Review PS2: Radiata Stories

Radiata Stories is one of the many games that made middle school bearable for me. Jack and Ridley’s teen angst love story. Gantz’s knight turned rogue. A huge lore backed story of mythical beings, mythical people, regular people, odd people and varying races across a wide array of landscapes. And a Tales style action/RPG gameplay with my favorite recruitment system to date. This game is loaded.

Now, I know a lot of you will throw Suikoden at me. It’s a close second. And I fault no one for disagreeing with that. But, Radiata stories’ charm is that I felt less like I was recruiting and more like I was investing when I finally got who I wanted on my team. The bottom line is that this game stayed with me more than Suikoden.

Just Make It Through The Prologue

The game begins with a knight’s entrance exam, nepotism and the ugliest gear you could possibly imagine. Seriously, it’s hideous and in no way realistically functional.

There isn’t a lot going on aside from introducing you to the game. The mechanics, the world, the story and how to play. But it does go for quite a while. Tri-Ace invested heavy in this story and it shows. Once you’ve played through it the first time it loses the appeal on subsequent playthroughs a bit. It’s not terrible just tough when you know what’s coming. And how limiting the…