Play Radiant Historia Online

Radiant Historia came out for the Nintendo DS in 2010, developed by Atlus. It was part of that late DS era where developers were really pushing what the dual screens could do for more complex RPGs. You play as Stocke, a special agent who gets pulled into a conflict between two major nations, and the game immediately sets up a world on the brink of ecological collapse.

You control Stocke and his party across interconnected maps, moving screen by screen to explore towns and dungeons. Your main goal is to prevent the world from becoming a barren wasteland, but the central mechanic is time travel. You use a magical book called the White Chronicle to jump between two parallel timelines, making different choices in each to alter the future. Combat happens on a 3x3 grid, and you can push enemies around the grid to stack them up for area of effect attacks. The pacing is deliberate, asking you to pay close attention to the story branches, and the difficulty encourages strategic planning in battles. Piecing together the timelines to fix broken events gives the entire experience a satisfying, puzzle like quality.