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haruki's Chrono Trigger (SNES)
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| [February 20, 2008 10:01:59 PM]
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Gamelog Entry #2
Gameplay:
This game is so fun! I have only finally begun to enjoy the true essence of Chrono Trigger’s unique battle system. It is definitely different from your standard RPG games where you have tiny animated sprites all stand neatly in line in one place, and then wait to attack, cast magic, or use items in a turn-based style. Chrono Trigger happened to be different in a sense that you have no idea where your party members will spread to during an encounter, and your position also determines what strategy should be used during the fight. It gave the gameplay something different and innovative, and it also drew me out of my boredom of only “click, click, click”-ing through the long narrations and scenes. There didn’t exist a “skip” option back then, sadly.
At certain times I noticed I selected horrible decisions and methods as to how to go about the battle. Crono has this one move, called “Cyclone”, where at most I could have slashed four enemies at once within a circular field, given if they were in a favorable and close knit position. Instead, I accidentally selected the enemy furthest away from the group, allowing me to only attack one. I was happy when I found the unique skills of the fighters as well. Since I am quite a fan on collaborative special moves, I had to refrain myself from screaming with joy when I not only saw duo combos, but triple combos as well. It is amazingly cool.
Despite the wonder battle style and skills the game gave me, I wasn’t too happy with how stereotype seems to follow us everywhere. The two girls who were in my party are, at the moment, HORRIBLE long range, close range, any range fighters. I have actually not found any good use of them except for maybe a certain fire spell or two, but even so, HORRIBLE. What is truly interesting is the fact that a frog, by the name “Frog”, who just happened to have wandered into my party was much better a fighter than those two COMBINED. I don’t want to sound like I’m exaggerating or anything, but it is interesting. The females have very low physical strength, whereas Frog, a frog, just happened to be able to kick butt. Interesting…Frog is cool though.
Design:
One of the oddities I noticed about the game was the map, where I move from place to place. It is fairly different from most other RPGs in a sense that there doesn’t really exists a town map or area map within the giant world map. I was fairly disappointed when I select a town and only find myself inside a room. One of the most enjoyable parts about a game is giving the player a large field to explore, but if I’m only limited to the world map and room or field, then it takes the fun out of exploring the area around that room or field. When I walk in near what I see is a town on the map, BOOM! I’m inside a bar, or inn, or mayor’s house. There’s no actual town. I want to see the other settings that surround that “event place” or important place that I have to go to in order for progression and events to occur. I felt that the game world was very small and unable to expand itself. But then again, the plot of Chrono Trigger is about time travel and the makers have to make dramatically different fields to match the time I’m in, even if I am in the same area.
I think the game did a very good job in presenting humor and expression to the 8-bit sprites. For instance, during the cut scenes, depending on whichever situations, Crono would be able to look surprised, triumphant, shocked, hurt, etc. It’s actually interesting to see visual sprite expressions in comparison to most others where they’re only able to walk and talk.
The art design for the game (of which I am sure the artist is Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragonball, DragonballZ, etc…) was simply superb. I was sure that I recognized the Toriyama’s artwork style once I saw the cover of the game. Although technically the world field is pretty small, the game field is not. There is time skip to consider, so the artist literally has to redesign each place and setting to correlate with the time skips. The result was beautiful as I travelled between Dark Ages 600 A.D. to Present 1000 A.D. and Future 2300 A.D. The contrast between the world’s geography and atmosphere was simply amazing, from bright, happy present to dark, industrial future.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 20th, 2008 at 22:02:42.
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| [February 20, 2008 04:04:25 PM]
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Gamelog Entry #1
Summary : Chrono Trigger is an innovative RPG narrative game where you play as Crono, a young man who ventures through mysterious time warps with his friends Lucca and Marle in an adventure to prevent a catastrophic future.
GamePlay: Chrono Trigger has actually been on one of my “Must Play” list for the past several years after hearing so much praise about it. I was delighted to have found that it was on the Classics lists, giving me a reason to finally play it. The game started out with a stereotypical beginning, where you find yourself in your room, head downstairs, and talk to your mom for the story to begin, very pokemonesque. After playing for around say fifteen minutes, I realized that my character doesn’t have a voice in the game. When interacting with other characters in the game, it is always them who talks, and my character either just listen, or an option bar shows up for me to make decisions for him. I actually enjoyed this style of narration because it allows more openness or room for me to view myself as the main character of the game and give my own perception of the story.
I found the overall gameplay to be very typical, where I just navigate my avatar around until I find something interesting to progress through. It's actually slightly boring and tedious because I don't feel like the game's really letting me interact with it. Then again, it is an RPG where story is everything. I don't exactly know exactly what my objective is in the game yet, but the story so far is interesting. I've obtained two party members so far, one of which disappeared through a time warp due to a teleportation machine malfunctioning. Naturally, I jump through the portal to save my damsel in distress, and WOW. The whole map almost completely changed when I traveled back in time. I notice the interesting things about games. They either have to have really good gameplay, or really good plot. It has to be one or the other, or both! Game plot at the moment just got interesting, and we'll see how much more interesting and intricate it can be.
This entry has been edited 3 times. It was last edited on Feb 21st, 2008 at 17:03:58.
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haruki's Chrono Trigger (SNES)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 20 February, 2008
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