If you prefer a more relaxed experience, Friendly mode is for you. It allows you to skip fights you don’t care about whilst still claiming EXP and gold to aid you in future scraps. It’s a smart move for a game with such a good story, as now that story can be played and enjoyed by everyone regardless of if they’re a fan of the genre or not. Bigger battles will require your attention, but Friendly mode makes it so easy to grind that these should never be an issue.
Presentation:
Presentation is always where these releases live or die, and Perfect Chronology is a mixed bag. For the main game, there’s a bump in resolution afforded by the new hardware but that’s pretty much it. The sprite work, for better and worse, remains the same – it’s a charming style but it does feel slightly archaic by modern standards. There’s probably an alternate timeline out there where the game received an entirely updated look like Superstar Saga and fans are rioting in the streets. Porting these old classics is full of unavoidable, controversy-fuelled landmines like this.
Other elements, such as the character portraits, have been updated however, and said controversy is occurring as to be expected. The slick, wholly original portraits from the original title are gone and have been replaced with slightly generic anime alter-egos, with some serious redesigns on certain characters. Personally the original sprites mixed with new portraits serves up a ‘worst of both worlds’ situation for me, but your mileage will definitely vary. Regardless, the game looks great as an overall package, divorced from its own history, and the fantastic design of the original is, for the most part, left in-tact.
The voicework here adds a lot to the presentation, and mixed with the phenomenal OST it serves to produce one of the finest sounding games on the system. A couple of ever-repeated battle noises can start to grate, but really if you have any sense you’ll ignore this slight stumble and jam some headphones in, crank up the volume and bask in that wonderful soundtrack. It’s seriously sublime.
Conclusion:
“Radiant Historia Perfect Chronology” has breathed new life into a game that originally seemed condemned. Having released in the dying days of the original DS system, Radiant Historia was a game worthy of far more fanfare than it originally received. Despite a similar release window with Perfect Chronology (the 3DS is most certainly on its way out) the new bells and whistles promise to allow an even bigger audience to appreciate Radiant Historia for what it is: one of the best time-travel stories around, period. That it’s got loads of new content, engaging gameplay and a soundtrack to die for doesn’t hurt either.
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