Radiata Stories

Seriously this game could have done so much better for itself, the storyline wasn't bad. But it was the long periods of waiting after a certain point that got me. The game focuses around Jack, son of a famous knight who took down a dragon, but ended up dying shortly afterward. His dream is to follow in his fathers footsteps and become a knight as well, in order to become a knight he had to fight in a battle arena.
If he manages to defeat his opponent he will become a knight, unfortunately for him the knight he faces is a girl, by the name of Ridley. Without breaking a sweat she kicks his ass and wins the battle, Jack feeling like his dream has been crushed, he is still administrated into the knighthood when they found out who his father was. He then joins a small group of knights consisting of Captain Ganz and his former opponent Ridley who turns out to be of high status in the kingdom.

After a few missions and a basic storyline missions, Ridley becomes injured in a battle due to Jacks incompetence. With that Captain Ganz and Jack are removed from the knighthood and asked to leave the castle. Jack then becomes a mercenary for hire, while Ganz joins a gang of thieves, this is when the storyline slows down to a mere crawl. Living each day doing so many sub missions and quests to the point your head hurts, and it isn't even fun.

The city is fairly large and you can recruit members to join your group, so there is extra soldiers when needed. Some will even pay you to let them join, others you have to do small quests or find to get them to join. But here is where the real kick to the teeth comes in, despite how many soldiers and comrades you have in your group. When the storyline starts to pick up again, you will be given an option, depending on which you choose you can either keep all your comrades or loose them. In my eyes it's a loose, loose situation for the ending you achieve with this decision.

At times it felt like they were trying to put humor into the game, with typical Japanese motions that is over played in a lot of animes.

Some of the armor that is given will made me cringe, some of them are really awful looking and will show in cut scenes. The worse one I remember is this tight red one piece jump suit. When he walks he moves his ass side to side as he shimmies across the floor, I had to equipped with with lower defense, because seeing a sixteen-year-old dressed in something like that will burn into your memory forever. The only thing I liked about the armor was Fayt's armor that can be required along with a blue wig to make Jack resembles Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Fayt.

I really don't enjoy waiting around for the story to pick up or constant run around missions that aren't really necessary for leveling. The only thing I really enjoyed is the battle system, with Jack as a leader, you are able to call out orders to your comrades, and can even learn new commands from books and scrolls you can buy or find. Your army can consist of humans or of mythical creatures such as Elves, and Goblins. Out of all the characters my favorite would have to be the Light Elf Gil, who is not only shiny, but he is very powerful and a useful ally.

I seriously wouldn't recommend playing this game, unless you are a heavy fan of JRPGs which I am not anymore. If they tweaked the game even a little more it could be good enough for a sequel, but instead we got this game that has no real value.