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.

[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.

[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:



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.