If you pick Magus, you are a loser

[Wolf Kanno]

Hm, I have to say to this that most players use tabs and will find more use out of other characters than Magus, because everything that he does can be easily matched/outdone by a few other characters, not to mention that he has no healing techniques and Magic Barrier is kinda useless. He has no physical techs when single-target is preferred to prevent unnecessary counter-attacks, which altogether is why I'm saying he lacks versatility and cohesion. Even without tabs, this doesn't really seem to change much. In my first post I stated that Magus' tier 2 magic is better than everyone else's [before you guys started pointing it out to me], which at that stage is kinda useless because you no longer gain anything out of being frugal and better options are available to you at that point.

I never saw the point in using tabs in any game that has them except maybe FFIV but they only increase HP and MP since you can't actually max those out naturally.

I also do enjoy being frugal, VeloZer0 would understand cause both of us are the types that try to conserve items and other resources. Mostly cause that's how it was done in the old days and sadly, old habits die hard (and then become horribly useful again with SMT). I also have always had issues with game mechanics that basically tell the player to spam the best they have. I never believed in the FFVI approach of winning by teaching everyone Ultima and then spam cause I see little fun in doing that.

My other point you seem to miss is that Magus is not exactly built for every occasion but neither is someone like... oh Ayla, who is Magus' opposite in the game. All but two of her skills are single target, the two that are not have restrictions on them that for me frankly make them not so useful and she pretty much doesn't have magic based attacks which really makes her useless in places where you need it to kill enemies that resist physical (Ocean Palace/Black Omen) hell, I find Magus is more useful in the Rainbow Shell quest cause his high power Lightening Magic can take down groups of enemies whereas Ayla has to wait for them to be stunned by thunder before her attacks will even work. Throw in the fact that her normal physical attacks eventually begin to outshine all of her single techs and you get a character who loses most of their diversity to become the game's token Berserker, which I generally don't care for cause their really is no skill involved using them.

I usually prefer AoE by end game so Ayla really doesn't do it for me. She's great in Boss battles but is seriously lacking in dungeon crawls whereas I feel Magus is quite the opposite by being decent in boss battles but incredibly useful in long dungeon crawls. This is really my point here, characters are built for certain tasks and certain play styles definetly gravitate towards certain characters more.

Only because for pretty much any situation I can think of, there's a character that could have taken his slot which would suit the battle far more without the consequences, unless of course you're someone that likes to play things in a way that makes them a bit more challenging. And that isn't me being sarcastic or anything, because I do that sometimes as well [I'm playing the version of FF V with Roogle right now, which apparently is harder than the normal one].

This just goes back to my point that not everyone is good at everything (except maybe Robo and Crono) so yes, Magus is lacking in that fight so don't bring him along, he's far more useful in other capacities and other roles. The one I even mentioned, though he's not great against the Lavos spawn or Zeal, he's very useful for his high magic damage and speed to take out most of the creatures in the Black Omen so he makes the dungeon crawl infinitely more bearable (at least for me).

Yes, even before VeloZer0 posted this and you after, I've already seen this a hundred times. Just because it's the DS translation, doesn't necessarily mean it's close to the original translation. Even with modern JRPG's, a lot of dialogue and sometimes entire personalities get changed quite a bit [look how much Kefka changed, though that's an older example]. I might be wrong but Raine [the friend I was referring to] speaks and reads Japanese very well and is a hardcore gamer, so I'm inclined to take her word on it.

I only brought it up cause it actually sound like what your friend was saying about Magus. Instead of his usual "Die you idiot" he actually says something a bit more sympathetic. As a 16-bit RPG, I find it hard to believe that Magus had some long-ass speech that got snipped down to three sentences, especially since the DS version doesn't have the same dialogue restrictions that the old cartridges did. While I am certain your friend is not wrong about Magus giving a personal speech to Zeal, I have a feeling its not far from the DS version.

Kefka's dialogue in the GBA version changes his personalty but its mostly because there is enough space to translate more of his unique speech patterns as opposed to actually giving him more dialogue. In reality, the SNES version still gets across what he was meaning, the GBA just does it with a few more words that happen to draw out more of his personality that wasn't completely lost in translation. My point is, even if they somehow made Magus' dialogue verbatim to the Japanese, I don't think you would see a satisfactory change in his personality and this has been my point about if they gave him extra dialogue. Frankly, its not like the other characters have more character depth than Magus, the game is still limited by its technology and thus all the other characters still neatly fall into stereotypes and cliches with little deviation.

[RedPouch]

Some of your points are valid, but my preferences for most any fight have always directed me to use other characters. Ironically, I actually end up using Magus more often than you guys might think, but only because I get irritated with the lack of males in the cast. And I don't really count Frog/Glenn, either. I really wish there was a way to make him human in-game. Honestly, it would've been nice if Magus had undone his magic if he joins your party. Would've been an interesting perk, but then I'm not sure how human Glenn would still use Slurp Cut and Frog Squash.

As for being frugal, I used to be like that when I first played RPG's but now I've noticed that I can spam consumables a lot and I still end up with a lot of excess. For whatever reason, they always seem to heap up in RPG games.

I only brought it up cause it actually sound like what your friend was saying about Magus. Instead of his usual "Die you idiot" he actually says something a bit more sympathetic. As a 16-bit RPG, I find it hard to believe that Magus had some long-ass speech that got snipped down to three sentences, especially since the DS version doesn't have the same dialogue restrictions that the old cartridges did. While I am certain your friend is not wrong about Magus giving a personal speech to Zeal, I have a feeling its not far from the DS version.

No, not a long speech, but he said things that were slightly different. I can't remember exactly because we had this discussion a long time ago, but she said that Magus said something along the lines of Zeal being "the mom from hell" or something, and she gets a bit defensive about it.

Kefka's dialogue in the GBA version changes his personalty but its mostly because there is enough space to translate more of his unique speech patterns as opposed to actually giving him more dialogue. In reality, the SNES version still gets across what he was meaning, the GBA just does it with a few more words that happen to draw out more of his personality that wasn't completely lost in translation.

Well I can't speak too much for Kefka because I don't know what he's like in the Japanese version, but I was told by some members from EoFF that he's actually a bit more effeminate in the Japanese version. Not in a girly-queer way, but more like a Jack Sparrow kinda way, I think is what someone said.

My point is, even if they somehow made Magus' dialogue verbatim to the Japanese, I don't think you would see a satisfactory change in his personality and this has been my point about if they gave him extra dialogue. Frankly, its not like the other characters have more character depth than Magus, the game is still limited by its technology and thus all the other characters still neatly fall into stereotypes and cliches with little deviation.

I'm not really looking for a complete change in his personality. Like I said, it would've been nice if he had a little bit more depth added [and yes, you can add depth to someone without contradicting their personality slate, so it's ridiculous to assume that depth would automatically make him "sissy"]. And I have to say that the other characters do get noticeably more depth, namely Frog, Marle, and Lucca, so I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on that. Not all cliches and stereotypes bother me in truth, but ones that get overly used way too often do, and it's even worse when overly used ones get lots of fanboy hype that just drives me nuts.

[Roogle]

Some of your points are valid, but my preferences for most any fight have always directed me to use other characters. Ironically, I actually end up using Magus more often than you guys might think, but only because I get irritated with the lack of males in the cast. And I don't really count Frog/Glenn, either. I really wish there was a way to make him human in-game. Honestly, it would've been nice if Magus had undone his magic if he joins your party. Would've been an interesting perk, but then I'm not sure how human Glenn would still use Slurp Cut and Frog Squash.

I agree. I think I would have really liked to use Frog if he had changed back into Glenn when Magus joins the party. You would think that mortal rivals in the same group of adventurers would have more tension than Frog and Magus do.

I said earlier that I liked using humans with magic as a general rule, so Ayla, Frog, and Robo are immediately out of the picture. That leaves Crono, Lucca, Marle, and Magus, so not much to work with there —

In the fan sequel, Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, they originally wanted to make Frog in his human form a playable character, but it proved to be more than just a simple sprite replacement issue due to things like Slurp Cut and Frog Squash.

[VeloZer0]

I agree. I think I would have really liked to use Frog if he had changed back into Glenn when Magus joins the party. You would think that mortal rivals in the same group of adventurers would have more tension than Frog and Magus do.

That is the one downside with only having three characters present for all the cut scenes. All the dialog has to stand independent of the other two party members. Factor in the fact the Magus is optional and I can see the nightmare the developers were faced with trying to make Magus fit into the party.

(Maybe nightmare is a bit strong, but I would certainly say there would be a much greater deal of difficulty having him sustain conversations with party members.)

[Roogle]

Yes, I dislike having fully customizable parties especially during story heavy sequences because it tends to devalue the dialogue. It is too difficult for developers to create long, detailed conversations between two optional party members without taking the other character combinations into account.

[RedPouch]

That is the one downside with only having three characters present for all the cut scenes. All the dialog has to stand independent of the other two party members. Factor in the fact the Magus is optional and I can see the nightmare the developers were faced with trying to make Magus fit into the party.

(Maybe nightmare is a bit strong, but I would certainly say there would be a much greater deal of difficulty having him sustain conversations with party members.)

I don't know much about how much space Chrono Trigger took, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot is crammed into the game. I'm sure the lack of dialogue might be due to limitation issues. My solution to it would have been to dump a few useless NPC's/dialogue in the game to make room for such dialogue. For example, you don't need 15~20 NPC's telling you that "there are evil spirits in the Northern Ruins".

[VeloZer0]

On the whole I think I like it better, as it allows me never to have to listen to the characters I don't want to hear from, but that doesn't blind me to it's flaws.

Conversations are important, but I think enough repertoire can be established through having required party members at times and scenes involving the entire party. The main problem with Magus is he arrives just as the game becomes completely non linear.

EDIT: Man, seems we are all watching this thread like hawks.

[Roogle]

I would say that it was technically possible for the developers to create special conversations when certain party combinations were used, but that it wasn't a priority — developers are always rushing to try and have a game released on schedule, and customized dialogue for special party combinations may have been deemed to gratuitous at the time. In Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, I am pretty sure that the characters converse often with each other, but this is due to the fact that you are forced to use specific parties for a large portion of the game similar to the beginning parts of the original Chrono Trigger.

[RedPouch]

I would say that it was technically possible for the developers to create special conversations when certain party combinations were used, but that it wasn't a priority — developers are always rushing to try and have a game released on schedule, and customized dialogue for special party combinations may have been deemed to gratuitous at the time. In Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, I am pretty sure that the characters converse often with each other, but this is due to the fact that you are forced to use specific parties for a large portion of the game similar to the beginning parts of the original Chrono Trigger.

I would really enjoy playing this game if I could. It sounds really intriguing. The more characters become like actual people that happen to be living in that realm, [without contradicting their canon personalities] the more I come to like them a lot. I could even end up liking Magus a little bit at that rate.

[Roogle]

The interquel, Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, takes a different approach to introducing the characters in the game. Shortly after the introduction of the game with Crono, Lucca, and Marle, you are forced to play through a part of the game as only Magus, giving a better insight into his personality rather than what we see of him after he joins the party through scripted lines. Keep in mind that it is a fan project.

[McLovin']

I love the music they use in Crimson Echoes.