Atlus has been working on bringing back Radiant Historia with a remake of the DS original, titled Perfect Chronology. I was able to get some behind-closed-doors hands-on time with the not-yet localized remake at E3. Perfect Chronology is a blend of new and old, with classic gameplay spruced up by updated artwork and several new tracks of music.

During the bit of dungeon crawling I was able to do, I got a chance to try out the battle system, which is the same as it was in the original. Enemies spend the turn-based battles on a three-by-three grid system, on which they can be pushed, pulled, and moved around on using certain character abilities. This is important since many attacks have special areas of effect. One attack may target all enemies that are in a vertical line, so it's beneficial to force them into the proper formation first. However, each turn enemies have a chance to redistribute themselves.

Unfortunately, it was hard to get much of a sense of the battle system, since all ability descriptions were still in Japanese, so that making a plan of attack was impossible. Randomly choosing attacks did move monsters around quite a bit, and a couple of times I accidentally had attacks land for heavy area damage. Enemies being able to rearrange themselves on the grid every single turn can quickly dash any long-term plans, and the constant need to reassess could either be refreshing and keep players on their toes or get a little tiresome. It's hard to say without some extended hands-on time with a localized version.

Radiant Historia is about a soldier named Stocke, who finds the White Chronicle which lets him travel in time in an attempt to stop a war. Consequently, the original game had two timelines it explored the causality between. As an extra incentive for RPGamers who've already played the original game, the remake will include an all-new extra timeline that will be available right out of the gate. The current release window for this 3DS title is sometime in early 2018.