|
Thursday 21 February, 2008
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...
|
