Platform: Switch
Release: 2023
Radiant Tale came to my attention for its bright fantasy setting, even though I was less keen on the circus motif. Oddly though, it is a motif rather than a genuine circus. In a rather Japanese fashion, the key members of the cast are part of a performance troupe called CIRCUS (where "Circus" is quite obviously said in English and the name is stylized in all caps for the English translation) and they have a large tent they perform in, but after the first chapter they're more of a theater production than a circus. The troupe is touring the kingdom in order to bring joy to the nation's major cities and cause the healing Chloris flowers to bloom in order to restore the magically stricken prince.
While I can't say this is a game with no evil or no bad guys, and multiple routes have a sense of life and death drama, it is definitely optimistic and the kind of world where the characters really can make things better for people purely by giving a performance that speaks to them.
Radiant Tale could easily have gone the route of having a generic medieval fantasy world found in a lot of anime these days, but I found I loved the worldbuilding in this one. In fact, while some otome games' glossaries feel rather superfluous, Radiant Tale's lore is not window dressing. It's stuffed with detail, and while you might wonder why you need to learn that mages are able to cast magic because they've formed a contract with an elemental spirit, it's all setup for when that knowledge is necessary. Though it can be overwhelming at first, the story is good enough to ensure you remember the important bits even if you're the type to ignore every codex entry that pops up for further reading.
This game is a recent release as of this writing, so please be aware there will be spoilers after the break.
In Radiant Tale we play as Tifalia, a sixteen-year-old girl who was orphaned ten years ago when her researcher parents were killed in an accident. Since then she has lived with her Aunt Spirea and Radie, a fey beast who is considered a part of the family (though since all fey beasts are sentient, it's not exactly clear whether he's a surrogate father, brother, or even family pet). She loves her current life and family, and wouldn't ever dream of leaving them until one day a dragon literally falls out of the sky and barely avoids crushing her on landing.
When their first almost empty performance goes up in flames (literally, Vilio is so happy to get an audience he sets fire to the tent and everything around them), Tifalia is happy to offer them suggestions to attract people while also serving them dinner. She has a knack for promotion, having been involved with her aunt's business for so long, and Jinnea, the leader of CIRCUS, immediately wants to sign her up. After some pushing from her aunt to go explore a little before deciding whether she wants to spend her whole life working at Liber, Tifalia reluctantly agrees to go and Radie comes along to look after her.
From there the common route goes through the kingdom of Escholtia, with each chapter taking place in a different city, and the final performance returning to the capital, Artheir. The plan is to entertain enough people in each of the cities to cause a specially researched flower called a Flora to bloom. It's much stronger than the regular Chloris flowers which already bloom when people experience joy (and they seem to be everywhere, because they were even popping out of nowhere while indoors during the prologue) and so far the Chloris flowers are the only thing that seems to be aiding the otherwise unmoving prince.
Each city (except the return to Artheir) allows Tifalia to spend time with one (and only one) of the love interests while scoping out the city, and occasionally Jinnea, who for a time I was convinced was a love interest considering his prominence in the opening credits. You would think that by consistently (or mostly consistently) selecting a particular love interest in each town would be enough to send you on to the appropriate romance route after the tour ends in Artheir, but the game is surprisingly fiddly about it.
In these split scenes, any choice Tifalia makes will award a point to somebody, but not necessarily the guy you're actually interested in (at least if you're playing without a walkthrough like I was). So I ended my first playthrough of the common route with 5 points for Zafora, 1 for Ion, and 3 for Paschalia who I had never chosen to accompany in town but kept getting points for whenever he was grouped with Zafora or the one time I had no idea which choice would take me to which person and went grocery shopping because it sounded like a helpful errand.
Most otome would funnel me on to the route of whoever Tifalia had the highest affection with, which was clearly Zafora, but there's actually a common route ending in this game which results from not having enough affection with anyone, and I hadn't seen one of those in ages. In that ending, CIRCUS wraps up their tour in Artheir, Tifalia goes back to Liber, only to later get wheedled by Jinnea into working as his secretary and that's not a fate I'd wish on anyone.
I have a feeling that the game designers expected the player to use a walkthrough (and anecdotally speaking, it seems like a lot of players do) because when I got the Paschalia scene while groceries shopping he and Tifalia talked as though they'd shared some significant moments together when in actually they hadn't because I had never hung out with him the entire common route. Since the kitchen/cleaning outside/grocery shopping choice is the last one for anyone not already heading for Radie (or Vilio, who has his own version of the common route) it seems like which love interest is connected with which choice should be obvious for the player to avoid referencing an emotional arc that the player may not have seen. Or like Radie, the choice could automatically be made for the player.
If the player doesn't get the Jinnea ending, CIRCUS goes on a second tour, which I was initially surprised by, but it makes sense given that the first tour ends halfway through the story and our cast of characters clearly intend to separate after their job is done. The thing is that Prince Colivus wakes up after the performance in Artheir, but he still looks seven-years-old, the age he was when he accidentally froze himself when he was attacked by a Fiend. Undoing the magic should have brought him back to his actual physical age (and I really feel sorry for a kid having to bum rush from seven to seventeen after coming out of what was practically a coma), but for some reason Colivus is stuck in a seven-year-old body and there is the suspicion that he might be subconsciously holding himself back because of all the responsibility that will fall on him once he grows up.
So CIRCUS's second tour, on most routes anyway, is to boost Colivus's confidence in himself so he feels better and ready to face the world like the teenager he is supposed to be. It is a little weird to think that a performance troupe is toting the crown prince around as another act in their show, but they do make it a point on more than one occasion that they were assembled on orders of the king and everyone including the king seems fine with it.
Whether the second CIRCUS tour finishes (I would say usually it does not) depends on the route and the ending. But what I do like is that the end of every route, regardless of whether CIRCUS is actually touring, is turned in a performance of some kind, with the ending of Ion's route being a particular highlight when CIRCUS breaks in phantom thief style with Jinnea's "Ladies and gentlemen!" announcement giving me Magic Kaito vibes as they confuse the heck out of everybody present, including their target.
Each route follows the story of one of the CIRCUS members involving whatever secrets they were hiding when they first joined. A couple of them like Zafora and Ion have their backstories come out during the common route, which is why I wanted to play Zafora's route first, followed by Ion, but the remaining three of Paschalia, Radie, and Vilio only really have their stories addressed in their own routes. I can see why Radie and Vilio should be played later, since Radie's story is also Tifalia's story and the story of her parents, and Vilio is basically the finale all the worldbuilding is building up to, but I feel like Paschalia got a raw deal. I might have been more interested in playing his route if I'd gotten a taste of his story as part of the common route.
Usually I feel like the protagonist herself ought to have a story in otome, so she has a chance to be a protagonist and do things rather than get pulled around by the plot, but even though Tifalia had to be pushed into taking this journey and isn't "special" in the way some of the more fantastic members of CIRCUS are, she puts in the work and her being part of the team isn't just for show. CIRCUS literally would have failed its mission right out of the gates if she hadn't joined.
Tifalia is probably one of the most proactive protagonists I've seen in otome. I think there's a tendency for otome protagonists to be a little helpless to better showcase the capability of the love interests, but Tifalia is rarely any more helpless than her male companions who aren't equipped for the situation at hand. When a Fiend wanders into camp, Zafora and Radie aren't going to touch that thing anymore than she is. They're not fighters either.
The result is that Tifalia really feels like one of the team rather than dead weight being kept around as a matter of convenience or to cook the men dinner. Even when she makes some decisions I'm not a fan of, it's usually in the vein of trying to do something to address the problem rather than meekly pulling away. I mean, she does pull back sometimes when it comes to confessing her feelings towards her chosen man, but not always, and regardless she is often the first to declare her feelings so I think that counts for a lot.
Next week we're going to move on to Zafora!
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