Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 422: Radiant Historia

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Like dust in the wind, Nadia Oxford leads Jeremy Parish, Anthony John Agnello, and topic-requesting patron Lorenzo Hulzebos across the sands of time to explore (and re-explore) Atlus' cult-classic time-travel RPG, Radiant History. Art by John Pading; edits by Greg Leahy. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, ashes to dust, to dust, to dust. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Retronauts. I am your host for this week, Nadia Oxford, of the Axel of the Blood God RPG podcast. Thank you for joining us on this journey. I am accompanied by some excellent friends. First of all, there's Mr. Jeremy Parrish. Actually, my full formal name is Time and Jeremy Parrish in Space. And I already know that our second guest, Mr. Anthony John Agnello, his nickname is going to be Erica's Hair Forever.

Erica's Hair Forever, that's right. This is, I'm short hair, Anthony, John Agnello, for this show. The proper version. Yeah, the proper version. I don't have like the wind-blown anime Wifu Pillow look. The Wifu Pillow aesthetic. We're also joined by a very special guest, Petrono Lorenzo Hulesbos. Lorenzo, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I have to think about this one carefully. Ah, say what's in your heart. My name's Lorenzo, and I need your boots, your clothes, and your thaw machine. Are you going to throw us on the griddle? I actually have never seen Terminator somehow. I saw that clip because I wanted to see what Arnold's like when he's talking. And it's like, that guy got on the grill and he's like, I'm going to put my hands down and I'm going to put my hands down again and again and again. And then I'm going to roll off.

That's not a smart way to go about it. This is not a Terminator podcast. No, maybe the next one, though. You should join us for one of those. I mean, Terminator podcast now. Rosh, Rosh, uh, is kind of Arnold Terminator-esque, you know. You got a point. Yeah.

And you're like, how does he walk through any of the doors into these castles? I don't, it's confusing. Oh, no, I have to go to the can. It's been foiled again. He's got, it's like an astronaut suit. He can, he just go in there. He just goes like Iron Man as well. I'm just trying to.

relive a few scenes with Raj, rushing through doors, and it's like, does he ever go through the doorpost with somebody else at the same time? And I think he might. And I'm like, that's not how doors work. You know, they had very different building codes in, uh, in this kingdom. So doors all have to be double wide. It's like instead of a cat door, you get a Rosh door. So this, uh, this has already gone way off the track as we might expect from a podcast hosted by myself. but I will say that I think it's safe to say all four of us are basically we're fans of the really offbeat Atlas RPGs of which I think Radiant Historia accounts alongside say like Etriene Odyssey and all that good stuff and I'll probably never see again Is Etriy an oddity offbeat? It's pretty I consider it kind of offbeat. It's it's like it's as it's as old school as you get it's like I just looked at

at a video a strange journey which actually released right around the same time as Radiant Historia. I was always under the impression that it's kind of like Edwin Odyssey, but also more like SMT with demons and shit. And it's like, this seems weird. And Edwin Odyssey is like baseline fantasy normal. I guess you got a point there. You know, this is totally off topic, but Shemagame Tense started out as a dungeon crawler

from the first person perspective. And it changed when it became the persona series and then, you know, SMT, Three went to more of like a traditional or more kind of standard JRP style. But before that, it was a, you know, a dungeon crawler. So Strange Journey was really, you know, a strange journey back to where this series began, in a sense. But all of those games that were talking about, Edrian Odyssey, Rating Historia, Strange Journey, et cetera, you know, all of those games were part of Atlas's really big push on the DS to really create. a ton of unique content. And there was a period in like 2009 or so where it kind of came to a head and they published something like nine games in the US that year. And that was right at

the same time that flashcards really became big and mobile phone gaming started to really become big. And the DS market imploded. And it's really kind of a miracle that Atlas survived that because they were putting out stuff like Steel Princess and I can't even ever. remember what else. Like, yeah, just a ton of like really quirky niche JRPs that must have sold a dozen copies. And now Izuna was one of them, I think. Jeremy, my world, my way came out within six months of radiant historia. Wow. So, so those games were all kind of like licensed in by Atlas and not Atlas games. And, you know, just kind of a disastrous timing. They, they, like, I love them for what they tried to do, but it was the worst timing in a market that had really kind of turned its back on the DS. And, you know, nothing good happened from that. And I think as a result, people kind of overlook Strange Journey, but they especially overlooked Radiant Historia, which was really late in the DS's life and so much better than, you know, any of those kind of quirky little minor games that they licensed in. It was like a legitimately great RPG that just really kind of was.

washed beneath the waves of history and indifference. And it looked different from the outset, but you wouldn't be able to tell that because of the tide of all of these Atlas RPGs and all of the imitator Atlas RPGs that sort of surrounded them. You know, there were all of, like, how many ruin factories were there on DS at the exact same time?

Sega had stuff like Sands of Destruction, which was basically this game meets Zinogears. Yeah. Yeah, it was all over the place, and there was no ability to, you know, there was no demo for Radiant Historia. There was no way to test it out ahead of time. You just sort of had to gamble. And, I mean, this came out, was it within two months of the 3DS launch proper? And it looked, it looked crappy on a 3DS.

It looked, it looked really janky on a launch 3DS. So there was. Well, that's why you had to hold down the start button when you launched the game. just like virtual console i just can't do stretched out 3DS virtual console i just can't it's bad there are there are ways to do good stretch there are ways to do stretching well but 3DS does not do any of those things it makes everything look disastrous So, Rating Historia, as we have already started discussing in quite some detail. I think we all have probably our personal stories about this wonderful, weird, beautiful RPG, like how we got into it, what got us interested in the first place.

Lorenzo, you are a very special guest, so you tell us first about your connection with this amazing game. Yeah, I kind of glossed over me just now because we got very off topic. But Jeremy, you said Atlas released like 9 DS games in 2009 in the US. And absolutely none of them in Europe. I'm really sorry about that. Yeah, me too. But at least Nintendo published at 3-0.C. here with a font that is actually legible. It can't be done.

yeah like radiant Historia I first encountered it not in a store because they weren't here but I think and I'm not sure how I got there but I was looking for a Cronocross let's play

because I was trying to play it and it wasn't going very well and I was like I at least want to know the story and the context of the music so I'm going to watch a let's play and I watched the Krona Cross Let's Play. Very good. Very good music. And it was like, I'm going to see what else this guy is done. And right at that moment, he was doing Radiant Historia. I'm like, hmm, time travel. I like Krona Trigger. I'm going to watch this time travel RPG let's play. So I did. And right around that time, Atlas actually did a reprint of the game while he was doing his let's play. So I don't know if there was a connection.

there, but I like what I'm seeing. I've seen the let's play now. I'm going to play the game and I'm going to experience this for myself. So I did. It was great and I loved it. Awesome. And that's how I met

right into Storia. It's a very moving story. But no, I'm actually really bad that you found the game because it's such a special game. And I'm sure another person who can tell us about how special it is is Anthony, because I know you love this game to death. I do love this game to death. And I was going to skip

it entirely when it first came out. Because, you know, we sort of went off on that road of how, at the time, it wasn't very offbeat. It's very offbeat now. It's unusual to encounter something that is executed at this level of this game type. And when this came out in early 2011, I, you know, I was still really actively playing a lot of DS games and a lot of really good DS games were still coming out. So right around the same time, you had Ghost Trick and Okamidon and the DS version of Dragon Quest 6, a very compact, easy-to-play RPG that doesn't take forever at all. And so I was committed to Dragon Quest 6. I was like, this is going to be when I'm not working and playing games for freelance purposes, this is the RPG that we're going. will be in my pocket wherever I go. And I remember vividly being on a treadmill and miserable about it, listening to one of the earliest episodes of Acts of the Blood God. Oh, that piece of crap podcast.

That freaking thing. And this is back in ye olden times when the one-up still existed. And Jeremy and Kat were like, you don't understand. It's a real RPG. Radiant's story is a real RPG. It's not like a DSRP, you're not going to turn it on, and then some blonde anime ladies just like, let's go on an adventure! There's going to be turn-based battles, Yokoshima-Mora is going to make you cry, and you're going to wonder where this came from. So the next day, I was like, no, screw it, I'm dropping everything, and I shotguned that game.

In preparation for this, I went back and got out my old cart, and my cleared save was still sitting there. and it was 40 hours and I was like oh my God I think I logged that 40 hours in maybe a week playing through it I was just addicted to Radiant History

when it came out so yeah it really sticks out in your memory this game there's nothing quite like it no that hasn't been since yeah so I actually listened to those old episodes

because there's like two episodes of active time babel It was at the time. I'm going to see if there's anything here that I don't remember. And it's like the first episode was like, Jeremy, you had a preview, an import copy, I think, and you play like two hours. You were already praising it because it seemed good, even though it was very dense with text and difficult Japanese text at that. And then a few episodes later, it's like you also had the Atlas Rap and you were talking about Radiant Historia and Tactics Oger, which also came out right around that time. And also, as a big map that you can go back to and explore different possibilities to change the flow of the game.

And it's like those were good episodes. and I think they represented the game very well. Man, Atlas should send me a check. Come on Atlas, get on it. Jeremy, they owe you a lot of checks, dude. That 2007 to 2011 period, you were like, somebody play this game, and then five people played those games. Yes.

That's like a $6. I actually realize now that, you know, I was in saying, oh, they were like the quirkier games, now I realize that in retrospect, yes, they were quirky, but back then everything was like that. It was a really great time for RPGs. It was so strange. But Parrish, why don't you tell us a little bit about your history with this particular title? Yeah, so my story is very exciting. I played this game because it was my job. But, you know, it was my job because I cultivated that role for myself. I was like, I love, games and I love JRPs and I will cover these games even as imports. I'd forgotten that I

imported it, which was foolish. This game is so, so dense with text and story and so reliant on that and really kind of all about that. And I don't read Japanese that well, nearly well enough to understand this. But I did really enjoy the systems because it's one of those rare RPGs that marries together really inventive and interesting systems together with a really interesting story and even the the storytelling itself has an interesting mechanic to it. So, you know, I was, I picked it up as a matter of course because, hey, Atlas RPG developed internally, that's going to be good, or somewhat internally. And even though it was a very plain looking game, like some very kind of uninspiring colors and sprites and world designs and

that sort of thing. There was just so much going on in terms of the content and the way it plays that I just didn't care. It was a very good game. And yeah, I'd forgotten Tactics Oger came out around the same time too. But like it just felt this felt like a bounty of riches. All of a sudden there's, you know, two great, immersive, deep RPGs that heavily involved turning back the hands of time to change the outcome of the narrative in the story. That's, you know, amazing. How do we luck into this? And, you know, in hindsight, we should have held on to that moment because it was precious and fleeting. But, you know, we still have those games. And I think you can still play Tactic Zoger on PSN if you, if you, I have it on my Vita. Yeah, you kind of have to jicky around with it a little bit. And fortunately, there was a 3DS remake of Radiant Historia that I think really, you know, they made some creative changes that I'm not super crazy about, but they also really just drilled down on the story aspect of the game with that and really let it just stand out and let people experience it without having to do a lot of the kind of mundane grunt work

that the first version of the game suffered from. And yeah, it just really works in both incarnations. And I think they're probably both really expensive now, because that's what happens with video games that are no longer in print. They immediately become stupid expensive. but it's one worth tracking down. Yeah, they are both really expensive now, unfortunately. The 3DS one is not cheap. Is it on eShop? You can still get it on EShop.

Historia, sorry, Perfect Chronicle is. Yeah. Okay. I bought the original DS version, I think, one or two years ago. No, no, it's probably more like three or four years ago now, because time makes fools of us all. Especially milk. Yeah, that's why there's yogurt in.

my locker. We won't for the same low-hanging fruit pears. And I didn't think it was that bad at the

time. I mean, it was still probably like double the price of a launch retail copy,

but you know, not extraordinary. As for myself, I kind of took the cheating route. I didn't play the original

Radiant Historia, which is funny because thinking about it at the time, I would have been about.com's guide to the Nintendo

DS. So I would have been playing pretty much everything and of course I've always loved RPGs and I guess, I think I remember now I try to hook up with a contact from Atlas to get games to review from them and they just never really got back to me so that never happened but you know time goes on we come to read his

story a Perfect Chronicle and of course working with Kat Bailey as I do she's you are playing this game for the Axel of Blood God podcast which I was on by that point So I said, all right, I'll do what you say, and I played it, and I really enjoyed it. And I seemed to recall that when we actually covered the episode, the game on the episode, I think that was when you joined me, Agnella, wasn't it? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. We did talk about the remake, because I had been hesitant to pick it up. I was like, I don't know if I'm going back down that hole again. And the art, I don't know if we want to derail the conversation into the aesthetic choices between the original and the remake. Oh, we're going to get there. I know we'll get there. Let's wait until we've covered everything but to read me. I was, when I saw that, there was, it was, you were so glowing about it, Nadia.

And then I saw all the art again and I was like, no. And then I read Jeremy's review, which is basically like, you can completely do away with the battles and only focus on the story. I was like, oh, no. Damn it. God, he snared me. I got to go. I mean, it was it actually was

a good decision, I think. At least I have the option there. Yes. Because if you actually fight the battles, there's a few frustrating things about it because you no longer

get a makeup experience like you did in the original. And they've cut down heavily on how much money you get from fights. Ah, yes. And if you fight every battle on the game, like you might have done in the original,

you're like, I can't buy anything in the shops. What am I doing? And it's all in the line of duty for the new content. And it's a reasoning I understand, but I don't have to like it. That's the way to look at a lot of these remakes. I don't understand, but I don't have to like it. Sorry, I understand, but I don't have to like it.

It's my mantra as an old person now. So just to go quickly over the summary of the game, and then we'll talk a little bit about people who made this game. Of course, great and his story of his came to the Nintendo DS in 2010. Perfect Chronology came out to the 3DS in 2017. This is about Japanese times. The

Western versions came out about a year later respectively. Very briefly, it tells the story of a destined hero or character or protagonist. I don't know what you want to call him, stock, with an E on the end there. It was chosen to wield the White Chronicle, which is a book that might save civilization

from encroaching doom. The choices do make have very deep effects on the stories events and you can travel between quote-unquote nodes that is a pivotal moment in the story and you make decisions like according to the stuff you need to do like we'll get deeper into that but basically it's a little bit like like groundhog day with more anime and less sunny and share that's accurate I think I think I nailed that yeah like it would be like if groundhog day had bill Murray very intentionally being like, well, I fuck that up, got to go back

and fix it. But right from the beginning, because he eventually gets hair. He's like, oh, no, my weird ninja lady not wearing pants and her weird gnome friend. What is Marco? Is like, Marco? I hope you, I was going to ask you know. I think he's the same

the same species as Poco, I think is his name from Arc the Lad. Just like an extraordinarily, you know, kind of like the kid in Galaxy Express 3-9, you know, just like a really horrible, trollish little guy. In perpetuity. A human who's extremely ugly and terrible looking, and it's not his fault. He's not that ugly.

And the anime estates, actually, in my opinion, don't come into play until the remake again. It is very flat, though. Like, just looking at the character art, it's like, everyone is flat. Is this paper Mario? No. Paper radio. I'd play that. Yeah.

So would I. Actually, now I want that. I think I wrote down, I'm sorry, I apologize ahead of time, I wrote down that Marco was woo. So, you can, if you don't hear me in another episode, folks, you'll know why. I mean, in response, I added that he is. certified best boy trademark, except in that one side quest, that one key side quest where you arrest, not his girlfriend, no, the girl he has a crush on and he's too scared to ask out. And if you get the bad ending on that, he's like, I have dedicated myself, I have

dedicated everything to taking you out stock and he kills all your party members including Vash who is the Terminator like how and in the 3DS remake he gets this

character portrait art that's super evil it's like there are two player characters who have an evil face and it's stock and it's Marco I would have to say Marco is is not who you'd expect to go super saying, but yeah,

when cute little things go absolutely nuts, it's really, really terrifying as people have attested to me when they've seen me lose their temper. So briefly here, we want to talk about the director of the game that is Mitsuru Hirada, who I also

owe a debt to for making Tokyo Mirage sessions if they want to talk about another strange Atlas game, which does not get his due. Have you guys not played it? I was just going to say, I have never finished Tokyo Mirage Sessions. I really like Tokyo Mirage Sessions, but the one that he worked on in this lineup that is, you know, my precious, precious baby is SMT4. I love that game.

You and Eric Van Allen alike, like you would both, like, die for this game, apparently. It's so good. It's just, it's definitely my favorite of the traditional Megami Tenside games besides Soul Hackers, but, you know, soul hackers. Soul hackers, I don't think I've heard anyone say Soul Hackers ever. That's right. I got you covered. Notting. I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I have actually not played any of the RPG right there. Someday, someday, someday we'll hold hands and descend into that help. Yeah. I do have a Wii U, and it's actually hooked up, but it's anime and it's, it's Fire Emblem.

And I had never played a Fire Emblem game. Oh. Like, I do own several now, which I have also not played. Backlux also make fools of us all. Indeed. So I've never actually played Tokyo Mirage sessions. It's one of those things where I'm like, oh, I should play that. And then guess who does it?

have time, this guy. That's right. But I do love Strange Journey, and I do love SMT4. So Mitsuru Hirata is A-O-K in my book. One of these days I'm going to play Nocturn also. It's on my switch. But guess who doesn't have time to play it? That's right. You're looking at them. Time makes fools of us all. And that's especially our backlogs, as Lorenzo said. That is why the copy of nuts and milk in my backlog is now nuts and yogurt. Okay, we're

going to keep going to keep going with that joke. That was good. Thanks. Could have gone cookies and cream, but nuts and milk happen. I'm psyched about it. I'm psyched about it. Cookies and cream. Okay, that's the next one.

Anyway, we should probably stop talking about yogurt and Hirada's games and talk about the other director of this game, Satoshi Takayakshiki. Not to step on your toes there, Nadia, leading the conversation along. But sometimes those old instincts bubble up, and I'm like, I'm leading this show. but I'm not you are I was thinking you were just taking authority over me

because I worked on you for so long but yes also the draft writer role design and also design a setting for the game and before

there was Rating Historia there was Rade in Historia Rada stories Radiata stories for the PlayStation 2 So I know They say Radiator

in New Jersey Jersey Radiator stories My Aunt Janie Played Radiator stories It's a hot woman story I like to play it in the winter wore my hands over it.

They come in, they got that nice brown village that they got on all those old PS2 RPGs. And you might think it's that romancing saga remake because of the weird snubby character art, but it's not it's its own thing. That was the best

review of this game that will ever happen. That's all the lot for it. I'm going to have to have my body reset there from the spring. But the two games basically share almost all the staff

like Radiant Historia was not really a follow-up to Radiator Stories, but it was certainly inspired. The team wanted to kind of take that name or I suppose for lack of a better term and carry into the future.

So it's just an interesting note about the developers how they started not with Radiator Historia, but with Radiator Stories. Steamy. I actually think there's not a lot of overlap between the two and it's just

the designer and the concept artist just those two guys who seem to be freelance developers or designers and first

I don't know how they got with triades but they did and they made Radiata stories which I tried to watch Let's play off

but there were just no good ones out there in my opinion but all than that, it's just once tri-ace and the other one's helpless and never the twain shall meet, except for these two freelance guys, I guess. I guess they're just their influence over, I know there's only two guys, but when you get

character designers and setting designers meeting up, then you get a lot of shared ideas between them, but either way, it's pretty cool. Nadia, I had not, before seeing your outline here, I'd never heard of this game that Takayashiiki made this year World of Demons? What is that? Yeah, me too. I don't know, actually. I had to look this up because

I looked up everyone on Moby Games and it's like, okay, what else did they do? It's like, Digimon. I'm like, okay. It's like Star Ocean. It's like the Gameboy game. Okay. It's like, World of Deep.

What that? 2021? What is this? and it's a if I remember correctly it's a platinum games game for iOS and only iOS

that's what I feared so it's probably on Apple Arcade or something yeah got overshadowed by Fantasian or whatever that Sakaguchi game is I shouldn't groan if it's on Apple Arcade because then it's a legitimate release

but I'm just thinking oh god please don't be a gotcha add stuffed I know that platinum so when the gooch put out Fantasian earlier this year that there was sort of a dump of really exciting Japanese stuff on Apple

arcade all at once it was that and not everybody's golf like that should be the effect of the end of it's not everybody's golf underlined under God don't worry about it. This isn't the exact same courses as the PlayStation game and then there was

the Platinum game, and it's sort of like a one-touch brawler sort of thing. It's not even an RPG. So now that I know that it's the same writer, though, I kind of want to go back and check it out, because, you know, the guy who's like, I want to write a story where it's like a living sword and it's causing everything to turn to sand and then everything sucks at the end, I like that perspective. That's interesting. Yeah. We need more developers who just kind of explore that. You know what? f this right that that branch of humanity

we have a lot of repeties about hope and friendship and love will win in the end and you have like people like that and Yoko Taro saying you know you know well we're probably screwed here's a train going through you for no reason at all that that approach feels more in keeping with our current times anyway sure I think so I mean let's not

let's not dress this up here but let's go back to talking about video games as we should chew chew chew chew Ha ha ha. The character designer and concept artist for the game was Hiroshi Konishi. And we have a bit of a, we've come out a bit of an impasse here because we're talking about the art that he did. And I think when I looked up his name, he was also doing the art, he was also doing art for, in addition to monolith softs in Zeno Saga, Anthony Bay Chronicles.

I also think he was doing the art for Tokyo RPG factory games like Lost Sphere, but I think Lorenzo you're saying you're not sure if that was him. No. If I look at his Twitter account, he doesn't seem

unless he just really doesn't post about it. He doesn't seem like he's done a lot of game stuff in the last 10 years. And I was like, I'm going to try to look this up, which is hard because there's just not a lot of information about this guy.

But giant bomb seems to say there's two Erosi Konishi's. Oh, okay. And one worked on Radiata stories and Radiant Historia. And the other one worked at Monolith. And it's like going back to Xino's saga, that was episodic, I don't know, 100-hour games or something. Great episodes, I guess. I've never played them.

Neither way, I mean. And it's right around the same time those Xenosaga games as Radiata stories. So I'm like, I really don't think this is the same guy because there just doesn't seem to be enough time in the world to work on both

of those games. And then, you know, the monolith guy goes on, well, works on Chino Blade and, you know, Monolith got called in to help on Breath of the Wild, so there's also credit with the name in that game. Then suddenly I.M. Setson, that comes along and lost fear and I think, what is it, Okinaki, Oninaki? Yeah, Oni Naki, I think it was called. It wasn't bad. I feel like Tokyo Arpduty Factory is getting there, but that's another podcast.

Nadia, you just nailed the entire Tokyo RPG Factory story with one statement. It's not bad. It won't kill you. It's not bad. They're getting there. Well, it's funny. I think Tokyo RPG Factory is actually a really interesting comparison point to something like Radiant Historia, because Radiant Historia taps into the sort of creative well that,

the great mid to late 90s RPGs we're tapping into and on all fronts the sort of very very distinct from anime trope aesthetic design of very unusual

and affecting story very clearly defined characters with a not broadcast like they're only you know seven party members eight party members total and then there's you know the the musical palette of the whole

thing. And it's so funny, I always think of, like, I am Setsna. And I am Setsna's sort of oral landscape is insufferable. It's just, it's a piano. Isn't it sad? Aren't you sad and all the sad things happening in sad RPG town? And you compare that to Radiant Historia and the music in there, which is, you know, it is very melodramatic. But it is so. Good. And it's never cloying. It comes very, comes right up to the edge of cloying and then backs away. I mean, it's, it's kind of unfair to compare really anything to Yokoshima-Morra. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, hey, this little guy over here, he's got, you know, he's got some nice biceps, but he's not as strong as God.

Right. Why isn't this far side comic as good as the Sistine Chapel? Screw this. Suss-Tis. Suts. But, yes, yes. Michelangelo never drew cow tools. So who's got the advantage here, sir? Boo. Well, that actually is a great segue into talking about the music, which, as we just said, was done by Yokushima Mora, who.

Lorenzo wrote down that she apparently thought it was a joke at first. Yeah. Around the time of the initial DS release, Atlas released a five or six-part interview series with several key staff, including Hirada and Shimamura. And I think it's also mentioned in the World Guidance book interview that they emailed Shimamura, Atlas did, to ask if she was interested in

composing for them. And at first she was like, oh, I guess this is a joke. And then later she thought, But I might as well respond. And, yeah, she got to hear the pitch and was very interested in it. I mean, RPGs are kind of, well, I want to say 90% of what she does nowadays, if it's not 100%. But she thought it was very interesting. And she was reminded of Shin Megami Tensei.

strangely enough Atlas game I don't know how that happened which she liked very much she mentioned in the interview and this is about the Super Famicum game by the way and she said she finished all three routes

what is it law, neutro and chaos pass Burnti she really likes games with multiple endings which says has in spades of course yeah including the one where marco kills everybody yeah i mean i mean that's an ending all right yeah something that i found really funny uh that they mentioned in the world guidance interview is that after you get a bad ending so it's like oh stocks like i have to think about this one

carefully and he makes a decision it makes the wrong decision and you don't get to play the rest of the game after that, but it's like, you get like four to ten pages of text detailing just exactly how everything went very badly. Yes, you get a nice narrative explaining everything. Yeah, and then after that you go back to Historia and those scenes where you go back and you talk to two little elf people I guess the Japanese people Japanese players

they gave a specific name to that now I just thought that was very funny because what they call it is I hope I'm going to pronounce this correctly Han Seikai

which literally means post-mortem meeting and the guy who translated the interview, which, by the way, I commissioned because impulse control, what's that? I don't know. Awesome. Yeah, I'm going to ask them, it's Schmopulations, by the way.

Right, right. I'm going to ask them to release that interview to the public around the time this episode airs. So if you want to read the full interview, you can, hopefully. No, that's actually just intrep quickly. That's a really cool commission. because that benefits everybody as someone who's very interested in game preservation and stuff like that.

I think that's a really thoughtful little thing. Yeah, I was like, I want a commission translation of the interview, maybe some other stuff because there's a lot of interesting stuff in that book with the concept art and a little bit more detail in character backgrounds and the story

and the timeline, which takes place over, I want to say, seven to nine months in real time. Oh, interesting. But eventually I was like, okay, I have no impulse control over this, but my bank account stops somewhere. I don't want to spend everything on this book because it's like 130 pages. Wow. And ultimately, the interview is like seven.

So, you know, that's workable. But in that interview, they call it Hans Seke, at the post-mortem meeting, which put a little note there saying it has a somewhat negative connotation of remorse or apology, which, yeah, that fits. It's like, okay, stock, you're going to give somebody advice. What do you do? It's like, I'm going to make the worst decision ever. And then the world ends. And you get confronted by the two little elf people. I've been calling the two smuggled bastards all this time.

Yeah, I mean, especially in the remake with the neo-character art. But that's like, yeah, Stuck, you've done a goof. You might want to do it again, choose something differently this time. Yeah, but that starts right at the beginning, too. They're smug little bastards within the first 20 minutes. They're just like, hi, I think you're using that book wrong. Why don't you do it like this, idiot? FII.

Yeah, you don't want to go north because north equals death. You want to go south. It starts like, but south, there are these big crates. that I can't push and it's like maybe if you push them you can save everyone and it's like I can't

I don't have the power of push and then they give you the power of push so everything turns out just fine the power of pushing crates which is like a level one

RPG power look at me mom that's basic Socopan crates and barrels yes you can push barrels I do like how you can a lot of RPGs make you go step by step when you're pushing a crate

but this game nope you just grab like great all over the map if you want it's not it's not like practical but it's just fun yeah unfortunately it's on the in the ds version you can only push them in the cardinal directions yeah so it's like i'm going to pull this barrel i'm going to push it to the right and then i'm going to push it up and then i'm going to push it to the left and you have to make sure you stand at the right space because of course It's a barrel. It's rounded.

So a crate, it's like you walk into a crate and you come to a full stop. And the barrel is like, buy stock, see you later. And then you have to walk back and try again. Thank you. So let's So let's speed up things a little bit here. we have a lot to cover still. We haven't really even talked about

what makes Radiant Historia a game worth remembering, what makes it so special. And by God, okay, first of all, we've been over the story. We've been over about the time travel aspect, and I find that it's actually hard to pull off a good time travel movie slash game, but this does it very, very well.

The thing that sticks out to me most, though, is I actually really like the game's characters. I'm replaying this. I didn't replay the whole game, but I did re-familiarize myself with the most important characters. I like how the characters are adults, and I know that sounds stupid, but when you play a JRP, everybody acts like a 20-year-old, 25-year-old teenager, basically. In this game, in Rating Historia, Stock is kind of cold, but he's not Sundari.

He's very, very, very professional, and not like in the whole, I'm Alone, Wolf, I don't need anyone way. When he's assigned Marco and Rainey, he's like, okay, you're my charges now. all protect you because you're under me and we'll fight together and they're like yeah we'll fight together cool because we have our we have our heads on straight we are characters who have seen trauma and we are very down to earth because of it and of course I'm not saying they never have their moments where they slip up or just get really weird or whatever but it just not a dynamic I see in RPGs ever anymore um I mean don't like it be wrong I love

hanging out with with the you know persona's teenagers which sounds really bad but you know what I me just yeah but nobody's a dumb dumb nobody's nobody is behaving in a completely illogical way i right from the start i love and lorenzo you were talking about that moment where like stocks like i can't push a giant crate i'm not superman it's not like there's there's this opportunity to infuse that whole moment with like anime over emoting yeah yeah he's like what do i do raney and marco these people I just met or did, but instead he's just like, I don't know how to handle this. I know I need to do a job and what do I do now? It's really great. Yeah, I think the best way I've heard at least the playable characters described is as

remotely competent, which is a lot to ask from anime kids in games. it's like they describe stock as like this super professional and wonderful assassin and he's absolutely terrible at his job like he can't aside from the escort mission at the start he can't finish a single

mission he is given in the game at least from his first boss which has his reasons but those are spoilers but it's like even when something happens and sometimes you know dumb stuff happens like

changing clothes which is very bad in the remake let's talk about why it's a classic and not remake that's safe to remake for later yeah because I was actually going to say I think what it applies for both games

games is that another reason why it's a special, special RPG is because, holy crap, I love that battle system. I forgot about how much I love that battle system. And going back to it, we're just like, uh, combo, take that stupid, stupid chickens. It is. Yeah, it's so good. Honestly, I put the, and that's why I fell so hard for the original on DS. It, that battle system is probably in my top five favorite battle systems for any RPG. The, uh, the whole feeling. It's such an interesting way to think about a grid-based battle system for an RPG. You know, you always, it's very common. Even in turn-based stuff, the idea of Rose is familiar all the way back to the late 80s. But here, I'm going to use, like, one of the curse words of

video game editorial. Five bucks, please. Jeremy's not my editor anymore. I can actually use it. I'm going to say a Big bag. Yeah, no, I'm going to say visceral. There is the worst word. I'll allow it. The worst word, but it's so visceral to feel all of the enemies getting piled up into one square. Like a catamari.

And then getting pushed into a corner so you just wail on them. It's amazing. It's so good. And I especially love that skill. You get near the end of the game for Gavka, which is like everybody's in the middle position. and they're going to stay there and you're going to trans turn like five musso's and you're going to combo the heck out of them. And that's great.

I just, I love it so much. At first, I was reminded a little bit, you know, because of the grids of live a live, live, or however you want to pronounce that, because it also has a very good grid. And Radiant Historia also does that thing where sometimes enemies represent multiple spaces on the grid, just like in live and live, which, by the way, great episodes. Oh, I think I was on that episode. It was that one with me, Victor, and Bob.

Yeah. Yeah. At first, I was thinking, maybe I'll do a live, a live request. But then it was already done. It was great. It's like, I have absolutely nothing to add to this because this is, it's better than I, the, my preparations ever would have been. But it's like just that grit where, and we should probably explain that a bit. It's like when you encounter enemies first, you can knock them into submission so you can get preemptive strike, which I always love.

That's such a great mechanic. I love that mechanic. It is perfect. it's not full proof it's like not every time you knock someone out you get a full preemptive but that's okay it adds to the challenge yeah definitely but then you get into the fight and you're on the right you're just like one row and they can't move you but the enemies are on a three by three grid and you have these abilities they call assaults so you got like a push assault so you use it on an enemy you push it on an enemy you push them to the back row and you've got left assault and right assault and you push them to the left to the right and you can grapple them forward and there are more advanced versions where you

knock back an entire row or an entire column and when you do that you can push them into other enemies and then they occupy the same space so what you can do is push all the enemies onto one square and then launch them into the air and use an elemental attack on them and they'll drop to the ground and take half damage from the last attack you dealt them

it's just really it almost makes every battle a puzzle basically yeah it hits everyone and not everyone can be pushed not every enemy because sometimes there are crystals that are stuck to the ground or vines or you know that kind of stuff

And it's like, okay, I know I can't push these guys, but I've got these other enemies in the battle that I can push. So if I push them onto the enemies, I can't push, I can still attack them all at once. And in addition to that, if you think, oh, but Rainey is attacking first, but she only has push assault. Yes. And Marco is lost, and he can learn all the assaults. He can push them back, push them to the side. grapple them forward. It's like, okay, I want to have Marco take the first turn so I can pull someone forward

and then I can have stock push them to the right and then have brain need to all the finishing blow. You can do that. You can swap turns and not just with your allies, with the enemies too, which adds another little wrinkle to the strategy. aspect of it because it's like okay I can change my turn that or my three turns that I have now with the three turns of the three enemies that I am fighting if I do that I have six turns but if I do that I turn red or yeah I think in the DS version they called it Baroque and in the remake they don't call it anything and what that means is you take more damage

So it's like this risk-reward thing. Like, okay, I can have six consecutive turns, and I can absolutely wheel on these guys. But maybe I'll be dead. Yeah. Do I take that risk? Yeah. So that's just another little aspect that just really makes it very interesting.

And sometimes you really want to have that 10 turns in a row. because this is never really explained in the game but when you steal items from an enemy or when you try to get an enemy to drop a certain item and there are some very good items to steal in this game drop items are much worse they have like a 1 or 2% drop rates for most of them they're pretty good

the drop items but the steal items if you can steal a gun from a ballista that's just you wouldn't download a gun oh yes I would because the gut is so good it has so much magic and oh it's just it is just such a satisfying battle system and it's just such a shame that it was never I just don't I can't think of anyone ever utilize a similar thing

no it's never come back it's in 10 years nobody has ever used anything similar, and it's so strange to see that the battle director for this is the same person that was doing, you know, Persona 3 and Shin Megami Tenci 4, because those are, they're very satisfying battle systems. I'm not denigrating those at all. They're great, but this is so, so distinctive. And, like, for all of the sort of strategic depth that Lorenzo, you are describing, you have to do these really interesting things over and over and over and over again in the actual game.

And I find, Jeremy, your review of the remake is really interesting because you're like, finally, I don't have to do the same battle 43 times in a row. Yeah, because I love the battle system, but this is a game where you are retracing your steps constantly, trying to find proper outcomes for stories, going back and retracing your steps through areas and you're going to fight the exact same battles over and over again. And when you have this kind of involved convoluted battle system, after a while you're like, you know what, I've done this actually like eight or nine times now. And I don't need to do it again because sometimes you don't necessarily know what the right trigger is for the story flag that

you're trying to seek after. And so you'll like follow through what you think is the right direction. and then end up with the exact same dead story and the elves are like, dude, what gives? You didn't fix anything. So then you have to go do it again. And I mean, yeah, I know we're trying to save talk of the remake for later,

but I really feel like the emphasis on story and retracing your steps and exploring outcomes really feels like it was derived from the visual novel genre. Like this is, you know, a type moon novel that happens to have a kick-ass battle system in it

and having the ability to say, okay, I've kicked enough ass in the battle system, now I can just do the visual novel. Like, I appreciate the fact that they gave us the option. I'm always, always on the side of giving players more options. And I think that in the remake,

that was a really smart way to give people options. It wasn't just like, hey, you can tune the difficulty, so enemies hit harder or not as hard. Like, okay, neat. What an original idea. Thank you. But no, this actually said, hey, change how you interact with the game, change how you experience the story and focus purely on the story in addition to having the option to like make the enemies hit as to hit twice as hard. And that's, you know, that's really valuable to me.

I think that was a great kind of compelling pitch, like to open up a game in one genre to people who would normally not want to play that genre who are, you know, more on the, side of the visual novels. I don't know if anyone actually said, oh, I love visual novels and now I will play Rating Historia because of this. But, you know, I think it was a really smart choice for them to make. I think so. It's weird to hold those two games up side by side, too, because as much as I adore the DS original, all of these sort of things that we've talked about that make it special, make it a pain in the ass to replay.

And... It does, yes. The, for better or worse, when it was designed in 2011, it was Atlas and the entire team were clearly maximizing this for the culture of DS players. This was a portable game meant for people who rode trains every single day. And that battle system and being like, yeah, of course you've got to go back and satisfy those little weird trolls. Do it again. Fight the same battles all over again. But we're going to make sure that doing those battles over and over and over again feels really good on like a 20-minute commute, which, I'll admit, is exactly how I played it.

And that's probably why I was so obsessed with it. Yeah, I was. Wait, how did you play through it in the space of a week for 40 hours if you were playing it on 20-minute commutes? He was on snow piercer. Were you commuting a lot? So when you're in New York and you're a full-time freelance game. journalist in 2011, you are getting on a train, you're going half an hour downtown to one place, then you're getting on a train, you're going half an hour to someplace else.

So a 20-minute commute is, I have like five to six 20-minute train rides every single day. Fair enough. Yeah, as a fellow city dweller, I understand, who has been in the underground with the DS. Actually, it was fun, and there was one time there was one of the Pokemon games. it was X and Y came out and everyone on the TTC on the subway was playing it like challenging each other. That was a lot of

That's awesome. Yeah, the subway culture man. When I beat the original Radiant Historia and I don't know if like we want to like preserve spoilers here. Can we get into spoilers when we talk about story stuff? I mean, I think so. I think like because I wanted to talk about the story stuff. This is probably a good time to segue into it while we still have a few minutes.

Yeah. The, well, the person who is, you know, Stock's sort of commanding officer, as soon as you get a look at Heise in the very beginning of, I'm a bad guy. You're like, bad guy. Come on. Stock, he's right. Look at the hair. You know what the worst part is about Heise? He's actually supposed to be like 36. Oh, my God. They keep doing that. I mean, just looking at the character ages. Like, Stock is 19. It's like, okay, fine. Rainy, Marco, 17.

It's like, sure, whatever. Rush, 21. Like, hmm, he doesn't look 21, but I'll believe it. It's like odd, which we haven't mentioned yet. Also, I love traps. Traps are so good. And then they completely ruined it in the remake by making it so your combo stops.

When you lay down a trap, when the enemy is already dead. It's like, why would you do that? I want to rack up those combos. But art, she's like nine. Art is supposed to be nine? Yeah, seven or nine, something like that. That's bizarre. You know, children are the most powerful JRP characters always.

Absolutely. It's like, okay, Gavka is like 35, and the highest is 36. but the rationale I've heard for it. It's like he has traveled through time so much. But JRPTs keep doing that, where they make the gray-haired person 30. Come on, people. Stop killing me here.

I mean, I don't understand why they do it. Japan has a very lengthy longevity, generally. So why are you telling everyone that by the time you're 36, you're old and gray and probably on the death's doorstep? Yeah, but pop media like this, you know, video games specifically have a very short lifespan. And once you get into university, you'd better stop playing video games or you're kind of weird. Oh, no.

So, yes, for them, like, you know, age 20 is nearing the end of your existence. Oh, dear. That's kind of sad. Yeah, it's just like every JRP ever. If you're 25, you're a battle-hardened, grizzled veteran. You are. You've seen it all. And then when you're 35, you're a mentor.

and then when you're 80 you're a teller you have ascended in other words you forget all your spells and when you level up your stats go down the rationale for he's missed a bad guy

he just looks like a bad guy I can hardly even consider that a spoiler but it's like he has the black chronicle where stock has the wise chronicle so he can also traveled through time and he has gone through time so much that he has aged beyond the normal process because stock does travel through time a lot and sometimes by a lot of time when you get

to the post-mortem meetings like one of them is like stock spends a year in a bad ending and he's still 19 I guess and you can do that multiple times and he doesn't age but but Haise has gone beyond. And I think that really goes back. It's like a rationale day devised because of his, his inspiration. Because originally he was a mechanized butler for Erica. Oh. That was his original concept.

Also, Raoul was evil, which, yeah, no, he's really not. He's a marshmallow. He's a marshmallow. He all can't be evil, though. He's a cinnamon bun. He's a cinnamon bun flavored teddy bear. I think in a poll of most popular characters, he came in like third or fourth, which is pretty amazing considering the competition. I think Viola came like second or third, which great.

I love Viola. Art was 100. Yeah, no, I think Art was number one. Of course. Of course. Of course he was number one. But also his inspiration is, um, The guy from cast of Cagliostro.

Oh, yeah. The guy, yeah. The count. Gero, I think his name is. Oh, okay. The guy with the metal Wolverine claws. You know, if you think, okay, we've got this Gero guy, and then we've got a mechanized butler.

And what if we take the robot aspects away, then you get high? He still has some mechanized aspects. When you fight him and you eventually fight him as a normal guy, he has some kind of thing on his arm that extends. It's like if you look at it closely, it's a vestige leftover of that mecca butter design. He's also jacked. Yes.

I like that that's a classic 80s RPG move of having the old man bad. guy take off his shirt and he's just shredded. Yes. Yakuza right there all the way through. That's the back of the box quote for Yakuza. Shredded old guys. That's the switch remake of Radiant

Historia where now Heist at the beginning will like tear off his entire cloak in one swoop and it'll be like, I have a tattoo on the back. Wealder of the Black Chronicle. So basically Master Roshi. Oh, absolutely. I like that Heiss's

motivations aren't necessarily. like I this goes back to something you said really early Nadia which is that all the characters are adults that Haise's motivation is not mustache twirley and it's also not ultimately like I'm going to take over the world and turn everything into my palace of sand it's you know

he has a good reason for at least in his mind you can see the justification for why he's doing what he's doing with the white and black chronicle and for what he wants for stock and Erica to that to that extent like it's it's not yeah it's not you know ghoulish even when he turns into a sort of cosmic deity like character thing took me days to beat as I recall I had to put my through

I had to put my 3d S to sleep and say okay I'll come back to this later that was that was how I beat this game I had to go to a friend's uh like reading at like a theater And it was an hour and 20 minute train ride away. And so I just put my D.S. to sleep. And I was like, all right, now I can finally do the final boss and watch the ending. I thought you're going to tell me you did the final boss during his reading. That would have been great. Well, I might have had it like, mm.

But when he turns into, what is it, the apocrypha, the apocrypha? He turns into Kafka. Yeah, he turns into Kafka. But unlike when Kefka becomes Kefka or you get to the end of Final Fantasy 9, it's like, and now death is here. It like makes sense that a heist would turn into this thing. There's actual justification for it, which is interesting. I mean, ultimately, it's still a revenge plot.

Yes. It's like, oh, absolutely. Okay, it's revenge, but it's revenge that is fueled out of a place that, you can understand. And that is really something that Hirada, the director, said in the interviews. Like, when you look back at the game, after you have played it again, you might think, oh, I guess there are no, like, really evil people. It's like there are, there definitely are, and they're in the two countries,

and the remake absolutely, I don't know if this is an Atlas thing. I've heard conflicting accounts but it's like you've got the evil queen and you've got the evil general and they get redeemed for no apparent reason and I really hate it there really should be no redemption

because they're really evil and they really try to kill you and it's just oh I can show you an item and now you have this whole redemption arc and it's like no they are evil they deserve to die and you know you go the evil bastard he uh he uh spontaneously combusts in in the in the usual in the normal play and that's good and he deserves to burn in hell

forever Is this something they added to the remake story? This might be a good time to kind of segue and talk a little bit about the differences we had between the two. So I know you guys have just like waiting to vent. So this is your stage. there are a lot of good things the remake does it's like yes the option to not fight battles that's good you still have to work for it it's like if you run into an enemy you still have to go through the

grid that's fair if you hit it with your sword it dies and you get experience some money and that's pretty good so you know that's great they add support skills, which is very nice. You can really rack up combos with those as well. They add in the original game you already had an enemy scan,

but you have to remember everything. It's like, okay, I am fighting a goblin, which by the way have very annoying voices in the remake. Yeah. I don't know why that's there. Oh, it's terrible. But it's like, okay, maybe this goblin is weak to

lightning. Because he has a metal sword and a pot on his head. Okay. Now I have to remember that for the rest of the game. Right. In the remake, they say, okay, you can press the X button and you can look at the status and the elemental weaknesses and resistances of enemies.

Very good. They add a map, which is, it's there. Yeah, it's a map. in a way, in half the map almost. It's very blocky, and it shows you where the exits are, which I guess that's useful, but it would have been nice to have a little bit more map. But, I mean, I guess, it's like, originally,

it seems they were trying to remake this game for PlayStation Vita. Ah. They had some mock-ups in an interview for the remake. it's like yeah this would work as a one screen game it's like the turn order is on the right

it works not fine then it's like oh the feeder is kind of dead let's put it on the 3D yes and oh now we've got a second screen what do we deal with that a map but we only have a month left shit

give me MSPage open it up That's just a rectangle, rectangle, rectangle, and a few triangles for the doors. That will do it. So, yeah, it has a map. Okay. Now that I know that there was a potential Vita version of this remake, that explains so much about the aesthetic choices. Oh, yeah.

You're right. Absolutely. Now I get why they did that to the character. Touchpad function, too. Oh, oh, no. Sorry, that's terrible. Rear touchpad cast spells with the white chronicle by using the rear touchpad. No.

Oh, yeah. Oh, hear me. I don't, I don't mean to just, like, harp on the art style. I guess, please do. The only reason it is so bothersome in the remake is that the original art style is so good. and so distinctive and so unusual. It was really interesting reading the interview or the stuff from the strategy guide

that you commissioned have translated Lorenzo to see them say that the only reason that Erica had short hair in the DS version was that they couldn't, with the fidelity of the DS screen, make her look good with long hair. And they wanted it to have that, But then they realized that, you know, making the character art have these sort of bold black outlines would really make it pop on the DS hardware. And I was like, well, the restrictions resulted in a better game.

Don't run away from them. That art style is so good. And the first time I played the remake, I actually took the free DLC and I put the original character portraits back into the game. I also played on Append mode, which don't do it. No, is it a pen or is it original? I forget. The mode where you just have the DS game. And all the new stuff comes at the end.

Just do not play the game that way. It's not a good time. Yeah, there's an option to play it where it's all integrated. Like if you're a new player, everything's integrated. Like, that's what I did. Yeah, that is how I played it last time to prepare for this podcast. And it's a much better way because if you do it, the way, if you get all the new stuff at the end, you get so tired of going to, we should

probably explain what the new content is. In the new content, there is a new character who, spoiler warning, ultimately you find out is a lost in time princess of the old empire that caused the desertification to happen in the first place I'm saying a lot and you get missions from her to go to potential histories you know like divergences

like in the original game you have a standard history and alternate history because you make a choice between do I stay with evil bastard highs what do I go with my buddy Rush Second choice.

But then you're into a dead end. Yeah, ultimately you have to choose both of them at different times because of all the roadblocks. But the remake

gives you possible history. So what happens is you go to a timeline where say Rosh is a general whereas he's actually just a major

or some other rank in the normal game. It's like he rose through the ranks much more quickly and now he's a force to be reckoned with and there is something happening in that history that is distorting it so you have to fight a battle get the item go back give it to nemesia and your character and move on with your life or what can happen is you get a mission you have to go to a potential addestal and there is an item there

that you want because it's the plot McGuffin but it's cool so what you have to do is you have to go to all my mind why is there only one note that makes you go to all my mind it's such a waste potential

and you have to go there for the new content like four or five times it's so many times like why I do remember visiting the Sand Fortress a lot I got very familiar with the Sand Fortress I mean it's not a very big map in the first place.

So it makes sense that you have to go to places again and again. But it's like, okay, so you have to do something. You have to learn a new skill that you can learn or you have to get a specific item to move on that you can only get at one point in time. And then you have to go back and, oh, you get to MacGuffin and you can move on with life. And ultimately, you have to do it at like 28 times. Even if you do that at the end of the story, you're really going to get burned out on it. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty terrible thing.

Yeah, do not do that. Do not do what I did. Do not make these mistakes, these same sins. I made these mistakes so you don't have to. Okay, so you get all the MacGuffins and you get to a new dungeon and you fight the ultimate cause of the desertification, which is it's a lost empire princess's boyfriend because her parents did not like a boyfriend and they turned him into a monster

and you have to save him with the power of the red, white, and black chronicles. I almost said blue, but... Fireworks explode, everything's fine. Very, very different angle for the game to take. Heist comes out and he's dressed like Uncle Sam. He's got the hat now. Ridiculous about that.

Stock, now you know, patriotism was the... a real goal all along. I would forgive them for that. I would actually like to see that. But yeah, I don't really like that ending. It's like I really like the original games ending. It's like, okay,

either you sacrifice yourself to give the people more time to come up with an ultimate solution to the certification or you do the 10 and 12 in the remake key side quests, which are

very helpfully denoted with an actual key on the White Chronicle screens. Like, that's good design. I'll give you that and everything else because I love the original game. So I don't know why I said that. So if you do those 10

key side quests, you get some really nice things like giving Raj bad relationship advice and also giving these bad relationship advice and giving yourself, bad relationship advice, and ending the world multiple times. That sounds like what I would do.

Yeah, I mean, if you want to unlock all the nose, that's what you do. But also like romance between humankind and beast kind, that's very nice. A scientist who, instead of creating more machines that drain mana and accelerate the desertification, you give him a way to cultivate a specific plant that generates mana and gives hope to the people that at one point in time the amount of mana that is being drained by the stupid monster

that we explained in the remake that you will actually generate enough mana to save the world that way and not have to sacrifice someone of the royal family those are very nice side quests and if you do them all at the end high says

okay Stark you win you defeated me but I don't agree with this ending where you sacrifice yourself and yet die so what I'm going to do is I'm going to sacrifice myself for your future

because I love you all everyone killing each other for love up here it's really nice it's like it's such a great bit of sweet ending it's like we haven't solved the ultimate problem

but we're working towards solutions and we've bought some time by sacrificing the bad guy and you know we're planting conets and we're generating money and we can actually save

we have a chance we have a hope to save ourselves in the future and then the remix is like nah screw all that we're going to kill the guy and then everybody ends up happy including the people who don't deserve it

that's special people that don't deserve it that's a bummer you have to give the remake this much so it introduced me to the game I think it introduced if 10 people bought the first one then 20 people bought the second one yes you got to give it that yeah I mean it's still a good game but it's like they make some choices that I just

really do not like and I don't know how I would improve it honestly I would even just love to see this game up-resed on the Switch. Because I think it would be a huge hit on the Switch. Nadia, I was just going to say, just take the original game, or the remake, either or, and just make it

look nice and clean, put it on Switch, and you've got a freaking winner. Because I, it's like, I'm out here playing right now, like SMT, Final Fantasy 14, like the best RPGs out there and I'm still sitting here playing Raid and his story saying, wow, this is still an excellent

game. We need this on the Switch. The only thing that's bothering me is I'm all snobby now with my Switch all ED and I don't want to be looking at a DS screen so give me my remake please I mean if they originally intended for the remake to be a Vita game yeah yes I think

they could do it easy I think so I'm here I'm speaking for developers but I think so I mean that they released it in like 2017 which is when the switch released I think yeah it came out right at the end there yeah it's it's I think it did it come out like a month before Breath of the Wild and the Switch

Yeah, I mean it's right around then and it's not it's not the last of the big sort of the Atlas team 3DS games No, it's persona Q2 Yeah, Persona Q2

Yeah, Prona Q2 And they got buried Yeah, it's so sad Strange Journey Redux That was my first SMT and I love that I find it very interesting How the original games

Radiant Historia strange journey were released around the same time at the end of the DSS life cycle and then they do the same thing for the 3DS remakes and it's like you're making the same mistakes again only worse this time around

Oh yeah I mean like I said persona Q2 which is a great game but and I think Etrain Odyssey Nexus was out at the same time as well yeah great games and just gone okay fine you screw up the timing it happened put them on the switch they're not

no one's going to really ding you for having lesser graphics on the switch. Well, this has been a great in Historia, and it has been a wild ride. I think we've had a really, really cool conversation full of fun jokes and memes and our feelings and our thoughts and our hopes and our dreams. Why don't we wrap it up by just kind of each of us giving a quick, like, one-line elevator pitch for the game and why people should try to play it somehow if they can get their hand on it? You go first, Lorenzo. I was going to start off with trivia because originally the main character

was going to be a sword and when I say sword all I can think of is that ProCD sketch where it's like sword I love prosence so much and that's fair I can just picture stock as a sword being really pissed off and he's swinging and he hits something stop it

stop it Yeah. Okay, my elevator pitch for this game, you are a remotely competent person in an RPG with time travel, and you have to maneuver between two timelines to save the world from impending sand doom. Sand doom is the worst kind of doom. It gets in your ass crack. Yeah, it gets everywhere. It's very rough. So much sand. So much sand. Anthony, your turn. I hate sand. Obligatory.

Obligatory. It's funny. Part of the elevator pitch for this is that stock, I mean, he's literally named stock. Yeah. I know. A stock RPG character, and he looks like he's going to be an Anakin Skywalker. I hate sand-esque kind of figure at the beginning. Oh, no, my mom.

The presentation is very misleading. leading. And I'll sell this game in the exact same way it was sold to me. This is pound for pound, one of the three best RPGs on the DS, bar none. Absolutely. And it is up to, you know, people sort of lionize the great Squarespace of the PlayStation and the great early PS2 RPGs from Atlas. And this is up to that pedigree. It's absolutely flawed, but it is unlike anything else. And I mean, Lorenzo was talking about the fact that the DS version was reprinted only a few years ago. And so it's not going to cost you an obscene amount of money. But track this down if you have a DS. It's great. And Mr. Parrish. So I'm trying to pitch people on buying this game.

I'll just say why you like it. When I say elevator pitch for like, hey, let's make this game. Because it's already been made, you know. I love you, Parrish. Just to just Tell me why you love the game, please. No, like I said earlier, it's a rare game that has both extremely inventive combat mechanics and extremely inventive narrative mechanics. And it could succeed as a game on the merits of either one of those, but it has both. And that's really just, it's a rare achievement. You just don't see that very often, you know, in a genre that has become increasingly safe,

increasingly predictable, probably because games like this didn't do that well at retail for circumstances beyond its control, honestly. But yeah, like, this is one of those rare games that really just said, what can we do with the genre? What can we do that's different? And really kind of explore the potential of the RPG. And yeah, for that reason alone, I recommend both versions, despite the excessive amount of hate being directed at the remake here, it, you know, I can see where some of the creative choices were not in people's, you know, to people's liking. And there's stuff in the remake where I was kind of like, oh, come on. But, but on the whole, like, they're both really great. And the remake is nice because it allows you a lot of flexibility

and how you experience the game. So, yeah, it's, um, for any series RPG fan, uh, it takes, years has been very kind to this game, 11 years. Yeah, I agree with that. Just piggybacking off what you said there. It's, like I said earlier, I am right now playing SMT-E-5. I'm playing Philharmedes of 14, and I'm just enjoying the hell out of just replaying Radio Historia. I would say, though, don't be scared to get to remake. I know, I know why the reasons they have been slung around, why it's not like, you know, maybe the theater for people who love the original game. But I would say, it's still a very easy way to play the game, probably the easiest way.

You can get it off the e-shop as far as I know. You absolutely can. You should. Good, good. You should. The remake is still a very good game despite, you know, creative choices. It's like you've got a good game as a base. So you're going to have to do something very extraordinary to make that game bad.

It doesn't go that far. I ding it for. The new stuff and everything. But absolutely get it. No, absolutely get whatever version you can. Play it, love it. Maybe poke Atlas until they give us the game on the Switch, like we should get it.

And yeah, it's certainly one of the greats, both for handheld and, like, if you measure it up to consoles, it's still very much measures up. So, yes, Radio Storya, great game, play it. And, yeah, that would be it for this very meaty retrospective. We hope that you all had a nice time bubbling through time with us. Just to wrap things up, I'm Nadia Oxford.

I'm also the co-host of the Axel of Blood God RBP podcast. Please listen to us and support us over at patreon.com forward slash blood god pod. I also host Charlene Dropouts, a Final Fantasy 14 podcast, and you can bet Final Fantasy 14 is about to get very exciting because we are coming up to End Walker. And of course, don't forget to support Retronauts. Throw us some change over there at patreon.com forward slash Retronauts for lots of great stuff just like this, including I did a podcast with Parrish, and I did one with Kirk Cattala. We talked about, talked about Castlevania rankings, and that was a really popular show,

as it turned out. I had a great time with that. Thank you for joining me on that, Parrish. Absolutely. I love that episode, despite how wrong you guys were repeatedly. Oh, it was just us being wrong for two hours. It was fantastic. I love being wrong for two hours. As a New Yorker, he was very offended by our views of New York. Just, just horrified the entire time. So, Lorenzo, thank you so much for choosing this topic. And if you could go ahead and you have something you want to promote, just let it out. I have nothing to promote because I am a regular wage worker and I don't do creative stuff. I'm a financial.

So financials are creative accounting is found upon, so we don't do that. So instead I'll say, this is the first time my voice. has been on the show. But not the first time my words have been on the show because I have sent listener mail before. And I have appeared in a Pokemon episode of Retronauts. Actually, I don't remember if it was Pokemon. I think it was the Mystery Dungeon episode of Retronauts

where Pokemon Mystery Dungeon makes an appearance. And I am the letter writer who said, I spent 200 hours on this game, and I recruited every single Pokemon. come on and evolved all of them so I would have one of each so yeah I think that was the reaction during the episode as well which do not do that I also send a letter to the Nazica episode where I mentioned that it's also the name of the the girl finds Odysseus when he washes ashore which, you know, I like mythology.

So listen to those two episodes. They're very good. And actually, I will plug one thing, and that is the World Guidance interview that I commissioned to be translated by Shmoplatians. And depending on when this episode releases, around that time, stay tuned at Shmoplatians. and probably also Retronauts because there will be a link, I hope, to the interview so you can all enjoy that very much.

We really look forward to it. That's going to be really cool. Mr. Agnello, why don't you say a thing? I'm around. You can find me. I host a gaming podcast called ContinuPod, and you can go to continuepod.com to listen to that. And I also host a podcast about video games,

soundtracks called Video Game Groo's. And you can follow me on Twitter at A. John Agnello. And this is a weird plug, but you could go to ship to shore vinyl and basically just find Jeremy and I dueling back and forth with liner notes for releases. So these days, if you're like Christmas shopping

and you're like, ooh, Kloa soundtracks on vinyl, you'll get Jeremy on one and then me on the next one. yelling at each other across the fence. Yeah, literally. It's just like, this one's better, this one's better. But, yeah, that's where you can find me. Kloa one soundtrack is better.

It is. There's no contest. It's, Kloa once, Kloa wants just better. It's not, come on. That's why I took it and left the two for you.

And you have some liftover. Oh. Mine has a snowboard. It's fine. You know, I'm just imagining. dueling liner notes, it's like dueling banjos. It's like, yeah, I mean, there's banjos in the soundtrack. Deliverance. I have not seen that film, but I know that scene.

You get lost in the swamps. Some guy's going to come out and be like, hey, y'all heard the soundtrack to clone Noah? It's real good. Do you guys laugh? The show got a pretty liner notes. He's got real pretty notes. Hey, boy. Real pretty liners. I'm going to make you squeal like an old keyboard solo in a Prague song. And then it's... Why are you threatening me with a good time? I mean, you know,

Kiperson did hold down the keys on his, his Hammond organ, with a knife. So it's threatening. It's threatening. Mr. Parrish, why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself and this keyboard solo with a knife? Sure. Sometimes I've been on a podcast called Retronauts.

I would check it out if I were you. There's lots of episodes that have me on it in some capacity. You can also find me doing stuff on YouTube under my own name, Jeremy Parrish, limited run games under my own name. And actually, I don't really use a lot of aliases online. Or do I? And you just don't know about it. I'm just talking to me. To me, you're still toasty frog. I mean, yeah. Anyway, so I do a lot of stuff on the internet and you can find me. And you should, because it's good. As for the, you know, the knives, it's just, it was the 70s. Keith Emerson, wild guy.

He had a portable keyboard. I think I might have mentioned this on the Prague music podcast. I'm on sometimes Alexander's Rectime band. He had a portable keyboard like a little mini-mogue or something that he would carry around on stage and play solos. And

then he rigged it up so that it would spurt fire. He could blast flames from the end. So he would do, yeah, it was it's you could just imagine the sort of shenanigans he got up to but it was prog rock man sometimes i think to myself wow my parents were really weird then i realized oh right they were up in the 70s so that explained at all there were no rules it was great they were just

no rules whatsoever just just a little kitty on the branch saying hang in there that was the only that was the only credo that mattered everyone had a pet rock and a string to wind their rock around or something like that and run a lot of cocaine all right thank you all so very much for listening like to hear more Retronauts because, of course, why wouldn't you? This is just a reminder that Retronaut's amazing content is only possible through the love and generosity you bestow upon us. Please help us keep the lights on by becoming a Patreon net, patreon.com forward slash Retronauts. You will not regret it, and you have several tiers before you. Choose wisely. For $3 a month, you can enjoy early access to each weekly Monday episode of the show

seven days advance. For $5, you can receive access to two full-length Patreon-exclusive episodes a month. And for magical $64 a month, which is absolutely fantastic, you get the opportunity to set the topic of retronauts once every six months. And yeah, as long as it's within reason, because we can't have any

like podcasts about Mario's square butt. Or can we? Perish. That's obviously your call. I mean, he's in Minecraft now, so. Ah, okay. So and Minecraft is retro now. You can have rights. Okay. Well, see, that's just the kind of shenanigans that we're stuck

man i am so glad i have never played that game square butts are on the table everybody so go for that 64 dollar tier you know you want square butts yeah the great thing is they're on the table you don't have to worry about them rolling off because they are square those babes are going to stay exactly where they were planted alternatively square butts it's like you just get a calendar about uh you know sakaguchi's butt uh kawasu's butt that's right square butts square butt Square books. Finally, I know what I'm doing for my next annual calendar.

Yeah, there you go. Something tells me that Final Fantasy 14's dev team would agree to do that. Yoko Taro definitely would agree with it. He definitely already has it. He'd be like, oh, can I be all 12 months?

That's my only condition here. He wears a face mask in public, but pants, nope. I'm sure Soken would do it. Soken would absolutely do it. And then he'd do it again. So with that lovely image of square butts in your mind, I just want to say thank you all so very much for listening, and may your future be sand-free. You know what I'm going to do.