Let’s take our time machine Epoch and travel back to 1995 A.D. It is the time of the Super Nintendo. Young but still extremely powerful Iga is reading an EGM magazine. In this magazine Chrono Trigger is reviewed and the grades were excellent. If my memory is correct it got a 9.5 from all reviewers. The concept of time travel spoke to me, but then a cataclysm struck. Iga lives in Europe and back then Europe was seen as a backwater continent, with its high standard of living, health care and love for football. RPGs would not be localized because people thought Europe was just not interested. Sure we got Zelda (back then classified as an action RPG) and Secret of Mana (it kinda looks like Zelda), Illusion of Gaia and Secret of Evermore and Terranigma (both never released in America). Heck all of the RPGs were action RPGs, with the exception of Lufia II which was even localized in Dutch.

We never got Final Fantasy III (of VI in Japan), we never got Chrono Trigger and I want to say we never had Dragon Quest, but I don’t even remember the game from back then. One of the reasons why I was so exited for the Virtual console is because I could finally play games that were never released in Europe. First game I downloaded was Sin and Punishment a game that was never released outside of Japan. So here we are 16 years later and I am finally able to play Chrono Trigger, technically I was able to play it sooner on the DS, but I am not going to pay full price for a decade old game!

So after reading and watching footage of Xenoblade Chronicles that is going to be released in Europe this September (suck it NOA), I was really in a mood for a RPG. What would be a better game than Chrono Trigger?

So after downloading it, I started playing immediately. The first thing that struck me is the story telling. It was very minimalistic in its design. No long conversation in text like Golden Sun, but few texts boxes and off you are. By talking to locals you are able to piece the story together yourself, like you would with the scans in Metroid Prime. Even later when Froggy’s motivation is shown it is shown clearly and with no bullshitting about it. This is why he has turned into a frog and why he is what he is and what happened to Cyrus. No hour long conversations, no melodrama and sappy music, none of that shit. With the rise of disc space capacity developers have used it to make CGI cutscenes to fill up the extra space. But sometimes limitations are good for art, giving the artist too much freedom; he/she might not be able to deal with it. Instead of having a short and logical story, we get way too long cutscenes with a story that get so convoluted it has to be retconned (see Metal Gear). Also a player wants to play the game and not watch it, so keeping them simple and to the point is good and Chrono Trigger does exactly that.

The story itself is also good. It starts with an accident and Chrono and Lucca trying to fix the timeline and slowly but surely the plot unravels and it becomes something much greater. The story is already spoiled by Wikipedia, because never thought I would play it, so I read about the story. But even with my foreknowledge I am still gripped by the story.

The second thing that struck me while playing Chrono Trigger was the world map. I am not a big fan of world maps, I rather have something like Zelda where the whole world is interconnect, but I have played games before that had a similar system, Golden Sun for example. But they way Chrono Trigger handles the village is weird. It is not like other RPGs where you enter a village one the world map only to appear in a separate screen where you can walk around exploring the village and enter all the houses. In Chrono Trigger you see the village on the world map and you can only enter some separate houses. In practise when you see a village you just walk around until you a text appear and then you press ‘A’. Also you have these huge maps in various time eras, but you can only enter a few areas, the rest of the world map is just for show. It really makes the world feel small, the weakest aspect of Chrono Trigger.

I have talked about the world map, the story so now it is time for the battle system. Unlike many RPGs from that era, there are no random battles here. You can see your enemy on the field at all times, sometimes you are ambushed and cannot avoid the battle, but most of the time you are not. The battles are interesting and fun. Enemies move around if they are close together, you can use an attack like the fire twirl to get them all at once. Or they are in a row, you can use another attack to get them. Also combining techniques is great fun and different enemies have various weaknesses. Some are weak for magic other cannot handle physical attacks. It is great fun to do some trial and error to see what approach works the best.

The bosses require thought and making a mistake can cost you dearly. Most bosses have a mega attack that can be avoided, either by not attacking or destroying certain body parts. I made many mistakes on boss fights because I did not read the message like “attack me if you dare”. If you attack them they will counter you hard, so you better do stuff like heal your party. But once I realized you have to pay attention to that sort of cues it was all fine and dandy. This oversight was caused by my lack of RPG exposure.

Also this trial and error battles is fine, great even, but really the game needs more frequent check points. I have lost hours of progress, because I encountered a rare enemy. Because the game had not any saves after a boss fight I had to do the whole thing again. Not fun, sometimes a boss keeps attacking with crazy powerful attacks and you choose heal, but before your character does it, the boss attacks two times again, killing your. Grrrrrrrrr. Most of the time it was because I did something wrong in battle, but it does not change the fact that at the time I was pretty pissed. I often went back to the End of Time so I could save the game. Grrrr

Also forming your own 3 men/women team is awesome. You gradually learn more and more moves, some that need two people to perform, until you are a mean lean fighting machine. My team consists of Chrono, Frog and Ayla. The reason I choose these tree, because they are all fast, which means that I do not have to wait ages to cast a spell or attack like I would have with Robo and Lucca. They hit hard and both Frog and Ayla have healing powers, frog can even heal the whole team on its own, giving me the chance to attack with Ayla and Chrono. Ayla and Chrono together have awesome attacks that hit hard, like the Volt Bite that takes 1,000 HP from a boss. Also Ayla and Frog can fully heal the team together restoring all HP and removing stuff like confusion and poison. Finally Chrono and Frog have hard hitting attacks together and both have magic. The bosses do have too much health though. It can take up to 15 minutes to battle a boss, way too long for my liking.

The character customization is limited; you can’t change your class or anything like in Dragon Quest. You get items which give you the ability to increase your speed, power and such by one point, but you never get many. Also there is armour and weapons, but that usually just increase your attack and defence. The customization is mostly in the team you choose. All in all a good and fun battle system, but no as good and fun as the system found in the Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi series. But those games are god tier.

Also about the character and how they look: the characters are designed by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame. Chrono really looks like Goku, but with a sword. All characters are distinctive and are so much better than the million zipper atrocity you see in Final Fantasy. Fuck Final Fantasy, Akira FTW.

The final part will be about the pacing. The game starts simple and slowly and surely it become more epic as it builds up to a conclusion. Then after the conclusion it is quit again and it again builds up. I am of course talking about the build up to fight Magus and finally after you beat him you get to see where the big evil comes from, you get ready to fight, only to enter Kingdom Zeal: a very quiet and peaceful part of the game. I am now at the Ocean palace and so far the pacing was good. No grinding, no long boring parts. The beginning is pretty linear. Later you get to choose your time era, but doing it out of order does not do anything. You can for example visit 65,000,000 BC once you reach the End of Time, but until you are told to get a red stone, visiting that era will do nothing except for giving you experience points and some items. After you get the time machine Epoch you are able to do stuff, like immediately fighting the final boss. I chickened out and went on with the story.

Also an interesting thing about the dungeons, unlike Zelda and Golden Sun, there are no puzzles what so ever. It is only fighting and more fighting and looting treasure chests. Not nearly as awesome as in those games, good thing the battles are awesome, otherwise it would be boring.

All in all I am having a blast with this game. Some things are annoying, but the game is still awesome. In conclusion some positives and negatives

+Good Story and Story telling

+Cool Characters

+Good Battle System

+Great Pacing

-The world map and villages a bit simplistic

-Boss battles go on way too long

-Not enough check and save points lead to some frustration

Huge impressions there, I think I have gone off playing VC games on the big screen. I think when Wii U is out and I can play them on that little screen like a portable and plug my headphones in I will be all set and ready to buy more.

gamingeek said:

Huge impressions there, I think I have gone off playing VC games on the big screen. I think when Wii U is out and I can play them on that little screen like a portable and plug my headphones in I will be all set and ready to buy more.

robio said:

For the rings to work you have to have have the right three members, the ring equipped on one of them, and they all have to have learned the correct techs. Most of them involve Magus so that he can team up with the rest of the party. One for instance is for Marle, Lucca, and Magus and it's pretty much an all hell breaks loose kind of attack.

Ultimately you won't use them very much though. Magus' magic is good enough on its own that he doesn't need to team with anyone, and you'll probably find he serves the party better if he's using accessories that cut down on how many magic points his spells costs.

Finiished the game today. I got the ending where Chrono's mom gets lost in time. Seriously that should be the plot of Chrono Trigger 2. Chrono and his buddies looking for mom. After fiding mom they find out who the entity is and then they go in space to stop all the other Lavos larva. I read the story about Chrono Cross. What a piece of shit that is. The story is crap, the artstyle of the game is very different, why call it a sequel? I am just going to ignore it like everyone ignores Highlander 2.

The last boss was easy though, you had like four bosses in row before you could save. I did the flying fortress route. A bit annoying but it was kinda easy. Against Lavos I finally discovered what the Elixer does. Damn should have know earlier, healing MP and HP completely and for all characters (Mega Elixer). Damn! The first stage of Lavos is easy, the second likewise. But the spite looked cool. The final version looked like a silly moonwalking alien kosmonaut. Beat it easily too.

All in all Chrono Trigger is a classic! It is awesome, pure and simple. Will replay it in the future.

Now the real fun of the game comes in, going back and winnng it at different points during the game. With New Game + mode you have all your exp, tech, and equipment (or the characters will from the moment you refind them), and you can tackle Lavos at any point. Some of these endings are amazing and others are....well kinda crappy. But overall it's a pretty cool experience.

As far as Chrono Cross goes, I think it's a fun game, but its connection to Trigger is pretty loose. Still, if you can get past the fairly ludicrious plot there's a lot to enjoy. Trying to find the 40+ characters who are available to join your team is cool, and while most of them are lacking in the personality department there is some great character design behind them, and just about everyone has cool techs in the game. The music is excellent. There are even more multiple endings and they're just as good as Triggers.  And the battle system is very well done (though a poorly designed character menu screen does make it kind of a pain.

It's due to come out on PSN one of these days and I feel obliged to get it. Who knows, maybe we'll get a sequel.