15 Years Later, This Nintendo DS RPG Is A 10/10 Masterpiece The World Forgot

Published Sep 19, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT

Lee D’Amato is a writer born, raised, and based in Queens, New York. With collective thousands of hours in games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Elden Ring, and The Legend of Zelda, he's now writes game features, guides, and reviews for Screen Rant, but has covered a wide range of topics, including ancient history, affordable travel, and overall health.

The Nintendo DS might just be the best-ever handheld console. Released worldwide between 2004 and 2005, the DS was the perfect follow-up to the Game Boy line that had put Nintendo on the map. It took the clamshell portability of the GBA SP and added all sorts of new control functionality, including two new face buttons and a full-on touch screen.

And then, there was the library, which included numerous beloved and critically acclaimed games, including expansive RPGs, tricky platformers, and a whole lot of Pokémon. The handheld even had a ton of practical software that allowed players to read books, track their schedules, and even quit smoking.

Pretty much everyone who had a DS has fond memories of it, but one of its greatest RPGs has been largely forgotten. Although the game was well received in its heyday, Radiant Historia has been largely lost to time.

Radiant Historia Is A Forgotten DS Masterpiece

First released in 2010, Radiant Historia was a turn-based, DS-exclusive RPG developed by Atlus (of the Persona series) and Headlock. What looks like a fairly typical, Final Fantasy or Etrian Odyssey-style combat system on the surface conceals a fair amount of tactical depth. Your actions in combat move both your allies and your enemies around the field, which allows you to execute calculated maneuvers.

You might spend one character's turn placing an electric trap behind an enemy, then have the next character ram them straight into it. Other character abilities allow you to shift the entire enemy frontline into a column up and down the battlefield, at which point you can execute a massive area of effect attack that wipes them all out.

Emphasizing chained attacks and buildup to big moves, this kind of combat is really satisfying when you pull it off. What really sets Radiant Historia apart, though, is its time travel mechanics. The game follows Stocke, a spy for the kingdom of Alistel, as he embarks on a mission to its rival kingdom, Granorg. When things go south, he's given a magic book — the White Chronicle — that allows him to turn back time and have a second chance at creating a better outcome.

The game's timeline later splinters into multiple branching paths, different dimensions created by a series of pivotal choices. The item you need to complete a quest in one timeline might only exist in another, so you have to use the White Chronicle to jump back and forth repeatedly, navigating different versions of the game's events and seeing the multiple ways in which the story could've played out.

It's Almost Impossible To Play Radiant Historia Today

Radiant Historia is undeniably brilliant, and I'd be remiss not to mention that it's all underscored by the music of Kingdom Hearts composer Yoko Shimomura. But the truth of the matter is, unless you still have a working DS and one of the few extant copies, you can't really play it today.

Radiant Historia did get a re-release, but that was back in 2017 (2018 in the West) as the enhanced 3DS port Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology. This included expedited combat mechanics, character redesigns, a Fire Emblem-inspired support skill system, and a new story scenario.

But other than the DS original and the 3DS remake, there's no other way to play Radiant Historia today. DS games aren't included in the Nintendo Switch Online library, and Radiant Historia has never gotten a port off of this now out-of-print handheld. With the 3DS eShop shut down as of 2023, your only recourse is to own the console and a physical copy — and the 3DS has gotten weirdly expensive as of late.

If any classic Nintendo game deserves a re-release, it's this one. A Radiant Historia renaissance on the Switch (or, ideally, all modern platforms) would bring this classic, overlooked RPG to a whole new audience, unsticking it from the brilliant - albeit outdated - Nintendo DS.