Radiata Stories - PlayStation 2

Young Jack Russell wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, a renowned member of the Royal Radiata Knights who protect the kingdom. Unfortunately, Jack is more than a little in need of some refining. He's a bad boy with a sharp tongue and a penchant for kicking objects and even people around. Can a world-saving quest help this obnoxious 16-year-old grow into a respectable human being?

Radiata Stories is a lighthearted and humorous fantasy role-playing game from Square Enix. You control Jack as he travels from town to town, recruiting allies and taking on menial tasks. Of course there's also a plot of saving the kingdom from certain doom, but there's plenty of time for exploring and meeting people before you'll need to worry about that. The game is fairly open-ended, allowing players to explore at their leisure.

Unlike the usual RPG, where the NPC characters simply wait around for the player to come listen to their one sentence, everyone in Radiata Stories has their own life. People wake up, go places and do things, then go back home. Learning the characters' schedules and using them to Jack's advantage is critical to a successful adventure. Sometimes they're too busy to stop and talk to you, so you have to catch them at the right time. This makes Radiata feel less like a game and more of a living, breathing world.

Combat is real-time, much like Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and Namco's Tales series, but you can give general guidelines for the NPC party members on how they should operate. There's even a link system that lets you coordinate your party's strategy.

There are two main story paths through the game, and after you've completed one you get to keep all your money and skills the second time around. A minimum of two playthroughs are required to discover and recruit the game's 177 potential party members (shades of the Suikoden series by Konami). Once you've recruited people as friends, you can swap your current party members at any time, but the only character you ever control yourself is Jack: if his HP falls to 0, your adventure is over.

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