The Chrono Campaign Has Begun

[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.

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

[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.
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.

[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.

[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.