So I played Radiant Historia for the DS back in 2011, and am almost finished playing the re-release/expanded edition for the 3DS. I don't know if anyone else here has played it, but I highly recommend it.
Radiant Historia is pretty much what I envisioned a third Chrono game to be like. I figured that Chrono 3 would have either involved:
1.) Anti-time, as mentioned during the Counter-time Experiments at Chronopolis, which somehow backfired and threw Chronopolis back into ice age. Although there's no official explanation for how counter-time works, my personal interpretation is that it allowed one to literally travel to previously erased timelines, essentially sidestepping the Darkness Beyond Time entirely. This means we would have seen characters crossing back and forth across the various timelines of the Chronoverse, including Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, along with the Ideal Timeline created at the end of Chrono Cross.
2.) Multiverse. Multiple timelines and "what if scenarios" darting to and fro amongst a myriad of potential timelines, constantly causing changes to the timeline to create an optimal outcome. This is ultimately what Radiant Historia explores.
For those unfamiliar with Radiant Historia, you play as a hero who is gifted a magic tome that allows him to traverse back and forth across two timelines, where events in one timeline can subtly affect the other. The two timelines begin relatively similar, but gradually go into completely different directions. The game also has a backdrop of war, so even the enemies/allies changes in each timeline due to the rippling change of history.
One of the things I love about this game is the constantly need to jump from timeline to timeline to solve puzzles and blockers. Sometimes that means traveling back in time in one timeline to make a new change farther down the timeline.
For example, one NPC you meets reveals he was injured in a battle. You then have to retrace this NPCs steps at various points in history and find him at a certain point in time, warning him of his upcoming injury. Then, when you return to the original point on the timeline, he's heeded your warning and avoiding the catastrophic injury and rewards the party with an item.
All-in-all, this is a great game and one of the best jRPGs I've played in the past decade. I highly recommend it, especially if you love the whole time travel motif.
Has anyone else played it?
