The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Backlog: Chrono Trigger

Oopsie. No updates for awhile, eh?
Well, if it helps, I've been busy GAMING. A LOT.
So expect the results sometime soon. Thing is, Every time I start a new game, I think, oh I'll just finish this one quickly and move on, only to find out that some games can be very very LONG.

Right now, I'm playing Ogon no Taiyo (Golden Sun) and Ogre Battle 64, where each battle takes about 45 minutes. Seriously. And besides that I'm doing Conker's Bad Fur Day as a Bortlog, but what a frigging HILARIOUS game that is! I'm loving every minute of it! And that's saying something, cos this game was made by Rare, which means it can be REALLY annoying.

So, anyhow, since I don't have anything interesting to say about my daily life (almost graduated though!) time for another Backlog!
And, WOW, do I have a doozy for ya today!

Chrono Trigger's the name, Time Travel's the game.
Geez, do I even need to begin to explain? EVERYONE knows Chrono Trigger, unless they've had their heads stuck up their Arse for the past 10 years (Yes, it's been 10 years already!) and with the exception of some really stupid people, EVERYONE loves it too.

But I'll give a small intro for people who were still embryo's at that time.
In Chrono Trigger, you take the role of Chrono, a strappy young whipper-snapper with fiery spiky red hair. It is the year 1000 and the Millennial Fair is being held, so time to Par-TAY!
And that is already the first point that I like about this game, in the beginning, there is NOTHING to worry about. You're not immediately thrown into the midst of things, there's no big spectacular opening with lots of special effects.
Just Chrono being awoken by his mom, and going to a fair! No pressure, no danger, no insane people trying to take over the universe, it was a breath of fresh air at the time.

But man, once the story gets rolling, you will find out that the planet is in grave danger, and only Time Travel will allow you to put a stop to the terrible fate that awaits mankind. And again, there's no real badguy in here, just some being threatening to destroy life, more a parasite than an evil monster with malicious intent (very thin line there, I'll admit). Great stuff.

Throughout your many courses through time, you will get to see the Middle Ages, Prehistoria, as well as the obligatory floating continent complete with ancient-yet-far-more-evolved human race. Every time frame has a character that will join your party and most of them have incredibly imaginative names, like a dude changed into a frog, called Frog. And a robot called Robo. Man, I love Square.

The beauty is though, that what they lack in sensible names, they more than make up for with personality and unique characteristics in battle. That is to say, they all have their own special skills that none of the others have, offering more strategy to putting together your party. It's not like most Final Fantasies, where every character is the same as the next, only with a different weapon.
And here comes the most brilliant part, because every character has his/her own specific set of skills, these can also be COMBINED with other characters to create so-called Double and Triple Techs, where two or three characters work together to create one massive attack.
Add to that the fact that there are no random battles in here, and perhaps you will understand how unique this game was back in the day. All people knew was Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and this game changed all that. The Combo System is something that sadly never been copied by other games, at least, not to very great extent, since it offers so much personality to battles. Grandia Xtreme did it effectively as well, and there are sure to be some others, but even the official sequel to Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, had only a very small amount of Combo's, even though it featured 45 (!) characters.

As if such a totally original concept of story and gameplay wasn't enough, Square added marvellous graphics, and a classic soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda, which has immortalised itself.
The Playstation version of this game adds some nice Anime Cutscenes, accompanied by arranged versions of familiar themes, and it offers a nice overview of all the available endings, a whopping 12 or so. The only downside to the PSX version is that, like with the remakes of FF4, 5 and 6, there are unforgivable loading times (this is a goddamn 4MB SNES game on a 650 MB PSX disc, for Christ's Sake) and the music has been mangled by lousy emulation.
Also, in this case I would very much advise to play the English version, because this is one of those rare cases where the translated version is FAR better than the original Japanese one. The immortal Ted Woolsey has done a great job at adding a nice sense of humor to what was originally a rather serious RPG, in dire need of some comic relief.

So what do we have?
Great graphics? Check.
Great Soundtrack? Check.
Great Gameplay? Check.
Multiple Endings? Check.
Lengthy Adventure? Check.

Man, what is NOT to love about this game? I certainly can't think of anything, and if you can, you need to shut up and die lonely in a corner somewhere, with noone to love or mourn you. Sad, sad person (you know who you are!).
This is a Timeless (hoho) classic that has firmly carved itself into the History of Video Gaming as one of the Greatest Experiences of all time, as well as still being one of the most desired for a real remake.
It rocked the gaming world back in 1995 and it is now a pillar of solid gaming that present day RPG's are founded on, and can only ever hope to live up to. I do not see how this game can receive anything lower than a 10, since there are no alternative scores on the Chrono Trigger scale. Pure Genious and Perfection.
If you haven't played this, you haven't lived.

posted by Ingen! @ 11:45 AM