Half a Year Later and I Need to Rethink Radiant Tale

I usually don't spend much time thinking about a game after I'm done blogging about it. The writing itself is a way to let all my thoughts and feelings out, and even the things I didn't say usually exist in notes and excised paragraphs (since I like to keep posts to about 2000 words each). If Radiant Tale had been a one and done title my post would probably remain another mark checking off a game I had wanted to play.

But Radiant Tale Fanfare! is coming out at the end of June so I need to reckon with what I thought about the original. Fair warning, spoilers ahead.

The original Radiant Tale interested me because of the noblebright fantasy setting, but also because writers Nao Kojima and Sachi Arino were half the writing team for Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~, which I consider my gold standard for the genre, and Kojima had also written part of Cafe Enchante, which I still think fondly of.

So I was buoyed by expectations for how the story would work based on their past projects, which are particularly notable for their themes around found family, where the protagonists and her various love interests support each other through thick and thin. I like when the guys who aren't currently in a romance with the protagonist get to play an active part in the story and become buddies with the other men. It avoids looking like a harem situation when everyone has a reason for being there and it's not because the protagonist turns them on.

Radiant Tale was my most anticipated title of 2024. Perhaps unfairly, I had expectations. It didn't need to be perfect, Cafe Enchante definitely had things I didn't care for (like what happened to Kotone in Misyr's route), but I did expect the highs to outweigh the lows.

And overall I think they did, which is why I'm fussing over Fanfare. It's more like there are pieces of Radiant Tale that I really like, but it doesn't come together.

For instance, the found family thing. While Radiant Tale does have a reason for everyone to be together besides the protagonist (since Tifalia joins an already established group), and they do help each other when the chips are down, it feels more like a group of coworkers than found family. If you like your coworker you'll help them out, you might drive them home if they're sick, or do other things that are regular acts of kindness. But that doesn't mean you're both going bowling on Friday night.

And that's kind of what Radiant Tale gives us. After the halfway point when CIRCUS is finishing their first tour, they even expect to go their separate ways, never to reconvene again, and there's little to suggest their attitude changes after the actual end of the game. They send a few letters, but the band is not together nor planning to get together (barring Vilio's ending since he has the golden route that solves everyone's problems and caps it off with him and Tifalia getting married months later during one of their performances).

They're not a bad group of characters, I can't say anyone bored me, but they aren't as tight knit as I originally expected them to be. And to be frank Ion's good ending pissed me off with his possessiveness of Tifalia where he didn't want her spending as much time thinking about his friends as thinking about him (and I had liked him up until that point). Jealousy just ruins the found family dynamic when the intention is to restrict one family member from seeing the others.

And it's not just that. I disliked Paschalia's route because everyone in CIRCUS made potentially invasive plans to save Paschalia's life without running any of it by Paschalia himself. As someone who has survived two different cancers I was so mortified for the guy. I'd like to think if they really cared they would have let him decide the way he wanted to approach his illness; present the options but not push. A family should be supportive, rather than deciding support.

And then there was general plot stuff like the scripting at the scene of Balto's murder, Vilio's half-assed common route, what exactly were the circumstances around Radie's amnesia, etc.

I'm not here to nitpick individual instances, since most of this can be found in my 6-part VN Talk series, but the thing is my opinions of a game can change with time and perspective. I left Radiant Tale feeling that it was the weakest sibling of Code:Realize and Cafe Enchante, but would still probably make my Top 10 list of otome. I wanted to feel like I had enjoyed it. Now… I'm not so certain.

And with Fanfare coming stateside this summer, I need to figure out whether I'm going to get it. It used to be I'd clear my gaming schedule for a Code:Realize fan disc (what you'd probably call a stand alone expansion in another genre), and I would have done so for Cafe Enchante if it'd had one, but with Radiant Tale it's not that I hate the original, so much as I find myself disappointed.

I was listening to the even if Tempest soundtrack while working on my blog posts for it and it got me pumped, remembering some of my favorite parts of the game. Cafe Enchante's soundtrack was more hit or miss, but still there were very good tracks that reminded me of the best moments of the game. When I played Radiant Tale though, I just felt… bored. I like the opening song "Michi no Sekai e Fanfare," but none of the instrumental tracks sparked anything in me unless they used "Michi no Sekai e Fanfare" as a leitmotif. While that could be a fault of the composition, it also means that scenes never felt powerful enough to connect with the music.

I can't point to any one thing as a key factor that let me down, but in general I suppose it's more the sense that the package did not come together in a greater whole, and I'm not entirely sure if that's me and my outsized expectations or the game itself. I suspect that if I hadn't known the writing pedigree my expectations would have been lower, but I would likely have complained about the same things.

For perspective, I think Cafe Enchante, despite its problems, ultimately sits comfortably in my Top 5 otome because I felt the game came together well enough to overlook the flaws. Radiant Tale didn't have the magic to keep it together.

It wasn't all bad. Lack of a found family dynamic (and spotty plotting) aside, I liked Zafora and Vilio's story arcs. I liked the worldbuilding and how old tales used as parts of CIRCUS's performances later became critical lore for the final route. But I did dislike the ending to Paschalia and Radie's routes, and the jealousy line in Ion's. When I put it that way, I suppose I liked "half" the game, and I'm not sure that's enough to enjoy a fan disc, especially when there will be After Stories for the endings I didn't enjoy as much.

A fan disc is generally full of low stakes post-game epilogues and side stories so there's less of a chance the game will trip over itself with continuity errors or questionable plotting. The worst case is that it could be boring. And when it comes to it, I might not be interested in seeing what happens next. I could be proven wrong. I didn't like Impey's route in the original Code:Realize, but he won me over in the fan discs, so there's hope.

After writing all this, I think my conclusion is that I'm still interested, there are aspects of the game I'd like to revisit, but I'll wait for a sale. Which likely means I won't be covering it on my blog any time soon, but I've got plenty of backlog so I'm not hurting for material.

My Favorite Games of 2023

Last year feels rather strange to me in that I didn't complete any RPGs and I'm not entirely sure how that happened, since I usually manage at least one of them. That said, it felt like such a good year for enjoyable gaming. I only list games I liked enough to finish, which usually means I felt they were good or very good, but great games are fewer and further between.

I usually designate these great games as my Top 3 picks each year by marking them with an asterisk (*) and I was pretty sure that I knew what my Top 3 were going to be as we went into November as I'd played what I thought was a shoe-in for my third stellar game in October, but even if Tempest slid in at the end of the year and blew me away, so I'm going to call out Ghost Trick as an honorable mention. In another year it probably would have made Top 3 and it is still a solid game I highly recommend.

With that said, these are the 12 games I liked the most out of the ones I finished in 2023, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first.

OPUS: Echo of Starsong (Switch, Windows, Mac, iOS) *

More often than not, I find one of my favorite games of the year at the start of the year, and that was definitely the case with OPUS: Echo of Starsong, making it one of the few linear games where I dove back in immediately after I finished. Told from the perspective of an elderly Jun Lee, he reflects on the short period of time he knew Eda and what being with her meant to him. If you want an intimate piece of space opera with deep lore and some far future Chinese flavoring, all wrapped up in 12-15 hours of gameplay, this is a must-have, but bring tissues. That's not a spoiler. The frame story makes it clear that Jun and Eda are deprived of any happy ending.

Ambition: A Minuet in Power (Switch, Windows)

When Yvette arrives in Paris on the eve of the French Revolution, her fiance mysteriously does not pick her up, nobody seems to want to associate with him, and he's left her paying for the rent and the maid at what would have been their home. Refusing to return to her village, Yvette forges a new life in Parisian high society, and the player can decide whether she reunites with her fiance or discovers a new love entirely. With a tight calendar system and selling gossip for money, Yvette can nudge the tensions in Paris one way or another. Probably more fun if you like French Revolution stuff, but also good if you just like being a schemer. You can make Yvette somewhat upstanding if you want, but there are a lot of options to play as an awful person.

Buried Stars (Switch, PS4, Windows)

Mystery/suspense visual novel in which a group of aspiring k-pop stars and their floor director are trapped inside a collapsed building. Despite the unusual choice in cast (I never thought I'd be putting on my detective hat with a pop star as my protagonist), the mystery is effective and had me on the edge of my seat through much of the main game. The game's UI is a little misleading in regards to how the story will actually play out, and there are some obvious translation errors, but despite the bumpiness I think this will end up one of the more memorable mystery VNs I've played. Saying why would be a spoiler, but I talk about it here.

My Sweet Bodyguard (iOS, Android)

Part of the Love 365 library app. A college student discovers she's the long lost daughter of the Japanese prime minister and is threatened by unknown forces who want to influence her father. Fortunately she has a crack team of bodyguards looking out for her in what is a surprisingly upbeat and light-hearted romance adventure. It also gets really silly on some routes, so don't come here for any realism. Each route may as well take place in a different reality since plot points and villains generally don't cross over.

Frostpunk (Windows, Mac, PS4, XB1) *

Brutal survival-based city building game. After a deep and potentially neverending frost settles over Victorian England, you play as the captain in charge of a new settlement that strives to survive heading in an unknown future. Though it is possible to make a relatively comfortable life for your people once you know how the game works, I think most first time playthroughs will either end in failure or with barely anyone alive (and you might end up a despot on top of that too). I like how the game makes you consider which lines you'd be willing to cross in order to allow your city to survive, and if you fail, was it because of poor planning or because you valued your morals?

Piofiore: Fated Memories (Switch)

Liliana has grown up as a ward of the church, but for reasons unbeknownst to her, she is extremely important to varying factions fighting for control of a city in 1920s Italy, thus sparking a journey with various men from one of the city's three mafia families or an agent of the church. It's otome, but darker than usual because none of the guys can really say they've walked away without killing someone, though they're generally presented in a nicer light if they're Liliana's current love interest. While I bought this as a fan of anime takes on mafia, it's worth mentioning that Liliana is a civilian, so even if she's present during the action bits, she's usually a non-participant, and some of the heavy decision making by the men happens in scenes when she is not around.

Detective Di: The Silk Rose Murders (Windows, Switch, PS4, XB1)

Series of murder mysteries in the style of the old point-and-click pixel adventure games, starring a fictionalized version of Di Renjie, more popularly known in English as the protagonist of the Judge Dee books/movies/TV series, but was a real historical person. This Di is portrayed as relatively young and new to his work, though historically he would have been pushing fifty by the time of the game, which mostly involves solving a series of murders on behalf of Empress Wu Zetian. It's a fairly short game, with some of the usual point-and-click genre problems of not being able to figure out what you missed, but otherwise a fun bit of intrigue. Good if you don't have a lot of time or want a quick palate cleanser before diving into something else.

Radiant Tale (Switch)

It took me a few games to realize that found family is one of my favorite tropes in otome. I love when the entire cast is a group of friends who support each other through thick and thin, so when I realized Radiant Tale shared staff with Code:Realize and Cafe Enchante I knew I had to get this. Tifalia joins a performance troupe called CIRCUS and gains a wacky surrogate family that includes personalities as varied as a fun-loving dragon, a flashy noble, and possibly the world's most unfriendly clown. They're on a JRPG-eque quest to free the kingdom's prince from the spell that has frozen his body and heart in time, and only by literally bringing joy to the world can they heal him. Despite the overly bright and optimistic theming, some of the routes can get unexpectedly dark.

Ghost Trick (Switch, PS4, XB1, Windows, DS, iOS)

HD remaster of the underappreciated mystery solving puzzle game for Nintendo DS. You control an amnesiac ghost who has a number of "tricks" he can perform in order to manipulate the environment and the living around him in order to figure out who he is and why he died. Without spoiling too much, I think pet lovers will enjoy this game. It's not too long, but not too short either, being the rare game that is just the length it needs to be and no more. Fans of Ace Attorney will recognize writer/director Shu Takumi's brand of character writing, though Ghost Trick is less episodic since there is only one central mystery that covers the entire game.

Ten Trials of Babel: The Doppelganger Maze (Windows, Mac)

Indie puzzle adventure game where humans and various fantastical races are unwillingly placed in a survival game where the winner can ensure the continued existence of their race. English translation is usually pretty good, which makes it more obvious when it's not. Puzzles will give you a pretty good workout if that's your thing. Best played with a pad of paper next to you in order to make notes. Though it's probably possible to reach the best ending without romancing anyone, Xixy needs a certain level of friendship with her main three party members to open the way to the true ending.

even if Tempest (Switch) *

I was truly blown away by the narrative in this game, which is marketed as otome, but aside from affection-related dialogue options, plays out more like Raging Loop since it also features one love interest per timeline and a protagonist who tries to abuse timeloops in order to solve a problem. The worldbuilding is fantastic and Anastasia is one of the most engaging female protagonists I've ever had a chance to play, getting to be both strong and vulnerable, vengeful and kind, and rising from a childhood of abuse to being the person she wants to be. She is willing to do whatever it takes to save the ones she loves, and some of what she does is truly heartrending both for her and the player. There are witch trials which will likely appeal to Ace Attorney and Danganronpa fans, with the unique twist that they are playing out in the court of public opinion in which judgment is less a matter of truth than what the jury comes to believe.

The Last Matches (Windows, Mac)

Indie visual novel based on The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen. It's very short (about an hour to play through), but felt like a fitting title to close out the year given that it takes place around Christmas. Both the original tragic ending of the story and a happier one are available for our protagonist. I liked the sad ending better, perhaps because it pulls from the original and works better thematically, but also because the happy ending feels surreal, like I can't tell if it really happened. Still, it's a nice little package if you want something quick that will pluck at the heartstrings.

VN Talk: Radiant Tale - Part 5: Vilio

Vilio was the character whose route I most wanted to play. I don't always like the poster boys, but Vilio is such an unabashed ray of sunshine that he's actually billed in-universe as your friendly neighborhood dragon. (And his color scheme of red hair with red outfit gives me a bit of an Ys nostalgia vibe, if Adol Christin ever turned into an overenthusiastic dragon.) On other routes, if characters are feeling down or the odds look far too long, Vilio is often the one to give them an optimistic push, to remind them that they're CIRCUS and they'll find a way!

In many ways, I feel Vilio embodies the spirit of Radiant Tale the most. Why shouldn't a cheerful dragon be the poster boy of a game where we solve the world's problems by putting a smile on people's faces?

He can be a bit much, with his extroverted nature and the joy of seeing the world beyond his village combining into a person who is ready to go just about anywhere and do anything, but there's never a sense of abrasiveness about it. The common route and the routes of other love interests tend to play him fairly one note as an over the top curiosity seeker with the occasional shift to seriousness when the situation calls for it, which made me wonder why such an outwardly earnest guy would be the gated love interest. Looking back, it's really Zafora's route that gives the best inkling of what Vilio's actual route will be like.

Radiant Tale was only released a few months ago, so be warned there will be spoilers after the break!

VN Talk: Radiant Tale - Part 4: Radie

Sometimes to get a jump on the blog writing I'll start a post before I'm done with a route. It's usually to get some initial thoughts down or to make sure I don't forget something important. It might also contain why a particular character ended up in the play order they did. Occasionally this results in some tweaking as I finish the route and new facts come to light, but Radie had given me a number of false starts and it's because the character I loved was not the one I romanced.

My impression of Radie kept changing from the common route to the first half of his route, to the second half, all the way up until the end. He occupies an unusual space in Tifalia's life since he's not human and has been with her since childhood. He's close enough to be considered family, but because he looks like a cute and cuddly fey beast most of the time (and Tifalia doesn't know any better until midway through Chapter 1 of the story) it's hard to say exactly what family role he occupies. He looks after her like a guardian, but his size and cuddliness suggests more of a pet.

And before I go much further, please realize that Radie's route, though available at the start, contains a fair amount of backstory that isn't covered on other routes and I'll be spoiling that here. While his route doesn't spoil other routes, since they all operate fairly independently of each other, you might be unable to keep that backstory knowledge out of the back of your mind while playing, and for me personally I might have ended up annoyed with Radie for the bulk of the game.

VN Talk: Radiant Tale - Part 3: Paschalia

Paschalia ended up being my third route by virtue of being leftover after Zafora and Ion's stories snagged my initial interest, Vilio being locked as the final route, and Radie being recommended for second to last. Also, I generally want to put what I expect to be the least appealing route in the middle, so I have something to look forward to if the middle ends up as less than appealing.

This doesn't mean that I disliked Paschalia, but he's a difficult character to get a feel for on the common route. He's described as being almost ethereal, and that's as apt a description as any. He's soft spoken and non-confrontational. He seems kind, but in practice rarely volunteers to do anything helpful. (The other guys will even mention he didn't help them set up their tents.) He's kind of like pretty wallpaper that happens to be able to do some magic.

We know from the prologue that Paschalia's flowing appearance and blue hair show that he's bonded with a powerful water spirit since the stronger the spirit the greater the mark they make on the person who forms a contract with them, but he seems reluctant to use water magic and wants to find another powerful water mage. But none of that is brought up again unless the player selects him during town events, so if you're not already aiming for Paschalia, he's left something of a gentle enigma.

Now, this is a relatively recent release so be aware there will be spoilers after the break.

VN Talk: Radiant Tale - Part 2: Ion

Since I already had a save set up with Ion's first solo scene complete, it was easy to resume his route, and I already knew his was going to be the darkest of the initial four. How dark? Well, dark for a story where the joy of the common people can cause healing flowers to bloom. But in other games, it could just as well be business as usual.

I want to say that I liked Ion's route, because there's a lot that I did. Tifilia is wonderfully proactive. I love how she's the one who makes the first move and works hard to convince Ion it's worth having a future. His backstory is already covered in the common route, but once on his actual route the story squeezes an exquisite amount of drama from it. His past is never just a bit of color to flesh out the person he is, but actively affects his present. It constrains him throughout his route and the way the details, particularly the hurdles, are parceled out is at an excellent pace so it doesn't feel too heavy-handed or belatedly included.

But the emotional story between Tifilia and Ion, and Ion's personal journey, is about the only thing that's handled well. The rest of the time I felt like the writer(s) were hoping no one would look too closely and not realize that certain things didn't make sense.

This is a relatively recent release so be aware there will be spoilers after the break.

VN Talk: Radiant Tale - Part 2: Zafora

I caught what seems to have been a cold that knocked me out on Sunday last week, which ordinarily would have been the day I prepared my post, so this is coming a little late. I'm definitely feeling better now, though I'm not over it entirely and I might not be for a while. This has been my first illness since my cancer treatment left me somewhat immunocompromised, so I don't have a good idea of how long it'll take me to fully get over other than it's longer than it used to be.

That said, back to my next post on Radiant Tale. Beware of spoilers ahead!

After my premature common route ending due to spreading my affection points across too many characters, I knew I wanted to choose between Zafora and Ion. The random Paschalia scenes I got didn't leave me feeling like I knew the character any better, and Zafora and Ion both had intriguing story hooks between Zafora trying to reclaim his father's title and Ion's past as a slave gladiator. I thought I might play through some of Ion's early scenes and then double back to Zafora if he ended up interesting me more, but after I finished my first city exploration with Ion on my second playthrough I knew.

I had to play Zafora. Not resolving his story was bugging the heck out of me, so I left the Ion save alone for a later playthrough and replayed through the common route more cautiously on a new save. This time I made different choices where I'd messed up before (which made up for all those times I accidentally wound up with Paschalia scenes), and finally was rewarded with the last chapter of the common route segueing into the Zafora specific route.

VN Talk: Radiant Tale - Part 1: Overview

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

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.