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Sir Whompus's Chrono Trigger (SNES)
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| [February 21, 2008 07:56:19 PM]
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Game play:
It seems as though even outside Chrono Trigger I am traveling through time, because what seemed like a few minutes turned out to be a couple hours. Since I left off, I have journeyed backward and forwards through time just by sheer accident. When I say accident I don't mean the means, I mean the reason. The story line in Chrono is amazingly plausible. The characters act like real people, not driven by some divine writer that said "this would make a good plot". For example, I just rescued the girl from the past and returned to the future only to find that I was going on trial for kidnapping her! But wait, it gets better: I caused the trial to occur by saving the royal advisor in the past; after his rescue, he was determined to make a legal system to put away criminals... but i didn't know that I would end up as a victim of the system I indirectly created. I didn't need to rescue the advisor; he was locked up in a chest, and had I not opened it I wouldn't have been tried. However, the fact of the matter was that I did get on trial, and was forced to break out of prison. In an attempt to escape the guards, I had to use one of the time gates to lose them, ending up in the future. It surprised me that the reason wasn't "go kill this bad guy", but more of a "run the hell away" reason. In fact, they haven't even introduced the main villan yet.
Anyways, after I played for another 2 hours I was delighted with the battle system. It's natural, without any random encounters (gasp!). Well, their are "random encounters", but they actually show the enemies popping out from bushes or from off screen so it makes sense. It was a small touch that I think makes alot more sense than the normal system. As well as a actual decent introduction to battles, the battles themselves were fun. For instance, bosses require you to think. The first boss I encountered would counterattack when it was hit from far enough away, but wouldn't when it was close to you. I powered through the fight, but I almost died because I did not wait for him to move to a more tactically sound position. The second boss also required though; by reading a book on a desk, you gained information that the boss (divided into 3 parts) would heal itself and was immune to fire until the head was destroyed. It made the fight much more difficult, because the first time I fought him, I was unaware what part was healing, which led to my demise.
Design:
The design of this game is, quite frankly, amazing. I can see why it is on the classics list: from the story to level design to battle systems, it is a very well put together the use of time periods as level design seemed to be a tricky way to pull it off; unless they actually changed the map it would get repetative. However, after finding my way to the futuristic zone, I was no longer worried. The continents are completely redone, as the entire world was (to the best of my knowledge) devistated by war. Craters cover the ground, and people live in small civilizations called domes. Talking to the NPCs, I found that food is hard to come by, probably because the land doesn't seem fit to grow anything.
I wondered after the last log if healing moves would be part of the double tech abilities. Surprising enough, I found that they were combined with attack techs. For instances, when you combine a heal with a AoE, it makes the heal affect all party members. It was an interesting way to include the healing in the tech combos, and one that I will be interested to see more of. The fact that bosses requires you to think is another great improvement over most RPGs. Where in most you can power your way through bosses without much thinking, in Chrono that does not seem to be the case unless you happened to be very, very over leveled. It seems like the battles will not get boring unless they end up rehashing the same abilities for the bosses over and over.
The story was also impressive; as I mentioned before, it has characters that seem alive, with motivations other than "i must do (insert quest) to save the world!" One of the party members is a princess who, at this point, has rejected her father as a fool who can't even think beyond the crown. Another, your best friend, follows you because she tried to break you out of prison before finding out you had done it yourself. Finally, the Chrono himself seems caught up in a tangle of problems just because he was interested in a girl. I have high expectations of the story and character development, and doubt I will be disappointed.
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| [February 21, 2008 05:31:26 PM]
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Summary:
Taking up the persona of Crono, you fight to save the world in the classic RPG setting. However, the world is divided into different time periods, making the world many times more expansive than normal. While the design of the planet is similar throughout the game, each time period is obviously different from another in both culture and even in geography. One of the first games to offer a real time battle system, it is faster paced than games that came before it, but still allows you to choose the typical turn style of RPGs if you so desire.
Game Play:
Amazingly, this game does not start off with an epic struggle between the forces of good and evil, or really any kind of conflict what so ever. It starts off with a simple day to the fair. Crono, the stereotypical strong yet quiet lead for this game, gets a day off to go visit friends and just relax. When he gets there, he meets a young girl named Marle, who is obvious the other half of the romantic storyline. Guess Crono works really fast... Anyways, you spend the day with this cute, interesting girl by doing events you normally find at fairs. A strong-arm bell ringing contest, food, a horror tent, more food, fights with a gigantic singing robot, a pie eating contest... Oh, and lets not forget the teleporter demonstration. What could possibly go wrong there?
Anyways, after you've had your fill of the carnival minigames (that took an hour for me...) you meet Crono's nerdy friend, Lucca, who is demonstrating her newest invention, a teleporter! Square did a wonderful job of the carnival, creating a scene that relaxes you and makes you think you are just getting character development... but then Marle decides to try the teleporter and all of a sudden a huge flash appears and there is no more Marle. But wait, you've known this girl for a full day, you can't just let her dissappear! You travel back in time, and start the real gameplay.
While the battles at the fair helped to level you and get you used to the combat system, you begin to get your real battle moves soon after you leave the fair. Instead of magics and battle skills, you have different Techs for each character. If you have the right ones, you can combine 2 Techs of 2 characters to create double techs, which cause much more damage. Its an interesting system, and one that I have just begun to unlock. What I am curious about is if later on, once you get a healer, if you will be able to double tech buffs to give yourself some amazing advantages. I doubt it, but it would be pretty cool...
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Sir Whompus's Chrono Trigger (SNES)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 20 February, 2008
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