Radiata Stories is the tragic hero of the videogame world. It has shown more promise than anything in recent memory, and has been insanely fun to play most of all the time. However, it is cursed by one fatal flaw. But more on that later! 🙂
The music in this game is insanely kickass, if for nothing else than the “Payapaya Dance.” This song is hands-down the greatest song I have ever heard in a videogame ever. Better still is the fact that you can find a record of it and play it any time you feel like hearing it. More games need a Payapaya Dance.
The controls are extremely easy to get used to, yet allow for customization. You execute your attacks by pressing a single button, but you can create your own combos out of a list of moves for your character. This allows you to fight the way you want to, but still only have to press one button. Pretty nice feature, especially for newbies who want to play but can’t handle pressing insane amounts of buttons.
Many people consider this game to look too childish or something, but those people are stupid or…something…OH YEAH, COMIN’ ATCHA!! I love these graphics, they fit very well with the character of Captain Jack Russell the dragon slaya!
Jack is probably the greatest and funniest hero to ever grace my television set, and I have played quite a few games, believe you me. He always knows just what to say and never fails to bring a smile to my face. Don’t believe me? Consider this Jack Russell quote: “I’d rather do as I please than have too many fleas.”
About the fatal flaw. This game has 177 characters for you to get to join you, about 2/3 of which you can get by following one plot branch, and the other 1/3 by taking the other path. The major problem with this is that it becomes ridiculously easy to miss characters. And I’m not just talking miss and then come back and get later. I mean miss and can’t ever get again. Further, you need to recruit many characters in order to get the super-strong characters later in the game. In case I’ve lost you, I’ll sum up: You can miss some piece-of-crap newbie character fairly early in the game and have this cause you to never eeeeeeeeeever be able to get the ĂĽber-characters at the end of the game. It really sucks. It’s really easy to miss certain people, too. Really easy.
Overall the game rocks and managed to keep me playing for hundreds of hours despite my having to restart and lose 50 hours of gameplay a couple times because some screwed-up thing happened and I ended up completely unable to get all of the characters. I am a perfectionist; I need everything and everyone. This game seriously messes with me, and yet I still love it. Take that as you will, but only if you take it to mean “this game is really freakin’ good”.
