to one of the biggest selling points of this game.




Welcome to the most important part of staircases.



At the top end, a massive pair of doors.



And the bottom has us and the time children.



So, one of the main features of Radiant Historia is that you're going to get a LOT of branching paths in the story. Sometimes they come from personal decisions, like whether to go with Heiss or Rosch. Other times the decisions are tactical (flank the enemy or attack head-on?) or social (tell your friend to confront their fears or to get help from someone they trust?). The Heiss/Rosch decision is the only real branching point, however, because in every single case aside from that, choosing the wrong branch results in a very instant bad ending, after which Stocke bounces back to Historia and the time children give him advice on how to not do that in the future. It leads to a kind of scenario where you kind of want to actively make poor choices, just to see what silly ramifications they can have on history. The game gives you this badass time-traveling agent and then takes off the gloves and throws them away so it can wreck half of the things he tries to do, and I love it.

OH ALSO WHAT



Okay nothing else worth transcribing here. They just mention they can use mana crystals to heal the party, thus making every save point also a full heal, assuming you use a pretty rare resource. It's a nice way of handling things, I think.

Anyway that doomsaying above gives us our guidelines for how to approach decisions down the line. Try to keep the best interests of the world in mind, even if they might conflict with what your current allegiances might be, but above all trust your gut, because inaction will guarantee defeat.



And now we can access nodes via Historia.



In addition to saving and healing, these places can also be used to time travel to particular points in the story.



Here's what our current story looks like. The bottom screen has a text summary on each node, which you can scroll up or down as you please. Anything on this map that's blue is a node, which means we can go back to it whenever we visit Historia, and usually heralds an important choice. The remake added a lot more nodes to non-choice parts of the story, largely to make backtracking for certain sidequests much easier, which is extremely appreciated. We'll fill this entire screen with nodes, don't you worry.

Next Time: trying to assign priorities in my dating sim, do i rank my bestie over The Man. please reply