"Silly characters and dialogue help this game stay afloat."

Developed by tri-Ace, the same company who released the Star Ocean series and Valkyrie Profile series comes a new game. It's named is Radiata Stories and at first it looks like just a mix of other RPGs together. (Tales of Symphonia, Kingdom Hearts, etc) But Radiata Stories comes out with its own story and is a game that is worth mentioning if you like the previously mentioned titles. Sure, the story may be slow and cliche at moments, but you'll get through them with some likeable characters and some silly dialogue.

Characters and dialogue is what makes this game shine. You're introduced to Jack Russell a new knight in the knight brigade. His father is a well known man for slaying some dragon and saving mankind. So, you have to fit in his shoes. Except, Jack Russell isn't the smartest character around. You can sum Jack to be a idiot or a moron and he fights with strength, rather than intelligence. The story is cliche and slow at the beginning and the plot wasn't extremely strong at any moment. The plot is about humans versus nonhumans and how there are some evil dragons trying to destroy all of mankind and stuff. I didn't really pay attention to the story, because it bored me. But I did stay awake, because of the silliness of the game. The dialogue is well written and the story did make me laugh a few times. Though Jack is a likeable character, even though his IQ isn't very high.

The graphics are really colorful and everything is really nice. Reminds me of Tales of Symphonia sort of. The character designs I found were really ... cute? Big head with lots of facial expressions, especially for Jack with his silly remarks and his huge eyes. I loved the graphics and found the graphics to be one of the main good points about this game, beside from the characters and the humor. Voice acting is also done well. It seems like they don't take themselves seriously, so you can just sit back and watch Jack mess around in the game. Not all cutscenes are voice acted though, so that made me a little sad. Background music was upbeat and matched with the humor of the game. The only thing that annoyed me was Jack's victory voice that always said "Alright" when he won a battle. Or the same grunting sounds he makes when he swings his weapon at the monster.

The gameplay is similar to a lot of games, but I'll try my best to explain it to you. Battles happen when you run into a monster. After that you're taken to a different screen with all your party members and you move around and click the O button to attack. The game will manually walk if you're too lazy to do it yourself. You could practically just click the O button whenever you enter a battle, because the difficulty never gets hard enough and the game practically turns into button mashing frenzy. Of course you could do it all yourself if you want. There is also a thing called the volty gauge where once you hit a 100 you can do a super strong volty attack. Or you can just do a regular strong attack (which costs 5 volty points)which depends on what your weapon is. There are around 175 characters to recruit and that will keep you busy testing out different party formations. But the sad thing is the only controllable character you can be is Jack and the other characters are just there for looks and to make the game seems a little more busier. That was a disappointment for me, because I loved switching characters when I played Tales of Symphonia.

There's also a time feature in which day turns to night and night turns to day and depending on the time. NPCs might be in different locations, shops could be closed, and battles may be a little more different. The time thing takes a while to get used to, but you'll get the hang of it once you play the game for a while. Speaking of time. The time it takes to beat this game isn't that long, expect to play around twenty to thirty hours of this game on the first go. But since there are two different endings, you might want to play it twice. But then again you might not, since the story isn't that engaging.

Radiata Stories comes with many flaws that keep it from being a good game. The plot is cheesy and slow at moments, battles are more like mashing the O button, except for the boss battles, and that the game is super easy doesn't help the game that much. But if you can look over that and find yourself liking the characters, the funny dialogue, and the colorful graphics then you'll have yourself a great game that will keep you occupied for hours.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/03/08, Updated 03/20/08

Game Release: Radiata Stories (US, 09/06/05)