Radiata Stories -- Can side quests make a game?

[kpjam]

Radiata Stories


The story and gameplay in Radiata Stories, or stories, are weak.  

The main character is Jack Russel, and you following him on his... well, there's really no Journey per se, a smattering of camping trips maybe.

Anyway, Jack is the son of a famous knight. A knight who killed a dragon and was later slain by another knight, for reasons that are a bit murky.

Jack decides to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Radiata knights. That's where we begin. You end up in the knights, then something happens and you end up out of the knights. After that, you end up working for a professional fighting troupe(where the bulk of the game play takes place)

One of the first things to notice is that there is a clock in the game.  It runs in 24 hour cycles(There are no days, just hours)  When you end in the troupe, you have pretty much free reign of the city and you can meet most of its inhabitants(The castle is barred to you for reasons of no longer being a knight.)

With the clock, the inhabitants all have set patterns(i.e. this person can be found in the shrine from 1-3.)  It's important for training and saving.

Being a member of a squad inside the troupe, means you take assignments.  When you aren't performing an assignment for the troupe, you can take individual assignments, etc. Assignments are generally mini-quests.  Go pick this up from this town, go kill this animal to get its fangs, etcc... there are a few.

Since you probably want help in the individual assignments, you need friends.  Hence, the activity in the game you'll spend most of your time(if you want everyone); which is running around talking to people and getting them to sign up to be your warrior.... friends.  You can form a group of up to 4, which you do at the fighting hall.

With all the above, is where they derive the 'stories' from.

In truth, you could probably recruit a few choice people and just move on from there.  

That's the overview of the game 'storyline.'  After a while, the main storyline takes over again or appears and you can quickly finish if you've spent some time leveling up and got yourself a decent healer.

Overall, I tend to think poorly of the story.  The 'mini-stories' you get from the guild and the people you recruit run from non-existent to cute but nothing that captures the imagination or really causes you to care. There are a couple people that you have to get to know to recruit, but even this is superficial. Which is the overall problem. Jack is a doofus.  No other characters are around all that much. You don't interact with people on your team. Though they have the amusing/annoying poses when they get the last kill in battle.  You just don't feel that there is any history to the others.  Even Jack, the son of a famous knight, there's no past reflected in his story.

The ultra annoying part is that you only have 1 save point through most of the game: Jack's house.  What's really annoying, is that after a set period of time, the storyline kicks in without you having a choice.  The only way to circumvent this is to save between midnight and six am.

The other really annoying thing is that some characters can only be recruited during certain hours.  So if you're not where you need to be, you need to wait another day.  Or Just sit there and read or chat online.  The game would have been helped tremendously by a wait feature that jumped you ahead to the time you want.  You can rest at home, which at times speeds up time, unfortunately, no matter when you rest, you wake at 6am.  

So the story gets a 2 out of 5.  3 if the multitude of mini-stories appeals to you.

Music.  Ahh.  It was there. Nothing horrible.

Combat is where the game makes its impression.  It uses the field type battle where you run around hitting enemies. The Ai is decent, though targeting can be troublesome(I've repeatedly had a target run behind another and Jack runs around the very long way to get to it.)

Basics first.  One button strikes.  Another blocks and jumps back.  Simple, no?  Well, there are 4 types of weapons Jack can carry.  Axe, one-handed sword, two-handed sword, and Javeline.  Each of these has 10 attacks, and 2 special attacks.  Using the weapon unlocks these.  Each has there own characteristics(Knock-down, wind-up, quick, powerful, etc).  You can switch weapons and attacks within your weapons choice on the fly.  This makes up for the limited variety of weapons.  Limited, in part, because the game is in part limited in scope.

To use the 2 special attacks you use 'volty'.  Volty is Radiatia Stories special guage that builds when you hit enemies.  The lesser attack costs ten volty, while the special attack uses 100 volty(your entire gauge).

You can't control any other characters in battle until you learn 'orders'.  You learn commands by buying books.  The commands are simple, 'heal', 'stay-back', etc, and different purchases affect either individuals or multiple individuals.  Some commands use volty, so you can't heal your entire party unless you have 30 volty.

Another interesting thing, your friends don't use manna and can heal on occasion, without prompting, though don't count on this.  There is no battle orders, so you really have no control except for orders and 'links.'

'Links' are introduced later in the game.  With them, you make your friends form a formation and attack as such.  You can only attack and defend(no using items or issuing commands 'no heal')  Link can be devastating to the enemies.  There are quite a few of them, but I generally stuck to two.  Attack Arrow, where I was the head, the others were behind forming an arrow, and unleashed devastating attacks on single opponents.  The other, that I used almost exclusively was line.  Pretty much a firing squad.  Since the monsters run to you, wait for them to get in front of the line, attack twice and you're done!

The other thing about links, is you got to share the special attributes of the other characters and eventually Jack would learn them as well.  You can only have one equipped at a time, but there value is great.  Fighting spirit doubled the value that the volty gauge increased with each hit.  1000t made it nearly impossible to be knocked down(excellent in certain instances) and a host of others.

The last nice touch was practice dummies.  Walk up to a practice dummy, hit it, and enter a training exercise to help master your weapon.  Finish all 20 and get a nice weapon much earlier in the game then you could find or buy elsewhere.

All of these things are pretty simple, but put them together and you have a nice combat experience.  Fast, fun, tactics and strategy, without going overboard on having 85 different techniques which look cool but affect little.

Overall, I'd have to say this is a renter or bargain basement purchase.  The nice combat engine doesn't make up for lack of real story or the endless amount of time you'd need to power level if you chose not to recruit and not to cheat the internal clock of story advancement.  Too much filler, not enough story.

[Dracos]

Heh.  I stayed away from this on the value that I wasn't really in the mood for collect them all game again.

And when I am, I'll probably replay a suikoden. ^^;

Dracos

[Dracos]

Well, as merc poked, I am finally playing this game.  It has  its problems, but I'm enjoying it.

Personally, the one thing I want greatly for is tools to control time in it.  Even just a way to hop to morning or night would be nice.

Dracos