The Chrono Campaign Has Begun

[Forsaken Lover]

I would have said "Chrono Crusade" but that's an anime that has nothing to do with this.

i am playing the DS version because...I have no idea.

Anyway, initial thoughts:

1. What is this combat system? I did not expect this. I was picturing FF combat with everyone just politely staring at each other across a field. The "tutorial fight" I guess you can call it against Gato was an eye-opener. His always counteattacking you and only being able to hit you when he was close enough seemed to be telling me that the enemies moving about will be highly significant. Does them being closer to you increase the damage you and they can output? That would make sense. So basically time all your hits when they are close for maximum damage.

2. Is thee a way to switch between characters in combat? If both my characters' turns are up and Enemy 1 is near Crono and I want to control Marle can I move over to giving her a command?

3. Speaking of Marle, could she possibly be the tomboy princess the king couldn't control? She doesn't seem very tomboyish to me... But it seems kinda blatantly obvious. I wonder if our name selection for her was her making up an alias.

4. Oh and one more note about Marle.
Taban: MOVE ALONG AND ENJOY THE FESTIVAL! Forget you saw that girl probably being killed. (I know she's not dead but how the hell do any of the spectators know that? Someone call the police!)

5 oh yeah, police. What time IS this? Robots, matter transporters stolen from The Fly, yet they have a kingdom and a king and I just don't know. Maybe there are no police in this time period.

6. I know it sounds like I'm ribbing on the game but truth be told I'm enjoying it. It looks surprisingly good on my TV, the battle system is not quite what I expected and then there's that music. I've heard like five tracks so far and they've all been really good. I need to hear more of that song that played when Gato was talking before and after the tutorial fight.

[Pumpkin]

3. Speaking of Marle, could she possibly be the tomboy princess the king couldn't control? She doesn't seem very tomboyish to me... But it seems kinda blatantly obvious.

Haha, I commented on this in my LP thread xD I agree with you. Seems more like they wanted to reinforce the idea of her being a tomboy despite being probably the least tomboyish of the ladies in the game



4. Oh and one more note about Marle.
Taban: MOVE ALONG AND ENJOY THE FESTIVAL! Forget you saw that girl probably being killed. (I know she's not dead but how the hell do any of the spectators know that? Someone call the police!)

I think they were trying to play it off like it was totally safe just didn't work the way they planned since it was a new invention. And since people knew nothing about it they believed it.

Sorry I can't help you with the gameplay questions, I honestly don't remember most of it. I thought you could switch characters on the DS version was to just move the arrow over or tap her window commands with the stylus, but I could be wrong about that. I did find the combat very similar to FF though

[VeloZer0]

1. Does them being closer to you increase the damage you and they can output?
No, but most of the special moves only target relative to a certain position.

2. Is thee a way to switch between characters in combat?
IIRC you just move the cursor sideways.

[Freya]

Ooo i'm excited for your adventure :3

[Forsaken Lover]

Yeah it was pretty simple to change control of characters, I'm just dumb. The DS dual screen really weirded me out at first.

Now we're back in time trying to save the real Queen Leene because Time Travel Domino Effect. Pretty typical stuff. Those vile Fiendlord servants or demons or whatever are a whacky group though. I liked their thinly veiled nun disguises followed by a whole room of them just chilling out at a bar. I can see the comments I've read about this being a quaint, light-hearted but well-told story are pretty spot-on.

And there's Frog and Lucca. Not much in the way of characterization yet and I don't expect any from Crono so I can't say much on that scene right now.

[Forsaken Lover]

What in the world is going on in this game??? I hope this....modern(?) Chancellor is an evil demon in disguise too because holy hell, I don't think it gets more 'Kangaroo Court" than what I just saw. You'd need actual kangaroos to make it more absurd and stupid.

I did like that everything I did in the Fair was brought up though. That's pretty interesting. I have no idea if it changed anything or if my selection of dialogue during the "trial" affected anything either but it was still an unexpected and pleasant surprise. And i didn't mean to eat that one dude's food. I was just mashing X in tried-and-true video game tradition.

That first boss, Yakra, wasn't a pushover either. I'm guessing spamming Double Techs is a no-no for boss fights since it looks like that dude always used his attack-all move in response to that. I would guess a lot of bosses will have that gimmick. Lucca died my first attempt before I learned not to just spam DTs. Well that and also I didn't use Frog's healing magic. I didn't think I'd need healing for the first boss of the game.

[NeoCracker]

...Oddly Counter attacking you isn't really all that common. :p

[Sephiroth]

Now we're back in time trying to save the real Queen Leene because Time Travel Domino Effect.

At least the story notices that this is not possible and starts talking about something probably possible later without spoilering.

[Spuuky]

I did like that everything I did in the Fair was brought up though. That's pretty interesting. I have no idea if it changed anything or if my selection of dialogue during the "trial" affected anything either but it was still an unexpected and pleasant surprise. It does change things. You can be convicted or acquitted (although eventually the final result is the same). Perfect avenue for New Game+ to show its worth.

[Wolf Kanno]

1. What is this combat system? I did not expect this. I was picturing FF combat with everyone just politely staring at each other across a field. The "tutorial fight" I guess you can call it against Gato was an eye-opener. His always counteattacking you and only being able to hit you when he was close enough seemed to be telling me that the enemies moving about will be highly significant. Does them being closer to you increase the damage you and they can output? That would make sense. So basically time all your hits when they are close for maximum damage.

No, with the timing though you have probably figured that out by now but several attacks in the game including your own deal with proximity so its about making sure to make the most of moves by waiting to let the enemies line up right or prioritizing enemies that have close range attacks. It's a pretty novel system.


5 oh yeah, police. What time IS this? Robots, matter transporters stolen from The Fly, yet they have a kingdom and a king and I just don't know. Maybe there are no police in this time period.

It's kind of a quasi -modern/medieval/20 minutes into the future time.



6. I know it sounds like I'm ribbing on the game but truth be told I'm enjoying it. It looks surprisingly good on my TV, the battle system is not quite what I expected and then there's that music. I've heard like five tracks so far and they've all been really good. I need to hear more of that song that played when Gato was talking before and after the tutorial fight.
It's called Gonzales Theme (Gato's Japanese name) and if you pay attention his "singing" actually syncs up to the music. He was Sakaguchi's favorite contribution to the game. :)



I did like that everything I did in the Fair was brought up though. That's pretty interesting. I have no idea if it changed anything or if my selection of dialogue during the "trial" affected anything either but it was still an unexpected and pleasant surprise. And i didn't mean to eat that one dude's food. I was just mashing X in tried-and-true video game tradition.

This was apparently Hiroyuki's Itpo's idea to have your actions in the beginning affect the story and it syncs up nicely with gameplay them of replay value.


That first boss, Yakra, wasn't a pushover either. I'm guessing spamming Double Techs is a no-no for boss fights since it looks like that dude always used his attack-all move in response to that. I would guess a lot of bosses will have that gimmick. Lucca died my first attempt before I learned not to just spam DTs. Well that and also I didn't use Frog's healing magic. I didn't think I'd need healing for the first boss of the game.

Yeah some of the bosses can be brutal in this game if you're not prepared or over-leveled. Sounds like you're taking notice of the counter commands though so I feel you should be okay. Hope you're enjoying it so far. :cool:

[Spuuky]

6. I know it sounds like I'm ribbing on the game but truth be told I'm enjoying it. It looks surprisingly good on my TV, the battle system is not quite what I expected and then there's that music. I've heard like five tracks so far and they've all been really good. I need to hear more of that song that played when Gato was talking before and after the tutorial fight.
It's called Gonzales Theme (Gato's Japanese name) and if you pay attention his "singing" actually syncs up to the music. He was Sakaguchi's favorite contribution to the game. :)This seems like an appropriate time to mention this "song"...

http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00313

It is worth listening to. I guarantee it.

[Forsaken Lover]

Got my first Game Over thanks to that boss in the sewer in...2300 AD I think it was? His stupid little minions the second time around constantly kept doing this move that hit everyone in my party so I decided just to focus on the big guy for a bit then kill off the two little guys and before he could resummon them I had killed the main boss.
Oh and we also got our first peak of Lavos. I more or less know the entire deal with Lavos already but I'm sure there are a lot of finer details I don't know about so looking forward to learning all about that.

So our heroes are resolved to save the world and prevent the grim fate of mankind. Only, remember that whole tinkering with the past thing making Marle blip out of existence? If we prevent Lavos from destroying the world, does that mean Robo will never have been built? I didn't get a good grasp of where exactly he was form or what he was built for. I guess from the other robots and Robo's words he was built to guard that factory but what was the factory for? Was it just some regular human-structure so Robo will be created anyway even if we prevent the current future or whatever?

Time travel gives me a headache.

Not a whole lot to report...just some dungeon crawling and Robo probably had the only character development he'll have for the entire game. He's gonna be rusting in the End of Time probably while I use everyone else.

[Sephiroth]

So our heroes are resolved to save the world and prevent the grim fate of mankind. Only, remember that whole tinkering with the past thing making Marle blip out of existence? If we prevent Lavos from destroying the world, does that mean Robo will never have been built?

That was just a theoretical explanation without fully closed logic. Just as the causality paradoxes in Final Fantasy XIII-2 cannot happen and though must be accepted with a grain of salt (and we don't talk about "fantasy-world so itc an happen" but a chain of events that is not possible through its axiomatic state of not being true and false at the same time, those things can only co-exist in theory). You do not need to worry about this, Chrono Trigger works with a multiversal concept and what did happen in one time line happened always on thar time line. If anything, Leene's vanishing would have meant another time branch and that is without Marle but the Marle we already have does not cease to exist. Right before the ultimate boss a certain character also mentions "this is one of many possibile realities". Not that I believe this works because it also has flaws but it is at least somehow imaginable. The story probably also mixes some things sometimes and makes mistakes but overall it is meant as Multiversal Time Tree. Later you can also do some things through time traveling and there probably mistakes have been made as only one time is shown all the time so it seems a bit like "things were changed" like for certain characters or locations. Actually those would be other times instead and not changed/replaced times.

It is such a thing:

http://www11.pic-upload.de/27.08.14/g9334uh5uwib.jpg

The other branch should be "and Goku kills Cyborg Freezer" obviously.

So the only two things possible for time travelling are you "initiate" (or better "repeat") exactly the same thing on exactly the same timeline and were actually a part of that or you do something that was not a part of that timeline and this means another branch is a part of the concept. Both things happen in Chrono Trigger. The first thing with the saddest scene and the other one with almost everything else.



I didn't get a good grasp of where exactly he was form or what he was built for. I guess from the other robots and Robo's words he was built to guard that factory but what was the factory for? Was it just some regular human-structure so Robo will be created anyway even if we prevent the current future or whatever?

You will get to know where he is from and his time exists already.

[Forsaken Lover]

I think you're overthinking things a tad. This game doesn't seem to have nearly as complex a story as you are making it out to be. Or rather, it doesn't take its story that seriously. Stuff just happens and that is that. The party can alter time at free will but somehow they are never affected by this I am told.

You're also dropping a text bomb about the whole cosmic scheme of the game and I'm not even halfway through it so....

[Sephiroth]

I don't overthink anything that was implied by characters and proven by sequels. Also I didn't spoiler with that text.

[Forsaken Lover]

Wasn't there only one sequel? Regardless, all that you said boiled down to "when you change the past, you don't change your past, you just make another timeline" right? Basically what Future Trunks did. he altered the fate of the other timeline but he did nothing to help his own.

But I dunno, it seems like the whole temporal and spatial workings of the series is up for debate. One reason i wanted to play the games was I saw several topics discussing this very matter. The exact connection between Trigger and Cross seems to play heavily on what you believe about how time travel works here.

Hell some people say the DS version of Trigger I'm playing is a different timeline from the original Trigger.


I think I can already see why fans of Chrono Trigger don't like Cross. Cross is a ~super serious~ game if I'm getting it right. All about existential themes and whatnot. Chrono Trigger seems extremely light-hearted. Fiends chilling at the bar talking about how much they want to eat humans while whacky music plays, now I'm back in super-olden times and just got wasted with a cave woman and Lucca and yeah. Unless this game does a total 180, I don't foresee this game coming close to Contemplate Our Navels.

Not that it isn't enjoyable because it is. Just some of my pondering about the massive divide in the fandom.

As for my report on Trigger, it's fun and all but I'm kinda waiting for the plot to really kick into gear. Sure we have a "goal' in the loosest sense of the term but there's no urgency or drive. We're kinda just wandering about trying to fix the Masamune for some reason. Oh well I guess the reason is so Frog will cheer up but that's still doesn't seem to have anything to do with the larger problem here.

Also I guess it doesn't help I'm kinda ahead of the plot in terms of the whole Lavos situation. The heroes think Magus made it but I know better. Kinda hard not to know the whole deal with Lavos when you hang around RPG boards for years and years.

I'm kinda hoping we meet Magus soon. Maybe then the game will kick into high gear.

[Wolf Kanno]

Wasn't there only one sequel? Regardless, all that you said boiled down to "when you change the past, you don't change your past, you just make another timeline" right? Basically what Future Trunks did. he altered the fate of the other timeline but he did nothing to help his own.

But I dunno, it seems like the whole temporal and spatial workings of the series is up for debate. One reason i wanted to play the games was I saw several topics discussing this very matter. The exact connection between Trigger and Cross seems to play heavily on what you believe about how time travel works here.

Hell some people say the DS version of Trigger I'm playing is a different timeline from the original Trigger.


I think I can already see why fans of Chrono Trigger don't like Cross. Cross is a ~super serious~ game if I'm getting it right. All about existential themes and whatnot. Chrono Trigger seems extremely light-hearted. Fiends chilling at the bar talking about how much they want to eat humans while whacky music plays, now I'm back in super-olden times and just got wasted with a cave woman and Lucca and yeah. Unless this game does a total 180, I don't foresee this game coming close to Contemplate Our Navels.

Not that it isn't enjoyable because it is. Just some of my pondering about the massive divide in the fandom.

Chrono Cross spends a good amount of time trying to rectify how time travel worked in CT and the whole reason why is because when the scenes were being written their were two different writers with two different ideas about time travel and no one caught the paradox until the game was shipped. Sadly the main writer chose to seriously look at the screwy implication of time travel in CC instead of hand waving the whole thing like most CT fans felt it should have been. Though there are many reasons why CT fans hate CC and it's not simply just the characters dropping serious philosophical monologues about time-travel with the drop of a hat.

CT does touch upon the issues of screwing with time but not as heavy handed or anvilicious as CC does it. Also, you will see Robo getting more character development later if you do two of the side missions. He's actually one of the more endearing characters to be honestly, just ask shion.


As for my report on Trigger, it's fun and all but I'm kinda waiting for the plot to really kick into gear. Sure we have a "goal' in the loosest sense of the term but there's no urgency or drive. We're kinda just wandering about trying to fix the Masamune for some reason. Oh well I guess the reason is so Frog will cheer up but that's still doesn't seem to have anything to do with the larger problem here.

Also I guess it doesn't help I'm kinda ahead of the plot in terms of the whole Lavos situation. The heroes think Magus made it but I know better. Kinda hard not to know the whole deal with Lavos when you hang around RPG boards for years and years.

I'm kinda hoping we meet Magus soon. Maybe then the game will kick into high gear.

Yeah, the party is getting Masemune and trying to convince Frog to wield it because they think Magus is getting ready to create him. The party is kind of going blind because they don't realize the truth yet and its going to kick off some surprises for them.

[Pumpkin]

I didn't like CC because the gameplay was horrendous (in my opinion) and most of the characters near the beginning made me want to punch them in the face. Also, it hurts my eyes. for the record, I tried CC before CT so that didn't influence my opinion at all

But yes, Robo (I named him Freddy) is an absolute dear :flirt:

[Sephiroth]

Wasn't there only one sequel? Regardless, all that you said boiled down to "when you change the past, you don't change your past, you just make another timeline" right? Basically what Future Trunks did. he altered the fate of the other timeline but he did nothing to help his own.


Exactly. Except it is more like "you do not change anything at all because the state of change would mean the contradictory non-existence and so if anything you can only make something new and independent" like at least Dragon Ball did or Chrono Trigger. What he and Cell did was the reason for our heroes' timeline to exist (always just as the non-arrival of Cell was always the reason for Trunks' timeline to exist) but no matter what he did, he just helped Goku and the others. Just as Gohan asked "what if you travel back to the past and shut down 17 and 18" and he said "that would only help for another time but in this time they are already active. In his own timeline the only things that helped from his adventure were his new powers that he got while training with Vegeta in the Room of Spirit and Time.

I am personally glad that those things in Chrono Trigger were a bit more defined because I am okay with plot holes and like with FInal Fantasy XIII-2 I can look over these things for what I like about it but if it is not necessary to be written like this than I prefer it this way.

Also the word "sequels" might have been misleading. I did not really mean it like "there are other sequels". I just talked about multiple things and a sequel that I did not specify so I said "sequels".

[Forsaken Lover]

I must say, things really have started moving. The Fiendlord Keep was an excellent little dungeon. I liked the music but I also liked that the music didn't start playing right away. I wandered around both of the little hallways first with it being absolutely silent and it was pretty eerie.

Ozzie and his traps was annoying but at least it gave you the sense of drawing ever closer and closer to the main man himself. Magus looks pretty cool and his actual introduction to us, with the screen being pitch black except for the light sslowly flickering on, was pretty atmospheric. I am always impressed with how cinematic even a SNES game can be. Magus' intro and boss fight were all really well done considering technical limitations.

Oh and i guess I shouldn't skip over Frog's, Glenn's, backstory. My general impression is he's by far everyone's favorite character and I can see why. I really liked that flashback and his theme song is suitably awesome and heroic so when he finally takes up the Masamune it was great.

So my vague memories of people discussing Magus over the years is he's not an out-and-out villain. I have no idea if I'm right on this but perhaps he's a Well-Inentioned Extremist? In any event, he has some pretty evil servants who capture the souls of the poor humans they murder and keep them in perpetual agony. That's pretty evil.

But now we're back in BC with Ayla and I'm not sure what will come next. I would guess genocide of the Reptiles since they are the powerful, intelligent and presumably dominant species on the Earth yet there is no trace of them in the future.

[Pumpkin]

I'm not a huge Frog fan. I mean he's fine, but he never really stood out to me. He was just kinda... there. Anyone who followed my LP can tell you who my favourite characters are :P

Glad you're enjoying it!

[Wolf Kanno]

Magus' Castle is easily one of the game's biggest highlights though you're not in the part where the plot really starts moving along.

Frog is a wonderful character but honestly there really isn't a character I don't like in this game, though I do tend to bench Marle for most of the game. I can't say much about Magus because I don't want to spoil to much but he's a much more complex character than you're led to believe.

[NeoCracker]

I'll just say 'Well intentioned Extremist' isn't really the right trope to go off here.

And Robo, if built right, is probably the strongest character in the game. :p

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll just say 'Well intentioned Extremist' isn't really the right trope to go off here.

And Robo, if built right, is probably the strongest character in the game. :p

He has lousy synergy with other team builds though, not to mention "building him" means pouring every Magic Tab/Speed Tab you can find into him and then farming the rest. :p

[NeoCracker]

Fuck team Synergy, dude can group heal for as much as Marle/Chrono's duel techs, gets every offensive element outside of water, and is a fucking tank.

Speed tabs are a dime a dozen, and you don't really need magic tabs for any one else at that point. This is without even needing to steal tabs from certain creatures in the game.

[Forsaken Lover]

Hey we finally arrived at Zeal!

And there it goes.

That was quick.

I thought that Golem boss was an unwinnable fight. It started off really bad with the thing doing like 300 damage to Crno with one attack and then it hit Marle with an attack that did 500. Needless to say I was worried at this point, thinking I had fucked up somewhere and should be stronger. But then once I got her back up and got Haste on everyone and finally started attacking it, the fight became a joke. I have no idea what was up with the beginning but as soon as we started using Iceberg Toss and doing over 1K of damage, it never hit me with anything strong again. I didn't have toheal at all anymore. It was very peculiar.

I'm glad I brought Ayla along though. i was thinking maybe I'd have preferred Frog but that Iceberg Toss is awesome.

Oh yeah, everyone kinda forgot about Magus possibly coming to Prehistory with us. I guess a giant fiery "rock" falling from the sky will make you forget the littler details but still. After Lavos fell and we went tO Zeal I felt the plot slipping away again. We were just wandering aimlessly until we happened to find the Palace and Marles Pendant opened the door and really nothing more has been explained or discussed, just a lot of Events occurring.

RIP Reptiles.

[Spuuky]

Wait, you have gathered that Frog is everyone's favorite character? Isn't he, like, the 5th most popular character?

Also, which character is the "most powerful" is really situational. Ayla's guaranteed 9999 crits are awfully good. Crono's definitely-not-Ultima is really good (and so is quad-slash or whatever). Really most characters are very powerful.

[Forsaken Lover]

Crono has no personality. You can't really like him. Saying you like Crono is saying you like yourself the most.
Robo I've never heard one thing about in all my years of being on RPG boards.
Same for Ayla.
That leaves Frog, Lucca and Marle. I have heard a lot of people say they like Lucca.

Also i just got the Epoch. Wasn't sure what to do so I went to 1999. Then I said I'd fight Lavos. He ain't so tough!
Changes attack mode?
And again?
And again?

Apparently he'd change enough to kick my ass so that was a bust.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well the Ocean Palace was a fairly long dungeon and I was tired even before it. I'm getting ahead of myself though. Why do they call it the Mountain of Woe? That was the Mountain of Win with all the mad EXP, TP and money I got.

So Lavos awoke and doomed the world as anybody could have predicted. Power-mad despot tampers with all-powerful evil thing and then it bites them in the ass is something I've been seeing in fiction since I was little. Crono is missing though so that's unexpected. And I guess I should have foreseen Magus being Prophet but I'm sleepy so give me a break.

Schala seems oddly close to Crono considering his total lack of a personality and the fact they knew each other a whopping five minutes, maybe less. Actually the reverse is true, the party is bizarrely invested in her when she doesn't really have much personality either and we've spent no real time with her.

I'm still waiting for someone to suggest "okay so Lavos almost killed us and maybe killed Crono. Why not just use TIME TRAVEL to stop that from happening?" That seems like it be the first thing on my mind if I had time travel and something I didn't want to happen just happened. I'd be like "whoops! Do Over!"

Well I guess at least I'm excited to see what will happen next. I honestly have no clue what could be the next bit of plot development.

[Wolf Kanno]

To be fair to the party and Schala, she's about the first and sadly one of the few, decent human beings in the Zeal timeline. For her, you were the first group of people she met who would actually do something about all the madness going on in that time period.

[VeloZer0]

Just a little FYI on party set up. Ayla has the 'Charm' technique, which is basically 'Steal'. As you get near the end of the game, and on to the 'end game' bosses there are very nice things that you can get from charming bosses, and certain enemies (Mainly speed tabs). For that reason alone she is always in my party.

[Forsaken Lover]

I had her in my party already ever since she helped me against the Golem and you aren't the only person extolling the virtues of Charm to me so I'll be sure to keep her in my party. I had taken no notice of that Tech until now though so I'm glad you told me. I can start getting Megalixirs which be awesome. Well not now but at some point.

Apparently poor Marle lags behind everyone else. New Game+ sounds ridiculously broken and easy according to a guy elsewhere:

Marle only falls out of favor after you've reached New Game+.

What happens is that once you get everyone's ultimate gear, the game kind of breaks down mechanically. Auto attacks are free, tend to hit as hard or even harder than techniques, and even if they don't, they will do more damage than a Double or even Triple technique. And Marle's best weapons are kind of weak compared to everyone else's.

Don't need a dedicated healer, because you pummel your way through everything and the defensive bonuses from gear get kind of crazy. And even if you do need healing, megaelixirs start falling into your lap once you figure out that Ayla's charm skill is a game-breaker in of itself.

Marle is one of the best characters, being a participant in some of the best combos in the game, but once you reach a certain power ceiling, she lags behind because her skills aren't really needed.

[NeoCracker]

The thing is, even without new game plus, Frog or Robo with your magic tabs still end up being the better healers, as their group heals don't require two people to preform. Of course this requires knowing this stuff in advance. If you know what you're doing, she's kind of replaceable by Zeal on your first play through.

The only real benefit of Marle is duel techs, but there are plenty of dual techs that group heal you don't need her for, and Frog and Lucca both have some pretty sweet duel techs with others.

Don't get me wrong, Marle is definately useful, and you're not going to feel disadvantaged for using her at all. But yeah, she kind of lags behind everyone else in the game in terms of usefulness.

[Forsaken Lover]

It's rather amazing how fast you can become invested in a story or character.

Magus being Janus is....so fitting it's really perfect. I recall the one NPC saying Janus got sucked into a Gate too but I never imagined this. It makes so much sense and it's very, very intriguing. Also unexpected. Being unexpected counts for a lot since even as good as the story has been, it's been very "I saw that coming" for the most part. Granted this isn't the game's fault entirely. Point is, Janus = Magus is great and I'm glad I saved before fighting him. I was right on the money he wouldn't join my party if I fought him then. I knew Magus became a playable character at some point and was kinda "eh" about using him but now I HAVE TO use him. There is no other way. This reveal has really just changed everything for me in quite a few ways.

[NeoCracker]

This is why I said he wasn't really a well intentioned extremist. Magus really isn't a good person. He's kind of an asshole whose dickishness so happens to be directed at the bad guy.

Not a bad thing mind you, as a Character Magus is fantastic after you make it through Zeal.

[Sephiroth]

Magus after joining the group is Piccolo after he beat Radditz. Still evil but for his own reason helping then heroes. Considering Lavos is no actual character someone evil was needed and him bein sympathetic is good.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well it isn't all Magus' fault. Apparently he was raised by Ozzie of all people. He was also fresh off being raised by his obviously deranged and insane mother. All-in-all, the kid had a tough childhood to put it mildly and it understandably screwed him up.

I'm in the endgame now though, Crono is alive and that's great I guess. Time to do sidequests! I am following a FAQ because that's just easier. This is non-main game stuff so I don't want to risk stumbling into something I'm unprepared for. I deicded to go with the "Rainbow Shell" firs but I've kinda forgotten all about it because I just found I can Charm Megalixirs off these Fossil Apes. Gonna spend a good while grinding up a healthy stock of those in case of emergencies.

I'll try and get back to Plot later tonight. Gonna be busy most of tomorrow so maybe i can try and get some of the sidequests done tonight and get some backstory and stuff.

EDIT:

bYoGFvn_fOk

[Forsaken Lover]

That camping scene and the subsequent time travel to Lucca and her mother was like something out of a very different game. The former was intriguing and meditative and the latter was sincerely horrifying. I grew up knowing the fear of losing my grandmother who was more like my mother and while I guess Lucca's mother didn't die, her being crippled like that while little Lucca couldn't do anything is just....just the worst kind of nightmare.

But yeah, good stuff. Just totally different from everything beforehand.

So i finished all the sidequests. Well except Omen and the DS exclusive stuff. Everyone is at a little under Level 50. Well I haven't finished the Rainbow Shell quest yet but I thought you could take stuff to Melchior and he'd make awesome equipment for you? I thought he made the best equipment in the game or whatever? I figured I'd get the ingredients in one of these quests but apparently not.


Anyway I think I might try to fight Lavos. Tomorrow of course, not now. I'm tired now. But I'll see if I can beat him - er, it. If I can, I'll just save my New Game + in another slot and load up the previous pre-final boss save to do the optional dungeons. I assume New Game+ doesn't come with the Epoch or the ability to do these dungeons straight away.

[Sephiroth]

That camping scene and the subsequent time travel to Lucca and her mother was like something out of a very different game. The former was intriguing and meditative and the latter was sincerely horrifying. I grew up knowing the fear of losing my grandmother who was more like my mother and while I guess Lucca's mother didn't die, her being crippled like that while little Lucca couldn't do anything is just....just the worst kind of nightmare.

As you have done it already:

The reason for this sidequest was so you could make an alternate timeline where she was saved. You just had to press four buttons: "L-A-R-A", as that is what Lucca'as mother is called.

But yes, that was something terrible thinking about how no one helped her in Lucca's time.



So i finished all the sidequests. Well except Omen and the DS exclusive stuff. Everyone is at a little under Level 50. Well I haven't finished the Rainbow Shell quest yet but I thought you could take stuff to Melchior and he'd make awesome equipment for you? I thought he made the best equipment in the game or whatever? I figured I'd get the ingredients in one of these quests but apparently not.


Indeed, you can get Chrono's Rainbow Katana, Prism Glasses and such.

[Forsaken Lover]

But you keep talking about alternate timelines except our heroes only ever go back to one timeline. Literally every change in the past you make you will see in the future. Are you saying our ship just magically travels to the right alternate dimension each time? Timeline 1 was Lucca's mother being paralyzed so we fixed that with Timeline 2 and we'll go to Timeline 2 every time we visit 1000 AD from now on. Timeline 1 had the Sun Stone being useless so we made Timeline 3 where it was in the right place but now we only ever go to Timeline 3 in 2300 AD. Timeline 1 had the Mayor's family being jerks but by giving Spiced Jerky to the lady in 600 AD created Timeline 4 of 1000 AD whee the family is nice. Etc., etc..

Are you saying we just randomly happen to go to the exact right timeline each time? That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't match up with anything that has been talked aboutwith regards to the party's time traveling abilities.

Like I said, I think you're overthinking things. This game was written by several different people and it shows. The temporal mechanics are shaky at best and contradictory at worst.

[Sephiroth]

But you keep talking about alternate timelines except our heroes only ever go back to one timeline.

I keep talking about an alternate timeline because the other thing is not possible and even if the impossible was meant in 1995 it is different already. Really everything necessary about them being either many timelines or one timeline that was never changed has already been explained by me. Also - to go back to the Dragon Ball example, Trunks was also magically possible to jump from branch tp branch. And in the DS remake Magus tells you right before one battle "this is one of the possible timelines where enemy x was already defeated ...". Also there is no way for you to know tht if they travel to year 1000 that it is year 1000 of the same branch. So if anything and it is something that did not exist in their future it is another future. You cannot change things and destroy a reality by replacing it with another one and even the game itself already had its lines that showed that it at least was clear somehow and they just did not put that much effort into a complex explanation to not make it confusing.



Like I said, I think you're overthinking things. This game was written by several different people and it shows. The temporal mechanics are shaky at best and contradictory at worst.

And I told you I am not overthinking things. You still thinking that would means you have ignored everything about characters or a sequel that I have explained you. The impossible thing is the contradictory thing and so even if it was possibily meant 19 years ago it does not matter because it has been retconned to a better and at least more logical way. So even if they had a wrong idea back then it is still what it is today. So there is no "overthinking" of this if at least something that seems reasonable in a way has been presented already. Some plotholes are acceptable in a story but such things do not even make sense in fiction for the very reason of their own acts being proof of the impossibility of the opposite's existence in the same context. Magus already tells you about it before fighting the secret boss in the DS version, so there is no doubt about it and normally a story is always at least partly written by more people. Still they must agree to most things for the final product that is presented and as we have it the way it is now with those extras, the sequel and various things we have an official version that is not just "somehow written without thinking to much about it". As a matter of fact newer Final Fantasys would be hated for being written without thinking much about. And as said, Final Fantasy XIII-2 had much of that - much that is not possible.


HThe prevailing fan wank theory for why Grandfather Clock time travel doesn't work after the intro is that the Entity grants the party immunity to the effect afterwards because it's hoping it will save it.

The other thing I would point out about the way time travel works in this game is that it doesn't bother with the "butterfly effect" theory where even just being in the past for a moment can drastically change everything but for the most part the party really doesn't mug up the past much anyway.

Yes, it does bother with it and it is not possible. There is no immunity or anything. Whatever happened, happened. You simply cannot do anything new, because of the closed circuit meaning it has happened exactly like that before. And Chrono Trigger with using the Chrono Doll absolutely shows that this is also meant. Any other immunity to something like this is as impossible as what people claim about it. You are part of a concept andd you canot destroy the reason for you to act. It is that easy. And that is not philosphical, it is normal physics and its causality and if you could just turn one stone around it would already mean a different world, it does not need to affect your party directly, it affects reality and so your party and everything. And that is not possible.

[Wolf Kanno]

But you keep talking about alternate timelines except our heroes only ever go back to one timeline. Literally every change in the past you make you will see in the future. Are you saying our ship just magically travels to the right alternate dimension each time? Timeline 1 was Lucca's mother being paralyzed so we fixed that with Timeline 2 and we'll go to Timeline 2 every time we visit 1000 AD from now on. Timeline 1 had the Sun Stone being useless so we made Timeline 3 where it was in the right place but now we only ever go to Timeline 3 in 2300 AD. Timeline 1 had the Mayor's family being jerks but by giving Spiced Jerky to the lady in 600 AD created Timeline 4 of 1000 AD whee the family is nice. Etc., etc..

Are you saying we just randomly happen to go to the exact right timeline each time? That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't match up with anything that has been talked aboutwith regards to the party's time traveling abilities.

Like I said, I think you're overthinking things. This game was written by several different people and it shows. The temporal mechanics are shaky at best and contradictory at worst.

As I said, the time travel mechanics are pretty simple in this game, its Chrono Cross that will be addressing the whole "alternate timeline" issue so just ignore that nonsense and enjoy because Kato couldn't and like R=U people he had to go an overcomplicate a simple story.

[Bright Shield]

I keep talking about an alternate timeline because the other thing is not possible and even if the impossible was meant in 1995 it is different already.

It's only not possible due to Chrono Cross ret-cons. Saying that it's not possible in relation to Trigger alone, is wrong. No one knows how time travel would actually work, if it is possible.

[Forsaken Lover]

Looking over some discussions I've been having with CT fans elsewhere, Woolsey's translation did change a fair bit. "Fiends" are called "Mystics" is a big one to me. "Fiend" makes them sound like r ace of demonic hellspawn. But it looks to me more like they are just as sapient or capable of good and evil as any human being. Mystic keeps them otherworldly but doesn't have the negative connotations that Fiend does.

Fiend of course is the more accurate translation. Magus was Maoh. Ever seen Kyo Kara Maoh? Yeah Magus wouldn't fit in there....

Anyway, another "Woolseyism" is apparnetly there is some line about the reason Zeal was so amazingly advanced so fast was because Lavos guided the evolution of humankind. I was reading that post elsewhere and was like "...what? I talked to every Zeal NPC and no one ever mentioned anything like this!" Then i learned it was only in the SNES version and not the one I'm playing.

So yeah, that's me posting for now because I don't feel like playing the game. Other stuff on my mind. I just wanted to get a few more of my thoughts out there in the meantime and see if anyone else noticed these alterations/additions or what you thought of them.



EDIT 1


http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg216/NikKingMan/EvoLavos_zps6f4c504b.png

That is from the more accurate DS version I'm playing. Then again, the DS version apparently retroactively makes connections to Cross so I'm not sure if this was a new thing or not. Ironically what I've heard is that Woolsey added the whole "guiding evolution" stuff in his translation but then Cross actually established that as a thing.

Anyway, beat the game. Got "Beyond Time" as my ending which I take it is the normal one to get. I think the only other endings I might try to go for are the DS exclusive one and the one where you take on Lavos with just Crono and Marle. Or maybe it's just Crono? Whatever, I just figured it might be a bit more interesting since the final fight wasn't really that tough. Was about Mid-level 50s.

Magus + Dark Matter = 2K damage every turn. With Golden Stud he can cast that thing all day. Had Crono spam Frenzy and Ayla spam Triple Kick. With all the Megalixirs I got from just going through just the first Black Omen, there was never much danger. The most annoying thing was I forgot to equip Ayla with a Golden Stud of her own so I kept having to waste time feeding her Hi-Ethers or Elixirs when I didn't have to.

I'm gonna take some time to collect my thoughts on the game as a whole and I'll post them later.

EDIT 2

Went and got the DS exclusive ending, "Dream's Epilogue." I like to call it the Magus Ending though because that's what it is. In the normal one Marle was like "you going to keep looking for Schala?" He doesn't even go "..." before going through the Gate. Hardly a great send-off. This ending though had two Maguses finding Schala together but being unable to save her... Perhaps even more tragic was how she told him that his relentless pursuit of power could not save her and so he just gave up on everything. He couldn't comprehend what she meant..that it wasn't how strong your magic is that saves a person but things more insubstantial and meaningful.

EDIT 3


So...Chrono Trigger. Some people I have talked to over the years say it could easily be in the running not only for best SNES JRPG but best JRPG ever. Now do I think either of those things? Well on the former I'm not sure. This is only the second SNES JRPG I've finished (ironically I played neither of them on the SNES). For best JRPG ever though, probably not. It was still very, very good however.

I think part of my lack of being wowed was due to knowing the "core plot" before I even went into the game. I've known all about Lavos the alien manipulator thing since long before I played the game. In addition to that the story was pretty straightforward so there was very little in the way of things that made me sit up and take notice. The one giant exception of course is Magus being Janus. That was a reveal I did not see coming at all and it cast a whole new, far more intriguing light on Magus' character. I noticed that Magus seemed to be at the center of all the best stuff in this game. When I first got really into the game, it was during "Frog's Arc" when we fixed the Masamune and proceeded to storm Fiendlord Keep. I think that was easily the best dungeon and highest point of the game's storytelling. Everything from the flashbacks of Glenn all the way up to the climactic battle with Magus was so exquisitely done.


So yes, Magus was my favorite character. After him? Ehhh....it's kinda hard to say. I never much cared for Lucca. I know a lot of people like her but she was never that interesting to me. Robo had a nice little sidequst but otherwise he didn't do a whole lot in the game. And Ayla...well you couldn't do much with her character anyway. She's got rather limited mental faculties. That leaves Frog, Marle and Crono. Frog was great for his arc like I mentioned before but he seemed to have limited purpose in the story afterward. I'm sure I might like Lucca and Frog more if I used them in my party - maybe they get extra scenes or a lot more dialogue, kinda like in FFVIII where I discovered Quistis had an actual character. you just had to have her in your party so you would get several more scenes with her and Squall that I never knew existed. Oh, CT is a much better game than FFVIII, I'm just trying to explain myself. That leaves Marle and Crono. Crono has no personality but I did like Marle, even if she was the blatantly obvious love interest from the get-go. I think everyone can sympathize with a difficulty in communication causing strain between you and your parent as you're growing up. That being aid, I have no idea why Marle's mother left that note with the Rainbow Shell....

In terms of locations and the like, Fiendlord Keep was the best as I already said. I also liked the Ocean Palace. I think it wa sa very good touch to keep the dungeon music playing instead of putting in the battle theme. It keeps things "in the moment" as it were.

The battle system thankfully was not anywhere near as complicated as I had feared. With enemies moving around I was worried I'd constantly need to be timing my hits and the like. This played a part now and then but a good deal of bosses are huge, stationary things so it was rather irrelevant.

And now onto music! From the onset I was very impressed with the soundtrack.
Gato's Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aanqnyJy-JU) - From the first time I heard this, I knew I was in for an awesome game.
Wind Scene AKA 600AD World Map Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1War2SIQ-_c) - It was easily the best world map theme for a long, long stretch of the game.
Corridors of Time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcf_FBbIRpM) - This one doesn't need to be explained or discussed. I think every Chrono fn I've come across knows how great it is.
Tyranno Lair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A11eWGIasMY) - I have a weakness for evil organ themes okay? Even so this theme probably wouldn't be one of my favorites if it wasn't for how it gets more....intense later on. I didn't much care for the actual dungeon itself but the music made it very memorable.
Frog's Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YsAyO9oW00) - Another "dur" track it seems and with good reason. This song was a huge reason his arc and reclaiming the Masamune was so memorable.
Battle With Magus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDA0_gdTqWA) - Heh, this segment of the game just had all the great music didn't it? Nothing but the best theme for the best character.

I must confess though, I was not wowed by the final boss music... I liked whatever theme was playing when you fight the first form of Lavos, the one that keeps cycling through previous boss fights. There is a segment of that fight where the music gets very light and soft and sort of dreamy... I really enjoyed that.

In conclusion, i give Chrono Trigger an A-. Good if simple and light-hearted story with some nice characters here and there and a very fun battle system and excellent music.

Which is why the camping scene still puzzles me... It's totally out of left field in terms of tone with the rest of the game's story. The whole meditations on the nameless entity that is possibly making all the Gates appear and whatnot just felt like something out of a different game. Before this, our heroes were just like "time travel smurf yeah!" and the temporal mechanics of this were shaky and contradictory. Then this scene popped up and well...I dunno what to make of it. Maybe Chrono Trigger is like that FF Tactics? They did speculate it was all the dream of a dying creature. It's all the fantasy world dreamed up by some poor cripple or whatever.


Also I forgot to mention this:

The stuff with Marle and the "Grandfather Paradox" is completely ignored after it happens. It was like the beginning of the game was giving you a warning. "Tinkering with the past will have dangerous repercussions!" Then the entire party was like "let's not just tinker with the past and future, let's completely rewrite everything we don't like!" It really shows that Chrono Trigger was written by several different people and then just kinda jammed together.


And while her brother was the best, Schala did nothing for me. We just barely spent any time with her yet she's like "my hopes are all on you, Crono and other people I've had no real interaction with!" I guess they did save the one dude from the Mountain of Woe so that showed we are awesome and all but...I dunno, just never felt any connection to her character at all.

But whether or not I cared for her, I didn't like that the subplot there was pretty much dropped. Luckily I got the DS exclusive ending which has a bit more closure.

[Forsaken Lover]

So I feel like I'm talking to myself here...

I'm gonna have to wait till Wednesday when i get paid. Then I can get Chrono Cross off PSN and start it.

What I know of CC's story:
1. Apparently the cast of CT all die?
2. The Time Devourer and Schala are involved, as hinted by the DS ending I got.
3. Porre conquers Guardia.

i have absolutely no idea how any of this ties together. It's rather like getting Page 1, 100 and 500 from a book - it just confuses things more than if you hadn't read the book at all.

I do expect to enjoy CC because, as good as CT was, I saw a lot of it coming. This is not entirely the game's fault of course. Me knowing about Lavos undoubtedly robbed CT of some of its nuance. But CC at least seems to be a more....I dunno what to call it. Well let's say this. CT was a very straightforward story 99% of the time. CC is not straightforward at all it seems. In fact it was suggested to me I need to do a double playthrough just like with my beloved Xenogears. A second playthrough will make everything more meaningful and understandable if it's truly like Xenogears in that way. Everything will take on a greater significance while I was just baffled the first time through.

Also in the meantime I'll be trying Radical Dreamers. Not technically canon or whatever but it was the inspiration for Chrono Cross and it's pretty short so why not?

[VeloZer0]

IMO, and I know there are people here who disagree with me, the best way to enjoy Chrono Cross is not to consider it as a sequel to CT, but as another game that reminds you of CT. (Kind of like sequential FF titles.) I feel the connections are weak, and it feels more like a spin-off than a continuation of the story.

I think that half of the hate that CC gets is because people go into it expecting Chrono Trigger 2, which I don't think anyone will argue it is.

[Wolf Kanno]

Honestly, I would say give CT another playthrough as well cause part of its charm is that everything is pretty interconnected. The prevailing fan wank theory for why Grandfather Clock time travel doesn't work after the intro is that the Entity grants the party immunity to the effect afterwards because it's hoping it will save it.

The other thing I would point out about the way time travel works in this game is that it doesn't bother with the "butterfly effect" theory where even just being in the past for a moment can drastically change everything but for the most part the party really doesn't mug up the past much anyway. The Reptites and the Mystics War were all foregone conclusions so the party's involvement doesn't have much of a dramatic effect, most of the real tampering to their own timeline doesn't really affect them either like making the mayor of Porre generous, rebuilding Fiore's Woods, and saving Sir Cyrus' soul. The Rainbow Shell is probably the biggest thing they do that actually affects the party. Still the time travel in CT is pretty simple and works best if you don't try to apply complex philosophical nonsense about time travel onto it.

CC largely exists to answer two questions that CT left unanswered:
What happened to Schala?
What happens to changed timelines?

While I will agree with VeloZer0 that many CT fans hate the game for being a crummy sequel to CT and being totally different from what they were expecting, there are some valid problems with the game.

It has a large cast of which only half are any relevant and half of that cast becomes irrelevant once they join you. The battle system is like a weird combination of Xenogears combo system and VII's materia system and finds a way to suck any enjoyment from either mechanic, it's plot is a bit too "contemplating our navels" (to be fair, Masato Kato and the remains of the CT team were coming off of Xenogears and by god does it show) which often feel out of place, and for CT fans its not only a giant player punch but also ends up asking more questions than answering.

CT fans didn't have the new ending animations or DS ending to brace us for the bombshells CC dropped on all of us. It kind of came out of nowhere and the best I would describe it is that you should approach the game like it was new because whatever CT may have established is not the whole truth. You may think you understand things like Schala's pendant, the Reptites, Masemune, or Balthazar but CC will school you by showing that you really don't know anything.

It's not a bad game but I would definitely describe it as a vanity project for Masato Kato who was happy to no longer have Sakaguchi, Horii, Toriyama, Kitase or Ito blocking what he wants to do with the story or characters. In Kato's original draft for CT, there was something like ten characters, Marle was a fairy princess, Frog was just a sentient monster and I think Magus was really a demon in the concept stage. It got tones down and some of the characters were merged to make stronger characters. Since Kato got more control, CC feels more like that early concept of CT.

After you finish CC, I would advise you to play CT cause one of CC's strengths is that it does change how you view things in CT a bit so in some ways it was a great sequel because it enhanced the mythos.

[VeloZer0]

I actually really liked CT's combat system. Enough to carry a series on games? No. But it is probably the most enjoyable 'one-off' RPG battle systems I have used. (But then again I really like playing with Materia)

[Forsaken Lover]

Honestly, I would say give CT another playthrough as well cause part of its charm is that everything is pretty interconnected. The prevailing fan wank theory for why Grandfather Clock time travel doesn't work after the intro is that the Entity grants the party immunity to the effect afterwards because it's hoping it will save it.

The other thing I would point out about the way time travel works in this game is that it doesn't bother with the "butterfly effect" theory where even just being in the past for a moment can drastically change everything but for the most part the party really doesn't mug up the past much anyway. The Reptites and the Mystics War were all foregone conclusions so the party's involvement doesn't have much of a dramatic effect, most of the real tampering to their own timeline doesn't really affect them either like making the mayor of Porre generous, rebuilding Fiore's Woods, and saving Sir Cyrus' soul. The Rainbow Shell is probably the biggest thing they do that actually affects the party. Still the time travel in CT is pretty simple and works best if you don't try to apply complex philosophical nonsense about time travel onto it.

CC largely exists to answer two questions that CT left unanswered:
What happened to Schala?
What happens to changed timelines?

While I will agree with VeloZer0 that many CT fans hate the game for being a crummy sequel to CT and being totally different from what they were expecting, there are some valid problems with the game.

It has a large cast of which only half are any relevant and half of that cast becomes irrelevant once they join you. The battle system is like a weird combination of Xenogears combo system and VII's materia system and finds a way to suck any enjoyment from either mechanic, it's plot is a bit too "contemplating our navels" (to be fair, Masato Kato and the remains of the CT team were coming off of Xenogears and by god does it show) which often feel out of place, and for CT fans its not only a giant player punch but also ends up asking more questions than answering.

CT fans didn't have the new ending animations or DS ending to brace us for the bombshells CC dropped on all of us. It kind of came out of nowhere and the best I would describe it is that you should approach the game like it was new because whatever CT may have established is not the whole truth. You may think you understand things like Schala's pendant, the Reptites, Masemune, or Balthazar but CC will school you by showing that you really don't know anything.

It's not a bad game but I would definitely describe it as a vanity project for Masato Kato who was happy to no longer have Sakaguchi, Horii, Toriyama, Kitase or Ito blocking what he wants to do with the story or characters. In Kato's original draft for CT, there was something like ten characters, Marle was a fairy princess, Frog was just a sentient monster and I think Magus was really a demon in the concept stage. It got tones down and some of the characters were merged to make stronger characters. Since Kato got more control, CC feels more like that early concept of CT.

After you finish CC, I would advise you to play CT cause one of CC's strengths is that it does change how you view things in CT a bit so in some ways it was a great sequel because it enhanced the mythos.

I guess I should also say the DS ending had Magus losing his memory which is significant to CC I think? Only I'm pretty sure my nosing about CC and CT stuff looking for translated supplementary material for after i finish the games revealed Kato saying that this guy who is Magus isn't actually Magus or something like that. Like he was the amnesiac Magus in Radical Dreamers but not actually iN CC? Maybe? I dunno.

But Balthazar is going to be back? That's pretty intriguing. I thought it was a pretty bleak and understated horror show for that poor guy. Cast into a post-apocalyptic future but trying his best to hold onto hope, to hold onto sanity, in order to avert this disaster. Our heroes owe him everything yet not a one of them ever recognizes what he must have gone through.

I never really understood what was going on with Schala's Pendant anyway. I take it was a piece of Lavos or maybe part of the meteor that Lavos fell with? Was Lavos on a meteor like Jenova or did it just collide with the planet all on its own? I could sear CT just said the pendant was part of a stone that fell from the sky but even then I'm not sure if I'm remembering that right.

[Wolf Kanno]

I guess I should also say the DS ending had Magus losing his memory which is significant to CC I think? Only I'm pretty sure my nosing about CC and CT stuff looking for translated supplementary material for after i finish the games revealed Kato saying that this guy who is Magus isn't actually Magus or something like that. Like he was the amnesiac Magus in Radical Dreamers but not actually iN CC? Maybe? I dunno.

In Radical Dreamers, Magus actually appears in many incarnations and he's kind of a central figure to the plot besides Kid. He was removed in CC because the director wanted the players to use the rest of the cast and worried that Magus would hijack the plot and player attention. So they changed the character he was suppose to be into a different character who has little to do with the plot. Didn't stop fans from figuring it out which character it was but there is a shout out to the real Magus in the plot, though the new DS ending kind of contradicts it a bit.


But Balthazar is going to be back? That's pretty intriguing. I thought it was a pretty bleak and understated horror show for that poor guy. Cast into a post-apocalyptic future but trying his best to hold onto hope, to hold onto sanity, in order to avert this disaster. Our heroes owe him everything yet not a one of them ever recognizes what he must have gone through.

I really shouldn't say more about it. I don't want to ruin it but at the same time the way the game explains it is kind of confusing.


I never really understood what was going on with Schala's Pendant anyway. I take it was a piece of Lavos or maybe part of the meteor that Lavos fell with? Was Lavos on a meteor like Jenova or did it just collide with the planet all on its own? I could sear CT just said the pendant was part of a stone that fell from the sky but even then I'm not sure if I'm remembering that right.

It's not so much its origin as much as what it can do.

The game is vague about details of Lavos arrival but most fans feel he was traveling in a meteor shell and he was the bulk of it. There is some confusion in the scripts concerning whether the shell was actually made of Dreamstone and thus explain why it seems to have a symbiotic relation with his power or whether it was just plain old ice and rock. Neither game gives a satisfactory answer. The nature of the Frozen Flame doesn't help any.

[Forsaken Lover]

So it is actually Magus? As Guile or Gil or whatever? I guess chalk that up as another spoiler I know going into the game.

As for Schala's Pendant, I never gave it much thought. I twas just this thing that opened chests and doors for me. I guess it had a bit more plot significance than I realized. Is the pendant Marle has the same one then or just made from the same material? Well I guess it couldn't be the exact same pendant since you get Schala's Pendant from Magus if you kill him but I dunno.

So many questions and I haven't even started CC yet. lol


I've also learned there is a "Fake Ending" and a "Real Ending" to Cross where I have to use Elements (in the right order) and the Chrono Cross on the final boss in order to unlock it.


Also if we go with the multiple timelines thing, we never actually saved Lucca's Mother. Oh we saved Timeline 2 Lucca's Mother but OUR Lucca's mom is still crippled.

[Sephiroth]

Also if we go with the multiple timelines thing, we never actually saved Lucca's Mother. Oh we saved Timeline 2 Lucca's Mother but OUR Lucca's mom is still crippled.

Exactly. Because that is how things work. You cannot do the opposite and make her legs suddenly reappear just as you cannot go back in time to just destroy something that was the reason for you to go back in time. And it does not matter how insignificant it is for a person because every stone on every place was a part of the reality he came from. Chrono's friends knew how these things work. That is why they used a Chrono Clone Doll in the first place. Thinking Chrono died was the reason for them to go. They used a Clone Doll and replaced it with Chrono so people would see the Doll "dying" and therefore would go back to save Chrono by replacing him with the Doll. Whatever happened, happened. Except on another timeline.

This has been spoken about here over 10 years ago already, by the way. This debate is not about "It's a game, let's just enjoy it" because I do. It is about what is meant and it is meant like that. And even if it is just meant like that after being retconned, it is still meant like that.

[Wolf Kanno]

So it is actually Magus? As Guile or Gil or whatever? I guess chalk that up as another spoiler I know going into the game.

Yeah, it's Guile, he's pretty badass too.



I've also learned there is a "Fake Ending" and a "Real Ending" to Cross where I have to use Elements (in the right order) and the Chrono Cross on the final boss in order to unlock it.

Basically its the True ending and the "you screwed up so here's the credits and if you want the real ending then beat the boss the way we vaguely told you to do" Ending.



Also if we go with the multiple timelines thing, we never actually saved Lucca's Mother. Oh we saved Timeline 2 Lucca's Mother but OUR Lucca's mom is still crippled.

More like OUR Lucca's Mom has been blinked out of existence at the End of Time. The original timeline gets the short end of the stick according to CC. Not that it doesn't stop things from the original timeline to come back and haunt the new timeline. :shifty:

[Forsaken Lover]

Yeah I had heard that last bit about the original timeline and its inhabitants all getting shafted elsewhere. Ironically it was also about our Lucca's mother too:
Here's the post. (http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/chrono-trigger-or-chrono-cross.309055/page-8#post-15062730) I only skimmed it in an effort to avoid spoilers.

Does anything I know about Cross weaken its storyline like me knowing about Lavos and where it came from weakened CT's story somewhat? If nothing else, CC sounds like it's a bit less straightforward so knowing one huge fact doesn't kinda blow the whole thing wide open. And I don't even think i know one big fact.

[Sephiroth]

Yeah I had heard that last bit about the original timeline and its inhabitants all getting shafted elsewhere. Ironically it was also about our Lucca's mother too:
Here's the post. (http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/chrono-trigger-or-chrono-cross.309055/page-8#post-15062730) I only skimmed it in an effort to avoid spoilers.

Then you pretty much know it already anyway, together with more of its illogical stuff - just like in Final Fantasy XIII-2 as I mentioned. Though Magus' DS explanation is better as it is more logical with the possibilities instead of just replacing.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well my thinking is "it's time travel. You can do whatever you want with it." It's like how God can be a giant computer, Morgan Freeman or that little...thing from South Park. It's a concept we have no real objective basis for so you can make up whatever you want and it's all plausible.

[Sephiroth]

Well my thinking is "it's time travel. ...

In fiction you can do whatever you want, that is true.

[Forsaken Lover]

So wait, Guile isn't Magus just like I said. He was intended to be but what I've read on that other site I linked to says that this idea was scrapped later on and now he's just a wizard dude.

[Sephiroth]

Precisely.

[Forsaken Lover]

So WK what do you think of Masato Kato? There was a time I tried to recommend Baten Kaitos (the first one anyway) to people by pointing out "it was written by Masato Kato of Chrono fame." However my recent exposure to copious amounts of the Chrono fandom has shown me that this is actually a potential deterrent more than anything.

There was that thread on the other forum I linked to of course but also the sheer vitriol in the comment section of the Trigger DS ending.

I don't know why can't they leave this game alone.

Because Kato is still bitter about not getting to what he wanted to for Trigger

ChaoticDarkShadow

No it wasn't! There was NEVER supposed to be a sequel to Trigger! Kato came in VERY late into production and wanted to do stupid trout with the story that THANKFULLY Hironobu and Yuji said no, Kato made Cross the PSX and DS versions of Trigger as way of saying "smurf you" smurf Cross it's a stupid smurfing sequel and a awful game

Admittedly YouTube comments are not the best places to search for opinions but I get the feeling you and other Chrono fans might not care for him much.

[Wolf Kanno]

I feel Kato is a strong writer, but I'll admit he is someone who works better on collaborative works than on his own. He's a bit like Nojima in that sense that he needs someone to reel him in cause he tends to want to over-complicate everything. For instance Kato is responsible for most of the Zeal arc and the second half of CT. He also worked pretty well in VII and Xenogears. With that said I trust him more than Nojima and I feel that his work on the DS version of CT shows that he's mellowed out a bit since the old days. I would love to see him come and work for Square-Enix on a non-MMO project (he still writes scenarios' for XI and XIV for instance).

I don't really hold the absolute hatred of CC like some Chrono fans do, I actually like the direction it was going I just wished it was more focused and less pretentious it reeks of an auteur game where Kato was pretty much given unlimited authority to do as he wished. That's not to say its bad and doesn't address some great issues and have good writing but I kind of feel at times that Kato kind of lost track of his point until almost the end. The game is pretty anvilicious about its themes as well even though some times it doesn't make much sense in hindsight except to make a point but its kind of shoddy writing. I feel that if the game had a much more narrow and focused cast and story it could have been a brilliant game.

The reason he gets hated on is because he took a game that was close to an impressionable generation and kind of turned it on its head. I doubt VII fans would have reacted any differently if Advent Children had been about a new cast of characters learning that not only did Cloud and Co. die in the intervening years from Don Corneo rising up as a the new leader of Kalm, which had become the new military power, but also had made the world worse and would have been better off just letting Sephiroth have his way. That is probably the closest analogy I can think of to what happened in CC for CT fans. Some fans simply ignored it and played it like it wasn't connected to the original, others reviled it for ruining their favorite game, and others appreciated it for what it was.

[Forsaken Lover]

So Chrono Cross' battle system seems a bit more...complicated than Trigger's. (http://www.uffsite.net/ccross/magic.php)

A friend I was staying with for a few months had a copy of the game and I did pop it in only for a few minutes. I just played with Kid, Serge and the other chick. Anyway, to use magic in this game, you need to use regular physical attacks to build up points? Magic or Elements seem to be the real deal on how to do massive damage. Can enemies counterattack you and stop you from using all your moves? Because I noticed the characters will just kind of stand there forever if I don't use up all my...bars or whatever they're called.

Also what about the whole "do you want to heal" thing after some battles? Do you build up Points and transfer them over to your next battle maybe? It gave me the choice to heal after battle or not so I would guess maybe rationing is important or something and I shouldn't waste it on healing.

[VeloZer0]

When it asks you if you want to heal after battle it uses up all the points you have left over. Seeing as they get discarded after the battle there is absolutely no downside to it. The main thing is making sure you finish the battle with extra magic so that you can take advantage of this. If you finish with no magic then you don't get any free healing after battle.

Enemies don't counter attack, but IIRC they can occasionally slip their turns in the middle of your chain if you don't have all the commands input quickly. But not very often.

[Wolf Kanno]

The big thing about Elements is that they are one per battle deals so you need to pay attention to the field affect board. You don't want to use a White element when you have two black elements on the field as it weakens the damage and after the element is used it's pretty much unusable until the next battle. The only exception are the Capsule/Item Elements which can be used multiple times depending how many you have in a set.

How many element slots you get is determined by character and which spells you can use are ranked so for instance most character will eventually get eight Lv. 1 slots to use low level magic but mage characters tend to have reversed slots where they have few low level slots but tend to be able to cast several high level elements. Low level slots are also the only way a character can use elements of their opposing element, as they won't get access to high end versions of spells. For instance, Serge can't use high level Black Elements but has easy access to high end White Elements.

You can also put a low level spell into a high tier slot and increase its power which is usually shown with a +1 or higher number so don't feel obligated to throw out low level Elements.

I know this all sounds complicated but honestly, much like Junctioning, it's pretty simple in practice and you can easily get away with letting the computer set up your elements for characters and be fine. The only times you need to be careful with elements is if you decide to bother with Summons and for the final boss battle in which case you may have to do some set up to make it happen.

Every character gets three unique skills which are either really powerful attacks, special buffs or rare abilities like one characters power to transform into monsters you've defeated or Kid and Fargo's steal abilities. They are located in the characters third, fifth, and sevenths tiers and once obtained can't be removed. The first two are obtained by just progressing through the game, but several characters need to do special side missions or find their third techs in treasure chests.

There are dual and triple techs but painfully few considering how large the cast is. There are a total of nine dual techs and two triple techs. Interesting enough these techs tend to be different elements than their two host use, for instance Serge is White Elements, Glenn is Green Elements but their Dual tech will be Red so this does give you some options in battle though you may not need it since these abilities are so rare.

[Forsaken Lover]

Thanks for the lowdown you guys. It does indeed sound complicated but perhaps experience is the best teacher. What sounds confusing in text might become second-nature once I play through the game some and test it all out.

Also I just found out that the song I mentioned preferring to the final battle music in CT? It was just plain old Lavos' Theme. Only I didn't think it was Lavos' Theme. i mean, listen to it.
http://youtu.be/nReqeBSp_WY?t=1m20s

Contrasted with the beginning evil organ, and when factoring into account that Lavos is this giant planet-destroying alien parasite, that part of the song is very....well I don't want to say out-of-place because I really, really like it. It's just so....soft and melodious and you would not associate it with
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080828025844/chrono/images/7/73/Lavos.jpg

[Wolf Kanno]

I love Lavos' Theme, its epic, haunting and melancholic. Hell Lavos is just an intriguing antagonist since he's more cosmic horror than methodical evil villain. It simply is trying to do what nature has forged it into doing nothing else.

[Forsaken Lover]

I have Chrono Cross! And man I can't wait until I get a CRT. This is supposed to be the best-looking game on the Playstation but my HD monitor does it no favors.

In the meantime though I am stuck with my digital download and graphics aren't everything.

So where I am in the game, Kid just joined the party (I guess it is technically rejoined but I'll get to that) and i saved outside Arni.

1. I'm not so sure about this normal battle music. It gets better I guess but that beginning... Also it's just not that good overall. Certainly no True Mirror from Baten Kaitos. I think my favorite track at the moment is the...is it the second world map theme? The first one sounded kinda like a remix of the CT world map theme (the first one maybe) but this new one is really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMEb6XXXi08

2. So what I was getting at earlier, I take it that the short opening of the game is the alternate world and then everything at Arni the first time was just a flashback. A "how did it come to this?" sort of deal. So while we already had Kid in our party, this is actually when she joined us.

3. I say "us" because I got Poshul as per the recommendation of a person elsewhere. I'm not so sure about the big fluffy talking dog but, hey, it probably made battles a little quicker than if it had just been Serge alone. Plus if frickin' Chu-Chu couldn't ruin Xenogears, I doubt my canine friend will ruin this.

4. Speaking of which, I wonder if all the stuff with Arni, and the conversation with Leena, is a Xenogears-like fakeout. You know, the stuff in Lahan and Fei and Alice looking like they would be a couple as opposed to Alice being vaporizeD and forgotten about 1% into the game. Kato did write that part of Xenogears after all... Maybe Leena will be lucky and just be forgotten about.

5. I can't say too much more at the moment. I mean, not much has really hapened from a plot perspective. Just got some Komodo Dragon scales and had a sweet scene with Leena and now I have no idea what's gonna happen next. Presumably it will lead to us storming that one place and looking for "Lynx" but I have no idea how long until that. Also having heard Chrono Cross' large cast was such a big thing about the game, and that not everyone is recruitable, I did look up this one site just for general info about each potential party member. (http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/psx/cc/characters.shtml)
I mainly just wanted to look at the pictures and stuff, avoided all spoilery info. Anyway, my point was just that I know Nikki is a party member and a few NPCs in....uh, "Alternate Arni" were talking about him.

6. Like I said, can't say too much overall right now but just at the moment, my favorite character is Kid. I thought her accent would bug me but she's feisty and I like that.

7. The battle system definitely isn't that complicated once you start using it. Just all the explanations and words online made it sound worse than it is.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah combat is pretty simple. Summons require a bit of work to obtain and use but frankly, they are not that useful.

Nikki is a potential party member but I'm going to slightly spoil something and say it is best to avoid Pierre for the moment. He's the game's resident Lethal Joke Character but only on a second playthrough because you need to do both paths to get all of his gear.

Leena is a play on the Alice deal but with an interesting subversion you'll discover later.

Also just a note, the epilogue scene is kind of a lie in one regard, while you are correct about the story part, your party is a bit of a twist because sometimes the game throws in characters you can't actually obtain by that point in the story.

Chrono Cross features several remixes from Chrono Trigger. For instance the world map theme I think your talking about that sounded familiar was Plains of Time which is a remix of Corridors of Time. Game has a few cool nods to CT like that.

Hope you are enjoying it, the game gets a lot of crap but I still enjoy it. :love:

[Forsaken Lover]

Apparently Leena could actually join my party but I screwed up. If I said no to Kid, then I could recruit Leena. But I'm a nice guy and I always pick the nice guy options. Like, when Leena asked me if I remembered the promise, I had to say yes even though "I" have no clue about the promise because if I had Serge say he didn't remember, that be mean. And with Kid, she had just helped save my bacon against Karsh so saying "no I don't want to join up with you" would be really rude and ungrateful.

I was also just advised elsewhere that a character in the near future will get sick and I should ignore my goody two shoes instincts. Thus I am supposed to refuse to help the sick person.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, you have to kind of be an asshole at one point to recruit a certain character who is one of the game's best party members. If you do help the sick person you get stuck with a less useful character. The powerful character is also tied into the plot more.

[Pumpkin]

I hated Kid so much

[VeloZer0]

I was also just advised elsewhere that a character in the near future will get sick and I should ignore my goody two shoes instincts. Thus I am supposed to refuse to help the sick person.
Absolutely. I made the mistake of helping the first time.

[Forsaken Lover]

I'm tired and I was just thinking I'll get to a nice part and save. Just do a little bit and have it all primed for a nice exciting part tomorrow.

Cue me resetting about three times against this one boss fight.

So looking it up after the fact, I could have gotten a few different people here. I didn't run into any of them except Guile though so that's who I have now. Anyway, right before you enter the Manor, a dragon thing appears because....why not? And it kicked my ass something fierce. It kept nailing Serge with this move I'm pretty sure was Black Element so it did insane damage.

So I ran away and realized I had a few White Element moves for him I hadn't equipped. That....did not help at all. The damn dragon thing kept killing Kid because it only used some super flashy move so you know it hurts like hell. And unless there's a way to revive characters I'm missing out on, Kid being KO'ed meant she was out of the fight for good and I can't have that. i was already warned that if a character is KO'ed and misses out on one of those stars, they are utterly screwed until the next boss fight and cannot grow like everyone else.

So my final attempt, I ran away again, healed up with the billiom Tablet sI stocked up on, and then decided "hell with it" and started another round. This time the bastard didn't use ANY of his stupid super moves. What the smurf? He just used some pansy physical attacks or whatever, regular old swipes that did relatively nothing to 60+ damage he had been dealing out before. So I beat him this time. Maybe the key is to kill one of his helpers? That's what I did. First time through I killed them both and he proceeded to wreck me so I was like "okay, focus on teh big guy and forget the other two." But after that failed me several times I decided to just take out one of them and that was what led to victory.

But now we're in Viper Manor and I have no idea what's going to happen or what's going on. I'm going to bed though because that boss fight was really frustrating and a kick in the balls I did not expect.

P.S.

Why are we not saving the poor enslaved mermaid?

[Wolf Kanno]

The Mermaid deals with a pretty complicated issue of racial tension in the El Nido region between Humans and Mystics. It doesn't help that Serge has this nasty habit of causing more problems than fixing them, he's even named for the trope in the Grand List of RPG Cliches. :lol:

[Forsaken Lover]

Grrrrr.... Kid is my favorite character and you all are telling me to repeatedly say "no, I won't help her even though she's dying"?

Goddammit.

[Wolf Kanno]

You have to be an asshole to succeed. Besides you'll understand why we told you this if you do another playthrough and help her. ;)

In fact if memory serves me correct, in order to get some party members and recruits, you pretty much have to blow off Kid every time she asks for help and not help her when she's poisoned..

[Forsaken Lover]

Well I did it and I did make a save file before the choice for the Continue + feature.

But to recap my progress so far:

1. Dragon Feeding. 100 times. Doing it "normally" got me nowhere. Spamming buttons like a madman led to success.

2. Marcy was an easy enough boss. Then the "Prophet of Time" was there. Was that supposed to be Gasper? He said a lot of stuff I didn't understand. Well the stuff about there being two worlds was simple enough but everything about Serge's existence and all that? No clue.

3. Then Lynx showed up. Okay, a recap. First attempt, he wasn't that hard at all. Except he used this move called Hellbound which I gather is an instant KO spell. Now we have precisely ONE Revive Element we found in the place. ONLY HE USED THE MOVE TWICE. And you can only use an Element once. So.....fuck. No charactes and stars left behind! I reloaded and did the fight again and this time he didn't use the move even once. What the hell.

4. Oh it wasn't even Lynx at all. I was thinking it be one of those Xenosaga deals where you win the fight then they just one shot you anyway. But whatever, Lynx says a lot more stuff I don't understand. Probably plays into the line someone said way earlier (I have no idea who it was now) about Serge destroying the world. Only Serge is the Chrono Trigger? Wasn't that an actual thing in Chrono Trigger? I forget what it was....

And so here I am, about to take a boat to somewhere because the Shaman told me to. No idea what's going on, I want Kid back and Viper Manor felt like it took way too long in spite of the fact very little happened.

5. Oh, forgot. I'm really curious to find out what happened to Dario. An accident they say? But no one will shut up about it. I'm sure this will be at least somewhat significant eventually.

[Wolf Kanno]

The Prophet of Time is actually Balthazar and everything he said won't make sense until a second playthrough... In fact get used to characters dropping vague out of context speeches onto you that won't make sense until New Game+ I did warn you that this was the Xeno team after all. ;)

Viper Manor simply introduces you to General Viper and his Arcacia Dragoons who you will be seeing a lot of for awhile. Guile has one of the most lackluster stories into sneaking into the mansion and that is kind of the end of any relevance he has in the plot. Granted he's broken as all hell since he's one of like I think three characters whose Lv. 3 normal is a group hitting attack. He's a beast in the endgame.

Pierre has an absolutely hilarious story into V. Manor and I vaguely remember Nikki having a more involved plot since he's one of the games few major players and thus his story foreshadows his awesome father. Sadly Nikki is probably the crappiest of the three you get. I am curious, who have you recruited so far?

As for Dario, since it sounds like you chose to ditch Kid, you will get a better version of the story about him. It's a bit complicated and involves another shout-out/connection to CT.

[Forsaken Lover]

I have:
Serge
Glenn
Kid
Greco
Poshul

And I think Macha and Doc are there too? I have no intention of using them but they let me name them and said they wanted to join the party.

So there are multiple stories to Dario's death depending on your path?

Also Balthazar being the old man is...weird. I thought he died and all was left of him was his robot thing. Guess not. Looking forward to see how that is explained.


Anyway, a lot has happened.

1. Met Fargo and his merry band of pirates. No idea if he's supposed to join later or what. No idea why his ship was attacked by monsters either. Maybe it's just a sign of things getting out of whack with the world.

2. Yay, Kid is back! That indeed didn't take long. She also apparently holds no grudge as I'll get into in a minute.

3. My party now is Serge, Glenn and Kid. I wasn't sure if I wanted Guile instead of Glenn but I gather Glenn has a bit more Plot to him, especially with us going against his lord and general and all, even if his lord/general is being used by the nefarious Lynx.

4. Speaking of which, Kid backstory! Her opening up to Serge like that is why i said she evidently holds no grudge for him being an asshole. Then again, I guess she never really realized how much of an asshole he had been. Regardless, I loved that scene. Whatever song played there? Top Tier quality. I mean Kid's backstory isn't the most original or anything but it sure as hell justifies her hatred for Lynx and also her "always act tough" demeanor.

5. Oh I'm getting ahead of myself though. So the humans drove out the dwarves which made them try and seize land from the fairies and both groups end up blaming humans. Eh, why not. Domino Effect and all that, the humans tipped over the dominoes. Although I guess Feinds - er, demi-humans - were once expansionist too so...I dunno. Everyone Sucks is the moral of the story.

6. No new dialogue or anything with Serge's mom or "Home Leena" which is kinda disappointing. I hope something happens there eventually at least.

And there's where I am. I guess actual plot advancement has been kinda slow but oh well. I'm not sure what will happen next. Maybe Lynx finally just up sand kills Viper Maybe I'll finally learn the details of Dario's death because no one will shut up about it.

Oh, oh, oh!

7. I remembered the brief stop at Radius but was like "...not much to comment on there" but there IS something to comment on there. Harle can go fuck herself. How the hell can she and Lynx both be eventual party members??? It boggles the mind. I'd prefer stabbing them both. A lot.

[VeloZer0]

I found the character selection in CC to be very lack-luster until after Fort Dragonia. Outside from Guile/Glenn there isn't anyone who I would really want to be in my party. And considering the first playthrough I grabbed neither of them, well you are doing well in comparison.

This is making me want to ditch playing DQ8 for the first time and replay CC.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well a lot of crap has happened....

Fort Dragonia took a good while but partly that is my fault. The Yellow Crystal puzzle confused me more than it should have. The Fort Dragonia music was AWESOME though, especially with the bell ringing and stuff. Great atmosphere.

And like usual, getting ahead of myself. Beat up the Dragoon Trio with no real problem. Before that fought Solt and Peppor and they explained how to use Traps. I proceeded to try and use it too only to gain nothing. I thought you just used the right Element Trap before the enemy used that Element spell or whatever and it saved you or something. Apparently not.

Getting back to Dragonia, my predictions about Lynx and Viper were spot-on. Not that I'm some genius....it was just kind of obvious. What i did not predict however was Lynx in Serge's body. Holy hell that's a bitch development! I wonder how long it will take to get that all sorted out.

Poor Kid... I'm sure she's alright but for right now Serge-Lynx is stuck in some weird other dimension maybe? I'm not really sure. I am really tired and after the short conversation with Sprigg about how much life sucks, I saved it so I can finally get to bed.

I'll probably have more thoughts once I wake up and can think straight.

P.S.

So Lucca is definitely a goner. That's one CT party member down. I still have my doubts they were all killed off or confirmed to be killed off. I guess I'll wait and see.

[VeloZer0]

Traps are... rather situational. Aside from a few bosses there isn't much point in using them defensively, they are more for farming elements that you can't buy. You can only purchase offensive elements up to level 4, all the level 5 & 6 attacks and the level 8 summons can only be obtained via trap. (You might be able to grab a couple of the lv5s through chests, I can't remember).

[Wolf Kanno]

I have:
Serge
Glenn
Kid
Greco
Poshul

And I think Macha and Doc are there too? I have no intention of using them but they let me name them and said they wanted to join the party.

I think you left out Guile in there but you have for the most part my final party. Serge, Glenn, and Guile which is hilarious in hindsight because they are almost a copy of my favorite party in CT of Crono, Frog, and Magus.:D


So there are multiple stories to Dario's death depending on your path?
Not necessarily multiple, more like you get a few lines of dialogue if you bring the right people. It's a huge sub-plot with an interesting twist at the end.


Also Balthazar being the old man is...weird. I thought he died and all was left of him was his robot thing. Guess not. Looking forward to see how that is explained.
Not really, I think I can explain this without really spoiling anything but remember that Balthazar passed away in the original Robo future where Lavos turned everything into a death world. Since Crono and pals changed that future... well I'm sure you'll figure out the rest. ;)



1. Met Fargo and his merry band of pirates. No idea if he's supposed to join later or what. No idea why his ship was attacked by monsters either. Maybe it's just a sign of things getting out of whack with the world.

Fargo is probably my favorite character not connected to the other major subplots in this game. He's also connected to a sequence that has one of the coolest musical moments in the game.


2. Yay, Kid is back! That indeed didn't take long. She also apparently holds no grudge as I'll get into in a minute.
Yeah, Kid has a tendency to bounce back.


3. My party now is Serge, Glenn and Kid. I wasn't sure if I wanted Guile instead of Glenn but I gather Glenn has a bit more Plot to him, especially with us going against his lord and general and all, even if his lord/general is being used by the nefarious Lynx.
You would be correct.


4. Speaking of which, Kid backstory! Her opening up to Serge like that is why i said she evidently holds no grudge for him being an asshole. Then again, I guess she never really realized how much of an asshole he had been. Regardless, I loved that scene. Whatever song played there? Top Tier quality. I mean Kid's backstory isn't the most original or anything but it sure as hell justifies her hatred for Lynx and also her "always act tough" demeanor.
I think it's her personal theme "Star-Stealing Girl"
YoEMaWrQBQM


5. Oh I'm getting ahead of myself though. So the humans drove out the dwarves which made them try and seize land from the fairies and both groups end up blaming humans. Eh, why not. Domino Effect and all that, the humans tipped over the dominoes. Although I guess Feinds - er, demi-humans - were once expansionist too so...I dunno. Everyone Sucks is the moral of the story.
Yeah this whole scene was weird, I love how you save the Fairies and then they kick you out because apparently being part of the species that caused the problems is a greater crime than actually be genocidal. Its one of the games more anvilicious scenes.


6. No new dialogue or anything with Serge's mom or "Home Leena" which is kinda disappointing. I hope something happens there eventually at least.
Serge's Mom is a bit more oblivious than Crono's. Home Leena really doesn't offer much either although you get some amusing dialogue if you had recruited her Another World counterpart.



7. I remembered the brief stop at Radius but was like "...not much to comment on there" but there IS something to comment on there. Harle can go smurf herself. How the hell can she and Lynx both be eventual party members??? It boggles the mind. I'd prefer stabbing them both. A lot.

How dare you! Harle is like one of the game's best characters. :colbert:


Well a lot of crap has happened....

Fort Dragonia took a good while but partly that is my fault. The Yellow Crystal puzzle confused me more than it should have. The Fort Dragonia music was AWESOME though, especially with the bell ringing and stuff. Great atmosphere.

And like usual, getting ahead of myself. Beat up the Dragoon Trio with no real problem. Before that fought Solt and Peppor and they explained how to use Traps. I proceeded to try and use it too only to gain nothing. I thought you just used the right Element Trap before the enemy used that Element spell or whatever and it saved you or something. Apparently not.

Getting back to Dragonia, my predictions about Lynx and Viper were spot-on. Not that I'm some genius....it was just kind of obvious. What i did not predict however was Lynx in Serge's body. Holy hell that's a bitch development! I wonder how long it will take to get that all sorted out.

Yeah, it's the game's big plot twist though there is one more that finally connects this game more to CT.


Poor Kid... I'm sure she's alright but for right now Serge-Lynx is stuck in some weird other dimension maybe? I'm not really sure. I am really tired and after the short conversation with Sprigg about how much life sucks, I saved it so I can finally get to bed.

Sprigg is actually a pretty awesome character, she only has one ability which is the power to transform into monsters but if you undergo a certain sidequest you can fight three boss monsters that she can transform into that make her a beast in combat and does a nice shout-out to CT all in the same breath.


So Lucca is definitely a goner. That's one CT party member down. I still have my doubts they were all killed off or confirmed to be killed off. I guess I'll wait and see.

This is contested among fans and the game gives a bit of evidence to go either way.

[Forsaken Lover]

I think you left out Guile in there but you have for the most part my final party. Serge, Glenn, and Guile which is hilarious in hindsight because they are almost a copy of my favorite party in CT of Crono, Frog, and Magus.:D

Hey, I knew I was forgetting someone!

But man, I have a ton new party members just in my last few hours of progress.

Sprigg
Harle
Radius
Funguy
Zappa
Van
Norris

It's crazy. Funguy I got by accident. Shame he's probably gonna be stuck like that forever.



Not really, I think I can explain this without really spoiling anything but remember that Balthazar passed away in the original Robo future where Lavos turned everything into a death world. Since Crono and pals changed that future... well I'm sure you'll figure out the rest. ;)

Well that makes sense. I keep forgetting CT had a linear, singular timeline so whatever changes happened there still happened. The TL'DR stuff earlier about multiple timelines got me confused. I've only really run across two timelines as it were anyway.



Fargo is probably my favorite character not connected to the other major subplots in this game. He's also connected to a sequence that has one of the coolest musical moments in the game.

Is it a sidequest?



]
I think it's her personal theme "Star-Stealing Girl"
YoEMaWrQBQM


Awesome, thank you for posting that. I'm gonna have to give the CC OST a listen to after I finish the game so I can identify what my favoite songs are actually called.



Yeah this whole scene was weird, I love how you save the Fairies and then they kick you out because apparently being part of the species that caused the problems is a greater crime than actually be genocidal. Its one of the games more anvilicious scenes.

Well I guess you could think of it this way - sure we saved hem but a lot of their friends and family are probably dead and their home is destroyed. It b ehard to be in a good, thankful mood after something like that.

That's my charitable explanation anyhow.



How dare you! Harle is like one of the game's best characters. :colbert:

I will grant you, she is better than I initially thought. I mainly knew her as this bitch who showed up to taunt Kid for dying and who tried to kill Radius. She hadn't done much to endear herself to me.


This is contested among fans and the game gives a bit of evidence to go either way.

Indeed, I've been most skeptical of that of all the various anti-Chrono Cross sentiments I've heard.

Anyway, progress.

I'm rolling with a party of Lynx, Harle and Radius. Radius feels like he is the most important character to the plot as of right now. Well, apart from SergeLynx obviously. I thought about switching in Norris for Harle but he has the same Element as Radius so can't have that.

Other than collecting a lot of party members...not much has happened I don't think. We're stuck in the Home dimension and this incarnation of Viper and the Dragoons has been missing for years so maybe they're all still alive somewhere. I've kinda been waiting for Karsh to be a playable character since way back at the beginning of the game. Of the Dragoons he feels the most important.

But yeah, not much else to report. I gotta pay Van's rent, fix Funguy, find Karsh (he's Zappa's son right? So that must be Zappa's "quest") and save the world. The odds of Number 1 and 2 being done seem low but 3 is probably within the realm of the central storyline so that's nice.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well that makes sense. I keep forgetting CT had a linear, singular timeline so whatever changes happened there still happened. The TL'DR stuff earlier about multiple timelines got me confused. I've only really run across two timelines as it were anyway.

Yeah CT was pretty straightforward. Cross doesn't try to over-complicate it but technically the world Sprigg is from as well as the Bend of Time are parallel worlds as well. Then again there is a good reason why you have only seen two worlds so far. :shifty:




Fargo is probably my favorite character not connected to the other major subplots in this game. He's also connected to a sequence that has one of the coolest musical moments in the game.

Is it a sidequest?

Yes, and though it is important to the story its completely optional as it deals with the Mystics/Demi-Fiends.




]
I think it's her personal theme "Star-Stealing Girl"
YoEMaWrQBQM


Awesome, thank you for posting that. I'm gonna have to give the CC OST a listen to after I finish the game so I can identify what my favoite songs are actually called.

CC Has a damn good soundtrack, I don't necessarily feel it is as well connected to the story as CT or Xenogears but I won't deny the OST is some of Mitsuda's best work.


Well I guess you could think of it this way - sure we saved hem but a lot of their friends and family are probably dead and their home is destroyed. It b ehard to be in a good, thankful mood after something like that.

That's my charitable explanation anyhow.

The issue that most fans have with the scene is that the fairies kind of act like the Dwarves were victims here as well when it was they who were... well causing mass genocide to take over their island for themselves and yet it feels like the fairies are letting them get a pass but not the humans despite the humans saving the fairies from the dwarves. The scene gets worse if you brought the fairy character you can recruit with you.




How dare you! Harle is like one of the game's best characters. :colbert:

I will grant you, she is better than I initially thought. I mainly knew her as this bitch who showed up to taunt Kid for dying and who tried to kill Radius. She hadn't done much to endear herself to me.

Lol, it's cool I'm just giving you a hard time since you hadn't reached the point where she joins. ;)



Anyway, progress.

I'm rolling with a party of Lynx, Harle and Radius. Radius feels like he is the most important character to the plot as of right now. Well, apart from SergeLynx obviously. I thought about switching in Norris for Harle but he has the same Element as Radius so can't have that.

Norris is also one of the game's more important characters, at least in Home World he's also a pretty badass character though Radius is no slouch either.


Other than collecting a lot of party members...not much has happened I don't think. We're stuck in the Home dimension and this incarnation of Viper and the Dragoons has been missing for years so maybe they're all still alive somewhere.

:shifty:


I've kinda been waiting for Karsh to be a playable character since way back at the beginning of the game. Of the Dragoons he feels the most important.

He is the most important and he's connected to the Dario story arc as well.


But yeah, not much else to report. I gotta pay Van's rent, fix Funguy, find Karsh (he's Zappa's son right? So that must be Zappa's "quest") and save the world. The odds of Number 1 and 2 being done seem low but 3 is probably within the realm of the central storyline so that's nice.

Here's some advice, don't worry about Funguy for now. Zappa is awesome because he'll help you create the best gear in the game. As for saving the world... yeah maybe.

[NeoCracker]

Weird fun fact: You can't name Serge Crono.

[Forsaken Lover]

Holy bucket of info, Batman! This scene with Fargo and the mermaid in Home:
1. Fargo was in love with her sister.
2. her sister had a daughter. A daughter named Marcy.
3. Luccia was taking care of her daughter. Luccia, the character I saw for....five minutes in Another World and that's about it.

So Marcy has vaguely more plot relevance than I realized and same for Fargo. I'm actually pretty intrigued by the Demi-human subplot and I would be happy to do his sidequest whenever it comes up. These poor people haven't had it easy.... And to think, they were all so happy after we went back and offed Ozzie. Now look where they are, slave labor on a ship for rich assholes.

Anyway, that scene wasn't THAT important I guess...it just had a lot of little things all said at once ya know? I wonder if Another Fargo was a bitter man too and lost his love and that's why he was a pirate there.

So I hate Fargo. When I lost the first time I figured the game was rigged but I kept trying it anyway and of course I kept losing. Sure I had seen the little event with Sneff and I had seen the little event with the guy in the Inn and his cat but no, I did not actually expect being changed into a cat was the answer to fixing all this. And so that was really bizarre.... And then right on the heels of this craziness, Nikki pops up and has a scene with Fargo about how Fargo is his father. Talk about tone whiplash. The scene itself was pretty abrupt in general... Maybe it would have been better had I actually seen Nikki before this but this is actually my first cutscene with him at all.

And gah, boss fights are becoming a challenge again. First Garai and then Miguel

Okay, first things first, Garai wasn't so hard once I figured out he attacks in a pattern. Well, so did Miguel but I'll get to that. As long as you were prepared for his Will....Will-something move I think it was, you weren't in too much danger.

But frickiin' Miguel...there was NOTHING I could do there. His combo of WeakMind and HolysomethingSwd is guaranteed to do over 300 damageE. Norris and Radius have less than 300 HP. Towards the end of the fight I spent more time healing than attacking and I finally had to revoke my No Stars Left Behind Rule because I had already run away from the fight five times and I was seriously crippling the atmosphere. Lynx dead, Norris dead, Radius with less than 100 HP and I pull out a victory. smurf you game.

ugh.....okay, STORY. Who cares about gameplay. This is a video game, it's about the story.

I really liked the music in the Dead Sea world and the Tower of whatever. I was obviously wondering "what the hell is all this?" right up until I found the Enertron thing to heal up my party. HOLY HELL, are we in 2300 AD??? And then Miguel showed up and I think I get what he was laying down. Basically, by saving the future of one timeline, we negated the future of another. True,
in 999 years the world would have more or less ended anyway but by altering history we undid all the lives that would have been born up to that point. We saved billions, killed trillions. Sounds good.

Goddess of Fate huh? I think the DS ending of Trigger kinda spoiled me on that one maybe.

But anyway, good times, things are happening. The whole bit in the Dead Sea other world was very emotional and apart from the fact he kept annihilating me, I liked the Miguel fight and the fact they kept the somber music for it.

And man I'm tired... We're FINALLY about to go back to "Another World" and be reunited with Kid hopefully. Her being poisoned didn't take her out of the party for half as long as all this crap has. I just want her back... And maybe my third party member from now on should have a lot of HP.... Ugh.

I might have more to say once I'm less sleepy and no longer fatigued from the stress of the Miguel fight... Seriously, gameplay can utterly ruin a game's plot. You just stop caring when it becomes too challenging and you think more about battle strategy than the plot. After all the fights with Miguel he could have told me radioactive cockroaches caused everything and I would have been like "sounds good."

Oh yeah, sucks to be Home Dragoons and Viper. They chose....poorly.

EDIT:

Oh I forgot, I think PuPu joined our party. Maybe I should have brought him to fight Miguel.

EDIT 2:

Looking it up, I think I should probably start using Diminish... I just haven't really bothered with buffs or debuffs this game because I have no idea how long they last. Diminish reduces ALL Elemental damage, including the damage you would be inflicting, correct? That is why I avoided using it.

[NeoCracker]

Miguel is, bar none, the hardest fucking fight in this game.

Holy Light Trap saved my ass going in there.

[VeloZer0]

I highly recommend having a character who can steal (Fargo/Kid/Mel) in your party from this point on. Dragon bosses have a nice item you can steal, and as a bonus also have more powerful elements you can trap.

As for Miguel, my strategy was pile on the dark elemental spells to keep the field element as black as possible. Also as his light spells tend to shred me, so do Lynx and Harle's dark spells cause high damage to him.

[Wolf Kanno]

Holy bucket of info, Batman! This scene with Fargo and the mermaid in Home:
1. Fargo was in love with her sister.
2. her sister had a daughter. A daughter named Marcy.
3. Luccia was taking care of her daughter. Luccia, the character I saw for....five minutes in Another World and that's about it.

So Marcy has vaguely more plot relevance than I realized and same for Fargo. I'm actually pretty intrigued by the Demi-human subplot and I would be happy to do his sidequest whenever it comes up. These poor people haven't had it easy.... And to think, they were all so happy after we went back and offed Ozzie. Now look where they are, slave labor on a ship for rich assholes.

Anyway, that scene wasn't THAT important I guess...it just had a lot of little things all said at once ya know? I wonder if Another Fargo was a bitter man too and lost his love and that's why he was a pirate there.

So I hate Fargo. When I lost the first time I figured the game was rigged but I kept trying it anyway and of course I kept losing. Sure I had seen the little event with Sneff and I had seen the little event with the guy in the Inn and his cat but no, I did not actually expect being changed into a cat was the answer to fixing all this. And so that was really bizarre.... And then right on the heels of this craziness, Nikki pops up and has a scene with Fargo about how Fargo is his father. Talk about tone whiplash. The scene itself was pretty abrupt in general... Maybe it would have been better had I actually seen Nikki before this but this is actually my first cutscene with him at all.

To be fair, the Mystics/demi-fiends you're dealing with are a sub-group of the ones from CT. So it's not like there whole race is getting shit on across the world. El Nido is just a small archipelago between the three continents. Pirate Fargo is actually in better shape than his Home World counterpart though they both have their own issues. You'll need to reunite them in order to help bring the Marbule/Mystic sub-plot to a close. Hint hint...


And gah, boss fights are becoming a challenge again. First Garai and then Miguel

Okay, first things first, Garai wasn't so hard once I figured out he attacks in a pattern. Well, so did Miguel but I'll get to that. As long as you were prepared for his Will....Will-something move I think it was, you weren't in too much danger.

But frickiin' Miguel...there was NOTHING I could do there. His combo of WeakMind and HolysomethingSwd is guaranteed to do over 300 damageE. Norris and Radius have less than 300 HP. Towards the end of the fight I spent more time healing than attacking and I finally had to revoke my No Stars Left Behind Rule because I had already run away from the fight five times and I was seriously crippling the atmosphere. Lynx dead, Norris dead, Radius with less than 100 HP and I pull out a victory. smurf you game.

Yeah, as NeoCracker mentioned, Miguel is considered CC's That One Boss, who would have thought a simple fisherman would be such a beast in battle. Luckily you won't really run into someone quite as difficult afterwards but he does serve to teach you about using debuffs/Buffs, exploiting elemental weaknesses, and keeping an eye on the Field Element. You'll need to keep this in mind for all the fights going forward.



ugh.....okay, STORY. Who cares about gameplay. This is a video game, it's about the story.

I think that will be a thread for another day...



I really liked the music in the Dead Sea world and the Tower of whatever. I was obviously wondering "what the hell is all this?" right up until I found the Enertron thing to heal up my party. HOLY HELL, are we in 2300 AD??? And then Miguel showed up and I think I get what he was laying down. Basically, by saving the future of one timeline, we negated the future of another. True,
in 999 years the world would have more or less ended anyway but by altering history we undid all the lives that would have been born up to that point. We saved billions, killed trillions. Sounds good.

I feel Miguel and by extension Kato are embellishing this a bit considering the CT gang ended the future where mankind is nearly extinct. I would say they killed billions and saved trillions but then again its all just numbers at this point. Yeah, the Dead Sea is pretty cool since it really sends the message home about the destroyed timelines. I love the scene meeting Miguel and the Ghost Children at Leene's Bell, it just sends chills down my spine.



Goddess of Fate huh? I think the DS ending of Trigger kinda spoiled me on that one maybe.
Not quite... :shifty:


But anyway, good times, things are happening. The whole bit in the Dead Sea other world was very emotional and apart from the fact he kept annihilating me, I liked the Miguel fight and the fact they kept the somber music for it.

It is one of the better boss fights and thew whole area is done really well.



And man I'm tired... We're FINALLY about to go back to "Another World" and be reunited with Kid hopefully. Her being poisoned didn't take her out of the party for half as long as all this crap has. I just want her back... And maybe my third party member from now on should have a lot of HP.... Ugh.

It may be a while before Kid rejoins, as for a third party member it comes down to play-style but I tend to favor blitzkrieg builds so fast high damaging characters, long battles will get you killed in this game since the element system gets weaker as battle go longer and the bad guys have infinite uses.


I might have more to say once I'm less sleepy and no longer fatigued from the stress of the Miguel fight... Seriously, gameplay can utterly ruin a game's plot. You just stop caring when it becomes too challenging and you think more about battle strategy than the plot. After all the fights with Miguel he could have told me radioactive cockroaches caused everything and I would have been like "sounds good."

I feel this depends on the player.



Oh yeah, sucks to be Home Dragoons and Viper. They chose....poorly.
Damn straight.




Oh I forgot, I think PuPu joined our party. Maybe I should have brought him to fight Miguel.

Sadly, he's isn't that good. There are only a few good White Elements in the game sadly.



Looking it up, I think I should probably start using Diminish... I just haven't really bothered with buffs or debuffs this game because I have no idea how long they last. Diminish reduces ALL Elemental damage, including the damage you would be inflicting, correct? That is why I avoided using it.

Definitely, you'll find melee trumps most things so use debuffs and keep the Elemental Field in your favor and just wail on bosses.

[Forsaken Lover]

Spoilers pop up in the weirdest, most annoying ways. I wanted to beat Janice in the Grand Slam but I had no idea how to collect more monsters. I read there were two ways: beat them with Sprigg or use the Forget-me-Not Pot accessory. Simple, right? Well I look up that item to find out where it is. The wiki says it's in Chronpolis. I'm like "is that the big city ruins we visited in Dead Sea?" First line of the wiki entry oN Chronopolis says Balthazar did something with "Project Kid."

Kid.

I've vaguely known there was something amiss with Kid... Something I read somewhere long before I started the game. I guess all this does is confirm my nagging suspicions.

Oh yeah, not much else to report right now aside from that. I'll talk more later when i'm actually done playing the game this session. All I can though is....SO MANY PARTY MEMBERS!!!

But still no Kid.... Goddammit.

EDIT:

Also apparently I missed out on the dei-human subplot being resolved. I was supposed to talk to Nikki before leaving the Zelbess or something.

EDIT 2:

RANDOM THEORY OUT OF NOWHERE! Dario is Lynx! Or related to him somehow! Could be totally wrong but I'm trying to connect the dots and who or what exactly Lynx is has been totally left in the dark. I was re-reading my posts about the Home Dragoons being dead and I was thinking of their counterparts and it occurred to me "what about Lynx's Home counterpart?" He must have oen as Norris knew him. Or can Lynx just travel the dimensions too?

The odds of Lynx being Dario seem very slim but I'm just throwing it out there. If I'm way off, oh well. I like surprises.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah the Demi-Fiend.Marbule quest is pretty easy to miss in this game.

I won't spoil Lynx's true identity but I will mention that you already know what happens to him and Harle as they were with Viper and his men in the Dead Sea frozen.

Now I did discover an amusing fan theory about Miguel that made me laugh... :shifty:

[Forsaken Lover]

Oh I missed Home Lynx being frozen with the others. Oh well then....

Also I am going around collecting Dragon Powers/Relics so I figured now is a good sidequest time. It almost feels like the endgame but I don't think we're quite there yet. I mean, Serge doesn't even have his body back yet.

Anyhow, I was wandering around looking for stuff to do and i visited Another World Isle of the Damned. Guess what I found there? Solt and Peppor! Annoying? Hell no, I got Karsh backstory! I neglected to mention but ever since he was available, Karsh has been a mainstay in my party. Loaded up with 3 strength-increasing accessories, he can deal in excess of 300 HP damage with just a full string of melee attacks. Anyway, after beating those two numnuts, I got Karsh's Level 7 Tech! So that's pretty awesome and unexpected.

Not everyone can have a Level 7 Tech can they? There are just way too many characters.
But wait, there are eight Element levels. Does he get a stronger Tech?

Can you tell me the Miguel fan theory or does tha tspil things to come?

[Wolf Kanno]

Every character but Sprigg I believe has a Level 7 tech but only a few of the cast members have to do a sidequest to obtain it. Others will gain theirs once you get something like 35 Stars or higher.

Elements go up to Level 8 but if memory serves me correct there is only one ability that is exclusively a Level 8 limit and its a plot ability you'll gain eventually.

Karsh is indeed a great character and I wish I could use more people in battle because he and Fargo are super useful. You're kind of in the "open" part of the game since you can deal with the Dragons in the order you want. I think only the Sky Dragon requires you to beat all the other Dragons to actually meet him. Make sure you steal from them because they all carry armor that allows you to null their elements. The Green, White, and Black Armor are the most useful because many of the more nasty bosses (like Miguel) use one of those elements. They can also be broken down to get the materials needed to make the Prism/Rainbow Gear which is pretty nice.

The Miguel Theory isn't really much of a spoiler since the evidence is not exactly rock solid, but some fans theorize that Miguel is actually Crono in disguise. Would explain how a simple fisherman is a total badass with swords made of Light.

[VeloZer0]

Elements go up to Level 8 but if memory serves me correct there is only one ability that is exclusively a Level 8 limit and its a plot ability you'll gain eventually.
I assume you mean asside from the level 8 summons?


Yes, Karsh is a great powerhouse for melee attacks. It is even better to get the Karsh + Glenn combination going, stack the field full of green element from casting Eagle Eye, and then just wail away with 99% accuracy level 3 attacks.

[Forsaken Lover]

Maybe I'm just not supposed to be able to beat Dario right now? I mean, holy hell. I'm wandering around because I have no idea where the remaining three dragons are and I stopped by Home Forbidden Island because, well, maybe a dragon is there.

Nope, only Dario. And to make things worse, I have to have Riddel in my party. I had admittedly thought about using her earlier but this boss fight has taught me the rror of my ways. She smurfing sucks. She lasts maybe couple turns even with all the defense armor and accessories I have.

Sn now we're down to 2.

Only Lynx is basically good for support and nothing else. I guess because Dario is Black Element Lynx's normal attacks do a pathetic amount of damage. Karsh, my main damage dealer as far as melee goes, can manage doing about 200 if he get sa full combo in.

Anyway, point is, it's basically Karsh vs. Dario with Riddel dead as a door nail and Lynx clinging to dear life witha lot of healing.

I still got Dario down to his hurt animation though so I must have depleted maybe half of his HP or more? I think that will do for now.

But melee has to be the way to go here because he counters every Element I used on him. I have to beat him into submission with brute force, not magic. I think....

So I got Water Dragon and Earth Dragon. The others? Well Sky Dragon is there but he told me to bugger off until I could find the others. Only I don't see Fire Dragon Island or any of the others....

EDIT:

Thank you VeloZer0 for the suggestion of Eagle Eye. I haven't used it up to this point but with it Karsh was doing 100 or close to it a good chunk of the time. Unfortunately it still wasn't enough. Him on his own just can't beat this bastard right now.

Also I noticed there appears to be no difference in the status effect spells being + or -. Eagle Eye -1 seemed to boost him just as well as Eagle Eye + 2. Diminish also seemed to work just as well at handicapping Dario's moves even when I used the -2 version.

EDIT 2:

So the trick is that he doesn't just counter using Elements on him, he counters everything. His entire moveset is dependent on your last turn. So as long as i keep only physically attacking, all he will do is physically attack. Huh....

Apparently Fire is the way to go.

I really hate accepting help on things like this. Now I know the trick to it, I have no desire to fight or beat him.

FINAL EDIT:

Okay, real update time.

1. Hey, Kid is back! Only she's brainwashed and trying to kill us! And now she's gone again.... :(

More awesomeness from Kid's Theme, Star-Stealing Girl. I really loved the scene of Serge just taking a few steps away from the party and having all those flashbacks about her. Serge seems so much more...emotional and possessing of a personality than Chrono. This scene showed you the bond Serge and Kid share really well.

2. Harle dies, right? I would have figured as much even if I hadn't been spoiled on it the other day. Sorry Harle, between you and the world, I choose the world. Oh, of course I said "I don't know" to her question but that was to be polite. If it had been Kid asking me to choose her or the world, then I might have chosen Kid. But Harle is not so endearing or interesting. Why the hell she had a heart-to-heart with Starky of all people, I don't know.

3. How ironic - in Another World, everyone is alive except Dario. Even Viper made it. In Home though, Dario is the last one standing. I appreciated the backstory even if the fight gave me a headache. Interesting that not once did Home Dario ever stop to think about the fact "Riddel" isn't the one he married or loved. Home Riddel is dead. I guess you shouldn't sweat the details.

4. That Black Dragon fight was so hard! Or not. i just walked up and took the Relic. I guess I'll have to make sure to do the sidequest right on New Game+ so I can face him for real.

5. Speaking of which, I think I will in fact do multiple playtrhroughs. Not only for plot clarification but also because I have so many party members here and I want to test some of them out. I frickin' just got ANOTHER one. I want to test Cave-Girl's moveset out!

6. The Dragon God music is really good. One of my favorite tracks in the game thus far.

7. Maybe it's just all the extra stuff available to me now but at this point, it feels like Serge has been Lynx longer than he was Serge. And Kid has been out of our party longer than she was in our party. I'm at 45 hours and I am missing our hero and heroine. Well, our hero is still there but you get what I mean.

[VeloZer0]

. Maybe it's just all the extra stuff available to me now but at this point, it feels like Serge has been Lynx longer than he was Serge. And Kid has been out of our party longer than she was in our party
That is one of my least favorite things about the game, the amount of time you spend playing as Lynx. It all fits together well from a plot point of view, but I just didn't enjoy using him as much.



Also I noticed there appears to be no difference in the status effect spells being + or -. Eagle Eye -1 seemed to boost him just as well as Eagle Eye + 2. Diminish also seemed to work just as well at handicapping Dario's moves even when I used the -2 version.
I believe that putting a buff in a lower skill spot just diminishes the time that it lasts by a trivially small amount.

[Forsaken Lover]

Serge has his body back!

I DON'T CARE!

I spent forever fighting Lynx-Serge and running away because I wanted his Rainbow Shell. I kept getting Trashy Tiara and I thought maybe it was just a luck thing. I think the key is to wait a few turns or to do some damage and then steal it. Only then do you get his good item and not the crappy one.

BUT IT WAS ALL FOR smurfING NOTHING. Not only did I get locked out of the demihuman sidequest, I got locked out of forging Rainbow equipment. FOREVER.

Goddammit.

This game could have been a Perfect 10 (and believe me, it's not) and I STILL would bump it down to 5 just because of this development. I am irritated right now. My entire endgame plan is shot.

YOU GIVE YOUR PARTY ULTIMATE EQUIPMENT. IT'S WHAT YOU GODDAM DO IN RPGS.

Kid needs a Rainbow Dagger, Karsh a Rainbow Axe, they need Rainbow Armor........but nope.

All because of one easily missed sidequest.

GAAAAAAAAAAH.

40 CHARACTERS
ALL smurfED OVER BECAUSE OF ONE SIDEQUEST
THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THEM

Because Zappa hitting trout with a hammer relates to the Black Dragon for REASONS.

[VeloZer0]

Well, if it makes you feel better there isn't really a post game to use it in anyways.

[Wolf Kanno]

Elements go up to Level 8 but if memory serves me correct there is only one ability that is exclusively a Level 8 limit and its a plot ability you'll gain eventually.
I assume you mean asside from the level 8 summons?.

Figured I was spacing something but then again, the summons are more work than they are worth, so I'm not surprised I forgot about them.


Maybe I'm just not supposed to be able to beat Dario right now? I mean, holy hell. I'm wandering around because I have no idea where the remaining three dragons are and I stopped by Home Forbidden Island because, well, maybe a dragon is there.

Nope, only Dario. And to make things worse, I have to have Riddel in my party. I had admittedly thought about using her earlier but this boss fight has taught me the rror of my ways. She smurfing sucks. She lasts maybe couple turns even with all the defense armor and accessories I have.

Sn now we're down to 2.

Only Lynx is basically good for support and nothing else. I guess because Dario is Black Element Lynx's normal attacks do a pathetic amount of damage. Karsh, my main damage dealer as far as melee goes, can manage doing about 200 if he get sa full combo in.

Anyway, point is, it's basically Karsh vs. Dario with Riddel dead as a door nail and Lynx clinging to dear life witha lot of healing.

I still got Dario down to his hurt animation though so I must have depleted maybe half of his HP or more? I think that will do for now.

But melee has to be the way to go here because he counters every Element I used on him. I have to beat him into submission with brute force, not magic. I think....

So I got Water Dragon and Earth Dragon. The others? Well Sky Dragon is there but he told me to bugger off until I could find the others. Only I don't see Fire Dragon Island or any of the others....

EDIT:

Thank you VeloZer0 for the suggestion of Eagle Eye. I haven't used it up to this point but with it Karsh was doing 100 or close to it a good chunk of the time. Unfortunately it still wasn't enough. Him on his own just can't beat this bastard right now.

Also I noticed there appears to be no difference in the status effect spells being + or -. Eagle Eye -1 seemed to boost him just as well as Eagle Eye + 2. Diminish also seemed to work just as well at handicapping Dario's moves even when I used the -2 version.

EDIT 2:

So the trick is that he doesn't just counter using Elements on him, he counters everything. His entire moveset is dependent on your last turn. So as long as i keep only physically attacking, all he will do is physically attack. Huh....

Apparently Fire is the way to go.

I really hate accepting help on things like this. Now I know the trick to it, I have no desire to fight or beat him.

Yeah Red Element is the best because its the only thing he doesn't have a nasty counter for and you can basically trap him in a pattern. Dario is the game's hardest boss but he's largely optional but he does grant Serge his best weapon.


FINAL EDIT:

Okay, real update time.

1. Hey, Kid is back! Only she's brainwashed and trying to kill us! And now she's gone again.... :(

More awesomeness from Kid's Theme, Star-Stealing Girl. I really loved the scene of Serge just taking a few steps away from the party and having all those flashbacks about her. Serge seems so much more...emotional and possessing of a personality than Chrono. This scene showed you the bond Serge and Kid share really well.

Eh, I felt Crono was a fun character but then again its the alternate endings that really painted Crono for me as well as the official artwork stuff. Serge always felt a bit too much of a blank slate for my taste but maybe its because he is just an unwitting pawn to so many people in this game.


2. Harle dies, right? I would have figured as much even if I hadn't been spoiled on it the other day. Sorry Harle, between you and the world, I choose the world. Oh, of course I said "I don't know" to her question but that was to be polite. If it had been Kid asking me to choose her or the world, then I might have chosen Kid. But Harle is not so endearing or interesting. Why the hell she had a heart-to-heart with Starky of all people, I don't know.

I disagree, I love Harle and always found her more interesting than Kid. Funny enough, Harle is kind of an "alternate" of Kid so it makes the issue a bit moot I guess.


3. How ironic - in Another World, everyone is alive except Dario. Even Viper made it. In Home though, Dario is the last one standing. I appreciated the backstory even if the fight gave me a headache. Interesting that not once did Home Dario ever stop to think about the fact "Riddel" isn't the one he married or loved. Home Riddel is dead. I guess you shouldn't sweat the details.

It was pretty amusing.


4. That Black Dragon fight was so hard! Or not. i just walked up and took the Relic. I guess I'll have to make sure to do the sidequest right on New Game+ so I can face him for real.

He's not that hard actually but fighting him also nets you a chance to steal the Black Plate which makes the Dario fight infinitely easier.


5. Speaking of which, I think I will in fact do multiple playtrhroughs. Not only for plot clarification but also because I have so many party members here and I want to test some of them out. I frickin' just got ANOTHER one. I want to test Cave-Girl's moveset out!

Some of them like Pip are interesting and I do like some of the cast members but many of them are sadly a bit samey. Definitely do a second playthrough because this game was kind of designed to be played more than once like CT.


7. Maybe it's just all the extra stuff available to me now but at this point, it feels like Serge has been Lynx longer than he was Serge. And Kid has been out of our party longer than she was in our party. I'm at 45 hours and I am missing our hero and heroine. Well, our hero is still there but you get what I mean.

Yeah... you do spend a large chunk of the game as Lynx. Not sure how I feel about this as I was not exactly attached to Serge's true form anyway but whatever.

[Forsaken Lover]

So when i first read "FATE" some time ago I was like "are they just being melodramatic?" with all the all caps thing. Now knowing that it's a computer makes more sense. Although it being based on Mother Brain - the genocidal anti-human thing from Robo's subplot - worries me some....

And man oh man was my suspicions right.

So my idea was I'd try and jot down my impressions as I went along but I think that kind killed the atmosphere or mood ya know?

So...Chronopolis. To begin with, some people have talked here and elsewhere about how "El Nido was its own thing." Like when I mentioned the fate of demi-humans/Fiends, people said El Nido was an isolated incident and the Fiends we helped in Medina might all still be doing just fine. I honestly didn't buy this idea because...well, it just seemed kinda silly. Perhaps its due to the technical limitations but I feel we saw practically nothing of the world iN Chrono Trigger. We saw a couple kingdoms, a couple random towns and that's it. I had it in my mind we glimpsed just as much of the planet iN CT as we did in CC.

But Chronopolis throws that all out of whack. El Nido truly is "an isolated incident" as it was a super-bubble of pet goldfish. They are nothing more or less than bred lab animals, even if the breeding was super-duper long. Do any real animals get bred "in captivity" for 10,000 years? At that point is it even captivity? Then again, FATE intervened so directly that it kinda is. That poor wannabe poet waitress....

I recall talk earlier about Lavos wiping out the Reptiles "being no accident." And this seems to confirm that idea. Mammals, or more precisely humans, were the creatures Lavos chose and the Reptiles bit the big one. I see now what people were saying about Lavos guiding evolution being a thing iN CC that might have been retroactively put into CT. In any event, I made sure to listen to all the...ghosts? Memories? Time-frozen consciousnesses? I made sure to read everything tey had to say and the one I liked was the idea that humans are such contradictory beings because our evolution has been altered by Lavos. We are contaminated which leads to the way we all live our sad little lives in hate while simultaneously wanting tlove. it's the paradox of starting war for peace and it's all Lavos' fault.

On a more substantive level, let me see if I'm getting Events straight.

El Nido Bubble is created at some point in the future.

Everything is going great for a long, long time.

TheN Wazuki and Miguel stumble upon Chronopolis. For...some reason, Serge is healed by the Frozen Flame and "chosen" by him too as "Arbiter"? Did Wazuki and Miguel just stumble through the facility until they found the giant energy thing? I guess it might help explain things if I knew what the Flame really was.... In all the information I received, I don't recall theme ver saying precisely what it was. Oh wait! Something to do with Lavos? It fell from the sky with Lavos? Is it perhaps like the Mammon Machine? Drawing out Lavos' endless power to do....anything? Still doesn't explain the whole Serge situation though.

I'm getting serious Xenogears vibes from this whole section however. Save Points being used as monitoring devices, the main character had his fate altered by coming into "contact" with a super-energy source, a sort of god-like computer thing.... Heh, I've heard Deus called a 'Lavos Clone" but FATE kinda reminds me more of Deus in a way.

Oh yeah!

[youtube1ercQOGIcAc[/youtube]

Substitute "Yamcha" with "Robo." What the hell was that? I'm still not sold on Kato hating Chrono Trigger or its cast but I think he might have hated Robo.

Also, as a boss, FATE was kind of annoying. Not hard but I had to run away the first time because Serge died. I'm gonna consult a guide because this is getting ridiculous. I have precisely ONE Revive Element and if Serge dies, I'm screwed. I must be missing something.

I also missed some goodies I think. I have no idea HOW I missed it but I missed "Recharge" in Chronpolis.

I also didn't steal whatever the hell FATE had to steal. I got it the first time - when Serge died - but the second time around I said smurf it. Probably gonna regret that but oh wel.

Back to story...I'm utterly at a loss for how the prologue of this game plays into what's going on now. Serge and Kid are after lynx? But right now we're after the Dragons who, if I'm understanding this right, are the super-beings who reign over the future in which the Reptiles inherit the Earth. How the hell does Lynx play into this?

This is pretty neat turn of events though, in every way. The whole El Nido reveal, the kind and holy Dragons being vengeful Reptiles, etc.. I wonder if they're still gonna have that awesome music when they show up again? Be kinda contradictory but at the same time fitting.



Also all the stuff with "Time Crash" and whatever? I'm not sure if i get any of that. I think the big and small of it is that they tried to do an experiment, trout went wrong, and both Chronpolis and Dinopolis ended up in El Nido. But now I'm thinking on this, I realize just how confused I am.... Isn't Chronpolis from the future? Then how did they create El Nido in the past? And wait, wasn't the experiment that screwed up everything them trying to manipulate time? But they already did that with El Nido, right...? I'm lost now. Did Wazuki and Miguel happen upon the destroyed Chronopolis that got sucked back in time?

EDIT:

Yessss, Kid is back! Although that flashback was appropriately nightmarish. I'm not sure how much control I have over what happens there? Is there a "bad' way to do it? Can you screw up and leave Kid in a coma? Masa and Mune said they were running out of power so I got scared and thought they meant the thing was almost over and I had to hurry up and save Kid or risk losing her forever.

The kids' drawings of the CT cast was also adorable yet heartbreaking. As was Gato being there but unable to help and beign destroyed....

EDIT 2:

I just got Lucca's letter from...Luccia.

Wow.

kid is Schala? Only, not the Schala we knew? She mentioned someone from the distant past who was gentle and all the rest of it and yes, Schala did cross my mind. But, come on, we barely spent five minutes with her! So I dismissed that possibility. yet no sooner than had I dismissed it when the next line, about Janus being there to protect Kid, sealed the deal. Kid is Schala... One of the weakest characters from CT is the best character in CC.

[Wolf Kanno]

Depending on your next update, I can try to sort some of this out for you because frankly it is pretty confusing the first time around. Right now, it's almost 3 a.m. and I need to get some sleep. :eep:

[Forsaken Lover]

I understand where my problem was. Everything was kinda being dumped in my lap at the same time so, in my mind, I thought it all happened at the same time. That El Nido was created before the experiment thing. But, now I know the Time Crash happened, everyone got sucked into the past, and THEN El Nido was made. That is much more sensible.

AND I BEAT THE GAME!!!! Even got the Real Ending. I say it's all pure luck. Once he...she....it stops spamming Green Elements, you have a chance for victory. I played defensive, saving up everyone's Stamina best I could and making damned sure to keep Serge's Stamina full. I got all the way through Yellow, Red, Green, Blue and Black before he finally got a damned move in. But guess what move it was? PHOTON BEAM! Yep, White! Thank you, video game AI for loving me.

I think I might go to sleep and collect my thoughts on the ending and teh game as a whole but I'm gonna say this right now.

What disappointed me about the ending? Not the little kids with their exposition - couldn't care less about that. The fact Balthasar somehow arranged ALL of this? That is kind of annoying but, hey, wouldn't be the first monumentally and impossibly complex scheme in fiction.

No, what bugged me was Lynx and FATE dying. AND NO ONE CARED. Admittedly right after this there was a big problem in the form of the Dragon God but come on. Lynx has been our central antagonist for 98% of the game. He has bee a driving force of malice and evil and is tied up in a lot of characte's plots. He's also Serge's poor, mind-screwed father.

Nobody cares. He just...dies. No deathbed monologue, not even a little scene between him and Kid or him and Serge or...or someone! What the hell, game. There's just no frickin' closure at all. It was so disappointing in fact that I honestly didn't think the FATE boss fight was the end of him. I was half-certain Lynx would reappear somehow at some point but, nope. That was his end, in all its complete anticlimactic glory.

Good game though and that was only a minor nitpick on the whole. Just saying what is fresh in my mind.

[VeloZer0]

I think that once you get a certain amount into the elemental chain the time devourer starts helping you do it. Also once you get all 6 locked in it just kind of sits there until you build up enough to use the Chrono Cross. Making it not quite so ridiculously difficult.

I though the fay the entire thing was wrapped up in CC was a little on the weak side. It was building up very strong, and then kind of meh. Grated that is the failing of just about every video game that tries to be really complicated and philosophical.

[Forsaken Lover]

I'm still trying to get to sleep and I won't feel ready to write up my final thoughts until I get some rest. In the meantime...

Dost thou seeketh to break the chains of fate? A son of man to challenge the
Goddess of Fate? Fascinating... Then confront my trials.
6W_nDvs0QnI

Once you learn about the Dragons and their intent, this song becomes a bit less appropriate maybe?

[Forsaken Lover]

Okay, let's get this over with.

Chrono Cross.

This will be just about CC. I'll do CC vs. CT later.

I liked when my impressions are dashed, when the unexpected happens. That was part of why Magus was hands down the best playable character in Trigger. Well, in regards to Chrono Cross, it certainly does a masterful job of serving you off the path you thought was beaten and laid out for you. Whether it was Serge becoming Lynx, the Dead Sea Ruins, Chronopolis or the stuff after, this game thrives on being routine and then suddenly BAM, you don't know where you are going. There was foreshadowing of course in the form of your first conversation with "the Prophet of Time" way back when you first get to Viper Manor but that's almost akin to the opening FMV of Xenogears. What the hell you just witnessed/read won't make sense for a long, LONG time. So while it's foreshadowing in the most technical sense, at the time, it was just a bunch of -Words-. I will enjoy revisiting that scene during my second playthrough and seeing how much more I can grasp.

So yes, back to the game as a whole. I enjoyed the story insofar as the general outline. The storytelling could have been tighter in a number of ways, especially the last "arc." If I didn't know better, I would say this game ran out of budget too.

\
Now onto the characters. Oh boy, if I had to list the triumvirate of why people seem to hate this game:

1. IT KILLED AND RAPED EVERYTHING I EVER LOVED ABOUT CHRONO TRIGGER.

2. THE PLOT MAKES NO SENSE.

3. NONE OF THE CHARACTERS MATTER OR HAVE ANY PERSONALITY.

Well I'm gonna lay this down for ya, mates. Kid is better than every single member of the CT cast. I know that's a comparison and I said I'd save that for later but I'm just gonna get this out of the way right now. Even as she was absent for like...half the game at least, she still had more personality and was more interesting than Robo, Lucca, Ayla or frickin' Crono. Frog, Marle and Magus were the best characters in CT and they were islands among an unimpressive sea of mediocrity and blandness.

The flashback of the orphanage being burned down? Kid having everyone she's ever known and loved brutally murdered right in front of her? And then being left all alone in the world just as she had thought she had someone to love and hold onto? Yeah, very powerful stuff for me. The music also helped but I'll get to that later.

As for everyone else? Well I only got about 25 or so party members and of those 25 I only paid attention to Karsh. From the first time you saw him after coming to Another World I was like "this guy is gonna be important." Perhaps a little overestimation on my part but remember what I said about liking when my impressions are all wrong? Well in one instance, I was glad that they were wrong in regards to Karsh because you just wouldn't associate a man in his role with his type of personality. He's a Dragoon, a knightly knight and a commander. You'd expect something...I dunno, regal or formal. But he has the most crude, blunt way of speaking. One of the funniest and most awesome little parts of the game was when you visit I think it was Another Zappa's house and meet Pierre. i had Karsh in my party and his contribution was saying "Zappa let this fruitcake stay in my room?!!?!" That sums up Karsh well I thought. And luck would have it that I even stumbled upon Karsh's backstory which I really enjoyed. I feel so sorry for him but it's a mark of what a good person he is that he did not for a second begrudge Dario being alive. He was glad that his old friends could be reunited even if he still loved Riddel.

And Serge...I feel there is no competition between Serge and Crono. For one thing, Crono didn't have any real role in the story. I think Serge benefits from him actually being integral to the plot. Crono though? I could have grabbed any random kid out of their house and they could have been as important as Crono. Serge, by virtue of being Serge, exuded more personality and likability than Crono. There was also the scene where, after a brainwashed Kid confronts you all at Hermit's Hideaway, he just steps away from the group and flashbacks to all his times with Kid. That simple, single scene did more for establishing a bond between those two than Crono and Marle's little romance in CT.
Crono is so self-insert it kinda hurts.

Oh and one character I want to give a shoutout to is Harle. I looked up the various endings and how to get them after I beat the game and it just so happens that I had a save right before Terra Tower. This enabled me to get the ending where you just confront the Time Devourer without doing anything with the Dragon God. In this ending, the various beleaguered races of El Nido ally with the Dragon God and reek bloody vengeance upon all humans in the archipelago. I bring this up because it made me seriously reconsider Harle's character. I had begun to really like her a lot more than my first couple impressions would have made me think but I did kinda forget about her eventually. Thsi ending though makes me consider just what a sad little existence she must have lived. She obviously did not want the same thing as her fellow Dragons... She had come to sincerely care for Serge and the rest of the world and clearly had no hatred in her. But she's just a part of the whole, a cog in the wheel, and couldn't do anything about resisting her own fate.

People have speculated about Wazuki maybe holding Lynx back and that's why he didn't just immediately go to Chronopolis when he had Serge's body. Well perhaps some part of Harle held the Dragon God back and kept it from immediately laying waste to El Nido.

Getting back to story for a second though, am I the only one who constantly rolled my eyes in the Chronopolis section when they described how the CT cast took down Lavos? Looking it up, Miguel said it first but the "ghosts" in Chronopolis say it a few times too.

Miguel: -insert big speech about how Lavos was all-powerful and manipulating things for aeons and damn near destroyed the planet- Were it not for a teenage boy and his group of adventurer friends, that is...

Every time I read that, or heard the scientists in Chronopolis refer to the CT cast as such, I just pictured them speaking with the most derision imaginable in their voice. It just sound so patently absurd and stupid and cliche.

Now on the plot as a whole, I feel the pacing could have been better. The game has a REALLY bad habit of not giving clear directions on what you are supposed to do next, especially once you have a boat and the world map is opened up to you. There is certainly a lot I've forgotten about CC but that's just because I spent so much time dicking around that I remember more about the billion random battles I fought than some of the conversations and cutscenes. Also, as I noted earlier, I felt the conclusion to FATE and Lynx was very unsatisfying. I do enjoy the reveal that, in the end, it was largely a struggle between two evil powers. Or, at the very least, two powers that cared nothing about humans. It ws all a war between FATE and the Dragon God and our heroes were just pawns stuck in the middle. And then there was Balthasar off to the sidelines, manipulating both sides and us. I guess when you are the Prophet of Time you are given a bit of license in how much you can control.... Honestly, the "how" bugs me much less than the presentation of it.

In keeping with how meh most of the ending was, Terra Tower also felt very bland. I expected better dungeons out of this game. I mean, a good chunk of the place didn't even have music. Oh when it did have music it was pretty good but I'll get to that in a second. I just think Chronopolis and the Kid flashback were really the last great moments of the game and everything after was...underwhelming. It was interesting but just not convincingly shown.

Now, on a better note, let's talk music! The thing everyone, even the haters, agrees is great about this game.

Back when I was playing CT, a lot of people mentioned the greatness of Schala's Theme. I found it a good enough theme but, like Schala herself, rather unremarkable.
Paradoxically though, the best song in CC was Schala's theme. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoEMaWrQBQM)

Garden of the Gods. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qml20JrzTc) In my mind, before I knew the actual title of this track, I thought of this as the "Dragons Theme" or "Fighting Fate." It has such a...holy and melodic air and it plays when Serge is reborn to fight and destroy FATE hence why I liked to call it "Fighting Fate."

Speaking of which, I don't think any other game beats this one when it comes to sticking it to fate and destiny and all that. First you beat FATE, than then the Dragon God and then the eventual destroyer of existence itself. You bested destiny three times. Good job heroes.

Oh yeah, music.

Another World Map Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMEb6XXXi08). This was the first song in the game that really made me sit up and take notice of CC's great soundtrack. It could honestly be the greatest World Map Theme ever, along with CT'S Corridors of Time.

Voyage(Home) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57kb5d3wZ4). As if to make up for the fact the other world got a much better map theme, Home gets a much better boat theme. Sometimes I forgot which "world" I was in so I'd just pause and listen to the music for a second and that would help remind me.

Terra Tower Theme. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwSJRLJpRPc) Well I say it's the theme for it but it's really only the theme for the last 1/3 or so. I don't know what happened there but whatever. i enjoyed the fact they kept this playing during battles too instead of the battle music. It kept up a great, creepy atmosphere. It really did make you feel like you were closing in on some grim, dark fated hour that would determine everything.

Dead Sea. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ine3_jdQIIs) For my money, THE best location theme in the game. That whole section of the game really was perfect, even including the Miguel boss fight and how annoying it was. But hearing this theme for the entire Dead Sea, wondering just where - and when - the hell you are, traveling amongst the remnants of a destroyed city and later learning it was "a dead timeline" just makes the music even more haunting and perfect.

Dragoons Theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuwK6vn6lBA). Why this didn't play during your fight with the three of them, I have no idea, Well at least it played before the fight and that was enough. Karsh, Marcy and ZOAH - do not mess with the Acacia Dragoons! I almost feel like doing my second playthrough with a team of the three of them... Also this theme will play the whole time.

Dragon God. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFiSb9SBOW0) I have no idea how you over-level in a game like this but I guess I was over-leveled because this fight was pathetically easy. Yet I was still stressed out on it because I thought this was the time I had to do the Chrono Cross thing to get the true ending. I was wrong of course but whatever. Going back and listening to the song again, I missed out on how awesome it is by focusing my energy on something I didn't even need to do. That's a bummer but at least I know how awesome it is now. Best final boss theme ever? Nah but very good nonetheless. I've heard some reviewers say Mitsuda's greatest weakness is battle themes and i kind of agree with that. Oh it's onlY RELATIVELY weak I must stress. This song is great, as was Xenogears' Awakening or Xenosaga's Last Battle but compared to the other things, like world map and character themes? It doesn't quite match up.

Life - A Faraway Promise. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG7fr4CYer8) You HAVE to get the real ending if for no other reason than to listen to this. It's so....so amazingly beautiful and triumphant and really gives a more idealistic and hopeful tone to the otherwise rather dreary and bleak final act of the story. Schala is freed, Serge has no memories (although he somehow told Leena about FATE and stuff so....he does have memories.....?) and someday Serge an Kid will be reunited. Makes me a bit weepy-eyed...

I think that will do for my favorite songs in the game There was plenty more great music to be heard but these are the best for me and I would put them against any other RPG song you can name.

So while this technically might play into CT vs. CC, it's truly more about my appraisal of CC's story. Firstly, "Guardia was destroyed" and all that? No one cares, it's not important at all. What happened to Crono or Marle? No one seems to know or care about that either. Going into this game no one stressed that it all transpired in an isolated sector of the world, far off from Guardia or the rest of it. In fact, even Porre isn't THAT important on the whole. They're more like an afterthought or third party of very little consequence. Of course they made robots and stuff (Grobyc is a robot right?) and I guess they must have gotten to Chronopolis somehow if Grobyc's arm was found there. Well Grobyc mentioned it was some long lost superweapon... i wasn't too clear on all that.

But yeah, CT kill count:

Lucca

Robo

Gato

Far from hating everything and anything CT, maybe Kato just hated Lucca.

But perhaps one aspect of CC sticking it to CT that I haven't heard talked about was the Masamune now being an evil sword that made our heroes kill their good friends.

So that's all I can think of for right now...

Main Pros:

Music

Battle System

Kid

Harle

Karsh

Serge

Dead Sea Ruins

Chronopolis

Various plot twists.


Main Cons:

The ending, especially the fate (unintentional choice of words there) of Lynx.

The game not telling you what the hell you need to do a lot of the time.

Being Lynx for far too long.

TOO MANY PARTY MEMBERS!!! I don't care about them maybe not having a lot of personality, I just couldn't decide who I wanted to use.

Also Steal being a unique skill that is amazingly useful. Even if i didn't like Kid, I would have had to have her or Fargo in my party at all times to use it. This limits your party choice even more.

Kid being out of our party for damned near half the game or more.

Final Score - Not Xenogears/10.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well I'm glad you enjoyed it. Disagree about your thoughts on CT in comparison but I'll leave that for the thread you seem to be cooking up.

[Forsaken Lover]

Heh, that might not happen till tomorrow but in the meantime, who were your favorite characters in CC then?

Also i knew I was forgetting something. i always forget something.

In keeping with the ending feeling very rushed, do you even have to get the Chrono Cross to beat the game? That whole part was amazingly unimpressive and you'd have thought it be something a bit more memorable. In fact, can you get the Chrono Cross before going to Chronopolis? I got it after but What I found hilariously off-putting was, when you find the Chrono Cross, Steena is there and rattles on about how great the Dragon Gods are. You know, the ones that just screwed us over and are preparing to destroy humankind? Talk about jarring...

[Wolf Kanno]

You need it to see the true ending. If you killed the Time Devourer in the final battle without using the Chrono Cross, the game just cuts to the credits, you don't even get a proper ending. Luckily it's only for the actual final battle. If you want the extra endings, you can just curb stomp the Time Devourer which is pretty easy to do since he's a bit of a joke. The Dragon God is more challenging but frankly I'm with some fans who feel that Miguel is the true final boss and the rest of the game is a cakewalk after that except when you fight Dario...

[Forsaken Lover]

Fair enough.

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Rate_the_Characters_of_Chrono_Cross.html

Found this and agreed with it for the most part. Well, in regards to teh characters I know about. I still have to decide who I will use in my party my second run.

Any suggestions on who else I should recruit if anyone?

I have:
Serge
Kid
Glenn
Greco
Orhla
Guile
Karsh
ZOAH
Marcy
Viper
Riddel
Starky
Poshul
Radius
Funguy
Macha
Orcha
Sneff
Leah
Van
Zappa
Doc
Fargo
Grobyc
Norris
Steena
Sprigg


I have to thank you all for telling me to not help Kid when she was poisoned. I was watching a blind Let's Play of CC on YouTube just to get another newbie's reaction to certain things ya know? What I was shocked to discover is that the "Kid Campfire Scene" is completely optional and missable. This LP'er did not get it at all. This is why I'm thanking you all - by refusing to help Kid, you ensure that you absolutely get this scene. It happens after Water Dragon Isle and fighting off the dwarvs. However, if you go to Hydra Marsh and use that other character, Razzly or something like that, then you will miss this sequence.

It's a VERY important scene too! It has Kid telling Serge all about why she hates Lynx and the orphanage being burned down and her past and everything. I liked Kid before this in a more detached "she's cute and feisty and that's nice" sort of way. It was this scene - and Kid's theme song - that gave me a more emotional attachment to her.

I guess it encourages replay value but not getting important stuff like that is kinda dumb in my view...

[NeoCracker]

Go Pierre when entering Viper Manor.

[Wolf Kanno]

Actually its possible to go through most of CC without Kid in your party, to even recruit Leena you have to refuse Kid every time she asks to join you and ditch her when she gets poisoned. I think its the reason why I never really cared for Kid because even though she's a major plot important character you can still go through the whole game without her.

[Forsaken Lover]

Why would anyone not use Kid?

Also I'm watching an LP of Cross and I just remembered that the poor imprisoned mermaid in Another Termina was still poor and imprisoned and crying throughout the entire game. What the hell. Is thee something I could have done there?

A poster elsewhere, back when I first started the game and commented on this event, said it was because of "a certain character is one of the biggest pricks in the game" and that's why she's there.

[Wolf Kanno]

Mostly to get Leena, she won't join you if Kid is with you if I remember correctly, also because Kid is a kind of a selfish drama queen. ;)

[Forsaken Lover]

She was in maybe half the game, if that. Also when she awakens from her coma, she and Serge had a conversation that is more or less like "oh I nearly died? Eh, pay no attention to that. How I survived is unimportant."

Doesn't sound very "drama queen" to me.

A lot of people don't like Kid it seems. :(

[VeloZer0]

Or just mainly an especially prolific poster. ;)

[Wolf Kanno]

I actually like Kid, but I just didn't feel like she was all that special. As for the drama queen comment it has more to do when she goes into rage mode around Lynx of the Frozen Flame that always bites her in the ass.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well that's good to hear at least. We can still be friends, even if you prefer Trigger and I prefer Cross. Quite frankly, it looks like we're a couple of odd ducks. I have yet to meet anyone else who enjoys both games. It's one or the other and, in the case of Trigger fans, Cross is the Devil. I don't think Cross fans hate Trigger so much as they don't get the hype.

Also i just thought of something. Why do none of the LP'ers I see on YouTube bring Leena to the Dead Sea? That's her pops there and everything. Then i remembered you only had access to Home characters at that point and the Leena in your party is Another. But I hear you can go to Hydra Marsh and the Temporal Vortex in New Game+ and bring in every one of your old party members from your finished game as long as you have the Chrono Cross. So I could theoretically bring Leena to Dead Sea in a New Game. No idea if there would be added dialogue though.

EDIT:

I agree with a poster elsewhere - what did everyone outside of El Nido think during the events of the game?

Are they still wondering where that second moon came from?

Did they realize the world nearly ended?

[Wolf Kanno]

Well that's good to hear at least. We can still be friends, even if you prefer Trigger and I prefer Cross. Quite frankly, it looks like we're a couple of odd ducks. I have yet to meet anyone else who enjoys both games. It's one or the other and, in the case of Trigger fans, Cross is the Devil. I don't think Cross fans hate Trigger so much as they don't get the hype.

I quite like Cross, just not as much as CT. I understand why CT fans could hate it but frankly CT wrapped up pretty nicely so there was nowhere else really to go except with a new cast and direction. Of anything, CC opened up an opportunity for the CT to come back for a sequel and actually be relevant the plot.


Also i just thought of something. Why do none of the LP'ers I see on YouTube bring Leena to the Dead Sea? That's her pops there and everything. Then i remembered you only had access to Home characters at that point and the Leena in your party is Another. But I hear you can go to Hydra Marsh and the Temporal Vortex in New Game+ and bring in every one of your old party members from your finished game as long as you have the Chrono Cross. So I could theoretically bring Leena to Dead Sea in a New Game. No idea if there would be added dialogue though.

You know, I can't remember if she does get any unique dialogue. I doubt it because I don't think they wrote any dialogue for characters in those parts so she's probably silent. I'm actually surprised how popular of a character she seems to be in some team builds but I forget that one of her techs restores all of your uses of Elements.




I agree with a poster elsewhere - what did everyone outside of El Nido think during the events of the game?

Are they still wondering where that second moon came from?

Did they realize the world nearly ended?

My guess is that no one thought anything of the second moon because it's transition into the world is similar to when the Black Omen arrived. Maybe the Zeal/Earthbound people noticed but by then the Ocean Palace incident had occurred and I'm sure no one wanted to deal with figuring out some mysterious islands and a new celestial body came from.

Norris and his gang tend to explain how the outer world was thinking. Porre knew something was going on but was more interested in the Frozen Flame. I can't remember correctly but I thought someone in the Porre military or at Chronopolis mentioned that FATE pretty much hindered any outsider from interfering with El Nido. I mean the only reason why Porre made it in was because FATE's main terminal point Lynx was frozen in time in the Dead Sea whereas Another World FATE did a pretty good job of making sure no one entered or left El Nido.

[Forsaken Lover]

That's true, I forgot the second moon has been there for 10.000 years so people of the "present" wouldn't think it strange or new.

Speaking of Porre, I just got the "General Kid Ending." I'm not sure where this one falls.

So far, of the New Game+ Endings, I've gotten:
1. Dragon God - Completely depressing as hell.
2. Happily Ever After - "Lerge" and Harle live happily in Marbule where they are helping to rebuild. Radius, Fargo and Zappa take down Dark Serge. Pretty much 100% positive with Lerge and Harle even helping to mend the enmity betwen demihumans and humans.
3. General Kid - Serge is marrying Leena, is becoming a fisherman and that's great. Kid meanwhile kills Lynx, seizes the Frozen Flame and leads Acacia to take over not only El Nido, but the main continent too by defeating Porre and Guardia.

Is that good or bad?

So I have a question for you all posted by a poster elsewhere. I have no answer myself really so I'm hoping you all can help.


Question, if the planet was the one guiding Chrono and Co to fight off Larvos... why did it allow them to go back to prehistory and fight the Reptiles? Wouldn't the planet prefer to have the Reptiles protect it, as they are closer to it than the humans (who are contaminated by Larvos?

I mean when Larvos called Chronolopolis to the past, it countered the beast by summoning Dinopolis and the Dragon God, right, so that would mean the planet favors the Reptiles, right?

I guess the only real answer is that the Reptiles were doomed anyway. Crono and friends just kinda helped it along.

I just realized I've been spelling "Belthasar" wrong the whole time. Goddammit.

Also I just got the best ending.

Stop Lynx? Save the World?

Nah - LET'S ROCK!

EDIT:

None of you guys told me that if I took the Save Kid Route theN korcha asks her to marry him and she kicks Serge in the nuts when he tries to butt in.

I clearly chose the wrong path originally.

[Wolf Kanno]

Korcha is annoying and Glenn is broken as hell with Dual Eihnlanzers.

Yeah the planet didn't try to save the Reptites because their fate was a foregone conclusion by this point. It should be noted that even though humanity was corrupted by Lavos, they are still part of the planet as well, so it went with the best option it could.