The introduction of a quest to teach Gafka his best techniques makes it clear that Radiant Historia is winding down. Not to mention that the stores of late have had incredible equipment available, only the smallest amount of which has been within range of Stocke and co's gold, though.
Radiant Historia's been pretty good about keeping an even keel on the cost-to-winnings ratio. If you fight most of the battles offered you'll always have enough gold to equip your party (at least your main party) upon arrival in a new town. The game does tempt you away from this model, though, when you gain the ability to make Stocke invisible. When this ability's enabled enemies can't see you and you can slip through whole areas without getting into a single fight. Doing so gets you through the game a little bit faster, but also costs you gold and experience.
Yet, in a way, in costing you gold and experience for running through chunks of the game invisible, it does something interesting. It plays on your laziness by allowing you to fight strategically even late in the game. Depending on your party of choice of course. But with Raynie, Marco, and Stocke, for example, there's enough balance between techniques to do damage and techniques to cause status effects to open every fight by poisoning the enemy and lowering their stats or raising your own.
Rather interestingly, then, the game's chief mechanic of allowing you to shuffle through time is also present in the way you play the game, since you can shuffle through play styles to adapt to it throughout.
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