Is Square losing their touch? (Now with Major Spoilers)

[Captain Cyran]

FFT: a very good game, though I think the story left something to be desired. SPOILER: It just pissed me off that while you gave save the world your friend goes and marries the princess.

Only problem with the plot is that two years after playing it's hard to remember it all.


SPOILER:I actually enjoyed that fact that as far as we know, most everyone died. (I for one was upset that Ramza had survived...didn't seem quite as complete, though you lived as pretty much a hermit I suppose afterwords.) I liked the fact that you gave everything and you didn't get anything, not even credit until hundreds of years after.

[The Dark]

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD










YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

FFT: a very good game, though I think the story left something to be desired. SPOILER: It just pissed me off that while you gave save the world your friend goes and marries the princess.

The ending with the mutual deaths makes it really interesting, though. The first time I saw the end of FFT, my jaw bounced off the floor. The whole metaplot was kinda funny, too, with it all being told as a history lesson.

CT: Up there with FF6 as far as I'm concerned. A very good cast of characters, a great story, what Lavos lacked in villiany Magus had. The concept of travelling through time and altering history, even the future, was great.

The best plot twist is when you discover Magus isn't really a villain (the confrontation in Magus' Castle). The whole time you think he's out to kill everyone, and he's really trying to save everyone.

CC: gameplay and graphics were good, but the story lacked and I don't think it should've been connected to CT. I wasn't pleased when I found out that the main heroes of CT had died in their 30s, less pleased to find that Guardia Kingdom had been conquered by wussy little Porre, not thrilled to discover that there was no time travel except for that short jump into the past to save Kid and that you couldn't go to any of the places where you'd been in CT. If Chrono Break kills Serge, I swear I will never buy another Chrono game.

All are dead except Lucia, IIRC. Wasn't she still at the End of Time? And yeah, they did too much screwing around with the plot, there were W-A-Y too many characters. Like I said before, it felt like a totally different RPG slapped with the Crono name and appropriate dialogue at the last second.

[Dalton]

For "modern" ones, my current favorite is still Wild Arms Advanced Third (aka Wild Arms 3).

Hm, I only played a bit before getting sidetracked by other RPGs. The heavy outlines the characters have tends to kind of annoy me.

Though I really do like the Wild West theme (in fact, I bought it because several of you suggested it).

EDIT: Oh yeah, the Wild Arms anime, dubbed, sucks balls.

[Ghost Rider]

Nope...the big glassed girl of CT is dead.

The problem I had with CC is that it had the worst connection to CT.

Basically it's a piece of Lavos that attached to Schala decides to avoid it's fate by manipulating two worlds into a conflict, but the world is saved because it never calculated that Schala would somehow hear the cry of a small boy...who would find and repair the dimensional rip within the universe.

But that above is only explained within three paragraphs of the game...and at the end. CT is basically tossed off like a rag...almost as a side note, and we get Square doing anime sequences in FFC to justify it's sequel. I mean why not a new game...the basic plot until you learn of the big parasite would have easily lead you down that path.

Oi...CC really does remind me of basically slapping on a name to sell a game.

A good note CC does have some fantastic music and very nice cinemas.

[Kuja]

Never noticed that. Then again, when I mean 'insanely hard', I mean that I never got around to getting past the second town.

Once I managed to scratch and claw my way to the end, the final boss battle is awesome.

But it just reinforces my feelings about FF2: a beautiful game with a great story that was ruined by a crappy level-up system.

[Iceberg]

A while back, someone said that Chrono games are held to higher standards. But, before CC, there was only one Chrono game...right?

Yes. ...

Well...that's not precisely true. You forget about Radical Dreamers, which was sort of a "co-quel" to Chrono Cross (and a hell of a lot better from what my sister tells me).

The Delphinius could have every single other airship ever. All at once.

Dude, totally. Moonstone Cannon, bizzitch.

Incremus + Moonstone Cannon + 2 Moon Guns + 2 torpedoes = 99,999 damage. BITCHIN'.

SoA manages to nicely overcome the weakness that you're just searching for the six legendary mcguffins to beat the big bad foozle by being a huge amount of fun.

Not to mention being packed with interesting little sidequests and a very unique world design.

And interesting characters who, in an amazing revolution of RPG character design, don't spend half the game whining about how much their lives suck and then perform a totally implausible attitude shift just in time to save the world.

Though the original is slightly broken by having an utterly stupid encounter rate, and even in Legends the battles run slightly too slowly. (just in terms of animating the characters running around and doing stuff. they all appear very slow compared to, say, Grandia II)

Yeah, I've noticed that the battles in SOA:L can run a bit slow. And the encounter rate can get ridiculous in this one too (which isn't a factor anymore since I can now get into Upper and Lower Sky). Never played Grandia II?...
You want to talk about slow battles, tho...FF 5 and 6 on the PSX were pretty damn slow. That's why I prefer the carts, despite the cinematics.

Two annoyance factors for me in SoA (which weren't fixed in SoA Legends): First is that magic scales up MUCH more slowly than S-Moves, and by the end of the game the latter are so powerful (and items so readily available) that there's little point to spending the SP plus 1 MP to cast a spell.

Second is that boss battles after you get the Delphinus too easily degenerate into a game of "three rounds charging, fourth round Prophecy, lather, rinse, repeat." This pattern is fortunately broken up in SoA Legends because the bounty bosses are more powerful than most of the normal ones (so much so that the final bounty boss is actually more powerful than the final boss of the game).

Another is that the battle system isn't quite as good as the one in Grandia II, but my dislike of Grandia II's plot, characters and music goes quite deep and I'm not particularly interested in playing it again.

[Symmetry]

Sephiroth was cool to look at, and he had an interesting history, but his motivations were confusing and sort of struck me as the typical high-school gothic 'NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME' type shit, only with world-destroying meteors instead of razorblades.

Kefka, on the other hand, has the best FF line ever uttered:

'Run, run, or you'll be well done!'

I actually thought his complete solipsism was an interesting take on the whole "evil villain" thing.

[Symmetry]

First, let me say that Xenogears was the greatest RPG of all time. It would have been nice if they had had the budget to actaully do the second disk the way they intended, but what they ended up doing was cool in its own way, and so I didn't mind.

Things I liked about it:

Cinematography. Xenogears did more with its cutscenes using the in game engine than the Final Fantasy games did with their prerendered stuff.

The Combat sysem. Fun, but not tedious like, say FF8.

Music. Second only to FFVI

Characters. OK, they threw in some lesser ones near the end which weren't so great (with the exception of Esmarelda), but all of the origonal six were great.

I know a lot of people missed this game when it came out, but I implore you to get a copy and play it.

The prequal doesn't seem to be quite as good. I mean, there is some really meaty philosophical symbolism in there with references to Nietzsche and Satre and such, and has the same nice movielike quality as the first, but the combat system is no longer fun, though it doesn't sink to the tedious depths of FFVIII (how many minutes is an Eden summon again?).

After that I would say that CT and FFVI tie for second.

[Ghost Rider]

Xenogears had some good points...but honestly it story became way too much hokey symbolism that I grew more and more tired because I found out that I had less and less to do with the game and plot.

It was decent but nothing I didn't see in P:Torment or a few other adventure games of the time.

[Vendetta]

Xenogears has some good aspects.

The plot has a good sense of momentum, which is unlike most other games like this. You actuyally feel like you SHOULD be getting on and doing the next thing right now (on the very few occasions where you actually get any control at all, as it's very forced scripting)

The music's alright. There are a few memorable tracks, but most is filler.

The gear battles are also good, because you can't level your way out of trouble in them. Which is nice. (but then, Chrono Cross does that all the time)

but it also has some very, very, very bad points.

The dialogue is almost all shite. Really. It's painful to read, the people who translated it should be tried for crimes against the english language.

Several of the characters are not only useless in combat, they're redundant to the story as well. It seems to follow the broken FFVI/VII tradition that if a character has one scene with the party, then they should join it forever.

And disc 2. What the fuck were they thinking?

Oh, and the fact that the actual 'plot' of the story, as already mentioned has less and less to do with the characters as time goes by. The actual story, taken as a whole, is shite, despite the strengths it displays on disc 1.

[Dark Hellion]

I feel its my responsibility to remind everyone of Squaresoft's best game Bushido Blade. You ran around slicing people with swords. For hours on end. The game has perhaps the highest replay value of any fighting game. You can play for 40+ hours and still be having fun.

[Steve]

Nope...the big glassed girl of CT is dead.

The problem I had with CC is that it had the worst connection to CT.

Basically it's a piece of Lavos that attached to Schala decides to avoid it's fate by manipulating two worlds into a conflict, but the world is saved because it never calculated that Schala would somehow hear the cry of a small boy...who would find and repair the dimensional rip within the universe.

*blink*

Ummm.... you really fucked that up.


TimeDevourer was going to devour space-time, not "avoid fate". Balthasar, Guru of Reason, realized this was going to come about and purposely manipulated Lavos into bringing Chronopolis back in time for some unfathomable reason, triggering the planet's own sentient power's decision to bring the alt-timeline Dinopolis (Advanced Reptite Civilization) to balance things out. Just that Chronopolis won the resulting war and thus FATE created El Nido. Which actually explains why it wasn't in CT, as this is all a result of Lavos being defeated.

Essentially, everything in the story, FATE, the Dragon Gods, the Frozen Flame, all of it was brought to pass for the purpose of enabling the creation of the Chrono Cross so that Serge, the Chrono Trigger, could free Schala from the TimeDevourer.

That's not to say I liked it. The eco-preaching of the Dwarves (fucking hypocrites) and other non-humans made me sick. And making Lavos the progenitor of intelligent Mankind was a complete fuckup (since it contradicts the existance of Ayla's people). Though the plot twist with Porre overthrowing Guardia and becoming a conquest-driven military dictatorship was certainly interesting. I'll also note that we never have the fates of Crono and Marle confirmed, only Lucca. And even her's is never extrapolated on. That's quite a big opening.

Meh, I just can't wait for Chrono Break. If they make it.

But that above is only explained within three paragraphs of the game...and at the end. CT is basically tossed off like a rag...almost as a side note, and we get Square doing anime sequences in FFC to justify it's sequel. I mean why not a new game...the basic plot until you learn of the big parasite would have easily lead you down that path.

Well, as someone said, Chrono Cross is based off Radical Dreamers as well. That's what you get with cross-polination of ideas. But yes, CC could easily have been made an entirely seperate game, and for all intents and purposes was.

A good note CC does have some fantastic music and very nice cinemas.

Mitsuda is second only to Uematsu.

[Ghost Rider]

*blink*

Ummm.... you really fucked that up.


TimeDevourer was going to devour space-time, not "avoid fate". Balthasar, Guru of Reason, realized this was going to come about and purposely manipulated Lavos into bringing Chronopolis back in time for some unfathomable reason, triggering the planet's own sentient power's decision to bring the alt-timeline Dinopolis (Advanced Reptite Civilization) to balance things out. Just that Chronopolis won the resulting war and thus FATE created El Nido. Which actually explains why it wasn't in CT, as this is all a result of Lavos being defeated.

Essentially, everything in the story, FATE, the Dragon Gods, the Frozen Flame, all of it was brought to pass for the purpose of enabling the creation of the Chrono Cross so that Serge, the Chrono Trigger, could free Schala from the TimeDevourer.

That's not to say I liked it. The eco-preaching of the Dwarves (fucking hypocrites) and other non-humans made me sick. And making Lavos the progenitor of intelligent Mankind was a complete fuckup (since it contradicts the existance of Ayla's people). Though the plot twist with Porre overthrowing Guardia and becoming a conquest-driven military dictatorship was certainly interesting. I'll also note that we never have the fates of Crono and Marle confirmed, only Lucca. And even her's is never extrapolated on. That's quite a big opening.

Meh, I just can't wait for Chrono Break. If they make it.

Yeah I know I fucked it up more then I should have .

I understood what the connection was...just felt they forced it at the end...when most of the game had little to no connection

Well, as someone said, Chrono Cross is based off Radical Dreamers as well. That's what you get with cross-polination of ideas. But yes, CC could easily have been made an entirely seperate game, and for all intents and purposes was.

Yeah I've played a bit of RD...I wonder why they didn't follow all the ideas through honestly making the re-appearence of one purple haired mage admitting he guess who would've been nice.

Mitsuda is second only to Uematsu.

No argument there.

[Dalton]

Dude, totally. Moonstone Cannon, bizzitch.

Incremus + Moonstone Cannon + 2 Moon Guns + 2 torpedoes = 99,999 damage. BITCHIN'.

Dude. You can't use them all in the same round, can you?

Not to mention being packed with interesting little sidequests and a very unique world design.

And interesting characters who, in an amazing revolution of RPG character design, don't spend half the game whining about how much their lives suck and then perform a totally implausible attitude shift just in time to save the world.

Yeah It's a breath of fresh air to have a lead character who doesn't spend more time bitching goth-style than he does going out and beating the shit out of the bad guys.

Two annoyance factors for me in SoA (which weren't fixed in SoA Legends): First is that magic scales up MUCH more slowly than S-Moves, and by the end of the game the latter are so powerful (and items so readily available) that there's little point to spending the SP plus 1 MP to cast a spell.

Magic is almost useless to me at this point in the game. Not when most of the battles consist of slice-n-dice.

[Vendetta]

I feel its my responsibility to remind everyone of Squaresoft's best game Bushido Blade. You ran around slicing people with swords. For hours on end. The game has perhaps the highest replay value of any fighting game. You can play for 40+ hours and still be having fun.

And with One Hit kills.

And no energy bars.

An to get the good endings you had to not fight the first five or so opponents and stick within Bushido's duelling code, and never continue...

Which was fucking difficult.

[Vendetta]

Dude, totally. Moonstone Cannon, bizzitch.

Incremus + Moonstone Cannon + 2 Moon Guns + 2 torpedoes = 99,999 damage. BITCHIN'.

Dude. You can't use them all in the same round, can you?

Yeah, Moon Guns are secondary cannons.

It would be easer to Incremus first turn with Fina, then have your two strongest characters fire Moon Torpedoes in the last two rounds of that turn, aimed at the round before your MSC chance (often the last round of a turn), then on the second turn, fire the Moon Cannons with Drachma in the round both Torpedoes hit, then the Moonstone Cannon with Vyse. (you could even use Aika and Fina in this turn to fire more torpedoes to hit when the Moon Cannons hit.


That's going to net you well close to 150,000 damage if you're at a high level, in a single combat turn, against most enemies.

(I remember just sitting and duking it out with the Hydra, and I was doing far more damage with my main gun than it was...)

[The Kernel]

Nope...the big glassed girl of CT is dead.

The problem I had with CC is that it had the worst connection to CT.

I'm not sure where you got that Lucca was dead in Chrono Cross. Yes, she said that the three of them didn't exist anymore in the home world, but the reason Lucca died was because Serge messed up Fate's abilities to use the Frozen Flame so Lynx was sent back to kidnap Lucca and get her to repair it. That means that she, and maybe even Marle and Chrono are still alive in the Alternate Universe. Since the two universes were joined at the end of Chrono Cross, they may still be alive.

As for having a tenuous connection to Chrono Trigger, I think that Chrono Cross was more about expanding the story from Chrono Trigger rather than continuing it. It isn't a true sequel, but I think that the story blends quite well with Chrono Trigger. Of course, it is all a matter of taste.

[Ghost Rider]

I'm not sure where you got that Lucca was dead in Chrono Cross. Yes, she said that the three of them didn't exist anymore in the home world, but the reason Lucca died was because Serge messed up Fate's abilities to use the Frozen Flame so Lynx was sent back to kidnap Lucca and get her to repair it. That means that she, and maybe even Marle and Chrono are still alive in the Alternate Universe. Since the two universes were joined at the end of Chrono Cross, they may still be alive.

I don't believe Lynx, FATE would lie about elimanting her.

And in the alternate...they gave no indication that Porre was any different then in the prime...the largest difference was the lack of Serge, not the back history of the conflict of Guardia or Porre...since at both times Porre sent an agent to the Isles to investigate them.

[The Kernel]

I don't believe Lynx, FATE would lie about elimanting her.

And in the alternate...they gave no indication that Porre was any different then in the prime...the largest difference was the lack of Serge, not the back history of the conflict of Guardia or Porre...since at both times Porre sent an agent to the Isles to investigate them.

Are you kidding? Lynx was acting as an advisor to the Porre army! We don't know how long his influence goes back. Nor do we know that Chrono/Marle/Lucca were killed during the fall of Guardia. All we know is that Guardia fell to the Porre army.

As for FATE eliminating Lucca, bear in mind that FATE may have been refering to only ONE universe, not the other.

[Dalton]

This seems kind of odd to me. Isn't Doan, a descendant of Marle, an indication that Guardia still reigned in the future?

[The Kernel]

This seems kind of odd to me. Isn't Doan, a descendant of Marle, an indication that Guardia still reigned in the future?

Good old Grandfather paradox eh? Actually Chrono Chross commited numerous violations of this, but I won't go in to specifics until you actually finish the game. Trust me Dalton, stay out of the specifics of Chrono Cross' timeline until you finish it as you will be doing yourself a big favor.

As for Guardia specifically, we don't know what the deal with that is except that the kingdom of Porre (probably at the request of Lynx) conquored Guardia a few years after the events in Chrono Trigger. Since this happened as a direct result of Chrono and party's interference with fate, we don't know how the future was affected.