Radiata Stories story revolves around the life of Jack Russell, the main hero in the game. He is your typical naive but determined, strong type of youth that doesn't think before he acts. It starts with him waking up (how typical can you get?) in the morning as his sister tells him to hurry up and get ready. After all, it's his day of the entrance test to become a knight. For you see his father Cairn Russell was a great royal knight in the past who's bravery was know amongst everyone in Radiata Kingdom for defeating the great water dragon. Today was supposed to be Jack's day to shine, but things turn out the exact opposite when Ridley, our lovely heroine, basically cans his ass in a match that was...how do you say...completly one-sided....

Once the contest is over, Jack is allowed into the Radiata Knights clan simply because of Jack's name and fact that he's the son of another famous royal knight of Radiata Castle.. He's put with Ridley, under the command of Ganz Rothschild.

           As the game progresses, the choices you make directly influence the outcome. Why? Because of the disagreements between humans and non-humans, the world is not a safe place, and war ensues. "Can't we all just get along?" is what you may be thinking here, but nope, that theory doesn't exist in role playing games. As all this happens, Jack and Ridley are forced to choose sides, ultimately making players follow the path of the human's or non-human's, giving two distinctly different storylines.

for me? aww thanks

Radiata Stories mimics the gameplay of Star Ocean: Til the End of Time very closely. All battles are fought in real-time as you move the character around and navigate through menus. There are differences, however. The only person you can control is your main character, Jack Rusell, unlike Star Ocean, in which you can control everyone. Later on in the game, you get to become captain of your team and issue commands to your allies. To increase the overall flexibility of gameplay, Jack has the ability to master various different weapons. As you fight and gain more experience with each weapon, you can unlock other attacks which can then be added to your list of combos. Each attack has a point system given to it. Meanwhile, every weapon you get has a set amount of points you can use. With this knowledge, you can input multiple attacks that you've learned into the slots of your weapon until you run out of points (unless you don't have enough to add to the slot). That is how your combo grows. After continuously pressing the attack button each time, an attack that you've learned is executed making massive hit combos that can chain up to ten hits.

Aside from Combos, Jack and some of the main characters can unleash "volty" moves. When the square button is pressed and you have at least ten points in your combat gauge, the special volty attack can be used by a simple tap of the square button. When you max out your bar to 100%, you can unleash the volty blow that activates a CG and a mighty powerful attack that does major damage. Each weapon has its own set of volty attacks and volty blows. I've found that the ability to pick the system of attacks and make a customized combo to be a great joy. It leaves a lot of room for strategy when say you don't want to attack a certain foe.

So here's where we talk about graphics. Radiata Stories has some great visuals. The textures are very bright and full of rich detail. When you travel from one locale to another, there are distinct differences in the environment pulling you into a very unique world. The light elves' Flower City is vastly different when compared to the dwarves' mining town, Earth Valley. Because of Jack's inate ability to bug the crap out of everyone and everything with his kicks, the environment even serves as an interactive playground. You get the ability to kick things like rocks and other objects to find secret items scattered all around the game.

Jack puttin' the hurt on.

In terms of game music, nothing clearly stands out that will have you humming a tune while on the bus or in your car. A cool thing to note, however, is the fact that some of the main stars like Jack have their own theme music. The music also matches their personality in a funny way. For example, Jack's theme music is goofy, yet symbolic of his personality. The voice acting in Radiata Stories is good. There is a lot of dialogue in the important scenes of this game, and none of the voice actors do a bad job bringing life to any of the characters.

There's been a lot of praise in this review, but nothing bad so far. Surprisingly, there is not much to complain about. It would have been nice to physically control other characters, and in terms of battles the difficulty, the game could use a minor enhancement, but there's not much more to complain about.

Radiata Stories is a game you should get your hands on. Its simplistic storyline is a nice little break from the more serious, complex plots that companies pump out nowadays, such as Xenosaga and the like. So if your looking for a nice light hearted comical adventure, this story is for you.