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Thursday 21 February, 2008
Gameplay
On my second time today through chrono trigger, I have taken a small break from the main story and I am just enjoying the atmosphere of the game. This game is renowned for having one of the greatest soundtracks on the super nintendo and I decided I would just appreciate that. The soundtrack contains many catchy tunes that I will find myself humming tommorow and is very fitting. It's hard for me to describe music through text but the music is never inappropriate. Sad tunes play during sad moments, exciting and upbeat tunes play during chase scenes, it really makes the game much easier to get into.
Doing nothing to advance the story in this game is still rewarding. The people who you can talk to are interesting and have distinct personalities that they are able to express through 1 or 4 lines of text. Theres the annoyed girl that would rather spend time at the fair, the mean drunk, the gambler, the happy old man who gets mad if you eat his lunch. It is nice to know that this game offers more than just a story for players.
Design
The level design for this game is very well done. They not only look nice, but are fitting to the current time period such as peaceful present to the grim future. The paths that you can take are mostly linear but with occasional dead ends that contain items.
This game has a few bits of innovation in it that seperates itself from the massive library of RPGs on the SNES. One aspect is the Active Time Battle system itself. I know a couple of games have this now but back in 1995, this was the first I have ever seen of this kind. The system basically made it so that if the player did not move or input any commands during a battle, the enemy monsters were free to attack again instead of taking turns like in traditional RPGs.
One bit of innovation that I've seen is the 8 way run. It is surprising that something so obvious wasn't implemented sooner. Most RPGs that I have played in the past restricted my character to moving up,down,left or right but this game decided that 4 directions was not enough. While this is a staple in any RPG today, it was not there for alot of games back in the 16 bit era.
The reward structure is pretty generic for RPGs. It is basically once you destroy enough monsters and collect enough experience points, you gained a level and all your statistics increase by a bit. This is boring and overdone even back then. The only thing that I found amusing was that if you grabbed an item in the present and then go back in time, you can grab the item again. I guess that somewhat rewards you if you kept in mind some time travel logic.
This game is very satisfying to play and I would not change much to this game. Besides the boring level up system, there isn't much to complain about. Like many fans, the only thing I can really gripe about is why does this game have to come to an end?
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