Atlus is one of the best Japanese publishers and developers today. From Persona to Shin Megami Tensei to even the new Metaphor Re:Fantazio, this is a team that knows how to make and release some of the best JRPGs and Japanese games. But what is the most underrated Atlus game of all time? Here is our staff ’ picks for the games you need to play.

Siliconera Speaks Up: Most Underrated Atlus Game 735h3o

I mean, of course Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker should be brought up here. This spin-off, tactical series is fantastic. But I'm really going to cite Princess Crown. This is a VanillaWare game that is a precursor to games like Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and it's just so much fun. There are multiple viewpoints. You see how it influenced more recent releases. It's wonderful. -- Jenni

One of my favorite Atlus games and most underrated series in their catalogue is the Trauma Center games, especially the sequel to the original Nintendo DS game. I fondly the mix of hospital drama visual novel elements with the frantic gameplay and outlandish bioterrorism plots that seemed appropriate for a Resident Evil game. Unfortunately, as an European, I never got to play Trauma Team, which means that Atlus personally owes me for not bringing the game to PAL regions and it now has to develop a new one to make up for it. That's how this works, right? -- Daniel B

In of games that aren’t the obvious choices in the mainline Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, I have to say that Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology is the most underrated game from Atlus. This JRPG holds a special place in my heart as the first 10/10 I gave a game, of which there aren’t many. The time travel storyline leads to so many unexpected twists and heartbreaking moments. You spend so much time with the cast and come to care for them in a signature Atlus way. What I truly love, though, is how this game feels like Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward — one of my favorite games of all time — in its branching paths structure and a classic Atlus JRPG mashed together into a masterpiece creation. -- Cody

The post What’s the Most Underrated Atlus Game of All Time? appeared first on Siliconera.

Atlus just opened a new teaser site at RadiantHistoria.jp, where the company is teasing the announcement of something new for the series, which will be revealed in the March 23 issue of Famitsu magazine.   The teaser site has the following message:

In the near future, a history once told will unfold again. And an unknown path will come to be known.

  We haven’t heard much about the series since its 2010-11 release of the original game on Nintendo DS, but it looks like that could possibly change later tonight when we get the weekly Famitsu information leak.   Siliconera will keep you guys up to date when further information becomes available.

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Last week, on November 3rd, it was Radiant Historia’s fifth anniversary since its release on the Nintendo DS five years ago, and director Mitsuru Hirata had a few words to share via Twitter.  

“Ohh, it’s already been 5 years! I can’t exactly say that it was a hit, but it brings me great pleasure to see how much people still love the game. It’s a title that I have very strong feelings about, personally speaking. I’ll always have the feelings of ‘I hope for a new Radiant Historia game some day!’ lol #rh_atlus”  

Radiant Historia released in Japan on November 3, 2010 for Nintendo DS.

The post Radiant Historia Director Hopes To Make A Sequel One Day appeared first on Siliconera.

After asking fans on Facebook and Twitter, Atlus learned that there are people who want to buy Radiant Historia. So, the Nintendo DS game is getting a reprint and copies will ship to customers in late March.

Amazon, Amazon.ca, and EB Games Canada are taking pre-orders for the Radiant Historia reprint now. The game will once again retail for $35.

Read our playtest to find out how Radiant Historia incorporates time-travel into a role playing game.

The post Radiant Historia Reprint Makes Atlus’ Time-Twisting RPG Much More Affordable appeared first on Siliconera.

Radiant Historia came out a year ago for the Nintendo DS and it's pretty hard to find now. That's too bad because Radiant Historia has a charming story and uses time travel in a clever way. Read our playtest to find out how.

Since Radiant Historia is out of print the price of the game skyrocketed and new copies are going for a whopping $150 on Amazon. That's… more than a Nintendo DS!

On Facebook, Atlus asked fans if they would buy Radiant Historia if it got a reprint. Any takers at $34.99? (The game's launch price.) $29.99? (The price of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2.)

The post Anyone Want To Buy Radiant Historia For Under $100? appeared first on Siliconera.

Radiant Historia’s story takes place in the continent of Vainqueur. Large portions of this continent are undergoing desertification. While some nations like Alistel continue to prosper despite this, thanks to their use of technology, others like Granorg are running out of arable land. In order to find more arable land, Granorg is attempting to invade Alistel. This war ultimately results in all of Vainqueur being turned into a desert.

In order to prevent this, ex-Alistel military man (now a top intelligence agent), Stocke, is blessed with the power of time travel through a book called the White Chronicle. Using it, he must travel back and forth in time to deter Granorg’s invasion and attempt to somehow prevent Vainqueur from suffering its terrible fate.

Time-travel is tricky business both in of understanding how it works and keeping track of its consequences. Radiant Historia acknowledges this and tries to present time-travel in as simple a way as possible for the player: through a visual time chart. Here’s a rough example of what it looks like:

You’ll be seeing a similar screen a lot during your time with Radiant Historia (minus the dinosaurs), so let’s get acquainted with it. Radiant Historia consists of two timelines, both of which have blocks scattered across them. Brown blocks on the timeline represent events during the story. Blue blocks represent points in time that you can travel back-and-forth between. Most blue blocks also represent a point where you have to make a decision by picking between one of two choices. Finally, the maroon blocks represent death.

On the example timeline above, you see four points at which you can make choices. (1) is a point at which you’re asked by a comrade whether you’d like to return to Alistel’s military (Stocke was originally a military man in the past), or whether you’d prefer to remain in “Specint” (special intelligence). Choice (1) is the point at which the game splits into its two timelines. I chose to remain with Specint because I was rather intrigued by Heiss, the mysterious Specint boss who seems to have his finger in many, many pies.

Heiss eventually sends you on a mission to meet up with an Alistel informant planted in Granorg who has valuable information to share regarding Granorg’s ongoing military tactics. Unfortunately, when you get to the rendezvous point, the informant doesn’t show. This is choice point (2). You have to decide if you’d rather wait for the informant to eventually turn up or make your way to the Alma Mines, which is where he was last.

I chose to go to the Alma Mines, which resulted in my immediate death from being ambushed by Granorg forces. To rectify this, using the White Chronicle, I travelled back in time to (2) and chose the other option: wait it out a little longer. Unfortunately, the informant still didn’t turn up. At this point, the game was kind enough to suggest — all within the context of the story — that I travel further back through the timeline to see if I couldn’t figure out what had happened to him. Taking it up on its suggestion, I travelled back to (1) and chose the option I had declined the first time: to quit Specint and re the military.

What happened next was interesting. It turns out your squad’s first military operation is to go to the Alma Mines and head off a division of Granorg’s army that’s trying to sneak into Alistelian territory. At the mines, you’re supposed to rendezvous with two individuals: an informant and a merchant, who will provide you with information on the Granorg troop headed your way, and explosives to hinder them, respectively.

Once I got there, I found the informant waiting with his intel. After he’d delivered his information to my squad, he made a hasty exit to proceed to what he said was his next mission. Unfortunately, the merchant who was supposed to deliver me explosives to deal with the Granorg troops at this point was mysteriously absent. This is choice (4). You can either send troops to scout around the area and search for him, or move on ahead to try and ambush the Granorg troops without the explosives. I chose to move ahead.

This resulted in another death, which meant I had to find the merchant somehow or the other. Using the White Chronicle, I travelled back in time to (4). This time, I chose to send scouts out to look for our merchant. Sadly, doing this proved to be futile as well, as our man was nowhere to be found. However, there was another solution.

Now that you’ve relieved the informant of his duties at the mine, he’s on the way to his “next mission”…which is to meet with an agent from Specint. Since, in the other timeline, Stocke is the agent he’s meeting with, I promptly travelled to choice (2) once again, and sure enough, when I chose to wait for the informant this time, he turned up (and made a comment about how I looked vaguely familiar…). After meeting with him, a quick look around the area also netted me another missing person: the merchant. The poor chap was being harassed by bandits nearby, to whom my party gave a sound thrashing and chased off.

Now that the merchant was rescued, I had created two choices. Let’s call this point (3). I could either proceed ahead with my Specint operation (after all, in this timeline, I had declined the military’s offer), or I could travel to the other timeline to see what effect the merchant — now proceeding with his own mission to deliver explosives to Alma Mines — would have on the military operation. I chose to do the latter and jumped back in time to (4) again.

This time, sending scouts out to search for the merchant resulted in them finding him soon enough, now that he was out of danger and trying to make his way to the mine. With explosives in our possession, my squad was able to deal with the Granorg troops attempting to sneak through the mines and the immediate threat was dealt with. Once again, after this point, I was free to continue through this timeline, or jump back to any other point in time I wanted…like, say, to (3) — the point at which I rescued the merchant — to see how my Specint operation would turn out.

In summary, Radiant Historia consists of two primary timelines, and explores “options” and “what if” scenarios in both. Acts you perform in one timeline affect the other, and vice-versa. The game keeps things on track by providing you with freedom within a relatively linear structure.

This sounds confusing on paper, but Radiant Historia’s timeline keeps you updated on everything that you’ve experienced so far. Highlighting any of the blocks on the time chart gives you a short summary of that particular event, and the chart constantly updates itself to add new events and changes to past events once triggered. It’s also a convenient way to catch up with all that’s happened in the game’s story so far.

Interestingly, deaths from bad decisions count as “events,” too. The game encourages you to explore different options, so you’ll find yourself at a “death-end” all of a sudden, every now and then. Fortunately, since deaths play out very quickly, they don’t feel like a waste of time or overly penalizing.

In addition to giving the game an interesting framework, time-travel in Radiant Historia has another advantage: making it so that no one series of events feels too long or drawn out. When given the freedom to jump between timelines even without any particular reason to do so, I always made the jump, just to give myself a change of pace from the ongoing events if I was starting to get bored of them.

That doesn’t mean Radiant Historia is a boring game though. The game is smartly written; perhaps more so than any other Japanese RPG in recent memory. Aside from the odd line here and there during the first 30 minutes, the dialogue is believable, and the drama that takes place within Alistel’s ranks — especially the rivalry between Specint and the military — is convincing. The city of Alistel itself is rather interesting, seemingly constructed entirely from some kind of metal from what I can tell, and powered by an energy called “Thaumatech,” which gives it a bit of a steampunk feel sometimes.

Stocke as a protagonist is interesting, too. He’s a man of few words, but not in an angsty way. Stocke’s always willing to chat with his teammates, learn more about their pasts, and look out for them during missions. He’s just…not very excitable, which is appropriate for an experienced soldier. Similarly, party and the ing cast, too, are all convincing in their own ways. Heiss, being the head of intelligence, in particular is most curious.

Food for thought:

1. Yes, items do carry over along with you, when you travel back and forth in time. So do your party’s injuries.

2. Revisiting events in the past means you have to sit through the dialogue all over again. Luckily, Radiant Historia lets you fast-forward through it all by holding the X button, or skip it entirely by pressing Start (thanks to ThurstTheSky for pointing out the latter).

3. I personally love the classic PS1 look a lot of Nintendo DS games with 3D art have. Knowing that Radiant Historia is one of the last of its kind as we move on to a new age of portables systems almost makes me a little sad.

4. I usually don’t say this about games, but Radiant Historia is a game that would benefit greatly from voice-acting, just because some of its characters are interesting, and Atlus USA usually pick great voice-actors.

5. While time-travel is Radiant Historia’s primary point of interest, the battle system is rather interesting, too. Catch up with our preview to read about how it works.

The post Radiant Historia Playtest: The Complexities Of Time-Travel appeared first on Siliconera.

Radiant Historia had an interesting team of developers working on it. The game was originally conceived by Tri-Ace’s Satoshi Takayashiki, concept designer on Radiata Stories, who pitched the title to Atlus because he was fond of their games.

This was revealed in a developer Q&A you can read on the game’s official website.

Takayashiki felt that Radiant Historia would benefit from Atlus’ experience developing role-playing games. Once the pitch was improved, sure enough, Atlus, as the game’s publisher, requested certain changes be made to the concept design. The first was a radical change to the game’s protagonist.

The protagonist of Radiant Historia was originally to be a sword. The story would revolve around those who came in possession of the weapon. Atlus argued, however, that players wouldn’t be able to relate to a protagonist that wasn’t human, and so the protagonist was changed to Stocke, who also ultimately underwent several changes.

The second change involved the game’s timeline. Radiant Historia was originally going to have two separate axes — horizontal and vertical. Lines on the vertical axis would represent different timelines, and the horizontal axis would present the game’s story, which was originally going to be a historical drama. This was changed to the simpler timeline the game presently uses.

The third change was to the game’s ending. Initially, Radiant Historia was going to have a tragic end where everything would end in ruin. This was changed as well. Radiant Historia now offers multiple endings, with one “true” ending. Finally, while the game’s battle system had already been chalked out, Atlus were the ones responsible for the order in which skills were acquired and how they were balanced.

As far as influences go, Takayashiki drew inspiration from fantasy novels, as well as other franchises that have detailed settings and characters, such as One Piece, Gundam, Warhammer and Dragon Quest.

The post Radiant Historia’s Protagonist Was Originally A Sword appeared first on Siliconera.

In Japan, Radiant Historia was released on November 3rd, 2010. The U.S. will see it on February 22nd, 2011. That’s a little over a three-month difference, which is rather impressive, given that the wait for role-playing games to be localized can potentially take anywhere between 6 months to a year.

Localization of Radiant Historia actually began in August 2010. Atlus USA had a large team assigned to the project, with as many as four different translators working on translating the game’s text alone.

The fine-tuning of Radiant Historia’s text in English was handled primarily by two editors, Nich Maragos and Scott Strichart, with two additional editors, Mike Meeker and Clayton Chan, handling some of the ancillary dialogue in the game, like that of NPCs. In addition to the text staff, were the QA team, led by Richard Rodrigues.

While editing, Nich and Scott alternated the game’s chapters between themselves. However, since several characters appeared in both their assigned chapters, there was a constant back-and-forth discussion to ensure that dialogue remained consistent throughout, as per the guidelines established by both.

Curious to know where the team drew inspiration for Radiant Historia’s localization? As lead editor, we posed that question to Nich, who revealed that the tone of the game’s dialogue was inspired by Greg Rucka’s Queen & Country comic series, as, like Radiant Historia, it is also a story about spies and infiltration.

The post Radiant Historia’s Localization Began In August 2010 appeared first on Siliconera.

This past week, Atlus USA invited the press to a web-streamed demo of Nintendo DS RPG, Radiant Historia, where we could watch a playthrough of the opening portion of the game and chat with Atlus USA’s localization team to learn just how Radiant Historia’s time-travelling system works.

Developed internally at Atlus in Japan, Radiant Historia had quite the consortium of developers working on it. Described to us as one of Atlus’ most ambitious Nintendo DS games to date, Radiant Historia brought together select of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei teams, along with certain of Tri-Ace to see it through development. Topping off the pile was Yoko Shimomura, who lent her talent to provide the game’s soundtrack.

Time-Travel Without a DeLorean:

Radiant Historia takes place in the nation of Alistel. The game starts out with its protagonist, Stocke, a member of Alistel’s intelligence agency, being sent out on a rescue mission to recover a fellow agent from enemy confines. Before he heads out, Stocke is handed a magical book called the White Chronicle that will aid him in his mission.

The White Chronicle is how you manage time-travel in Radiant Historia. Pictured to the right is a small part of the game’s timeline. The brown boxes represent linear events or chapters in the game. The blue boxes indicate events where you’ll be required to make a decision that will affect how you proceed. These are the points you travel back in time to. Finally, the dark brown boxes indicate a dead end or a bad end.

Radiant Historia has two main timelines, both with their own different feel with regard to the game’s story. Each of the two timelines then branches out into several smaller paths, making for a pretty large and diverse time stream. If you choose to invest the time required, it is possible to view every single path and event in the game during a single playthrough.

While Radiant Historia has multiple endings, there are two “true” endings you can reach. The first is the game’s ultimate resolution, while the other is an extended version of the same that can be unlocked by completing every event in the game.

Change-Order Battles:

The first thing you’ll want to know about battles in Radiant Historia is that they aren’t random. You can see enemies and choose to avoid them if you don’t want to fight. If you do want to do a little hassle-free grinding, however, the game has an “Auto Battle” option that can be turned on, which will make your characters spam their basic attack move over and over. We can’t attest to whether or not this will be effective in any way without having played the game yet, though.

The real crux of Radiant Historia’s turn-based battle system, however, is the “Change” command. This allows you to change the order of turns, represented on the DS top screen, and decide who attacks when. The Change command applies to every single player present in the current battle -- even enemies. You can swap your turns with theirs, too.

By using the Change command, you can group your party’s attacks to execute one after another, or in any other order you like. For example, you’ll want to make the first move and have your party attack one after the other if you think you could end the battle in a single round.

There is a risk to using the Change command, however. When you use the Change command on a member of your party, they begin to flash red in colour, indicating that they’ll take increased damage until their turn to attack arrives. This is one of the ways in which Radiant Historia’s battles involve a bit of a gamble.

The Change system also ties in strategically to the second layer of Radiant Historia’s battles: the enemy grid. During battles, your enemies will be placed on a 3x3 grid. Enemies in the front row have increased offense, while enemies in the back row have increased defense. By using certain skills in battle, you can push or pull enemies farther or closer on the grid, depending on whether you want them to hit harder or take a beating better.

You can also stack enemies onto the same square on the grid. If you manage to pull this off, any attack you use on a single enemy on that square will hit all the rest as well. So, in conjunction with the Change command, an effective strategy would be to pile enemies onto the same square and use the Change command to have your party attack one after the other to deal out damage in the most efficient manner.

While enemies can’t manipulate the order of turns, they can use one of their own turns to move around the 3x3 grid. Also, if you manage to stack enemies onto the same grid square, once your turn ends, they’ll be able to “unstack”  themselves without spending a turn.

During battles, your own party is limited to three . However, during the course of Radiant Historia’s story, you’ll find up to 7 to create your three-man party from.

Radiant Historia is due out on February 22nd on the Nintendo DS. Launch copies of the game come with a bonus soundtrack CD containing 5 piano arrangements from Yoko Shimomura’s score for the game.

The post Allow Us To Explain Radiant Historia’s Time-Travelling And Battles appeared first on Siliconera.

With Radiant Historia less than a month away from release, Atlus sent out a fresh batch of screenshots, along with a reminder that every launch copy of the game is a boxed set.

Launch copies of Radiant Historia come with a bonus soundtrack CD containing piano selections composed for the game by Yoko Shimomura.

The post Hell Spider Says Hi In New Radiant Historia Screenshots appeared first on Siliconera.

Radiant Historia, Atlus' time-twisting Nintendo DS RPG, comes with a piano selection CD by composer Yoko Shimomura as a bonus. That was Atlus' decision. The design of the CD art and slip its packaged in is yours.

These are the two choices:

For reference, here's the US box art for Radiant Historia. It's pretty similar to the second design so I'm leaning towards the storybook layout. Vote for your favorite here.

Radiant Historia comes out on February 22 in North America.

The post Help Choose The Radiant Historia Piano Selection Packaging appeared first on Siliconera.

Radiant Historia uses time-travel as a key gameplay mechanic. Stocke, the protagonist, must put together history between fragmented timelines.

By accident or, perhaps, on purpose you can send the world into ruin. But, don’t worry about that too much. Radiant Historia lets you rewind time and explore alternate paths. Atlus also developed a handy skip scene feature so you can speed past events you already saw.

The post Radiant Historia Lets You Rethink That Decision About Destroying The World appeared first on Siliconera.

Atlus' Nintendo DS RPG Radiant Historia must have carried a joke back from the past in one of its time traveling trips. That line... is a lyric from "I Ran" by new wave group A Flock of Seagulls. I think that gives us an idea about the tone of the English localization.

Radiant Historia lets players travel through time using the White Chronicle (no relation to the PlayStation 3 series) and alter history. Your decisions change the timeline and of course what ending you see.

Hiroshi Konishi and Satoshi Takayashiki from the Radiata Stories team created the game's concept. Mitsuru Hirata who worked on Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is the director.

Radiant Historia and its bundled soundtrack CD is slated for release on February 22.

The post Radiant Historia Travels To The Past, Brings Us A Joke From The 80s appeared first on Siliconera.

Atlus’ time-travelling Nintendo DS RPG, Radiant Historia, now has an ESRB rating. The game is rated “Everyone 10+” with content descriptors for fantasy violence, language and use of alcohol.

Quite a bit of alcohol, at that, it would seem. Here’s what the amusing rating summary has to say about the game:

“This is a role-playing game in which players control a special agent who travels across time to complete various quests. From a top-down perspective, players navigate menus and use swords and elemental attacks (e.g., fire, ice, lightning) to engage in turn-based battles against human soldiers and fantastical creatures (e.g., giant insects, goblins, lizard men); enemies lose hit points and disappear when defeated. In some sequences, drunken characters appear in taverns and make reference alcohol in the dialogue (e.g., "All the booze my liver can handle," "<hic> Ah . . . Drinking. The solution to all life’s problems. <hic>," "<belch> Oh man . . . I am soooo plastered."). The words "damn," "bastard," and "a*s" appear in dialogue.”

Radiant Historia isn’t far from release. Atlus have the game pegged for February 22nd, 2011 in North America on the Nintendo DS.

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Yes, Atlus is bringing Radiant Historia to North America and the Nintendo DS game should be in stores before the Nintendo 3DS arrives. Atlus is shooting for a February release.

Radiant Historia is a project developed with ex-Radiata Stories staff and from the Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey team. In the game, players travel through time and alter events to prevent a world calamity. Stock, the main character, gains this power after he is captured during a battle with the warring land Granorg. Naturally, Radiant Historia has multiple endings.

During battle, Radiant Historia places heroes and monsters on a grid. Players can set up combo attacks depending on the turn order and the position of enemies. But, you don’t have to fight enemies either. You can see foes on the field and use skills to slip by them undetected.

Update: North American copies have one of Atlus’ spoils. Launch copies include a music CD with songs from composer Yoko Shimomura. Radiant Historia is slated for February 22, 2011.

The post Radiant Historia Time Twists Into Stores This February [Update: Screens] appeared first on Siliconera.