Great for 30 hours, but after that its weak points become more defined.. Overall, it's both enjoyable and dissapointing.
----Storyline & Characters
This category starts off on a high note than slowly but surely plunges into the abyss after about 35 hours. We play Jack, a young man who is the descendant of a great warrior who had once helped in holding the
world of Radiata together. Jack certainly does not have the makings of a leader. He's goofy, simple, immature, a bit dull, and overestimates his ability by far. But on the bright side, he has his heart in the right place
and his lacking any solid allegiance (he just goes his own way) makes him one of the more ironically stronger characters in this game. He is within the first half hour, thrown together into a team with an exuberant captain who reminded me of an uber-cheerful version of Steiner from FF9, and Ridley- a beautiful, but very unapproachable and angsty young woman. The three argue and make for an awkward team at first.
The story starts off light-hearted, linear, and at times genuinely funny. But an event takes place about 8 hours into the game that totally breaks the linear pace, and gives Jack an immense amount of freedom, as well as full
access to the giant city of Radiata, complete with an impressive amount of characters.
Well over a hundred characters make up Radiata alone, with various others strewn across the tiny villages surrounding it. Where these characters
are sorely lacking in development (expressing little more than 6 lines of text to their personality) the majority of them have a style, design, and charm that- shockingly enough, can outdo many of the more generic leads of other rpgs. These characters wildly vary in age, morals, mortality, personality, and look. Some are dead serious and others are goofy. I was surprised by how some of these managed to be so outlandish and creative within such tiny development.
Unfortunately, many of the best characters are only available on the human path, which has the poorer main story. Around 25 hours in (it varies, some can race to the point in 10-15 hours, I took 25 ^^;) you will reach a branching path where you will have to choose between one of two sides that will fight ruthlessly against one another. Once you pick a side, you can't go back. Some of the allies you may have made may now be your enemy. So regarding the quality of the storylines on each side.. they're both not very good. At that point in the game the "stock fantasy kingdom power struggle and world-saving" storyline kicked in.
But I can say that the human path is shocking. Not what I expected at all. It's also the road to the bad side/outcome in my opinion and left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. The non-human side has a somewhat more thriving storyline, but overall we are treated to cliches and little of the fun that made up the first part of the game. So overall the story had some great moments early on, but grows too thin in the long run. But there are so many awesome characters.. and they get meager development. So it's quite a mixed bag. In the end I've gotta be fair and say it's on the mediocre side. 6/10
----Graphics
When I first saw some screenshots for this game I was immediately attracted. The character designs are beautiful, softly colored, and rich in detail. The backdrops looked pretty with idyllic nature scenes and the enormous, bustling town of Radiata. Battles also looked flashy, with the real-time attacks looking dazzling and great. While there are no CG or anime cut-scenes (except for an underwelming opening anime cut-scene) the in-game engine is about as good as it gets with crisp and clear close-ups. While the graphics did not quite live up to the awe I had expected from the screenshots, there are some scenes that are undeniably well done (like the waterfall..) Also the transitions from day to night are smooth and make the scenes glow with extra life. 9/10 More than beautiful, but lacking that extra oomph to make it stellar.
----Music
Never anything special. Sometimes it can get rather quirky with the occasional upbeat jazz track (in a midevil-stylized world?) but nothing at all memorable. The sound effects are alright though. The voice-acting is shockingly good. I'm usually the first one to be picky about voice-acting, but here I thought the central characters gave stellar performances. This does not include the brief voice-acting in battles (you know, the battle crys and spell casting) which are pretty bad. They usually are in any game though in my experience. (5/10- average at best.)
----Gameplay, Difficulty (Easy), All Features and Weak Points.
There is a time-based system in this game, similar to that of Zelda: Majora's Mask only without panic. One day and one night is about 15 minutes long, and at most parts in the game you can take your time and do as you wish. The "living world" in Radiata Stories could also be compared to Shenmue and Harvest Moon, if you stripped away the calender dates.
Characters will go about their daily and nightly routines each day. Their conversations will change, and they'll often travel from one end of the vast city to the other. If you catch them at the right place at the right time under the right circumstances, you may be able to recruit them to join your party.
Like Suikoden, you can acquire characters from all over the place to join your crusade. But in battle you will only control Jack, while the others do their own thing. You can asign vague orders to them by purchasing command books, but overall their AI can be trusted (and the game's incredibly low difficulty regarding battle and substantial healing items makes it irrelavant) While it might seem like a pain to only be able to control Jack, he does have a variety of weapons, weapon types, skills to learn, and attacks to set up.
While these all sound fun, and they are for awhile, the aforementioned low difficulty makes them easy and fast to master and quickly the last thing on your mind. Battles are breezy and fast, with the exception of some extra bosses that require more care.
But to get from beginning to end is no problem. The battle system, while not repetitive, is so barebones I was reminded of .Hack or Kingdom Hearts. You just button-mash the enemy into a corner and he'll usually be ko'd in no time. There is very little character management involved. Some may welcome this, but I found it to weaken the system. But little features like the ability of small enemies to stick to you and do damage, volty attacks (attack an enemy many times and be able to unleash a special attack doing more damage) are pretty good.
The dungeons are alright in number, but lacking in substance. No real puzzles, you usually just run down long corridors. While you can see your enemies on screen, it is not usually that easy to run away from them- unless you have a special accessory that enables you to run faster. It is called the "Feather Earring" and may have altered my experience with this game to make it much faster.
Collecting all the 188 characters on the other hand, can prove to be the biggest challenge of this game. You don't HAVE to do it, but it's kind of like power-leveling in recent Nippon Ichi games, there is no reason to GET this game unless you want to collect as many characters for your group as possible. While some are just handed to you, most require specific timing, a particular item or circumstance, or just plain stalking in order to get the slightest idea of what they want. This system of trial and error, puzzle-solving, duels, and the very very occasional mini-game can be very rewarding. It is also a neat feature that you can duel (go in a one-on-one battle) with almost anyone in the entire game by kicking them a couple times.
There are a number of side quests to undertake that usually direct you to a new field of monsters and a dungeon with a boss awaiting at the end. They vary in length (from a 6 minute fight to a 35 minute dungeon) The number of these side quests is pretty good, pre-split point has several, whilst the human path has a bunch and the non-human path has significantly less and they are not compiled in a list, rather they must be triggered by talking to specific characters. A poor design choice in my opinion. Tacking ALL of the side quests from each path together, it adds about an additional 35 hours to gameplay.
Overall I liked the inclusion of the side quests. At the end of the game, if you reload your data, you can access an additional dungeon that recycles some bosses and introduces some more challenging enemies. The design of this dungeon is a bit less primitive than the others and enjoyable enough to explore and complete (within about 4 hours)
There is a New Game+, a required feature, seeing as how there are two paths to this game. You cannot collect all the characters in one play-through. It takes two, or one more if you don't consult a guide as to not miss a select few of the ridiculously easy to miss recruits. While I like a New Game+ as a feature in itself, I really felt that splitting the game into two paths was one of the main failings of this game. This is because I played the game for the first time and took the human path. Dissapointed with the story that followed and ending, along with feeling a little gyped since I completed the game in 38 hours and had a sort of empty feeling.
So I decided to quickly do the New Game+ to take the other path, as the loose ends of the storyline had me mildly curious, and I had memorized the myriad paths of Radiata quite well so I figured it would be the right time.
This ended up becoming a repetitious trek until the split-point, and even as the non-human path was much better, two play-throughs had made the game go on for too long and revealed how shallow the once decent core gameplay actually is, and how temporary the novel features (tons of characters to collect, a living world, the main dungeons/bosses/storyline that have decent moments) last. For about 40 hours, taking the non-human path, it is a good game. But after the 75 hours I spent taking both paths, it felt too stale. (7.4/10)
A bit more about the pros and cons of the human and non-human paths (may contain light spoilers) I recommend the non-human path first.
Human Path
+ Many more characters, increased ease as you are able to collect a high-level healer (Kain)
+ The side quests are high in number, compiled in a list to complete, and Thanos is just a funny manager.
+ Through the aforementioned sidequests, some of the characters get a precious tiny bit of additional character development. The letter from Ganz leaves more of an impact on the story than actually having him on your team in the non-human side.
- Regarding the storyline, you take the side of many idiots, chief amongst them that awful evil jerk Cross. You are also still treated like a filthy outsider even though you are one of the major players on their side, which is strange.
- The entirety of the human path is vague, hopeless, and even has an ending that manages to be depressing in both abruptness and content.
Non-Human Path
+ Humor lasts for a few precious moments longer. Storyline is a bit better. IMO, it's on the side of good and you get brand new headquarters.
+ A few more duels than usual, and they contain some of the only challenging parts in this game as well!
+ There are two additional towns and two additional dungeons to explore that you cannot on the human path.
= Ending is not good, but it's not horrendously bad either.
- Less characters, less and messily set-up side quests on this path.