I used to be an avid RPG player back in the SNES days. Hunting down and collecting everything Squaresoft was a given and the first logical step to take after Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger made you fall in love with the genre's beautiful 2D art design, wonderful music and above all its characters and story telling capabilities.
I also explored a little bit of Enix's "Illusion" and Capcom's "Breath of Fire" series, but it was when I was blessed with a modded Playstation that I started noticing some unconventional titles carrying the Atlus logo. Some would have a dark ambiance and unusual settings (like Persona), or just add original new twists to the classic sword-wielding hero adventure (Thousand Arms), but always standing out for their diversity, originality, and an unusually accurate and uncensored localization.
As time passes by, you learn to differentiate company styles and finally stick to the ones you like, and I'm always looking out for that little Atlus logo on the lower right corner of the box. Why? Because it means that its contents are straight from Japan, expertly localized and uncensored, and totally against the mainstream. Even if they are just publishing a title, it shows that they take the risk to bring us something different that somehow, in some way, it meets their standards. And I really like those standards.

WonderSwan Color cover

"Riviera: The Promised Land" is a 2005 GBA title developed by Sting Entertainment. It's darker than your usual Final Fantasy, has beautiful art design and music, and it executes quite different than the rest. A perfect candidate for Atlus to bring over to these shores.
But this is not just one of those rare good carts we get every couple of months inbetween "Megaman Battle Network"s and the rest of the agonizing GBA's crap (yes Babar, you too). Riviera was actually born on the japanese Wonderswan Color handheld back in 2002 as "Yakusoku No Chi Riviera", and published by Bandai. A PSP port followed, showing that this small portable RPG did enjoy some success on the GBA.

American GBA cover

The pictures you will see in this article are from Nintendo's portable unless otherwise noted, since both the GBA and the PSP remakes are exactly the same game that appeard on the WSC in 2002. Some minor upgrades and add-ons include: some voice acting, an additional ending, better artwork and more CG sequences for the GBA port; and full voice acting, even more CG sequences, improved graphics and extra scenes for the PSP.

Japanese GBA cover

Long ago, the great war called "Ragnarok" between gods and demons took place in Asgard. The gods' only chance to win was to sacrifice themselves and create the dark-winged "Grim Angels", who brandishing their weapons called "Diviners" defeated the demons.
Long after the gods passed away leaving some of their remaining power in Riviera, the demons are back. The only way to get rid of them this time is to use the god's remaining power and carry out "The Retribution", a last resort event that will destroy both Riviera and the demons. But what about the land's inhabitants? Is it worth it to sacrifice all of their lives for the greater good??
As one of the Grim Angels, your character Ein and its partner Ledah are sent to Riviera to carry out the mission. But you soon get separated, Ein ending up getting acquainted to the locals and Ledah obsessively trying to accomplish his task.

The cast:
Ein is a Grim Angel that gave up his wings to receive his powers, and a walking japanese stereotype at the same time. Which one? The insecure, shy and unexperienced but brave-in-the-end type. Ugh, disgusting.			Ledah is the cool and powerful Grim Angel that is stuck babysitting Ein. He's quiet and smart, and thinks only about his mission. After arriving at Riviera, Ledah spends most of the game on its own.
Lina is the energetic little brat of the bunch. She hangs around Fia all the time and attacks with bow and arrow.			Fia is the down-to-earth, kind, sweet and reliable token girl of every RPG. She's a fencer and is also the healer.
Cierra is a goofy witch. She has the coolest attack magic and is looking for a friend she got separated from while looking for spell ingredients at the ruins.			Serene is the last of the Arcs, a race of sprites exterminated by the Grim Angels. She is a tomboy with a cool scythe and bat-like wings.
Rose is Ein's inseparable talking pet, although not as dumb as the usual RPG familiar. She's kinda cool actually, and will suprise you on one of the endings.

The plot can be interesting but surely not something the game stands out for. The real "meat" of it is in the constant character interaction, relationship to one another, and cute and funny dialogs between them. It makes you care a little bit about them, which is a corner stone for good story writing.
Then there's the two unique gameplay characteristics that make this title so attractive. The first one, a sort of "dating sim", was also seen in Atlus' Thousand Arms: In case you haven't noticed, all of your friends during most of the adventure are girls. Your interaction with them on certain events and how they perform during battles will determine who your favorite girl is in the end, which in turn triggers one of the 6 endings you'll see.
The second one is how Riviera is presented in a "point-and-click" graphical adventure way instead of the traditional dungeon, town and map overhead views. The game is divided in stages, each of them composed by a series of interconnected isometric screens. The camera doesn't scroll following your character, but instead you exit the screen thru one of the up to four different directions (up, down, left or right) and a new screen is loaded.
In some of these you will find interactive spots marked by signs. By activating them you can open new paths, use mechanisms in the area, trigger special events or just open a treasure chest. All of this happens either instantly or after small button-pressing mini-games are succesfully completed.

Just press up on the directional pad to read the book, or press right to talk to CoCo.

And that's what makes Riviera stand out.
But the game is sadly not perfect. Besides its low variety of enemy fauna (it pulls out the old color-changing-enemy trick) the thing that frustrated me the most is that the inventory list has only 16 spaces and NO consolidating is possible. Throw in a weapon and potions for each member of your party and you end up with 12 spaces left. Only 12 spaces to store special weapons, magic items, relics and other treasure you will find. With no other way to store (or even consolidate the same type of items) you end up throwing away awesome Dragon Slayer swords, powerful magic rods and even status healing items because the stupid list is too small.

The numbers you see next to each item are not the quantity, but how many times that item can be used.

This is not Final Fantasy's humongeous item inventory, but for a game that is supposed to last over 30 hours with no other means of item storage and retrieval is just frustrating. It flat out forces you to keep it simple, which I guess is Riviera's approach to RPGs after all: No equipping except for weapons, very little statistics, etc.

Although Riviera was born on the WonderSwan Color which only supported up to 16 colors at one time, the characters and beautifully lighted backgrounds are depicted by having each a distinctive base color. This is more evident on the WSC, but even with the GBA's and PSP's full color palettes Sting chose to keep the coloring faithful to the original. This surprinsingly isn't an issue since the artwork has been redone completely (the original's was bad) and looks so good you won't even notice. The fact that these base colors also help so much to individualize and exalt each of your companions is a nice touch.
The PSP's sprites seem to have gone thru a smoothing video filter that makes them look a little blurry and definitely less defined. Most likely due to the differences in resolution. Still, some prefer the GBA version's graphics.

Japanese PSP cover

Sound-wise the WSC version sounds outdated, the GBA has quite some voice acting for a cartridge and the score is overall really good, and the PSP's enjoys full voice acting and an amazing arrange soundtrack. By the way, be sure to listen to the mp3s I have included at the bottom of the page, they are excellent. The arrange soundtrack's added choire voices, pianos, harps and even electric guitars are superb.

So don't let Riviera's inventory issues and overall simpleness keep you from experiencing this little wonder. Newcomers to the genre and action-rpg fans are the ones most likely to be pleased by its fresh exploration system and few statistics.
A very original game with that great old-school feel that, all in all, I still feel tempted to play thru again.

Japanese arrange soundtrack cover

Soundtrack:
	The Grim Angel (GBA)
	The Grim Angel (Arrange)
	The Promised Land Riviera (Arrange)
	Dark Sphere (Arrange)
	Picnic (Arrange)
	Time Has Past... (Arrange)
	The Final Battle (Arrange)
	Self-Discipline (Arrange)

If you enjoyed Riviera and want more, or just liked the artwork but couldn't get into the story or gameplay, check out Sting Entertainment's "Yggdra Union". A tactical RPG developed by the Riviera team also for GBA.

Sources:

http://lacrimacastle.net is a professional looking, lean and complete archive of everything Riviera. Including animated sprites, artwork, ending movies, soundtrack and more.

http://www.sting.co.jp/riviera is the official japanese Riviera site. Not too bad.