Well a lot of people are from this "Zenan Mainland" which I assumed was outside of El Nido. I am unsure of how this works with later revelations about El Nido but oh well. Norris is from Porre and so-on.Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
I'd probably point out that half those characters are from different time periods that the party willfully or sometimes not so willfully ripped from their worlds to join them on their adventure. The point is that most of them only stand out in other time periods but their own, whereas Cross is crawling with things from the whole fantasy/sci-fi spectrum within a small country.
And speaking of Norris, he didn't have a portrait! He was just "Dishwasher" who got stuck in Luccia's trap and then protested he wasn't snooping. I never saw that my first playthrough so witht he benefit of hindsight it's extra amusing.Yeah, several characters can only be obtained once you're Lynx, like Irenes who is needed for the Marbule Quest. They pretty much won't listen to a kid, and if you've been exploring the towns thoroughly, you've met a good chunk of them as most of the named NPCs/characters with portraits, are obtainable as party members except for the bad guys and Dario. I think there are some characters who will only join after you obtain the Chrono Cross as well.
Also, while all characters, even those who haven't joined yet get stat upgrades from obtaining a Star Level, the mini-upgrades for the few battles afterwards only affect your active party, so in order to keep characters viable, you should switch out people after a major battle that grants a star so everyone can get a minor stat boost.
Also Lisa, the shop owner in Termina has a portrait, and even ends up with Serge in an ending. Yet not playable.
But, yeah, you're right for the most part. I never thought about it in terms of tehm not wanting to listen to a kid, though. That's interesting. There is a much better story here than the game presents and I think CC is one of those works that benefits a lot from fanfic writers expanding what we were given and helping CC to live up to its potential. A lot of these character and events are very interesting and just needed a bit more fleshing out.
Lucca died in both CC and Xenogears so maybe they're onto something....Norris is the best Yellow Option in the midpoint of the game. Though I think some of the Viper Manor crew have a few good options as well. There are a lot of Black Innate in the first half, but none I would consider as powerful as Guile, Lynx or even Harle. Even then, I always forget about Luccia because I tend to recruit her towards the end.
As for why there is a large cast, this is likely just Kato's taste. Pre-production material from Chrono Trigger showed that he originally wanted something like nine to eleven playable characters, all of whom were radically weird things with the proto-Crono and Lucca, being the only humans. Frog was an actual monster, Magus was an elf, Marle was a fairy, Ayla was more like a Tarzan expy, there was a dwarf and another character. Eventually Sakaguchi and Hori went through and merged some character concepts together and radically altered some others until we got the Chrono Team we know. So Kato imagined Trigger having a more fanciful world than we got, and he went for it with Cross and Radical Dreamers. This is one of the arguments the Cross haters use as to why Cross has so many "Take That!" potshots to Trigger within the plot.
But that's all pretty interesting.I had no idea about those original ideas.
Sweet, thanks.You did everything right, you're just not in the right "time". You can still get him though. Generally, the more "story-centric" characters are the only ones that can be permanently missed. Hence why it takes at least three playthroughs to obtain a file with everyone on it.
And it's good to know Norris is Yellow. I used him a lot for a while in my first run but Cross is such an easy game you don't really need to monitor Innates. It helps but it was hardly essential.
It's VERY important in this version. Exploiting weaknesses is pretty much essential and having your own weaknesses exploited is why Razzly died against the Hiho Tank and I'm never using her again. That fight took me hours, I ain't doing it ever again.
Also, I guess the scene with Kid and Serge camping where Kid talks about herself only happens in the timeline where you leave her to die. Otherwise, Razzly's subplot takes over when you leave Fairy Village. That is really weird. It's a pretty important scene too and the first time you hear her theme song.
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