|
Wednesday 20 February, 2008
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.
|
