You know, the one issue I do have with games with super large playable casts is when the game dumps like five to ten of them on you at once. Tactical RPGs, Suikoden, and now Chrono Cross, just have some annoying points where like seven people all join up and you only have like two slots to play any of them, Make the experience a bit jarring...

Anyway, I've returned to Another World and rescued local damsel in distress Riddel from her home. This netted me no less than seven new party members including Lord Viper and his entire entourage, Grobyc, Orcha, and Fargo. This is still one of the cooler parts of the game thoughm despite my minor gripe. Now I get to do my least favorite part of the game which is hunting down all of the Dragons. On the brightside, I have fulfilled all the requirement for the Marbule quest so that will be pretty awesome but I generally never cared for fetch quests like these.

One gripe I will bring up for CC is that I feel like the game could have done a better job justifying some of the bosses within it. Like I was kind of dumbfounded within the Hydra Marshes cause the Dragonfly monster nor the Ultros wannabe didn't count as bosses despite being significantly harder than most of the creatures in the area including the actual bosses. Yet the game is filled with bosses for the sake of having them. I was starting to get annoyed in Ft. Dragonia when I kept running into some silly guardian boss. I was more weird out when I had to fight that Robot thing in the Dead Sea, and last night, before I even touched the Orcha fight, I had to fight some giant cockroach thing that came out of nowhere. The game just has too many filler bosses and I get their connected to the leveling system, but I feel like this could have been handled a bit easier and we could remove a few of these fillers. It doesn't make the game feel exciting, it makes it feel padded. Granted, a lot of JRPG do this. It's just been getting annoying having like three or four boss battles in a row and like two of them feel unnecessary for the plot.

I mentioned before how I didn't particularly care for anyone in the plot, but I was actually wrong about that. I completely forgot how much of a soft spot I have for Harle and I was actually moved by here scene with Starky where she laments the fact she has to move forward with her plan despite wanting to stay with Serge and the others. Whereas Kid is emotionally fiery, and thus her emotional swings feel justified, Harle is a character who keeps her feelings in check and to see a scene where she finally shows a vulnerable side is very charming to me. She is also an excellent character to boot and now she's gone from my party...

I have decided that Karsh is a great replacement for Glenn, especially since I believe he's a better mage than him, so he's in the running for my final party; but I'm actually thinking of running with the game's suggestion of Fargo and Lord Viper for the moment. As it stands, depending on how the extra levels have helped her, I may throw Kid back in once she returns to the party, but Fargo may end up replacing her at which point it's either Norris or Karsh to take my third point as the team of Lynx/Karsh/Norris was pretty badass in Viper Manor.

I'm still trying to figure out where the game jumps to the second disc. I thought it happened earlier but I'm down to the last few major quests and I still haven't been prompted yet. I'm also making way better time than I had thought, which is surprisingly since the opposite was happening with my last title Arc the Lad 2. I think I just broke the thirty hour mark in CC and I'm not far from the end, whereas I'm like forty hours into AtL2 and I don't think I'm even a quarter of the way into the game yet. Not complaining here, just a bit surprised and being reminded how long it's been since I really played this game. On the flip side, this file has gone by so fast, I'm tempted to hit NG+ and do a few things in there as well.