The Tower of Radia (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Tecmo's The Tower of Radia for the NES. The game shown in this playthrough is an unreleased prototype of a fully localized English-language version of Tecmo's Radia Senki: Reimeihen (ラディア戦記 黎明篇), a Famicom title released at the end of 1991. The Tower of Radia is a narrative-driven action-RPG starring Ryu, an amnesiac who wakes up to find himself being ambushed by monsters in a forest clearing. He's rescued from this predicament by the wandering mage Leose, and once the dust has settled, the pair makes their way toward a nearby village. Once they arrive, things happen, vows are made, and we're whisked off on a grand RPG adventure. The game is unique in how it combines Zelda-style adventuring with traditional RPG elements. As you wander the overworld, your party will enter into random encounters with monsters, but since the action happens in real-time, you only have direct control over Ryu himself. Your allies are controlled by the computer, but you can influence their behaviors with general orders. For instance, if a wizard is getting clobbered, you can command them to hang back and defend. If your melee-focused wrecking ball is struggling to elbow his way to the front line, you can direct everyone else to clear a path. It's an ambitious and unique battle system that borrows pieces from several games, most notably Willow (   • Willow (NES) Playthrough  ) and Final Fantasy Adventure (   • Final Fantasy Adventure (Game Boy) Playthr...  ), and it blends them into a something that feels far fresher and more modern than you might expect from an 8-bit cart. It's not perfect - the AI has the annoying tendency to get in your way - but given its age, everything works impressively well. The rest of the game does, as well. The story is a fun mishmash of Ghibli tropes with a few genuinely surprising twists, the graphics and music are pretty nice throughout, and Tecmo's flair for the dramatic shines through in some of the bigger cutscenes. The NES's popularity went into a sudden and steep decline following the launch of the Super Nintendo, so it's not surprising that the game never saw an international release. That's unfortunate because The Tower of Radia is a quality game, but even still, it's cool to be able to play this forgotten piece of Tecmo history in the modern day. _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!