Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology - Nintendo 3DS

This is a really good RPG made even better for the most part. The story is very good. The graphics are great. The music and voicework is amazing. Even though I played the DS version, that was quite a while ago and I'm really happy to play it again!The graphics have some changes and some things that are very same to the original game. The battles and the overwold looks very much like the DS game except you can see a bigger area with the 3DS's bigger screen. The colors are definitely more vibrant in the battles/overworld. The anime movies are a great edition that I don't remember at all from the DS version. I'm sure they won't be very often, but I hope they continue once in a while through the story. The portraits are the one disappointment to me. I liked the sketched look of the original. The new portraits are very well done, but they're a bit more generic.The soundtrack is just as good as it always was. It's a very epic soundtrack. And it's completely improved by being a mainly voiced game. Every interaction with main characters is voiced in this 3DS version! Wow, what an improvement!The battle system is turned based with a little bit of strategy. It's very good, but I don't know that I'd call it great. It's enough to keep me interested and fit well in the game, but I think the story is better than the battle system. There is more to keep you interested than a lot of turn based battle systems, but they really talked up the strategy and the strategy is kinda light. Basically, you use a little strategy to pile up the enemies so you can attack more at once. It works, but there isn't much to mix it up.The story is very good, but it is very linear. The time travel element doesn't open it up because you basically get stuck in one timeline and can do something to get yourself unstuck in another timeline. Then it seems like the new third timeline is more side story than anything. But the story is very well done and interesting. It's not Chrono Trigger time travel epic, but it's a better story than a lot of RPGs have these days! Not only that, but the story is good all the way through and the game is worth beating!We've haven't had a lot of new RPGs for the 3DS that have felt complete. Outside of the main series, we've gotten a lot of RPGs that almost feel half-done lately. This is a complete unique RPG that is definitely worth your time, and it's been made better in almost every way on the 3DS. If you like RPGs, I really suggest this!

In many ways it feels like a throwback to the great roleplaying games of the 16-bit era. Certainly one of the best RPGs I've played in a while.The setting and tone are a bit dark compared to other RPGs without being overly depressing. The basic premise of the game is that you are an intelligence officer of one of the nations that is warring for control of the dwindling resources of a dying planet, given the ability to travel back in time and revisit previous moments of your life to do them over until you find the correct path forward.The good: Solid story, great artwork, great voice acting, and a fun time travel mechanic that is somewhere between those of Chrono Trigger and Zero Escape. All major and several minor characters are fully voiced. The new Perfect Chronology "what-if" content starts off feeling pretty isolated from the rest of the game, but Atlus did a good job of bringing them all together in the end and weaving a cohesive narrative. The extra content in this version of the game is pretty significant - and in general you get a lot of game for the price.The bad: Due to traveling through different timelines, your available party members change a lot, and certain members end up chronically underleveled because they just aren't available so much of the time. This version of the game makes this somewhat better by giving a new side-dungeon where you can bring any character you've ever recruited, but it's still more work to level them up enough to be useful. There's certain post-game content that requires you to be on a second playthrough to unlock.

This game is a perfect remake of the DS original, which got swept under the rug by big releases and didn't get the attention it deserves the first time around. It was already a fantastic turn-based RPG with some grid/ positioning elements mixed in. The turn system is very reminiscent of FFX, where there's a long chain of who goes next, with higher speed characters appearing more frequently. The story is fantastic and engaging, while the core plot device of the game, the White Chronicle, allows you to time travel (but done right). The soundtrack is amazing, composed by Yoko Shimumora (Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade Chronicles). The environments and character sprites are all gorgeous as well.Some of the main changes include a cleaner UI, updated character portraits (with different context-dependent expressions! Really bothered me on the DS having everyone with stoic faces during intense cut scenes), fully voice acted cutscenes by R E A L L Y high profile english VAs. Bryce Papenbrook (Kirito from Sword Art Online) plays Marco, and the protagonist, already a very likable character in the original, is voiced by none other than Xander Mobus (Ren/Joker in Persona 5). Atlus paid good money for the VAs and the quality shows.The best way to summarize Radiant Historia is that it plays and feels like a PS1-era Final Fantasy game but with all the modern refinements you'd expect today. Definitely a must buy for JRPG fans.

This was a very fun JRPG and its only the DS, which is why ended up buying this.One thing to keep in mind is that the DLC for this is deprecated, so I wouldn't expect to be able to get that anymore.