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.
Garden of the Gods. 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover
