Pumpkin's Games That Didn't Make the Cut

[Pumpkin]

Chrono Cross
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Chrono Cross is... hard to tell you about without spoiling anything. Our hero Serge just finishes killing innocent creatures for the sake of jewelry for his girlfriend, when suddenly he wakes up and everything is... different and people from his village don't seem to know who he is. It then follows him and his merry band of adventurers as they try to set things straight and defeat bad guys and stuff.

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I don't think anyone who knows me is surprised to find this on my list. There are a few reasons it made it here. The smallest detail being the character art. While some of the areas are beautiful, something about the actual characters turns me off. Why are Serge's cheeks so shiny? But more importantly, the battle system. On the one hand, you can pretty much customize your character however you want in terms of elements, which I like. One the other, the gameplay is at first confusing, especially if you don't find the dude in the first town who explains it, and after I did figure it out, just becomes tedious. For me, some people love the gameplay. And the last reason the game didn't make the list is because of Kid. Some people love her, she is my second least favourite character of all time. Even after rejecting her, she still keeps showing up.

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I really wanted to like this game. The first time I played it, I quit pretty shortly after the first boss fight because, well, I couldn't figure out how to play. Sure, I was winning the fights, but eventually I was going to need a deeper knowledge than I had. But I'd read up on the story and I couldn't find a decent script so I tried again. This time with my boyfriend, big fan of the game, and a walkthrough. I got to the ghost/pirate ship and realized that the game felt like a chore. I didn't look forward to playing. It was more like "Ugh, time to play again?" While the story was interesting, it hadn't picked up yet the way I knew it would, I didn't like most of the characters, and I didn't have fun playing.

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But the game has a lot of strong points. The story, like I mentioned. Even though I never managed to find a script, I did find a general story guide. It's very complicated, but very interesting when you figure it out. Multiple endings are always cool. Some good characters, and a large cast if you enjoy bunches of characters like I do. If you're open and you liked Chrono Trigger, this well let you look at CT in a different light. And if you like the gameplay because it adds more than just selecting Attack, then you might really enjoy it. Plus the very pretty areas and good music.

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[Wolf Kanno]

That's a fair assessment of the game. While it does have some strong themes and interesting premise, I agree that combat just feels convulated without really adding anything and ultimately I ignore using Elements in favor of just hitting things.

I also hate how the large cast distracts from the narrative because a good chunk of them have no reason to be there and collecting them and doing some of their quests don't really match up well with the big picture the game is trying to make. So yeah, I can completely understand why some people are turned off by this game.

[Pumpkin]

Speaking of the characters, I don't like how you can't get them all in one playthrough. I do like when games give you a New Game+ for people who enjoy replaying the game over and over and adding or changing certain things to change the experience a little, but I don't like having to wait until the next playthrough to get something like characters. It makes me feel like playing it once is an incomplete experience. New Game+ should be a cool bonus, not mandatory to get the whole experience.

Not sure if I'm making sense :P

[Fynn]

You should try Radical Dreamers. It's basically a first draft to a condensed version of this plot, without being bogged down by the battle system and a small nation of characters. Although I like Chrono Cross a lot, I agree with the majority of what you said. I still really like Kid, though

[Polnareff]

That's why I tried to specify that it isn't a bad game, just not a game for Pumpkin. Pumpkin likes bright worlds and simple gameplay and anime character designs


Basically Pumpkin is the opposite of everyone

I thought The Last Story was a fairly bad game. I know you said you didn't, but I'm probably gonna be the only one who says that lol.

IMO, an RPG lives or dies by its combat (and sometimes story, depending on the game). The combat was horrible to me. Why? Because of the reasons you stated, along with the controls plain old not working the way they should sometimes. Of course, since it was on the Wii, that was to be expected......but still.

[Ayen]

I'm not the least bit surprised this made it on the list. From what I can tell Chrono Cross sounds like that meh sequel nobody liked. Or maybe I just been reading in the wrong places.

[Pumpkin]

Lots of people like Chrono Cross. I'd say Trigger is more popular though, but Cross still seems to have a decent sized fanbase

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I mostly like Chrono Cross for the soundtrack. I also love the look of the world. i remember even enjoying the story and gameplay, but I could not tell you what happened in them.

I have Radical Dreamers and keep forgetting to play it. I should get on with that sometime soon.

[Polnareff]

Chrono Cross was a game, that, again, killed me because of the gameplay.

Your characters only leveled up a tiny bit after beating bosses? What was that about? And the game was made in such a way where, sure, for random encounters you have plenty of Elements to choose from, but in boss battles? Ha, you'll run out of them, and then what. I got about 3/4 of the way through the game and stopped playing. This same thing happened in Paper Mario: Sticker Star (but with stickers instead, of course )

I liked the amount of playable characters, the cool-looking special moves, and the graphics, but everything else jaded me. If the game had MP like Chrono Trigger and a proper way of leveling up, it would have been amazing.

[Pumpkin]

I'm actually going to go ahead and post two today and tomorrow because I won't be posting any this weekend, so I'll be caught up

A much less known title than Chrono Cross

Scribblenauts Unmasked
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Scribblenauts Unmasked follows our hero of the Scribblenauts games, Maxwell, and his magic pencil. It's basically a puzzle game. You input certain words in to your notebook of sorts and it will make the thing you wrote appear. Like if you write "Giraffe" a giraffe will appear and begin running around. He might eat if there's grass around. That type of thing. This particular Scribblenauts games is set in the universe of DC comics. Throughout the game, different heroes will ask for your asistance with different things, as will random townsfolk.

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The reason this game didn't make the list is pretty simple: I don't know much about the DC universe. I mean, I like Batman, but that's basically the extent of it. So some of the stuff was lost on me and I wasn't able to enjoy it to its full potential.

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With that being said, the amount of detail put in to this game is astounding. You get access to the Batcomputer, which will let you look up information on pretty much an DC comics hero or villain you want. And they'll tell you about them. And they'll show you different versions of them. And you can filter your searches. And you can summon all of them with you notebook. And a lot of them are true to character, such as Superman refusing to use a gun if you try to give him one (could be misremembering this part).



Overall it is a strong game. Like I said, the detail is amazing, the fact that the random stuff you summon will more often than not act appropriately, the sheer number of stuff you can summon for that matter is incredible. I still enjoy playing it, it's a lot of fun, but as I said, some of it is just lost on me until I buff up on my superhero knowledge. In the meantime, this is awesome for people who like silly puzzle games and enjoy the DC comics universe. You'll have to use your imagination a lot to come up with solutions for some of the problems, especially if you don't want to end up creating the same things over and over again, so its also a good brain exercise. But more fun. And it is great to replay and try different solutions.

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[Wolf Kanno]

I thought The Last Story was a fairly bad game. I know you said you didn't, but I'm probably gonna be the only one who says that lol.

I doubt you're the only one who feels that way to be honest. Lol

IMO, an RPG lives or dies by its combat (and sometimes story, depending on the game). The combat was horrible to me. Why? Because of the reasons you stated, along with the controls plain old not working the way they should sometimes. Of course, since it was on the Wii, that was to be expected......but still.

Funny enough I'm the opposite, I really loved the battle system, even if it was a bit too easy at times. I agree the controls could be better but I honestly enjoyed the better focus on working as a team and mixing up genre gameplay to keep it feeling fresh. While the game was far from perfect, I would love to see Mistwalker or someone else improve on it and maybe put it on a better controller.

[Ayen]

That looks cute. Chibi DC Universe.

[Rez09]

I was pretty disappointed in Unmasked; it felt inferior to Unlimited in just about every way.
And maybe it is because of what you said about being unfamiliar with the DC Universe (I just learned that Sinestro was Hal Jordan's teacher (or something like that) about three days ago. X_X), but I dunno . . . I just didn't like the puzzles I was offered. I felt like a random raptor was less able to solve all of my problems in this game, you know?

[Colonel Angus]

Chrono Cross is a very peculiar game. The only thing I felt needed fixing was the battle system. Whenever your character missed an attack, it seemed much more damning than it would in any other game because of the loss of stamina. It's like all the characters were obese & any movement made them out of breath.

Outside of that, the game has a great story, w/ a great cast of unusual characters. I can see your point about not being able to get all the characters in one playthrough, Pumpkin, but my main concern was always w/ the morality of it. Whenever you want to get a great character like Glen, you have to be a jerk about things. It's almost as if they're rewarding a negative personality.

[Rez09]

And they punish you with KorCHA for being a decent person, too. ._.