Radiant Historia

I've been wanting to post more, but I'm doing this freelance job at the moment that has been just eating all my time and energy, and on top of that my mom and sister are away in Colorado for the week so I'm watching the house and pets. I'm exhausted.

Anyhow, before they left, I had been using a little of my spare time now and then to play a DS game I picked up before I left Japan. It looks like there's an American version, as well, and both have gotten good reviews. It's called Radiant Historia (ラジアントヒストリア).

I'm only a couple hours in, and sometimes I'm slow because I need to look up unfamiliar kanji that are used often, but overall I'm getting the idea of most of the dialogue and plot points (I think... actually there was this one scene with an evil-seeming queen that just went over my head).

So far I'm quite pleased with it. I'm not very far into the story, but so far it reminds me of a somewhat darker Chrono Trigger. The animation style is very reminiscent of the latter SNES games and the music is easy on the ears. And it's a good way to keep up with my Japanese a bit. The only downside is that because it's in Japanese I need some mental energy to play it, and that's something I've been lacking recently.

To you gamers out there - have you heard of or played this one? If you've played it, what were your impressions?