Chrono Cross Appreciation

[Anonymous No.1661996]

I never could fathom how Chrono Cross drew the ire of so many. Save for the oftentimes easy gameplay, and the myriad of characters that don't all get an equal amount of narrative, it is probably my favorite RPG ever. The soundtrack is nothing short of astonishing, the visuals remarkable, and the plot is engaging and I think Lynx cleverly with Trigger.

Replaying it now with the Times Anguish mod rectified the easy complaints, maybe too much so. Some bosses are nuts "King Momoan/Garai".

Anyone else love this game?

[Anonymous No.1662012]

Chrono Cross >>>>> Chrono Trigger

Dat black dragon

[Anonymous No.1662030]

Does not cross completely nullify everything you did in trigger by saying you just removed lavos from one timeline and nothing you did really mattered

[Anonymous No.1662041]

>>1662030

Learn to alternate timeline.

Plebe

[Anonymous No.1662043]

>>1662030
It's implied in trigger anyway that its just a portal into the worlds history. Saving it of course was of no consequence when multiple dimensions exist, something the ct people had no idea about.

[Anonymous No.1662049]

The reason people don't like it is because it isn't Chrono Trigger. I preferred Cross too.

[Anonymous No.1662085]

Is "I like Chrono Cross" the new "I like Zelda II"?

[Anonymous No.1662107]

>>1662085

Liking Chrono Cross isn't anything new. I bought it when it first came out and I liked it better the moment I finished it. If you take the nostalgia goggles off it is just a better overall game.

[Anonymous No.1662110]

>>1661996
Still one of my all-time favorite games

[Anonymous No.1662117]

I played Chrono Trigger, Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross in a row for the first time last fall.
I'm going to remember those days forever, man.

[Anonymous No.1662120]

>>1662085
Why's it such a shock people like either game?

I think you mean claiming they are better than the others in the series.

CC is a great game on its own,, suffers slightly from being rushed as almost every ps1 RPG, but still very solid.

The only reason I can see it getting hate is turn based which ct was too(yes atb is just turn based with cool downs), linearity (again ct as well), or story(which I personally liked).

Also what's bad about zero grinding in a jrpg?

[Anonymous No.1662201]

>>1662030
It didn't nullify shit.

The actual timeline it happened in was true. The only problem was it fractured the timeline and made an offshoot where Trigger never really happened at all.

So really, you didn't need to play Trigger to play Cross at all. In fact Cross isn't very related to Trigger outside of a couple characters and Lavos. And even if it was important to Trigger's timeline, this doesn't matter because the protag basically fixed the last bits remaining from what was started. Think of it as an alternate universe of sorts.

[Anonymous No.1662205]

>tfw the protag is generally either hated or not cared about by most people throughout the story either way
>tfw it ends with the protag being in an infinite time loop, going through New Game+ after New Game+

This game's true ending and Terranigma were the only times I shed a tear at a games conclusion.

[Anonymous No.1662207]

>>1662085
Coming soon: "I like Snake's Revenge."

[Anonymous No.1662212]

>>1662201
So... What you are saying is, it nullified trigger!

[Anonymous No.1662227]

>>1662085
Fuck off, I've liked both CT and CC since their respective releases.

CC's a solid journey on its own. I love how colorful and vibrant the world is (for what it is) and the soundtrack most, though there are certainly some areas it suffers in.

[Anonymous No.1662229]

>>1662212
>The actual timeline it happened in was true
>So what you're saying is it isn't true?
Trigger itself wasn't nullified. It literally takes place in a universe where it never happened to begin with.

It's more appropriate to think of it as the relationship between two Final Fantasies with traveling into the Dimentional Void and fighting Exdeath as an extra and Gilgamesh appears.

[Anonymous No.1662278]

>>1662212
Cross made the universe more complicated than it should be thanks to the ending. Here's how I understand it:

Trigger happened correctly in the universe it happened in and everyone was/is/will be happy. You succeeded. However, there are an infinite amount of universes which Crono and the group didn't really account for. Lavos was only banished from their own timeline: there was to be many COMPLETELY UNRELATED universes where Lavos eats everything and thanks to it being Lavos it can still warp into their universe at some extremely low probability. The rest is gravy.

This in theory is true for every situation. In one universe Hitler didn't die, etc.

And so Cross's protag saves all universes by forever being in a time loop, possibly even warping between different universes and killing Lavos consistently in each one solving the problem once and for all everywhere.

>But they died, ghosts!
No, no they didn't, they're from an aborted history in another universe, as was already explained in the Dead Sea. In Crono's home, they are fine.

>In one universe Trigger succeeded.
>In one universe Trigger half-succeeded
>In one universe Trigger failed

Retcon both did and didn't happen at the same time. Granted, this could have not been called anything from the Chrono series and we would've all been fine and without argument. The fact that the tie-in with Cross is extremely obscure and is in an unlockable ending along with the rest speaks volumes to this: In Trigger's universe Cross never happened. In Cross's universe Trigger never happened. And in both Radical Dreamers never happened.

It's a fun game, but man does it fail in plot continuity. This idea is stupid, that said I still don't see the anger, isn't the first time this sort of thing happened.

[Anonymous No.1662298]

that's some puella magica shit. Neat.

[Anonymous No.1662319]

>>1662085
no, people have been having this argument from the moment chrono cross came out

[Anonymous No.1662334]

>>1662278
>references to cross are in a CT unlockable ending
babby detected.
The original had zero references to Cross and the remake had to have Cross references retconned in. There were none. At all. Which is all well and good, really. I prefer Cross to CT, personally, but Cross came entirely outta the blue for no good reason.

[Anonymous No.1662337]

The plot is an absolute mess, but CC is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games ever, and that more than makes up for the shortcomings.

[Anonymous No.1662350]

I haven't played the game, but the soundtrack is really nice.

[Anonymous No.1662362]

>>1662278
>by forever being in a time loop, possibly even warping between different universes and killing Lavos consistently in each one solving the problem once and for all everywhere.
I never heard about such a thing, you even see serge waking up at the Opassa Beach after the credits.
AFAIK the last boss was supposed to merge both dimensions and free Schala. If you kill lavos/time devourer you kill schala too and that would somehow lead to the end of the world.
The entire story was a plot by one of the 3 wise men to try to save schala.

[Anonymous No.1662391]

As a game it is awful. Most of the strategy in the game is dependent on having party members with the right element, you usually can't guess what that will be beforehand, and you are forced to have the worst element half way through the game when it changes the main character into someone the player is lead to hate the entire first half.

Whether or not the tacked on story elements that very briefly have any relation to trigger make sense or not isn't really something I care about. You could put Lavos in FF7 and it would have as much to do with it.

[Anonymous No.1662427]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBE3c9X0BoA

I haven't played through an RPG in years, mostly because none of them have the bizarre nonsense plots that chrono cross and xengears had.

[Anonymous No.1662480]

>>1662278
>Trigger happened correctly in the universe it happened in and everyone was/is/will be happy. You succeeded. However, there are an infinite amount of universes which Crono and the group didn't really account for. Lavos was only banished from their own timeline: there was to be many COMPLETELY UNRELATED universes where Lavos eats everything and thanks to it being Lavos it can still warp into their universe at some extremely low probability.
You're overcomplicating an already complicated story and making stuff up here.

Chrono Cross takes place in 1020 AD, 20 years after Chrono Trigger, in the El Nido archipielago. El Nido only exists because Chrono Trigger took place and Crono and friends killed Lavos. A shard of Lavos remains as the Frozen Flame inside the Mammon Machine.

Both Schala and Lavos are removed from the timeline by the actions of Crono and sent to a void where discarded timeline events go. Lavos manages to fuse with Schala in this void, and stays alive due to the Flame.

The protagonist of Chrono Cross is, as a child, caught up in an event that directly links him to Lavos and Schala. After that, he is about to die and due to his link with Lavos/Schala the timelines diverge. In one timeline, he dies, and the future proceeds as it did at the end of CT.

In the other timeline, he lives, with causes a ripple of butterfly effects that lead to CT characters dying and the future being messed up.

The only other single timeline shown to exist is the one where Lavos never fell at all, the Reptite timeline.

So there's only two timelines at first: Lavos doesn't fall, Lavos falls. The latter divides into two: Serge dies, Serge stays alive. At the end of the game, they merge again.

The only single mention of "infinite amount of universes" comes from an easter egg to justify inserting script of Radical Dreamers on CC. It may be true, but they never show up and they never have anything to do with CC. Your loop theory does not make any sense, either.

[Anonymous No.1662489]

>>1662334
To be fair it came from Radical Dreamers, which was written the CT scenario planner. He's just infatuated with Schala and kept writing about her after CT, that's the entire and only raison d'etre for CC.

[Anonymous No.1662504]

>>1662085
>Le newfriend face

[Anonymous No.1662536]

>>1661996

Chrono Cross was a hot mess. Beautiful, with a great soundtrack. Some neat moments, too.

Mediocre combat, weak characters, pacing issues, and a convoluted plot that I forget 5 min after I beat it every time.

But, I still do a playthrough probably every year.

[Anonymous No.1662542]

>>1661996
>The soundtrack is nothing short of astonishing
If quite short of astonishing. It's good, but not nearly as great as, say, Chrono Trigger or even Xenogears.

> the plot is engaging
Not only is it quite nonsensical in places, it also is quite a chore to sit through in many parts, e.g. around the time you invade the manor for the first time, and especially during the dragon hunt, which is where the scriptwriter simply gave up trying.

[Anonymous No.1662557]

>>1662085
Everyone likes Zelda II on /vr/. Unlike Chrono Cross, which is more like DKC3, i.e. a couple of people keep making threads claiming they are the best, and then everyone shits on them, because the games just aren't too good at all.

[Anonymous No.1662561]

>>1661996
Yes, I love Chrono Cross too and never understood the hate for it, either. I loved CT as a kid and played CC as a teenager, and I really liked how they handled it as a sequel. It starts seemingly unrelated, with only small hints of how they may be linked, and then it progressively casts you as a villain to what CT stood for until you understand how deeply related both stories are.

People complain about how CT characters show up as ghosts or die, but I thought that was a ballsy way to add gravity to the plot. Also paying attention it was obvious (to me) that they only died in Home World, the world where everything sucks, so I understand what they were trying to do with it. It was also a ballsy way to stand as its own game.

I also liked the main story theme: things may not have been meant to exist or live (Serge, El Nido...), but they have the right to do so, and indeed they may end up holding the potential to save ALL existence. It was a neat concept.

What I didn't like was the lack of difficulty, dismal plot pacing near the end, and convaluted stuff for the sake of being convaluted. I played Radical Dreamers after CC and while having the same essential main twist, Radical Dreamers handled it with a lot of simplicity and elegance. CC severely lacks both of those, it has that Japanese "let's make everything as complex as we can for no reason at all" syndrome.

[Anonymous No.1662572]

Nevermid me, just posting osts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFiSb9SBOW0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMntblDX0Bg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZidOQQDaCbE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk_NDMKfiVE

[Anonymous No.1662582]

>>1662561
>I ... played CC as a teenager, and I really liked how they handled it as a sequel
This is getting ridiculous. We can argue that Cross was or wasn't this and that, but one thing that it totally, utterly failed to be is a Chrono Trigger sequel. That it just didn't work as. At all.

[Anonymous No.1662591]

>>1662582
Sequel:
1. a published, broadcast, or recorded work that continues the story or develops the theme of an earlier one.
2. something that takes place after or as a result of an earlier event

Chrono Cross continues the story of Chrono Trigger and takes place both after and as a result of Chrono Trigger. It is a sequel. You may dislike how it continued CT's story, but that doesn't negate its status as CT's sequel.

Like I said, personally I thought it was a great sequel. Video games often do Electric Boogaloos with the same characters and setting as part 1 because it's easier and because that always sells as fanservice. CC chose a more original direction, and I liked that.

[Anonymous No.1662705]

>>1662591
but it basically just nullifies trigger. that's not a sequel.

[Anonymous No.1662713]

>>1662705
How does it "nullify" Trigger? The entire story and setting only exists because Trigger happened. All three main antagonists are from Chrono Trigger, and they fight because of Chrono Trigger's events. One of the protagonists is from Chrono Trigger, and she's there because of what happened in Chrono Trigger.

Did you play the game?

[Anonymous No.1662719]

>>1662705

It doesn't nullify trigger, it takes place in an alternate reality and explores themes that expound on those explored in Trigger.

[Anonymous No.1662732]

>>1662719
this. It's the exact opposite of nullifying since the entire point of the game is to turn the alternate reality back into the ct reality.

[Anonymous No.1662746]

>>1662713

You're wasting your time. Just take solace in the fact that you actually understood the plot (unlike nearly every hater), and are more than likely leagues more intelligent than they are.

At the root of this is impotent rage because DBZ guy didn't do the art, the original cast isn't playable and/or dead, and the game wasn't a rehash of the prior.

Chrono Cross stands on its own in every respect, and trumps Trigger in those meaningful (plot depth, soundtrack, aesthetics). The only people who can sincerely claim they hated Cross, but liked Trigger, are actual morons.

[Anonymous No.1662981]

Chrono Cross is great. It stands out enough in a genre full of absolute garbage for me to enjoy it from beginning to end, though the final boss battle was pretty disappointingly easy. Well, all the combat was sort of east I guess. Still loads of fun.

[Anonymous No.1663089]

>>1662981

I recommend your next playthrough with Times Anguish. Makes shit difficult if thats your fancy

[Anonymous No.1663105]

>>1661996

What hate? A handful of jaded nerds and DBZ fans don't constitute as the majority. Most people with a modicum of taste enjoyed both.

[Anonymous No.1664213]

>>1661996

So, is Guile Magus or not?

[NESfag No.1664223]

Cross could have been a fantastic game, but we all know it has 2 very big problems :
- storytelling is atrocious, 30hours of nothing relevant except small bits and and there while you're being dragged from place to place with an absolute lack of vision or even hint of the grand scheme; and suddenly 30mins of a monologue explaining to you everything in a monotonous, confusing way. Most people who played Cross have no idea what the story is about and that's due to how terrible that storytelling is. I usually don't 'defend' people who don't understand a jrpg story, like in the case of FF8 or FF9 people have no excuse not to understand stuff and the only reason there are such big false theories and thoughts about the game stories around is because people are goddamn retarded. But in the case of CC, I believe part of the blame is also on the game.
- the gameplay. On paper it sounds like a good idea not to have grinding possible; except that instead turning that into an advantage where you have to be smart and use tactics during fights, they didn't have the guts to do that. They dumbed down the game as much as they could so that it's not hard for a casual stupid player, because since it wasn't possible for those person to grind in case they are stuck in a fight, they thought they HAD to make everything piss easy not to frustrate them and make them stuck forever. The consequence of that is a gameplay boring for everybody, which tells you it has a 'gameplay system' with some depth but none of that matters because you're just better off spamming "Attack 3" for 99% of the game. There are only TWO bossfights which are a little more interesting than just "spam attack 3". That's very low.

Fantastic graphics, music, atmosphere. Some of the best I've ever seen in a video game period. But a terrible storytelling there is no excuse for and the lack of guts from the devs and their will to aim for the most casual players ruined the most important in a game.

[Anonymous No.1664224]

>tfw this is arguably the greatest mindfuck game ever made
>tfw now I have to play it again thanks to this thread

[Anonymous No.1664229]

I don't hate it, but it definitely doesn't touch trigger IMO. The story get's way too convoluted at the end, almost feels rushed. The last boss was so lame also. Chrono trigger was short and sweet, nailed the cliche story better than any other game imo.

For chrono cross it's just like they took a simple formula with perfect individual parts and expanded on them too much. Especially dat story... so retarded. music + battle mechanics were mint though.

[Anonymous No.1664230]

I played both without the nostalgia goggles on (never played them before 2012).

Have to say, Cross is one of the prettiest and one of the SHITTIEST game on the playstation.
Seriously. Needlessly convoluted battle system, slow battles, way too easy, more than half the moves and characters don't serve any purpose whatsoever. The plot makes no sense and makes 0 efforts to try and make you feel involved.

Trigger wasn't bestgameeverholyshit, but clearly one of the best jrpgs in the snes to playstation era.

[Anonymous No.1664243]

>>1662212
Trigger Nullified itself.

They Beat Lavos using timetravel, which changed their history so that they never learned about the day of Lavos, and lavos one. This in turn led to them learning about the day of Lavos after all ect. ect. ect.

Two things resulted in this timeloop: 1, They kept beating lavos at different points in history completely changing the end result each time (IE, ALL the alternate dimensions in Chrono Cross are connected so closely specifically because of this.)
2, Lavos and schala became self aware of themselves outside of the timeline because they kept shifting between existing and not existing.

[Anonymous No.1664256]

>>1664224

Play it with Times Anguish patch since it takes this guys main problem >>1664223 and mostly fixes it.

[Anonymous No.1664264]

>>1661996

i thought it was garbage, and ive tried to play through it twice.

>barely any character development. CT had memorable characters, each with their own long backstory that led to them joining the party and each with a solid sidequest at the end of the game.

>generic abilities for all characters that is just a matter of swapping out "elements", one of the lamest/worst combat mechanics ever invented. there are barely any unique abilities per character and they are inconsequential. the elements themselves are all "deal damage in blue/green/red/yellow color", and the fill mechanic/enemy strengths and weaknesses don't matter at all

>piss easy. CT was easy but most monsters deal 5-6 damage to characters that have hundreds of HP even mid to late game. wtf?

>the "star" leveling system was retarded. all it did was make the player hyperaware of how linear the game really is despite "branching storylines". at first i thought it would be OK since it would prevent you from overleveling, but since the game is so piss easy anyway, it doesnt even help

it doesnt even bother me at all that Chrono cross wasnt really a "sequel" to CT. what does bother me is that it took a lot of CT's strengths, and turned them into weaknesses

[Anonymous No.1664270]

>>1664213
He's a Magus.
Specifically The Magus from the ending What the Prophit seeks

[Anonymous No.1664313]

>>1664264
>piss easy. CT was easy but most monsters deal 5-6 damage to characters that have hundreds of HP even mid to late game. wtf?

I like most things about Cross, but this thing is unbalanced to the point of absurdity. Rainbow weapons are technically stronger than most ultimate weapons while at the same time you're still getting items made out of fucking stone in chests at endgame, you'll never ever run out of Growth Points so the summoning system was stupid and rarely used anyway, and to top it all off the stat leveling system was way too generous.

[NESfag No.1664316]

>>1664264
>barely any character development

I keep hearing this all the time and it's not true. The mast majority of characters in CC has more character development than all the characters in CT. In CT, all you get is a bit of development for Frog. Oh yeah, and you get to hear a bit of backstory for Lucas but that hardly counts as character development and that part with Robo. THAT'S IT. Tell me where is there is more "character development". Whereas in CC there is stuff for almost everybody, granted it's not always easy to find, but it's there.

You only get that impression because CC has a lot more characters so you feel overwhelmed and feel like you don't really know anybody outside of the few main chars. But saying it has less character development than CT is wrong. CT is a SNES rpg, strong char development isn't to be expected.

[Anonymous No.1664319]

>>1664313
>Rainbow weapons are technically stronger than most ultimate weapons
Uh... rainbow weapons are the ultimate weapons for most characters. Unless you mean the Rainbow Swallow is stronger than the Mastermune. The Mastermune is way better due to its critical rate, and the Rainbow Swallow's purpose is to be used while you don't have the Mastermune in a NG+.

>you'll never ever run out of Growth Points so the summoning system was stupid and rarely used anyway
...you HAD to use summons to be able to craft rainbow weapons, you can run out of stars early on the game if you overrely on summons. It wasn't hard to achieve a summon but it wasn't just a matter of pressing A, I think that's right for a summon. Plust they had skippable animations, thank god.

[Anonymous No.1664331]

>>1664316

i never said CT has "strong character development", its a videogame for crying out loud.

but CC has less than CT. each character joins you for a specific reason and there is a whole buildup to their joining you in almost instances:

>robo can help you get into the locked door via the factory, but he gets bashed up in the process. then you have to fix him and he eventually joins you
>ayla is a chieftess and you meet her several times before she joins, you go through a long (several hour) side journey where her idiot fellow tribseman steals your shit, you party with her, etc.
>frog/magus are self-explanatory
etc

in CC, with the exception of serge and kid, characters basically just say "hey, i'll join you for [x] reason. y/n?" and that's that. you can pick up on some other tidbits by talking to NPCs but that's so half-assed its not even funny.

i realize they had good intentions by including a ton of different characters, and i will admit it seemed appealing, but in execution they took one of CTs strengths over its peers (memorable characters) and turned it into a weakness (lame characters no one cares about)

[Anonymous No.1664335]

>>1664316
I went through the CC character list recently and save for about ten joke characters like Neofio, Turnip and Poshul, most of the cast actually join the party after a relevant event involving them. Plus every single one of them, even the joke ones, have their own mini sidequests for their third tech.

Ayla may have been more charismatic, but the fact is even Mojo has more character development than her. I mean even Lucca's letter in CC single handedly developed her far more than all of CT.

I agree with your post but you forgot to mention Magus, his backstory is fairly large although yes he didn't develop at all either.

[Anonymous No.1664371]

>>1664316
>The mast majority of characters in CC has more character development than all the characters in CT
Citation Needed.
Unless you mean stuff that you wrote in your fanfics. The "characters" are accent generator machines. The large majority of them have absolutely no connection to the plot of the game. They have a one paragraph story and very few have a second paragraph as a second event, completely optional most of the time.

Ask anyone to tell you what's the personality of any CT character.
Then do the same for CC. WHAT PERSONALITY-CHA?

[Anonymous No.1664432]

>>1664371
character development =/= personality

>The large majority of them have absolutely no connection to the plot of the game
Serge, Lynx, Kid, Harle: directly related to the Frozen Flame.
Norris, Luccia, Grobyc, Orcha: related to the Porre colonization story, and join you during a Porre raid and investigation.
Viper, Riddel, Karsh, Zoah, Marcy, Radius, Glenn, Zappa: related to the El Nido nationalist story, and join you accordingly during the conflict against Porre.
Nikki, Fargo, Miki, Irenes, Sneff: related to the Zelbess/Marbule storyline and are part of a lenghty, optional sidequest.
Razzly: part of the Hydra storyline and joins you if you choose to persue that story path.
Steena: part of the Dragonian storyline.
Doc, Orlha: part of the Kid is poisoned story, have faint connections to the Porre arc.
Leena: Part of the beginning storyline regarding Serge's death.
Pierre, Greco, Funguy, Van: Termina folks with no connection to the larger storyline outside of their wish to help you.
Korcha, Macha, Mel: Marbule folks with no connection to the larger storyline outside of their wish to make things right for you.
Skelly: his own recruitment is a sidequest, although unrelated to any major arc.
Draggy: joke character with a faint connection to the Reptite storyline.
Pip: gimmick character with a faint connection to the Porre storyline.
Janice, Poshul, Starky, Sprigg, Leah, Mojo, Turnip, NeoFio: joke/gimmick characters with no real connection to anything.
Guile: a Radical Dreamers gimmick guy with no real relevance to anything.

If you really reach for those whose premise hold "absolutely no connection to the plot of the game", they hardly make up the "large majority" of the cast. The actual large majority, however, is far more developed tan Marle or Ayla in CT.

[Anonymous No.1664463]

>>1662207

Snake's Revenge is actually not bad. It was made by the Castlevanai III's team.
Kojima himself liked it.

[Anonymous No.1664534]

>>1664432
>related to the Porre colonization story
Which goes absolutely nowhere and isn't really related to the main plot.
>related to the El Nido nationalist story
See above.
>related to the Zelbess/Marbule storyline
Which TRIES to be a theme in the game but it's stuck on it as an afterthought. So it doesn't count.
>Hydra storyline
Storyline is a big word for that.
>part of the Kid is poisoned story
So essentially, what should have been instrumental NPCs. They serve no real purpose beyond that.

>folks with no connection to the larger storyline outside of their wish to help you.
This covers almost everybody. And that's a problem, not a good thing. You know that one moment in FF7 when everybody scatters to think about if they really want to risk their lives in the final battle and each of them finds their own motivation to do it?
Yeah, if that happened in Chrono Cross you'd lose everybody who isn't Serge and Kid.

And you're still not showing me how they're far more developed.
Marle goes from spoiled princess to adventurer to responsible hero to someone who has to stand up as a leader in order to save her loved one. Ayla is admittedly less developed than Marle, since she's a primitive cavewoman. But she plays a relevant role for the Guardia family line and also in the main storyline, inspiring humans to fight and become the dominant race in the planet. And yet as strength obsessed as she is, she's still chooses Kino as her lover despite his weakness, showing the softer side of mankind.

Meanwhile you can get Leena to meet Leena of another world and that produces nothing at all. The fact that she's a childhood friend and might have feelings for Serge? Doesn't matter. Why is she risking her life to save the world? Would be nice if she tried to say it in more than a single line.

Everything is dilluted. They could have chosen a handful of characters and worked them into the story instead of this endless line of tagalongs, their only relevance being their elements.

[Anonymous No.1664651]

>>1661996

Might not be the right place to ask, but how does Crimson Echoes measure up to CT/CC?

Sort of want to try it.

[Anonymous No.1665335]

>>1664534
Rather than come into an "appreciation" thread for a certain game for the sole purpose of telling people here why they shouldn't like a that game, why not just go make a thread about a title you enjoy, or join in on another discussion pertaining to some of your /vr/ interests?

>tl;dr Chrono Cross is amazing and u r a stoopid luzer

[Anonymous No.1665340]

>>1665335
>why they shouldn't like a that game

[Anonymous No.1665346]

>>1665340
way to pick out a typo, faggot. now you're all ready to proofread your book report before turning it into you're 8th grade teacher tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.1665350]

>>1665346
AND YES THE 'YOU'RE' IS INTENTIONAL HOLY SHIT

[Anonymous No.1665352]

I know it's an extremely unpopular opinion here but I'm one of those guys that couldn't get into it because of how different it was from chrono trigger.
I loved chrono trigger.
it was just wasy too different. I know I should have treated it like something compelety different but I just couldn't.

don't hate me, /vr/

[Anonymous No.1665356]

>>1665350
>YOU'RE
Do you even know what an apostrophe is?

[Anonymous No.1665404]

>>1664264
Yeah, I tried to play through it as well. Just couldn't do it, and for mainly the same reasons.

If it was just easy it wouldn't be so bad but the combat is set up in this really annoying way that makes it hard to just autopilot through like I would with most other too-easy JRPGs.

[Anonymous No.1665416]

>>1665352

i dont hate you but thats still pretty dumb, especially if you're cognizant that you arent being fair

[Anonymous No.1665448]

>>1664534

>Marle goes from spoiled princess to adventurer to responsible hero to someone who has to stand up as a leader in order to save her loved one.

No she doesn't, she essentially the same bubbly stupid generic character from the moment you meet her otherwise. She's easily the most undeveloped character in the game and anything that plays into her generally has a much more important focus on everything -connected- to her instead of her herself, like the Guardia storylines. You can point and scream at her demanding everybody stop Lavos when you first find out about her as some sort of turning point for her but that felt absolutely no different compared to how she'd been behaving up to that point anyway.

>Ayla is admittedly less developed than Marle, since she's a primitive cavewoman. But she plays a relevant role for the Guardia family line and also in the main storyline, inspiring humans to fight and become the dominant race in the planet.

Nah. The prehistoric segment of the game has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in the game until literally the very end where Lavos falls from the sky.

Characterization starts to fall apart for characters the instant they join your party generally, much like in Chrono Cross. This especially counts for basically everyone that joins after Robo is introduced into the party because at that point a lot of the game allows you to switch around your party. Thus, most everyone's dialogue now becomes slightly different versions of the same core thing that all of them are going to say anyway. This isn't a whole lot different than Chrono Cross at all, it's just way more fucking noticeable there because there's so many party members.

If the game would have sticked to Chrono/Marle/Lucca, it would have had much better characterization but instead, after that point, it starts to eliminate character-specific scenes and starts to go off the rails. It sacrifices story strength for fun, again, much like CC

[Anonymous No.1665495]

I'll never be able to replay this game because it limits grinding.
And I like to get high and grind.

[Anonymous No.1665654]

>>1664651

pls respond

[Anonymous No.1665856]

>>1664534
According to you all storylines don't relate to the "main plot". I played CC and I thought that the main plot was that there are two parallel dimensions somehow linked to Serge and the Frozen Flame. Porre and El Nido are by far the biggest two threads from that main story.

Saying that Porre being colonized or El Nido being fred in each world "goes absolutely nowhere" is akin to saying that the Masamune story "goes absolutely nowhere", as you're just learning what has already happened and nothing new comes from it. They flesh out the setting and their counterparts in each world are linked to the Dead Sea and the Frozen Flame.

You are also romantizicing Marle and Ayla. "Marle stands up as a leader in order to save her loved one"? When? How? This is only vaguely real if you choose her to lead the party when Crono dies, and even then she doesn't develop at all, she just asks questions and does nothing out of the ordinary, just as any carácter you choose as a leader does.

Ayla is relevant because of her role for the Guardia family? To quote you, that "isn't rally related to the main plot". "Showing the softer side of mankind", give me a break. I could the same thing for Mojo in CC and have him sound like the ultimate heroic figure of all the arts.

Also, just a nitpick, but your dismissiveness of Lina about "saving the world" - no character in CC EVER joins you to "save the world". Some of the joke ones do it out of wanderlust and most of them to find the Frozen Flame and fulfill each their own desires. Which is already far more development than "CRONO STRONG! FIGHT BIG BAD! SAVE WORLD"

[Anonymous No.1665870]

>>1664534
According to you all storylines don't relate to the "main plot". I played CC and I thought that the main plot was that there are two parallel dimensions somehow linked to Serge and the Frozen Flame. Porre and El Nido are by far the biggest two threads from that main story.

Saying that Porre being colonized or El Nido being fred in each world "goes absolutely nowhere" is akin to saying that the Masamune story "goes absolutely nowhere", as you're just learning what has already happened and nothing new comes from it. They flesh out the setting and their counterparts in each world are linked to the Dead Sea and the Frozen Flame.

You are also romantizicing Marle and Ayla. "Marle stands up as a leader in order to save her loved one"? When? How? This is only vaguely real if you choose her to lead the party when Crono dies, and even then she doesn't develop at all, she just asks questions and does nothing out of the ordinary, just as any character you choose as a leader does.

Ayla is relevant because of her role for the Guardia family? To quote you, that "isn't really related to the main plot". "Showing the softer side of mankind", give me a break. I could the same thing for Mojo in CC and have him sound like the ultimate heroic figure of all the arts.

Also, just a nitpick, but your dismissiveness of Lina about "saving the world" - no character in CC EVER joins you to "save the world". Some of the joke ones do it out of wanderlust and most of them to find the Frozen Flame and fulfill each their own desires. Which is already far more development than "CRONO STRONG! FIGHT BIG BAD! SAVE WORLD"

[Anonymous No.1665885]

>>1662480
I agree with your synopsis. Ive played through 3 times and this is how I understand it as well

[Anonymous No.1665921]

>>1665448
>bubbly stupid generic character from the moment you meet her
Now you're just hating because you want to be a special snowflake.

>The prehistoric segment of the game has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in the game until literally the very end where Lavos falls from the sky.
>LAVOS
Yeah, it sure has nothing to do with the game. It's not like Lavos altering the natural course of evolution is a thing in the game. OH WAIT.

>This isn't a whole lot different than Chrono Cross at all, it's just way more fucking noticeable there because there's so many party members.

Which is a PROBLEM and why characterization in Trigger is stronger, you silly goose. When you have 7 versions of the same comment, each with its own personality, it defines characters and personalities. When you get THE EXACT SAME LINE 40 times with an accent generator, you get shit all.

>it starts to eliminate character-specific scenes
The game hardly spends time in a non-character specific scene. Because each time period is a character specific scene.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. I played Cross before I played Trigger so I gotta tell you, take off the goggles. It's embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.1666042]

>>1665921
>you can get Leena to meet Leena of another world and that produces nothing at all. The fact that she's a childhood friend and might have feelings for Serge? Doesn't matter.
Now you're just hating because you want to be a special snowflake.

>[Porre colonization] goes absolutely nowhere and isn't really related to the main plot.
Yeah, it sure has nothing to do with the game. It's not like Porre conquering El Nido and looking for the Frozen Flame is a thing in the game. OH WAIT.

When you have small sidequests that are personal to most charaters, that develops them. When you have 7 cliched STEREPTYPES as main characters, they do not develop as characters.

See? Two can play the overgeneralization game.

Also
>Because each time period is a character specific scene.
Yes, the present era sure develops Crono.

[Anonymous No.1666070]

>>1665654

It's a really, really bad fangame. I couldn't play much of it before I ragequit. Shit's just not that good.

I mean, if you're desperate for something Chrono related it might be worth a go but it just reeks of autism, at least to me.

[Anonymous No.1666082]

>>1666070
I agree, it's too tryhard. But you should just give it a go, some people like it. Prophet's Guile or whatever the name was, that was better in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.1666094]

>>1664534

Herein lies the issue with Trigger fanboys, you romanticize the fuck out of characters that weren't too fleshed out, and gloss over and diminish Cross ones.

Your first comment about Porre colonization story going nowhere outs you for what you are. Anyone who actually played and understood the game, and didn't just roll through it expecting Trigger 2, could easily decrepit Porre's relevance to the overall plot. To put it simply, Porre and El Nido correspond with The Frozen Flame in many ways, and it frightens me how you seem to neglect it.

It must be a strange thing, to be so marred by your blind loyalty to an inferior product.

[Anonymous No.1666405]

im not even sure why i like crono cross, i think i only play it for the fancy magics and effects it had, back in the day they were top notch for a 3d game it was awesome and the dragons made some great bosses

in other words i liked the game by its graphics and OST but i've always considered that the story was such a mess that i didn't even bothered with it, 2deep4u

[Anonymous No.1666743]

All points brought up against Cross that aren't pacing related are factually wrong.

[Anonymous No.1666883]

I played CT after CC so I don't have the CT nostalgia goggles factored in much. I didn't get to play CT until FF Chronicles.

I found CC to be confusing but not impossible to understand. Overall it's the fault of the way it's written. Since I knew little about CT at the time (I played mostly Genesis RPGs in the 16 bit era) there was nothing to go on in terms of relevancy to that game. So I went in blind and didn't have the plot connection problems people who played CT had. In fact, I was surprised that El Nido never showed up on the CT map. I figured it might eventually appear due to plot progression. It wasn't until I got pretty far into the game that I realised that El Nido wasn't based on a CT location at all.

That might sound stupid to some. But if you ever played a sequel before a previous game then it's easy to get confused like that because you don't know what from the sequel was actually in the previous game.

[Anonymous No.1666898]

>>1666883
That's not stupid at all.

[Anonymous No.1666902]

>>1666883
>I didn't get to play CT until FF Chronicles.
You poor bastard, you actually played through CT on FF Chronicles? Those load times before every single battle were unbearable for me.

[Anonymous No.1666912]

One thing I really, really enjoyed about CC was the world itself. The archipelago just seems like such a cozy place to go and live. Minus all the monsters and shit of course.

[Anonymous No.1667183]

>>1661996

I just wished Toriyama did the art. One of the best aspects of CT was the Dragon Ball aesthetic, and I feel most would agree that if Cross had that it would be a better game.

One of the most talented and varied artists imo

[Anonymous No.1667206]

>>1666902
If you were used to ff7's long ass screen wipes its about the same.

[Anonymous No.1667208]

>>1667183
Interesting point though I did like CC designs and art direction but if enix had a hand in CC, would their influence have had any effect?

[Anonymous No.1667209]

>>1667183
>I feel most would agree
Hell no. CT's art was okay because Toriyama's designs had to be SD sprites. If CC had Toriyama as the art director, the fact that every character looks like a mountain of imposible muscles with sameface would be a lot more noticeable. It wouldn't have fit the tropical setting at all either.

[Anonymous No.1667221]

>>1667208
More randomness. Hori is a gambling nut.

[Anonymous No.1667301]

>>1661996
The Drag Sword is gonna FUCK you with that all white field.

[Anonymous No.1667312]

>>1662591
I never said it wasn't a sequel. What I said was that it was one of the worst sequels imaginable.

Cross can provide some entertainment if you come into it with the right mindset and ignore its flaws, but if you want more Chrono Trigger, Cross is not your thing, period.

[Anonymous No.1667315]

>>1664223
Hey NESfag. Weird how you're perfectly adequate about storytelling in Cross, but then turn into a complete imbecile when talking about FFVIII.

[Anonymous No.1667321]

>>1667209
I think your only familiarity with Toriyama is through the Western edits of the DBZ cartoons. Perhaps not even that.

Here's some official Toriyama art for Chrono Trigger. Educate yourself.

[Anonymous No.1667342]

>>1667321

Sameface is a legitimate complaint, as someone that actually enjoys Toriyama's shit. He has a handful of different faces he draws for men, and literally maybe like two that he gives for women.

Toriyama is way better at drawing comical cartoony things like Doctor Slump because then he goes wild and you actually get interesting designs for shit. He's really good at drawing cool looking robots.

[Anonymous No.1667356]

>>1667342
>Sameface is a legitimate complaint
Maybe in the works that Bird Studio does in his name it is. But in his actual artworks it is not.

>as someone that actually enjoys Toriyama's shit
Read more of his stuff then. His cartoonish style is persistent, but saying that all Toriyama characters have the same face is like saying that all Disney characters have the same face. Sort of, yes. Because it's an art style, and they're cartoons.

[Anonymous No.1667405]

>>1667356

> Because it's an art style, and they're cartoons.

this is seriously a huge annoying complaint for me. toriyama isn't going for realism here, he has an artistic style that he draws that are obviously cartoonish, saying the same face thing isn't a valid complaint (and honestly he's varied enough). do you think if charles schulz did the artwork for chrono trigger we'd see a picture with charlie brown wishing charlie brown a good morning with a charlie brown sun looking in? go look at any cartoon or any comic with a style and show me how varied their faces are. go on... ill wait.

[Anonymous No.1667418]

>>1667405
Toriyama's sameface was a Dragon Ball joke. Then kids picked it up and took it seriously.

All jokes are at one point picked up and used seriously by idiots. You can't do anything about it. You'd think nobody would ever take something seriosuly, adn then there's a group protesting it on the streets, and another one teaching it to their kids and/or naming the kids after it.

[Anonymous No.1667479]

>>1667418

don't get me wrong, i think that image is hilarious, but its pretty annoying when people try and use it as a real argument.

[Anonymous No.1667618]

>>1667418
>>1667479
The reason it's funny it's because it's true for his DB-era artwork. As mentioned previously, in Dr. Slump the art was more varied, and in some DQ games there's more freedom too, but during DB (and in CT) all humans are the same with different hair.

>>1667356 is really cherry picking to make him look good. It's posting two girls, one of them in the weirdest angle posible who STILL looks like the same as the other. There's also just one guy at a weird angle, no other human men to compare. Monsters don't have human faces and like somebody else said before, he CAN draw cool looking creatures.

[Anonymous No.1668695]

>>1667312
>it was one of the worst sequels imaginable.

On grounds of not being 100% rehashed shit?

[Anonymous No.1668839]

I like both Trigger and Cross and think they're both fine games that deserve to be played.

[Anonymous No.1668886]

>>1667618
Ramna 1/2 started in 1988, Iny Yasha ended in 2008. If you check out the first issue of Ramna and the last issue of Inu Yasha you'll pretty much see that the artist has been drawing the same characters for 20 years.

Do this with pretty much any artist. The problem is that older comic book artist don't stay relevant when new ones take over. Did you read Toriyama's Neko Majin? Probably not.

Dragon Ball, like Pokemon or Sailor Moon had this burst of world-wide fame and continues to be a huge marketing push around the world. Especially places where they lag behind wester pop culture.

Doraemon looks the same. Cased Closed looks the same. Even the new Sailor Moon is using the 80's bishonen art style it started with.

The problem with Toriyma is that his work was so much different than what was being made at the time and his trademark style became what he was known for. Toriyama was always good at designing monsters, but his humans were not his strong suit. Add on the fact that he's been drawing 40 years now and human main characters market better, he kind of runs out of ideas.

Basically he learned to draw characters that way to set himself apart and now he's stuck with it. It's what he's known for and every comic book artist in japan knows that ultimately, their careers ride on being that one-trick pony.

[Anonymous No.1668892]

The only reason why I don't like his style is because dragon ball was really huge and iconic, so seeing a bunch of goku and bulma clones gets pretty weird.

If it looked like any other anime it'd been fine.

[Anonymous No.1669061]

>RPG system that caps your experience gains until you defeat the next boss

[Anonymous No.1669063]

>>1668839
This nigga gets it.

[Anonymous No.1669065]

>>1668839
Well, you're right. Trigger is much better in every regard, Cross is a very flawed experience, but they're seperate games and even Cross has a lot going for it, especially it's music, the visuals and some SaGa-esque elements to it's storytelling and progression.

After all, even though SMW is an incomparably better platformer than Sonic 2, it doesn't change the fact that Sonic 2 is a very interesting and truly, unquestionably worthwhile and memorable experience.

[Anonymous No.1669089]

>>1667209
DQ8 is a gorgeous game. Fuck you.

[Anonymous No.1669102]

>>1667618
>is really cherry picking to make him look good
What? I've shown faces from one single illustration, which is his personal work. No, YOU are cherry-picking, running across all sorts of media, none of it actually painted by Toriyama.

Characters based on Toriyama's art all look the same. Actual Toriyama characters all look different.

[Anonymous No.1669106]

>>1668695
On the grounds of being both entirely different and not all that good.

[Anonymous No.1669107]

The game was decent enough, but trying to make sense of the plot is foolish. Considering they just slapped the CT links into the game so more people would buy, it's safe to say they didn't try too hard to make a cohesive plot for CC. What they did actually just cheapened both games as it made CC feel like a CT side-quest, while CC pisses on CT at times. Should have just made removed the Chrono part entirely; they could have just inserted any random eldritch abomination as the final boss.

[Anonymous No.1669110]

>>1667618
Did you ever consider that, without their hair and shot at the same angle, most humans actually do look very similar to one another?

[Anonymous No.1669127]

>>1669065

>better in every regard

Haha, no. The only thing CT does better is pacing, and having one of the most annoying, irrational fanbase right alongside FF6. From an aesthetic, atmospheric in, and musical point of view, Chrono Cross is an evolution every sense of the word. A smarter game from a smarter audience. The soundtrack also encompasses some of the best work done to fucking date for vidya.

>>1669106

aka, on the basis of it not being rehashed shit. Its okay, your unbridled fanboyism is apparent, no need to feign any sort of rationality.

>>1669107

>slapped links so people would buy it
>the project lead has been wanting to finish Schalas tale for a long time
>evokes a sense of love of care if one actually played

Also, if you sincerely think the connection was flimsy, or that Cross marginalized or hurt Triggers story in any way, you are a moron. I suggest playing again and paying attention, this time you can go in knowing you wont get a time-traveling DBZ game.

[Anonymous No.1669138]

>>1669127
>fanboys! fanboys! fanboys! fanboys!
Stop screaming, you little shit. Despite being a nice experience, Cross is a highly flawed game. The second half falls apart, and the story is needlessly complicated. Connections to Trigger are superficial and nonsensical. Whole segments of the game like the first visit to the manor feel entirely purposeless and are a chore to play through, even as the game's difficulty is even lwoer than it was in Trigger.

You are the one who is an irrational fanboy here for missing the flaws Cross actually does have.

[Anonymous No.1669145]

>>1669138
I loved the viper manor, if anything it's the Fort Dragonia that you had to repeat like three times in a single playthrough that got on my nerves.

Chrono Cross had too much backtracking to the same locations and often the two dimensions didn't seem very different at all.

[Anonymous No.1669148]

>locked out of xp
>nope

[Anonymous No.1669175]

Jesus, dude makes a Cross thread and within no time a horde of plebeian Trigger kids infest it.

>GRR I TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND PLOT
>THEREFORE ITS NONSENSE
>WHERE CRONO?
>WHY NO TIME TRAVEL?
>MUH DBZ ART
>MUH GOOD ENDING

You guys should be content with your little nostalgia communities. Trigger frequently tops greatest of charts, etc. Leave your betters to do their bidding.

[Anonymous No.1669185]

>>1669061
>>1669148

But that's not true.

[Anonymous No.1669261]

>>1669175
> GRR I TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND PLOT
I understand the plot just fine. Granted, I had to run over to Chronopedia to piece out some of the more obtuse bits that are only really glossed over in the actual game, but once you're able to spread things out a bit instead of the one-two clusterfuck the game throws at you, the whole idea of a time crash and alternate timelines coming forth from the non-existent past to rip the present a new one with fusion danced element dragons isn't that hard to grasp.

> THEREFORE ITS NONSENSE.
It's not even the most convoluted jRPG I've ever played.

> WHERE CRONO?
He died. Kind of anticlimactically, considering the guy can rip out spirit bombs like they're going out of style.
Honestly, the whole thing seemed pretty vindictive. Like they were just killing off characters to do it.

>WHY NO TIME TRAVEL?
I honestly felt the two alternate dimensions weren't differentiated enough. It's not that hard to lose track of who's where.
The truly differentiated bits (like the Dead Sea, or the dead timelines) were pretty boss, though.

>MUH DBZ ART
I don't really care about this.

>MUH GOOD ENDING
Seemed pretty vindictive, like I said. Basically everyone except Ayla and possibly Glenn got their teeth kicked in. Seemed to very purposefully shit over the spirit of the original.

I still liked Cross, though. But it's flawed.
I wish the developers had more time with it. The ending is very rushed. I feel they could have done better, if they had more time.

[Anonymous No.1669298]

>>1669148
>wahh why can't I make numbers get bigger shitty game

XP and level meters are just carrot for brainless busywork masqueraded as gameplay.
Jrpg fanboy genocide best day of my life

[Anonymous No.1669321]

>>1669261
You do realize that the CT cast is only dead in Home World, right? And that undoing homeworld WITHOUT undoing its good aspects is the point of the entire plot? Hardly "vindictive" at all.

[Anonymous No.1669327]

>>1669298
I just enjoy combat more than story.
Fun for me is getting stoned and running circles not spending forever learning about some new bitch that just showed up.

[Anonymous No.1669346]

Damn, what's with all the hate in these Chrono threads?

[Anonymous No.1669441]

>>1669346
Chrono fans are some of the most ass pained people in all of /vr/.
Quick primer:

Trigger fans are mad because Cross was such a radical departure from Trigger in basically every possible way, and denounce it at every possible turn, refusing to believe that it could have any redeeming quality whatsoever.

Cross fans are mad that anyone could find a single fault in their perfect /vr/ waifu and denounce all Trigger fans as uncultured, base intellectual swine who couldn't tell their ass from a hat.

They are both extremely mad at each other and would like to tell you so.

Do not attempt actual discussion here. You will either be yelled at for dissent or ignored.

[Anonymous No.1669456]

>>1669441
>Trigger fans are mad because Cross was such a radical departure from Trigger in basically every possible way
That's not true at all. I equally dislike Xenogears for it's obscenely bad writing, and it has nothing to do with Cross.

[Anonymous No.1669458]

>>1669321
>undoing homeworld WITHOUT undoing its good aspects
It's as stupid a plot as it ever gets. It's 3rd Birthday, Final Fantasy XIII, Square-Enix grade terrible.

[Anonymous No.1669481]

chrono cross is fine, just not as a sequel to trigger.

[Anonymous No.1669489]

>>1669481
Wait until a Cross fan tells you that it's a perfect sequel because the main characters are clearly referenced as dead every now and then and the world of Trigger is in a seperate reality, so everything that happens is OK because anything can happen when there are infinite realities, so any dumb shit isn't dumb because seperate realities, remember?

It's like that Harry Potter slash Sonic fanfiction.

[Anonymous No.1669527]

>>1669489

lol'd. but yea, aside from being a convoluted mess, it has little in common with CT. the atmosphere and story are completely different and incongruous. the references that are there could easily be removed.

it would've been better as a stand-alone, but of course they had to cash in on CT's success for guaranteed sales.

[Anonymous No.1669556]

>>1669527
>but of course they had to cash in on CT's success
Actually, by the time CC came out, the mainstream has all but forgotten about CT. Parasite Eve was a bigger intellectual property than that.

No, it was one single guy taking credit for what many better writers did in Trigger, and taking it upon himself to ruin it all.

Let that sink: Kato's latest script was the Ninja Gaiden 3 (2012) "story."

[Anonymous No.1669562]

>>1669556

CT had faded, but there was (and still is) the cult following. so arguably they may have been aiming for that.

you're right, though. I believe Kato created the Zeal story arc, which of course was great. but many people worked on CT, which resulted in a classic product. Kato was limited to a single chapter, so he couldn't run amok like he did with CC, which disrespected CT in many ways.

[Anonymous No.1669597]

>>1669556
>>1669562
This myth again. "Many better writers" created small scenarios in CT, but it was Kato who took the main idea and ran with it. It was Kato who alongside the producers developed the main draft. Hell it was Kato who did the first playable character designs before they were Toriyama'd. Kato wasn't "limited" to a single chapter, otherwise he wouldn't have been credited as the single scenario developer and he wouldn't have had a say in the myriad things he did. All of this would be evident if you read any development material for CT.

[Anonymous No.1669603]

Didn't expect him to be such a mean motherfucker.

[Anonymous No.1669606]

>>1669597

I see. I wasn't clear on that point.

still, judging by CC, it seems like the collective helped restrain Kato and create a better product.

[Anonymous No.1669607]

>>1669597
those concepts make me wonder why they toriyama'd

[Anonymous No.1669624]

1/2

Boy, what a clusterfuck of angst. There are great things about Chrono Cross, but we're not sit idly by while Chrono Trigger is tarnished by idiots.

Trigger's one of the best jRPGs of it's time and continues to be great, now and well into the PSX era. Even so, we can't be overly critical or hold it to the standard of later games on certain points (character development) because of when it did come out and what was possible and expected at the time. Despite that fact, it excelled and surprised. It was very cleverly developed (use of the engine and sprites) and succinct in it's narrative. We can appreciate a lack of text now after having gone through the worst of the jRPGs that followed, and the non jRPGs that would have way too much text and forced tutorials. It's balanced in gameplay and story.

However, keeping that all in mind, the topic here is Chrono Cross, so let's focus there.

[Anonymous No.1669631]

2/2

Cross is very ambitious. The art style, world and music is beautiful. The battle system is complex for the sake of being unique, but not very fun. Too much micromanagement.

Cross and Final Fantasy VIII share some game mechanics. Around that time, Square must have wanted to rewrite their rules out of boredom rather than real ingenuity.

Fashioning armor and weapons from items may be rewarding, hunting for materials, but unlike FFVIII which has a faster pace (familiar menus and flow of ATB) Cross's battles are needlessly long. Whether materials come easily or not, it's not a great system if there is no choice in equipment. The next will obviously be better, there's no choice in preference. Both games have that issue. Just have a shop.

More time is spent organizing Elements than FFVIII's junctions and at least in that game we could still "fight" and get on with it. Not in Cross. The way turns work is alienating. We can be in the middle of attacking and then randomly an enemy gets a turn.

The characters aren't very different between one another in battle, besides elemental alignment.

The field effect is a great concept but in practice, it may not matter much over the course of the game except in some battles.

The story premise is intriguing, but how it's paced and presented in the game is terrible. That's some PSX era games, overly bombastic yet rushed, resulting in a game the fans have the salvage and pick apart to admire "what could have been".

As a sequel it fails. Someone else here said "side story" and that is very appropriate. Very loose ties, and none at all in gameplay.

It's a compelling work despite the flaws many will agree but it can be hard to complete. As a finished product it's broken, and it may be just as rewarding to look up the story analysis after getting a fair way in.

It's good though completely sadistic in design. Maybe ballsy in how it works in with Trigger, but also somewhat the work of someone who wants to watch their world burn.

[Anonymous No.1669635]

>>1669606
"Better" is subjective. If you mean "more lighthearted", I very much agree. Originally Kato, for instance, wanted Crono to actually die for good. The party would look for a way to recover a Crono from an earlier point in time, but their Crono would remain dead. One of the producers supported this idea, while the rest rejected it. Maybe this is why in both sequels he's written (Radical Dreamers and CC) the premise starts with Crono dead. In RD that's actually, in a way, the catalyst for the whole story.

If you also meant that CT is much tighter and simpler storywise, I agree, too. CC is complex, which is good, but also convoluted, which is not. I don't think this is just Kato's fault; Radical Dreamers had the same story but it was far simpler and much more personal and in my opinion satisfying. I think the fault lies in the zeitgeist of the time (Evangelion, Xenogears et al) taking over the project.

It is also worth nothing that many members of the CT development team worked in CC too, this is evident if you remember the names in the dev ending in both games. So I think Kato's penchant for darker stories + the 5deep10me mindset of the time resulted in the needlessly convoluted aspects that CC boasts.

>>1669607
Because Toriyama sells.

[Anonymous No.1669636]

>>1669624
>but we're not sit idly by while Chrono Trigger is tarnished by idiots.
you're already one. stop taking games so seriously.

[Anonymous No.1669642]

Says the person taking part in this discussion... be gone.

[Anonymous No.1669649]

>>1669631
To be honest I like CC's battle system a lot more, it lets me do whatever I want with my turn. CT just lets me wait for a bar and press one button. It's also faster than FFVIII, I really didn't like that one at all either. The enemy's random turns are the only puzzling thing about it but it gives the game some semblance of difficulty, which is the one thing it really lacks.

I could see people not liking it if they prefer atb, but I really find atb to be the most boring system in jrpgs.

>As a sequel it fails. Someone else here said "side story" and that is very appropriate. Very loose ties, and none at all in gameplay.
with this I completely disagree. The entire games happens because of CT and deals with every possible aspect of CT that it could without devolving into fan pandering and fanservice.

[Anonymous No.1669653]

>>1669635

I meant both (lighthearted, more concise). CT is fun with a serious core, which is just right. Zeal definitely demonstrates Kato's fondness for dark storytelling (Chrono gets killed, an entire civ gets killed, subjugation, etc).

the zeitgeist may be the reason. overall, in spite of it being messy, Cross doesn't suck. it just would've been much better as a standalone. killing off the CT crew and Porre suddenly becoming a war machine are things that irk me as a fan of CT.

[Anonymous No.1669661]

>with this I completely disagree. The entire games happens because of CT and deals with every possible aspect of CT that it could without devolving into fan pandering and fanservice.

not true. you could easily cut all ties to CT and give different names to the characters/places without interfering with the plot.

[Anonymous No.1669667]

>Chrono series
>good

[Anonymous No.1669674]

>>1669653
Well I'm a fan of CT and both things don't irk me, here's what I thought: CT cast is probably meant to be alive in the main dimension, them being dead because of serge in one makes the quest more emotional, and Porre being a war machine provides a way to link the new setting to CT's world.

Both elements are also present in a darker, more permanent way in RD and I love that game.

What irks me about CC is the needlessly complicated explanations and revelations. It's just too much to suspend disbelief, and ends up feeling like they're trying too hard to be deep. Have you played RD? It's like CC's story but fun with a serious core and far more concise. The twist is handled in a simple way that actually makes you care about it. In CC the twist is so needlessly convoluted that you end up shrugging your shoulders at it.

I can see CT fans HATING that Crono is dead, but I thought it was a cool move to make the player (via serge) be the one responsable for it. Plus it all gets undone at the end.

[Anonymous No.1669675]

Sup.

Just popping in here to remind you all that dwarves are assholes.

[Anonymous No.1669680]

>>1669661
Yes, and you could do the same with every single sequel ever made. But if you cut Schala, Lavos, the Reptites, both CT future timelines, the battle against Lavos, and the three main CT characters out of Chrono Cross, you may as well be playing a totally different game.

[Anonymous No.1669686]

>>1669674

I can see where you're coming from. but to me, it was like CC was out to nerf Trigger - to upend the story and twist it into something completely different. Porre suddenly conquering Guardia in 5 years, killing the characters, resurrecting Lavos as a greater menace, etc. it seemed to be about toppling CT and creating something different in its place. I think sequels should be about continuing or expanding a story instead.

I've been meaning to play Radical Dreamers, I've heard nothing but good things about it.

[Anonymous No.1669689]

>>1669680
The Reptites honestly aren't even called out as such until they're right on your doorstep. You could have just called them "alternate dinosaur timeline that grew up in tandem with nature because humans suck" and it would have been fine. Particularly with Cross's very strong "humans suck and mystics/demihumans/whateverthefuck are the oppressed" narrative. Just say, "They're demis from an alternate timeline where they're not oppressed and they're pissed" and you're golden.

As for Lavos, I honestly think you could just cut out that entire last boss fight and the game would be fine. Let the Dragon God be the last fight. Maybe buff it up a bit, or add in a second form or something.
Maybe you'd get to see Harle at the end.
I don't fucking know.

[Anonymous No.1669694]

>>1669689
>The Reptites honestly aren't even called out as such until they're right on your doorstep.
Yes, like you I fully expect every single game to give out every single plot detail as soon as it begins so holds no mystery or suspense whatsoever.

>You could have just called them "alternate dinosaur timeline that grew up in tandem with nature
Yes, and the reason such a timeline exists is because a huge planet eater fell in prehistoric times. So you would have to rename Lavos but not cut him out, because

>humans suck
due to Lavos being responsible for human evolution, which was a CT plot point too, by the way.

>As for Lavos, I honestly think you could just cut out that entire last boss fight and the game would be fine
The dimensions would merge how? What would be the point of Kid? What would be the point of the TITULAR ITEM? You'd have to remove all of those, too, or rewrite them.

>I don't fucking know.
Exactly. You'd have to rework the entire game. Why is it so hard to admit CC's story is very much connected to CT?

[Anonymous No.1669696]

>>1669298

i cant disagree with this though ive always been partial to the traditional XP/leveling type stuff.

however, chrono cross is so laughably easy that the system is just plain shit. who gives a fuck how much "depth" the combat system has if you dont have to use any of it to win? most monsters hit your characters for like 10 damage, even late in the game. it just turns every battle into a fucking chore. CT was easy too but CC made it 1000x worse.

[Anonymous No.1669702]

>>1669441

>Trigger fans are mad because Cross was such a radical departure from Trigger in basically every possible way, and denounce it at every possible turn, refusing to believe that it could have any redeeming quality whatsoever.

this is not true at all. i couldnt care less that it is not a true sequel to CT. its just a garbage game: >>1664264

[Anonymous No.1669703]

>>1669680

the reptites could be a different race. Schala could be a different girl with unique powers. Lavos could be a god or demon bent on destruction. etc. the plot doesn't need CT.

[Anonymous No.1669707]

>>1669649

It may be fair to say that it's a sequel as much as Final Fantasy VI is a sequel to Final Fantasy VII. Thing is, those two games, while radically different share a lot of thematic qualities. Even Final Fantasy games with different battle systems fit the over all feel of what a Final Fantasy game is, without needing to share characters.

You're right, this is the only way they could have had a follow-up without it being too lame.
>What if it had none of the original cast, and a different world, but there was time travel again?
>What if it had the same characters but they don't time travel?
>What if it had the same techs and battle system and aesthetics but nothing else?

Side-story feels more appropriate than sequel is because it doesn't share many aesthetics (not just Toryiama's absence), the old cast is shown only to be completely annihilated, (not even in a respectful way) the connections are a little tacked on, and the gameplay is radically different.

If Chrono Trigger was still a bit of a cult classic, maybe that's why the connections weren't fleshed out as much, so that new players could like it. It feels more like Kato wanted to get Chrono Trigger "out of the way" so he could use what was left out of that idea to make something else.

It's definitely not called Chrono Trigger 2, and we can plainly see why, regardless of whether or not you think that would be tasteful or whether or not anyone would have wanted that.

Making the similarities sparse can be good for a next entry in a franchise, but that doesn't mean it's a proper sequel.

Dragon Quest 1 - 3 are sequels and they build off each other, but also have respect. Cross seems more like it wants to destroy Trigger's majesty than continue it. This is how people can not acknowledge Cross at all as a sequel.

Cross didn't need Crono make a light-hearted cameo and do an X Slash with Serge, but why not, for example shown him die in the opening cinematic. Doesn't even need that. No respect. Hatred.

[Anonymous No.1669727]

>>1669686
> to twist the story into something completely different.
Yes, exactly! That's why I thought it was a great sequel. Most Electric Boogaloos sequels only do fan pandering and rehash the same stuff over and over. CC took the plot of CT as a foundation to establish a completely different world and time. When I first played CC, half the fun I was having with the plot was figuring out how it was linked to CT.

The twisting of CT is the conflict in the game, it's never meant to be a permanent positive thing. The characters are dead and Lavos will return because the timelines divided due to a single boy dying. CT's "shades" outright blame Serge for all of it, and it's quite emotional and quite unlike any other sequel, which would instead have you fight Lavos' dad or something. The point of CC is to set things right without erasing Serge's life and his timeline's positive aspects.

CC does continue the story, it shows what happened to the present and future world after CT ended. It also expands it, as it shows the Reptite timeline and what actually happened to Schala. It twists CT as a way for there to be conflict, and the conflict is resolved by setting things right as they were in CT without losing what was positive amidst the twisted world.

>I've been meaning to play Radical Dreamers, I've heard nothing but good things about it.
I've read from avid VN players that its gameplay is bad, but I enjoyed the writing and the atmosphere. I do recommend it, it's a far more personal Chrono Cross without the overcomplicated fluff. But be warned, in RD the things you point out (CT cast dead, Guardia overthrown, etc) are present and they are never reversed, so maybe you'll dislike it?

[Anonymous No.1669729]

>>1669703
In order for all of that to work, you would need to expand the game and show what this "different race" is, as CC doesn't show them, and who this "demon" is, as CC doesn't show it until the end.

Or you could, you know, just say what they actually are and anybody who's played CT will instantly know.

Like I said before you could do this with every single sequel. Doesn't mean you have to. The fact that you need to remove/expand/replace so many different CT elements for CC to make sense proves your "they're unrelated" claim wrong.

[Anonymous No.1669736]

Enough with this 'Electric Boogaloo sequels' strawman.

>Kato was just mad he didn't get his way with Trigger so he had to make anti Trigger, Chrono Cross, because he was CROSSED. Get it?

Sums it up.

[Anonymous No.1669737]

I just don't treat it as a sequel to Trigger. Like, at all. The endgame did not happen.

[Anonymous No.1669740]

>>1669707
Cross wasn't "disrespecting" anything. The death and the destruction of what you achieved in Trigger was the main conflict in the game and the point was to undo it.

Even if it did outright say that CT's cast were the worst people ever and the point of the game was to assure their utter destruction for the face of the world, it'd still be a sequel.

"Side-story" means a story that takes place in the same world but is unrelated to the overall plot or main story arc. Seeing how Cross touches upon every single major Trigger arc and ends up with the salvation of all existence, it's hardly a "side-story".

It does have different aesthetics and gameplay elements. This does not mean it's not a sequel.

Sequel means that it continues or expands upon a previous work. Which it does. That's about it. "Fans" may quote they misderected feelings regarding the plot, but that does not invalidate the fact that CC continues and expands CT's story. By the hand of the same writer, no less.

[Anonymous No.1669742]

Positives: MUSIC, grphx, character desgin

Negatives: Awful story progression, pointless convoluted writing, all characters other than like 10 have any backstory at all.

[Anonymous No.1669757]

>>1669727

it's still tangential, with a completely different artistic vision. it scrambled CT's world almost beyond recognition. maybe screwing things up and then fixing them could work for a sequel, but CC didn't pull it off imo.

>>1669729

they're not completely unrelated, but their relation is forced and not very strong. I'm not going to come up with an alternate CC backstory for the time crash, 2 dimensions, and dinopolis on the spot, but it could definitely be done.

[Anonymous No.1669761]

>>1669740

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_story

>"...derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work (e.g. a particular topic, character, or event)."

...if you want to start defining terms.

What would that one particular thing be?
Kato's Schala waifu. This is why everything else related the Trigger can be completely shat on.

Not a sequel.

[Anonymous No.1669769]

>>1669757
>it's still tangential
>it scrambled CT's world almost beyond recognition
>time crash, 2 dimensions, and dinopolis

If it managed to scramble CT's world instead of just taking place in an unseen part of it, and if it hosts all those concepts that are deeply related to CT, then it's not "tangential". You not liking the storyline doesn't make it "tangential."

[Anonymous No.1669783]

>>1669761
>What would that one particular thing be?
Yeah, Schala is a good condidate. I guess it'd be a side story if she was the only element of CT present in CC. It's not like CC has Reptites, the Masamune, Porre, the main cast of characters' ghosts addressing you, the future as a result of CT's ending, or main antagonists that are each directly linked to a main antagonistic faction from CT.

Yes, Schala is present. But she's not the focus of the story. CC expands and continues all the elements I just listed.

It's a sequel.

[Anonymous No.1669805]

>>1669769

they're related to CT, but you don't need CT's story to insert this stuff. an experiment gone wrong, a dimensional split, another sentient race, and a menace that merges with a character - these things could make sense without the story of CT. that's why I say it's a tangent.

[Anonymous No.1669812]

>>1669742
>Positives: MUSIC, grphx, character desgin
>Negatives: Awful story progression, pointless convoluted writing, all characters other than like 10 have any backstory at all.

I agree, but you forgot the worst negatives of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross

>It causes shitstorms like this on /vr/

[Anonymous No.1669818]

> Chrono Cross is perfect the way it is! you're just too baka gaijin to understand!

[Anonymous No.1669819]

>>1669783

>But she's not the focus of the story.

Let's not spoil the game, but to suffice to say she is... entirely. Sorry, bud, but everything else you listed is merely the apparition of a better game of which this one spun off.

[Anonymous No.1669820]

>>1669805
As it stands in CC, it's not a tangent and they do not make sense without CT.

You could replace every element that links any sequel to is predecessor to make it an unrelated work. Terminator 2 could be about a robot from a different planet that is sent to kill a boy because they've determined that when he grows up he will cause their planet to be destroyed. He's protected by an Austrian special agent from Area 51. At the end they destroy some NASA equipment to avoid the boy from ever being able to destroy the alien planet.

But all of that doesn't make T-2 "tangential" to Terminator. It's just speculation, not reality.

[Anonymous No.1669829]

>>1669812
>Discussions about games' flaws is FORBIDDEN

[Anonymous No.1669838]

>>1669597
Kato was a hired pen pusher operating under Sakaguchi and Yuji Horii. There was no major decision making on his part, he just wrote what he was told to write.

When he was finally given free reign, he started creating one abomination after another.

[Anonymous No.1669840]

>>1669819
>Let's not spoil the game, but to suffice to say she is... entirely.
Sure, that's why Schala is only mentioned five seconds before the final boss, she's only actually there for the ending, and you can play the entire game without ever recruiting her clone.

Yes. The focus of the story is never about finding out why there's two worlds or finding the Frozen Flame. Nope. That never happens.

>but everything else you listed is merely the apparition of a better game of which this one spun off
Funny that, I don't remember CT having a Reptite timeline with advanced dinosaur cities, the Masamune going bersek, Porre becoming a military power, their main cast being DEAD, or a Reptite God being sealed by an upgraded Mother Brain computer that controls every facet of the daily lives of an archipielago to stop them from messing with what the CT casts achieves.

You're right, CC doesn't continue or expand anything from CT, it just references things that already happened in CT. I must have played a CT prototype or something.

[Anonymous No.1669842]

>>1669829
God damnit now I have to look up Haruhi oral.

THANKS ANON

[Anonymous No.1669846]

>>1669597
>Chrono Trigger could have been this ugly, edgy pile of shit instead of the lighthearted cartoon that we have
Dear god, that was a close one.

[Anonymous No.1669854]

>>1669694
>Exactly. You'd have to rework the entire game. Why is it so hard to admit CC's story is very much connected to CT?
Random bullshit is not connection. No sane person claims that Crono Cross's story is not connected to Trigger's. What the adequate people are saying is that Cross's connection to Trigger is stupid, random and overwritten at the same time.

[Anonymous No.1669856]

>>1669736
This.

[Anonymous No.1669857]

>>1669820

It's true, it's a rather flawed argument to make. Still, Terminator 2 doesn't just have some off-hand dialogue saying Sarah Connor died, with Arnold only making a short cameo as a self-aware toaster make from parts of him that were rescued from futuristic a landfill.

[Anonymous No.1669862]

>>1669854
Random bullshit is funguy and poshul, Dragonians, FATE and the Frozen Flame are the core of CC's story and every major event revolves around them. It's hardly random and if it's bullshit then the Reptites, Mother Brain and Lavos were random bullshit in CT too.

[Anonymous No.1669865]

>>1669854
I agree. It was a slap in the face when for pretty much half the game you think you're after something else, then suddenly once you get to the dead sea or whatever its called and get into the ruined future building the game takes this massive 180 and now you're supposed to kill some dragons that are from some alternate timeline where the Reptites won?

I thought it would've been better if it just explained why Serge is so critical to the timeline that there was a diverge creating the second world where he was dead. Instead I got some convoluted mess.

[Anonymous No.1669868]

>>1665495
Are DQ games a stoners dream?

[Anonymous No.1669869]

>>1669820

it still seems easier to swap names for CC than it does for many other sequels. I doubt that a CC player would get confused due to not playing CT.

overall, instead of dismantling the old story, it would've worked better as a standalone or spiritual successor without direct tangents like the characters ghosts.

[Anonymous No.1669870]

>>1669865
>I thought it would've been better if it just explained why Serge is so critical to the timeline that there was a diverge creating the second world where he was dead.
You do know that the game explains that after you kill the dragons. The Dead Sea establishes the link with CT and I don't think that's a bad thing since so many people claim CC is unrelated, you included.

[Anonymous No.1669873]

>>1669840

The entire story hinges on her, dude. This cannot be denied.

[Anonymous No.1669876]

>>1669869
>direct tangents
what does that even mean

[Anonymous No.1669878]

>>1666912
i was a bit pissed off though. As soon as you learn there is a real connection between the worlds the game is like fuck you, you're stuck here. No nostalgia for you.

[Anonymous No.1669879]

>>1669873
The ultimate source of the game's plot is because of her, but she's not the entire story. Or was Lavos the entire story of CT?

The rest of CC's story revolves around other CT elements, and those take up far more time tan Schala. She's just a catalyst and the final boss, just like Lavos.

[Anonymous No.1669882]

>>1669862
>Dragonians, FATE and the Frozen Flame are the core of CC's story
AND they were clichefests pulled out of the writer's ass visibly at random. Bam! Alternative timelines. Bam, dragon hunt quest. Bam! An evil godlike A.I. Crono's dead! In one of the timelines! And every second female character is Schala.

[Anonymous No.1669883]

>>1669878
that wingapede thing should have at least let you fly outside and see what the world is like. Not even land anywhere else, I was want to see how medina is doing from afar.

[Anonymous No.1669884]

>>1668886
screencapped. you fucking nailed it. I say this all the time about anime or artists in general. you develop a style that says "this is me" and that's what gets you the big contracts with studios and such because they can emulate it.

fist of the north star has so much same face and even same design it's pathetic.

[Anonymous No.1669885]

You could have had this thread but, you just had to say Trigger wasn't a better game. You got greedy, and for that you paid the price.

[Anonymous No.1669886]

>>1669876

maybe that was the wrong wording. I mean like direct references rather than similar themes/plot points etc.

[Anonymous No.1669890]

>>1669882
>AND they were clichefests pulled out of the writer's ass visibly at random. Bam! Giant space fleas. Bam, sword fetch quest. Bam! An evil godlike A.I. Crono's dead! But then he's not! And every second female character is related to the royal family.

Dragonians, FATE and the Frozen Flame are stand ins for CT plot points, in case you missed that.

[Anonymous No.1669895]

>>1669458
it's just square terrible. cross was made without the people who made trigger good. aka those enix guys.

funnily enough the guy who wrote the most out of place section, 12000 had such a boner for one character he made he just had to center the entire next one around her.

[Anonymous No.1669896]

>>1669862
The reptites were simply there to have conflict in the story. If you hadn't noticed there is a conflicting force in every timeline. It makes each "arc" if you will, feel self-contained.

>Prehistory
Ayla and the Humans vs. Azala and the Reptites
>12,000 BC
"Normies" vs. Magically Enlightened (Zeal, Dalton, etc)
>600 AD
Guardia Kingdom (Frog specifically) vs. Magus' Army
>1000 AD
Not really a conflict here besides the Marle being mad at pops, but it comes during a time of peace.
>2000 AD
Humans struggling vs aftermath of Lavos, mutants and machines running wild.

It wouldn't be interesting going to any of these timelines if there was no struggle. No conflict going on. 2000 AD could've been completely fucking empty because everyone just died, but that wouldn't have been fun or interesting to play.

>Lavos'
>Random bullshit
He's literally a space parasite that feeds off a planets energy, then reproduces and throws more out there. He's a typical big bad, but at least he's known about since very near the beginning of the game, unlike the other ass pulls from other JRPGs.

You get to see in the order they appear iirc
>Day of Lavos in 2000 AD via a computer while trying to find a way home
>Talk to dude at end of time about Lavos and your quest
>Magus summoning Lavos in his castle
>See Lavos fall into the Earth causing ice age in 12,000,000 BC
>See Lavos summoned and kill Crono in ocean palace

Thats a HUGE portion of the game where Lavos is involved. Its not some small feat, or some asspull like in Crono Cross where Lavos' just suddenly shows up at the end. The Frozen Flame being a shard of Lavos' shell, doesn't really have anything to do with Lavos' himself. I honestly thought it was lazy when I found this out about it.

It couldn't have just been some magical item, it had to connect to the first game somehow.

[Anonymous No.1669898]

>>1669886
But if it didn't had the conflict of CT being undone in one world, the resulting story would lose all urgency and impact unless you were able to replace it with an equally important plot point. And having a plot point be as important as your entire previous adventure being undone would require it to be heavily expanded, just like the replacement for the bad guys you suggested early on.

[Anonymous No.1669901]

>>1669870
Its been a long ass time since I've played CC because I didn't enjoy it very much. I don't recall this happening but if it did then I take your word for it.

[Anonymous No.1669902]

>>1669890
They reference Chrono Trigger, but that doesn't make them good or logical.

Again, nobody sane ITT claims that CC is entirely disconnected from CT. It's connected, but badly and randomly - that's the point. A magical world has no rules, so everyhting is possible, and all kinds of random shit is automatically justified FFXIII-style. It's fanfiction-grade writing.

[Anonymous No.1669908]

>>1669896
The point of my previous message was that the Reptites, Mother Brain and Lavos were not random bullshit. And therefore neither are the Dragonians, FATE or the Frozen Flame.

>Thats a HUGE portion of the game where Lavos is involved.
Just like the Reptite dimension is a huge portion of the lore, setting and story of Chrono Cross.

>Its not some small feat, or some asspull like in Crono Cross where Lavos' just suddenly shows up at the end.
The Frozen Flame is referenced over and over, and Lavos is also foreshadowed a few times. I do agree he's not as involved as in CT, but CC is counting on you having played CT.

Which is why if you were to remove all CT connections, CC wouldn't be able to stand on its own without massive rewrites.

[Anonymous No.1669910]

>>1669908
>I do agree he's not as involved as in CT
In CT he's the central point of every single era, while in CC he doesn't even get mentioned until the end.

CT's focused, CC is all over the place. That's what we call "random bullshit."

[Anonymous No.1669914]

>>1669901
Yeah, with flashbacks and everything. Serge is important because he was in contact with the Flame and so he's a living link to Lavos.

[Anonymous No.1669918]

>>1669908
> Just like the Reptite dimension is a huge portion of the lore, setting and story of Chrono Cross.
No it's not. They literally do not give a fuck about Reptites until they suddenly need a final dungeon.
You're making it sound like they reference them all throughout the game and they don't.

[Anonymous No.1669926]

>>1669910
CC has the Frozen Flame as the constant focus of the story. The Frozen Flame is revealed to be Lavos near the end.

As his own, Lavos is mentioned in several cutscenes. He does get mentioned way before the end.

IF CC wasn't a CT sequel, then yes, Lavos would be random bullshit. However, it is a sequel, so all that backstory Lavos got in CT is being continues. Which means that CC, in virtue of continuing and expanding CT's story, Lavos is not random.

[Anonymous No.1669927]

>>1669914
Ass.
Pull.

[Anonymous No.1669930]

Trigger and Cross are good, but in no way they are the best RPGs out there.

[Anonymous No.1669938]

>>1669918
Reptite = Dragonians.

The game opens in a Dragonian Fort. The vast majority of islands are named after dragons. Several Dragonian ruins can be found in the archipielago. Getting a Dragonian artifact is the main focus of half the game. You have to be blessed by the Dragonians in order to tackle FATE. And yes, the final dungeon is a huge Dragonian citadel.

Just because they reveal that "Dragonians = Reptites" near the end doesn't mean the entire game is full of Reptite lore and technology. Even the entire gameplay is BASED on Dragonian technology.

[Anonymous No.1669942]

>>1669927
>any plot element in any work of fiction ever
Ass.
Pull.

[Anonymous No.1669945]

>>1669938
So... why didn't they just keep calling them Dragonians?
It honestly sounds cooler.

Reptite is kindof a goofy name.

[Anonymous No.1669949]

>>1669926
CC is not continuing CT's story at all. It pulls a few random names here and there and misappropriates them hideously.

Nothing would be lost from CC if CT's namedrops were completely renamed. In fact, CC makes an actual effort to make CT irrelevant, going as far as inventing alternate timelines that pile up on each repeatedly other just to justify the stuff that's going on.

Call Schala Sonya (because the character is not Schala), refrain from calling the Devourer or whatever it's called "Lavos" (as it has nothing to do with Lavos), and drop the retarded Robo reference. Done. Nbody in the world would ever suspect that it's a Trigger sequel, because it has nothing to do with Trigger. All Cross does is steal names and misuse them in various silly ways under pretense of other dimensions and shit.

[Anonymous No.1669950]

>>1669918
Reptite = Dragonians.

The game opens in a Dragonian Fort. The vast majority of islands are named after dragons. Several Dragonian ruins can be found in the archipielago. Getting a Dragonian artifact is the main focus of half the game. You have to be blessed by the Dragonians in order to tackle FATE. And yes, the final dungeon is a huge Dragonian citadel.

Just because they reveal that "Dragonians = Reptites" near the end doesn't mean the entire game isn't full of Reptite lore and technology. Even the entire gameplay is BASED on Dragonian technology.

[Anonymous No.1669953]

>>1669942
What?

[Anonymous No.1669957]

>>1669930
We can argue about Trigger, but Cross is plain old bad. We've already listed its numerous flaws many times over in this thread and previous ones.

[Anonymous No.1669958]

>>1669898

I see. it might not be as easy to change it if you're emphasizing that point. still, the connection between the two is disjointed.

[Anonymous No.1669960]

>>1669950
Did you seriously just delete your post so that you could repost it with a pretty picture attached?

[Anonymous No.1669962]

>>1669949
>CC is not continuing CT's story at all. It pulls a few random names here and there and misappropriates them hideously.

CC continues and expands the Reptite story by showing the Dragonian civilization.
CC continues and expands the Zeal story by showing what happened to Schala and what is the Frozen Flame.
CC continues the Masamune story by revealing its fate after CT.
CC continues the main CT storyline by having as a central conflict the possibility of undoing the accomplishments of Crono and his friends.
CC continues tha future CT storyline by showing what the future is like, and having FATE and Chronopolis.

All of these are integral parts of CC's story.
>going as far as inventing alternate timelines that pile up on each repeatedly other just to justify the stuff that's going on.
There's only two alternate timelines, the Reptite and the human one. This was also shown in a CT ending btw.

The fractured dimensions heavily featured in CC are anomalies and the goal of the game is to reunite them once more.

>Call Schala Sonya (because the character is not Schala), refrain from calling the Devourer or whatever it's called "Lavos" (as it has nothing to do with Lavos), and drop the retarded Robo reference. Done.
see >>1669820

You may not like the direction that CC's story took, and that's fine. But asserting that it has no links to CT whatsoever is daft.

[Anonymous No.1669963]

>>1669898

if that's the most important plot point of CC, then it wouldn't be easy to change. ignoring that, it is.

either way, the connection between the two is disjointed.

[Anonymous No.1669964]

>>1669957

Most of them are really frivolous, opinionated, or "THEY RUINED MY FAVORITE GAME!!!!" bullshit though

[Anonymous No.1669968]

>>1669950
I completed the game and I don't remember any of that. My god, storytelling in Cross is some of the absolute worst. I remember the stupid mansion, I rememebr the cat man, I remember the goblin lady, the pirate, but Reptites from Trigger I just don't remember at fucking all. Even FFVIII's story registered somewhat in my memory, but not this nonsense.

[Anonymous No.1669970]

>>1669963
It is the one the most important plot points, yes.

I agree that as it is the connection is disjointed. Well, it's actually there and clear to see if you can navigate the oodles of plot expoisiton and terrible pacing, that's what makes the connection feel disjointed. That's CC's main issue.

[Anonymous No.1669972]

>>1669962
>CC continues and expands the Reptite story by showing the Dragonian civilization.
>CC continues and expands the Zeal story by showing what happened to Schala and what is the Frozen Flame.
>CC continues the Masamune story by revealing its fate after CT.
>CC continues the main CT storyline by having as a central conflict the possibility of undoing the accomplishments of Crono and his friends.
>CC continues tha future CT storyline by showing what the future is like, and having FATE and Chronopolis.
Harry Potter fanfiction. Where the characters the writer doesn't like are inexplicably dead, and all sorts of random edgy shit happens all the time that's loosely connected to the original story in name only.

That's what you've described, and yes, Cross is exactly like that.

[Anonymous No.1669974]

>>1669964
Poor storytelling, bad pacing and questionable, easy yet convoluted gameplay are perfectly valid problems, though.

[Anonymous No.1669978]

>>1669962
This whole reptite/lavos thing doesn't make sense to me.

Because regardless of what your interactions with 12,000,000 BC were in Chrono Trigger, Lavos' falls and then the ice age starts and the reptites die.

So then theres this alternative timeline, where Lavos' doesn't fall at all, Reptites beat out humans, and continue on as if they never existed.

So why are those timelines merging? We have Serge dies/Serge lives timelines, which is fine, then you get into this whole "These guys were completely unaffected by lavos, so they can show up now" and it doesn't make any sense.

[Anonymous No.1669982]

>>1669974
>Poor storytelling, bad pacing and questionable, easy yet convoluted gameplay are perfectly valid problems, though.

You forgot a mass amount of playable characters which are never fully fleshed out, potential for you to end up with a series of stinkers in the mutli-recruitment scenarios. I've tried to play the beginning of Chrono Cross like 4 or 5 times over the course of my life and not once have I ever figured out how the fuck I'm supposed to get Glenn.

[Anonymous No.1669983]

>>1669972
Only problem with your analogy is that the main CT writer was also the main CC writer.

A more apt analogy would be a fan disliking Harry Potter 7 and dismissing it as fanfiction with random edgy shit with people dying and lack of school year. But while the first and last HP books are quite different in tone and events, they're all part of the same story progression by the same author. You can dislike it all you want; it's still a sequel.

[Anonymous No.1669990]

>>1669978
The game explains this. It's due to the Time Crash. That event pulled parts of different timelines into the sea where El Nido would eventually come to be, that's why El Nido has tons of dragonian ruins and elements and also why it has FATE ruling over it. Those timelines are not merging at all, they just influenced the world at one point and remained there.

>>1669982
Refuse to save Kid. That's about it.

[Anonymous No.1669993]

>>1669983
>Only problem with your analogy is that the main CT writer was also the main CC writer.
That's beside the point, but, nonetheless: wrong. That is not true. Kato was not the main author on Chrono Trigger, he worked under Sakaguchi and Horii, people much more talented and experienced, and experienced directors. Cross he wrote/directed himself, and that turned out the way it did - a clusterfuck.

[NESfag No.1670005]

Damn I can't believe this.
I'm the first person who always try to make people understand that quite often, video game sequels are 'official fanfictions' because they weren't made by the same people of the first one at all and that they were never asked (I mean; for some reasons this is hard to understand for games even though as far as movies are concerned NOBODY would ever look at From Dusk Till Dawn 2 and take its story seriously regarding the first movie); and now the first time I hear someone else talk about it it's in a case where it's wrong to use it.

You're not helping my cause man. You're not helping.

sorry just my one rant

[Anonymous No.1670006]

>>1669993
> Sakaguchi and Horii, people much more talented and experienced
Did they do any other games?

... I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm literally randomly jumping into this argument you guys are having because I'd be curious to sample their other work.

[Anonymous No.1670009]

>>1669993
> he worked under Sakaguchi and Horii
Producers, not writers. Kato developed their outline, was the story supervisor, and wrote most of it. He even did the original character drafts. I know CT fans hate Kato because he's hellbent on killing Crono and Lucca, but let's not act like he's not the guy who's responsable for most of CT's plot. Read development material. They all credit Kato. Or just read the credits. The only story supervisor there is Kato.

[Anonymous No.1670013]

>>1669983
Most sequels don't do Final Fantasy bullshit and:
>take place in the same world
>have at least one recurring character
>build off the plot, character relationships, and world events established in the previous iteration

So you can argue that yes, Chrono Cross does expand on the plot of the Chrono-universe (as much as I hate calling it a universe with 2 fucking games), but the world is entirely different.

It takes place what.. 17 years after Chrono Trigger? But WAIT:

>In 2400 A.D., the Time Crash hurled Chronopolis fifteen-thousand years into the past. FATE, desirous of creating its own paradise, began the process of terraforming several new islands in the sea. These included Earth Dragon Isle, Guldove, Hermit's Hideaway, Isle of the Damned, Main Island (Fort Dragonia, Arni, and Termina), Marbule, Sky Dragon Isle (actually Dinopolis ruins), and Water Dragon Isle.

So what the wiki is telling me, is that these areas should be accessible in Chrono Trigger, because they should've been established in... 2400 AD - 15,000 = 12600 BC, which is actually before the events of the Ocean Palace.

Chrono Cross is a convoluted mess. I'm not saying that Chrono Trigger is perfect, but half the shit in Chrono Cross thats directly linked to Chrono Trigger is fucking ridiculous. Its poorly explained, pushed into large sections of exposition and expecting you to remember detailed plot points that are coming out of no where and goes off on wild tangents.

>Find way back to my world
>Find Frozen Flame
>Get to the Sea of Eden
>Go kill some dragons
>Go kill Lavos/Time Devourer or whatever its called

Its just... you can argue it's the sequel sure, but that doesn't mean it doesn't feel like a fucking poorly written fanfiction.

[Anonymous No.1670014]

>>1669970
I guess we've concluded our argument then. you gave me a challenge, it was fun.

>>1669983
simply not true. Harry Potter had sensible progression. CC scrambled CT's world and told a clusterfucked story.

[Anonymous No.1670015]

>>1670006
They're producers and creators of Final Fantasy (Sakaguchi, for FFs up until FF7, then 9, then Spirits Within) and Dragon Quest (Horii).

They wanted to create a game together and got the idea of a time travelling gimmick. Their rough outline was developed by Masato Kato, credited as CT's writer. He's CC's writer and director, too.

[Anonymous No.1670017]

>>1670006
Sakaguchi: Final Fantasy 1-5 (series creator, director), Final Fantasy 1-9 (producer). Chrono Trigger (producer). Among many others.

Yuji Horii: Dragon Quest 1-10 (series creator, writer, game designer, director). Chrono Trigger (writer, producer). Among many, many others.

[Anonymous No.1670020]

>>1670009
Horii himself wrote for Chrono Trigger, apart from work as producer.

[Anonymous No.1670024]

>>1670015
>>1670017

Oh, wow. Turns out I've already played a lot of their work, then.
I guess you learn something new every day.

[Anonymous No.1670025]

>>1670013
>So what the wiki is telling me, is that these areas should be accessible in Chrono Trigger, because they should've been established in... 2400 AD - 15,000 = 12600 BC, which is actually before the events of the Ocean Palace.
I agree that Cross is convoluted. But paying a little attention is not that hard.

Those areas couldn't possibly exist in Chrono Trigger. BECAUSE Crono defeated Lavos, a new future is possible, where Belthasar is able to do in-depth time research. One of his experiments pulls his lab fifteen-thousand years into the past, as well as a figment of the Reptite timeline.

Since this could change history and alter everything, Mother Brain (FATE) creates El Nido, CC's "world", around this area to contain and minimize all meddling with Crono's achievements.

When Serge dies, timelines diverge and the world where he's alive can't be reached by FATE anymore, making it a clusterfuck where the CT cast dies and Lavos may eventually destroy the world.

It IS convaluted. But it IS also explained.

At least you acknowledge it's a sequel. You can feel it's "fucking poorly written fanfiction", that's fine.

[Anonymous No.1670028]

>>1670024
The two are literally fathers of the Japanese RPG.

[Anonymous No.1670031]

>>1670028
They're the most influential guys in Japanese RPGs followed by the Megaten and Ys creators.

[Anonymous No.1670032]

>>1670025
I honestly didn't correlate Mother Brain to being FATE until someone specifically pointed it out to me.

I remember being disappointed. FATE seemed cooler when it was its own thing.

[Anonymous No.1670039]

>>1670032
Literally all the major Chrono Cross villains are related or based on villains from Chrono Trigger. If it helps though FATE is technically a new AI based on a perfected Mother Brain.

[Anonymous No.1670043]

>>1670025
>It IS convaluted. But it IS also explained.
Explainable and well-written are two entirely different things.

[Anonymous No.1670098]

>>1669957
Sometimes I think people who put Chrono Trigger up there never played more than a handful of RPGs.

[Anonymous No.1670114]

>>1669896
>frozen flame just being a shard of Lavos

Why do Trigger fans have to be so comically retarded. I mean its almost standard affair at this point, watch low IQ DBZ heads make a mockery of themselves trying to explain something they clearly INTENTIONALLY didn't understand.

[Anonymous No.1670201]

>>1670098
I've played my fair share, I guess. My favorite is actually Lufia 2.
I have this thing for block puzzles.

[Anonymous No.1670413]

>>1670014
>scrambled CT's world
It's almost as though fucking around with the space-time continuum could severely and drastically alter reality or something... you know... like in every other time-travel story ever told ever.

I don't see the contradiction here.
It's a sequel. A sequel you and many others dislike but a sequel nonetheless.

You know what it boils down to? It's magic/time travel. I ain't gotta explain shit. Suspension of disbelief and all that.

[Anonymous No.1670473]

Cross is an amazing game. I like it more than Trigger though both are great games.

My favourite team was always Serge/Mojo/Orlha.

Mojo is just an interesting character in terms of design and purpose, he may be weak but his evasion makes him so god damn awesome. I remember him dodging full combo strings from very powerful bosses. Their magic would hurt him a lot, but physical attacks were child's play to him.

Orlha is super hot and super versatile. Her skills are amazing and her stats are great. Blue element compliments any team with it's innate-specific elements.

Serge was the glue to hold them both together. A team built in heaven.

I enjoy Cross' complex nature because even today people are talking about the story and wondering about loose ends and what have you. That's part of what makes the game great. Also, the soundtrack is amazing, with The Brink of Death being one of my favourite boss battle themes of all time.

[Anonymous No.1670490]

>>1670413

naturally, altering timelines creates plenty of room for unexpected results. and there's suspension of disbelief.

however, even in a fictional world, there should be rules and consistency - otherwise the story falls apart and it's difficult to suspend disbelief. my issue with CC is how its connection to CT is very disjointed and messy.

[Anonymous No.1670554]

>>1670473
>I enjoy Cross' complex nature because even today people are talking about the story and wondering about loose ends and what have you. That's part of what makes the game great.
That's my favorite part too, including the way the story unravels. As I was playing I kept wondering how the setting and the events could relate to Chrono Trigger, and Cross kept me constantly guessing all the way to the end. Games stories are usually interesting, but this was actually fun to get through because I loved trying to put its pieces together as I was playing it.

>>1670490
>even in a fictional world, there should be rules and consistency
There isn't a single thing in Cross that contradicts the rules or goes against the logic from Trigger. Its connection with CT is convoluted but it's not contradictory.

To keep your example, HP's progression is accessible because it's linear, but CC's progression hinges on space-time alterations so it can't be linear. When you start CC the progression is already done, and it's up to the player to decode it as the game advances. Both are valid methods, although the latter one requires far more attention and from this thread it's easy to see that's what detractors of Cross' status as a sequel are lacking the most.

[Anonymous No.1670596]

>>1670201
It's a bit too recent to be retro, but you should really look into Tales of Symphonia, it's like 50% block puzzles.

[Anonymous No.1670663]

>>1670554

I'd say it has less to do with attention span and more to do with the CC-CT connection being like spaghetti wire.

[Anonymous No.1670687]

>>1670663

to add on, I'm not saying there are any contradictions on a technical level. just that the whole thing is really murky and this gets in the way of storytelling.

[Anonymous No.1670690]

>>1670663
Then how come every single question in this thread regarding the validity/contradictions of Cross' links to Trigger are easily answered if you actually read the game script?

[Anonymous No.1670695]

>>1669065
>Sonic
come on now, neither CT or Cross were THAT fucking terrible.

[Anonymous No.1670703]

>>1670690

they're answered, just not easily. most agree that CC's story and connections to CT are messy.

[Anonymous No.1670721]

>>1670703
They're complex, not messy. They're easy to get because all of them are outright explained in the game. The mess is the narration pacing, but that's the channel through which the connections are conveyed. The connections by themselves are not messy. Stop projecting.

[Anonymous No.1670730]

>>1670721
I didn't know what the fuck was going on when I was a kid, and I probably wouldn't have understood it when I replayed it a few years, without looking at the wiki, and other supplementary materials.

I will tell you something. If you need to go back, and re-read, or have a script with you, or otherwise look something up to figure out what the fuck is going on you have serious issues with the delivery of your plot. There are plot holes in CC and CT for sure, mostly related to Time Travel Paradoxes, we can forgive that. But the plot not being transparent and being a foggy mess of exposition about halfway through, 3/4 through and just before the end of the game to explain and tell you what the fuck is going on is bad writing. CC's story could very well have been fucking excellent, but its delivered in such a way that makes it hard to understand without supplements.

[Anonymous No.1670750]

>>1670730
>but its delivered in such a way that makes it hard to understand without supplements.
The game's pacing, like you point out, IS a mess. That's why you have eleventh hour massive infodumps. If you read these infodumps, and paid attention to the story preceeding them, you wouldn't need any single supplemental material. What exactly was so hard to figure out? All the story points are tied up, that's why the infodumps are so long and detailed.

>There are plot holes in CC and CT for sure, mostly related to Time Travel Paradoxes,
the only plot hole relating to time travel paradox is present in CT, with Marle disappearing. Otherwise the time travel paradox is always handled consistently.

[Anonymous No.1670759]

>>1670721

the explanation is there, but it's not easy to follow due to pacing and other issues. majority opinion is that CC is plot soup.

[Anonymous No.1670764]

>>1670750
Info dumping is a terrible way to explain your plot because it all comes at you so fast its hard to take everything in completely. Especially when there are several, and they are broken up via doing other things, such as killing all the Dragons which takes quite awhile, so its hard to keep focused on what you were just told, because going to find, and fight all these dragons is a large under taking in and of itself. So after that which does seem out of place and seems fairly irrelevant (I know its related to getting the Chrono Cross from the Dragon's Tear or whatever -now- but I must've missed that part in the wall of exposition) you get nailed with -more exposition-. Then the final dungeon, and more exposition before the final boss.

I get there are allusions to Chrono Trigger, and references and all these other things happening during the main story, but it feels like the plot doesn't really start until these massive sequences of exposition and it feels like last call at the bar. The "Oh shit, games nearly over, we gotta wrap this up" mentality thats present in a lot of square games.

[Anonymous No.1670796]

>>1670764
Yes, the pacing is bad, the infodumping they had to resort to due to FFVIII development taking precedence over CC is a terrible device.

But the point is, there isn't a single thing that isn't explained or that isn't logical in regards to Chrono Trigger. Yes it is explained with terrible pacing. But it is there, plain for anyone to read and get.

[Anonymous No.1670798]

>>1670764

indeed. you shouldn't have to decipher an RPG.

[Anonymous No.1670893]

>>1670798

Speak for yourself. If an RPG was fully understandable your first play, it is too simple for my tastes. Chrono Trigger for example is a game aimed for kids, with themes and elements that MAY cause someone below the age of 14 to use some thought process.

Chrono Cross on the other hand can sit alongside genre defining examples such as Planescape Torment and KOTOR II. At the core of it all is a smarter game for a smarter player. I can see how this was a massive turnoff for people eagerly anticipating more time traveling hi-jinx with Goku and Co.

[Anonymous No.1670913]

>>1670893
Sometimes you have to take things at face value, and accept them for what they are.

Chrono Cross doesn't need subsequent playthroughs to be understood, you just have to sit down and fucking remember everything you were told through large sections of no plot until you get to the next section.

[Anonymous No.1670923]

>>1670893

first of all, you're being condescending towards CT. it was made for kids to play, but there was plenty of thought put into it. I wouldn't call it dumbed down - there's plenty there to consider.

second, I don't mean that RPG's should be simplistic. if there's alot to think about, and it doesn't sink in on the first playthrough, that's great. there's a big difference between complexity vs. a lack of clarity due to wrong execution.

[Anonymous No.1671024]

What the story tries to achieve does not trump it's flaws. It IS a game after all, that you play, and the battles are terrible which IS the game. We can call Chrono Trigger "boring" in retrospect, being spoiled with modern games, because for instance it uses ATB, but at least it makes sense and is playable.

Oh wait, here's something great about Cross, all the ugly dialogue box dressings you can unlock! Forget techs, summons, or equipment, let's have window options!

What's with borrowing FFII/FFIV's system for using items to advance dialogue? The gripe is neither here nor there but it's kind of archaic when we could just use the regular menu... (or have it automatic) too bad the menu is ugly and bad to navigate.

[Anonymous No.1671052]

>>1671024
what are you talking about? Cross has tons of summons, tons of elements and tons of equipment, and the battle system is way more complex, customizable and imo fun than ct's atb.

[Anonymous No.1671139]

>>1669597
>Chrono Trigger could have been a bizarre mix of Nadia and RoLW
>instead we got red Goku, young and old Bulma, purple Piccolo and green Vegeta on a faux time travel adventure full of plot holes

[Anonymous No.1671148]

>>1669456
>I equally dislike Xenogears for it's obscenely bad writing
I think the problem is ultimately that most of the people who write video games just aren't very good writers, on par with people who write comic books and big dumb popcorn movies. When they try to do something deep it just comes off as corny and pretentious.

[Anonymous No.1671172]

>>1669597
that looks amazing

[Anonymous No.1671176]

>>1669597
I wish they had went with this style instead of the regurgitated DBZ art. :/

[Anonymous No.1671186]

>>1671176
Give me a break. You didn't even know what DBZ was when that game came out.

[Anonymous No.1671202]

Hey OP i just finished Chrono Cross for the first time, like 20 minutes ago. Just wanted to say i loved it too...and i will keep playing it. Just wanted to share man, i hope i'm not too late.
Dat feeling of the game...never ending summer.

[Anonymous No.1671212]

The battle system is a failed experiment. Sure it can still be played and the concepts seem great, but the execution is too mechanistic. It's not fun because it's a fight to just play it and endure it's tedium.

Toriyama's art style is great and energetic. Sure he sticks to his flavor of design, but I don't know why you are all starting to clamor for what could have been for those Kato sketches. They're a completely generic anime style. He would have had to of handed the task to someone else regardless.

[Anonymous No.1671224]

>>1670413
>I don't see the contradiction here.
>It's a sequel.
Of course it is. A shitty, shitty sequel that misuses the source material in the worst way possible to tell its inane, barely comprehensible story about random happenings in a world almost entirely devoid of logic, where everyhting is magically possible at all times.

[Anonymous No.1671227]

>>1671148
Indeed.

Trigger, on the other hand, aimed to be a saturday morning cartoon with a tiny speck of deeper meaning, and that it delivered in spades.

Now, if only Trigger had beter, more involving and challenging gameplay beside the tech minigame that gets old after a couple of hours.

[Anonymous No.1671230]

Many people talk about the quality of the cast of playable characters. What is great about this game is that most of the character models are unique looking, even for regular NPCs, which is vastly improved over older games, or even say FFX where the playable characters look better and more fleshed out than NPCs.

This lends itself to allow for a great amount of randomness to the new player. It would probably seem like a complete surprise when people join you if you're coming into it fresh. It wouldn't work for every jRPG but it's a good concept that hasn't really been done as well since. It's also different from say a wRPG where more people join you but they are completely devoid of personality and more about class and and levels; pawns not fantasy.

There's a lot it does that's interesting, even when it's failing to deliver properly. The game is a development tragedy, like many PSX games (Xenogears). It simply doesn't touch Trigger either, but it has some worthwhile parts and qualities, if you can ignore a lot of it's problems.

[Anonymous No.1671236]

As a yuropoor I played Cross first and emulated Trigger later. Hoo boy, what a disappointment it was.

I expected a personal story full of confusion and slow discovery like in Cross instead of the usual generic jRPG beat-the-badguy trash, but that's exactly what it turned out to be. I couldn't give two fucks about most of the stereotype assembly I was given to play as because not only were they extremely bland, they also got less development than third tier PCs like Mojo. Couple that with a battle system that's "press attack to win" in 99% of the cases and the only way to get through the game without falling asleep is a big pot of coffee on the table and a finger firmly placed on the fastforward button.

While mediocre and forgettable on its own, I really started to loathe Trigger once I got involved with its retarded fanbase and their fanatical worship of the game.

[Anonymous No.1671240]

>>1671230

I know exactly what you mean here. I often look at the models of wRPGs and i think that they are just models, just soulless puppets to advance their stats and kill creeps.
That's why i love games like chrono cross.
That and Starky.

[Anonymous No.1671245]

>>1671227

It would be derailing to go too far to argue the strengths of Chrono Trigger's battle system, but it has many and plus it's fun, well designed and makes sense. Lining up attacks with enemies that move on the field during battle is a welcome addition to jRPGs as a small example.

Cross ditches many of the awesome bits like this of Trigger and goes for a "complex" (seemingly) battle system build off of the same old mold... how are Elements different from "spell charges"? Why is every battle prefaced with weak attacks just to get stamina so that we can finally make attacks that count for anything? They really needed to fix the system so that it was fun.

[Anonymous No.1671249]

>>1671236
>While mediocre and forgettable on its own, I really started to loathe Trigger once I got involved with its retarded fanbase and their fanatical worship of the game.

All those fanboys are yanks that grew up with it. Retarded they are but surely you can relate to seeing something from your childhood through nostalgia tinted glasses.

[Anonymous No.1671251]

>>1671236
You may like or dislike Trigger, but it was very well-made. Similarly, regardless of your personal feelings about Cross, it's a hideous fucking mess of a story.

And neither game is any good as an actual video game. Even Trigger is worth anything only as a cartoon.

[Anonymous No.1671257]

>>1671251
Trigger is short and sweet, taking you know, 12-14 hours hours, which compared to games like FF6 is pretty short. Its also quite impressive graphically compared to other RPG's at the time.

Cross is a lot longer then that. The aesthetics are nice for the beaches and oceans and the water, but most of the other stuff is quite generic. The soundtrack to both are excellent.


Getting into these debates is pretty retarded though, people have their opinions and you aren't going to change their minds, so its just going to be heated arguments about everything thats being said in the thread.

[Anonymous No.1671259]

>>1671236

Nice joke post.

People love well made games. For what it is and as a SNES game in 1995 there's nothing cliche about it and it's awesome. PSX discs have more space for endless text, whereas with a SNES game we need to be more clever, with expressions, reactions as well as back story.

[Anonymous No.1671270]

>>1671251
>Even Trigger is worth anything only as a cartoon
Clearly, you've never seen the Chrono Trigger cartoon.

[Anonymous No.1671271]

>>1671251

nice bait m8.

[Anonymous No.1671273]

>>1671270
There is no such thing. Unless you're talking about that anniversary short about monsters from the game.

[Anonymous No.1671276]

>>1671257
It's a fact that Cross is badly written and awfully plotted, though. It just makes one basic mistake after another. Beside the opening reveal of the second dimension and the scene where your body is stolen, it doesn't do anything right whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.1671281]

>>1671245
>strengths of Chrono Trigger's battle system, but it has many

Such as?

Double techs were completely useless because single attacks were always more flexible and faster. Then again, the single attacks were also almost always useless because the game was so easy that just attacking normally as soon as a character's turn came up was usually the best solution. Free movement would've improved the fights a lot but instead the characters jump back to their starting positions after attacks. There are no techs that push or pull monsters to set up attacks (or simple walking) either, so that the enemy grouping was more or less the same as in FF1.

The only thing that's remotely positive is that the fights are fought on the map but even that was implemented very poorly. Once the fight starts the screen is treated as flat ground regardless of the actual scenery, and many battles were the same boring canned crap without any surprises.

[Anonymous No.1671284]

>>1671281
>Double techs were completely useless because single attacks were always more flexible and faster.
The advantage of most double and triple techs is that they are generally stronger, and more MP efficient.

[Anonymous No.1671285]

>>1671276

you've vomited so much hate all over this thread
that nobody takes you seriously anymore.
You are just like that retard, two-headed boy.

[Anonymous No.1671286]

It's a fact that Trigger is badly written and awfully plotted, though. It just makes one basic mistake after another. Beside laying the groundwork for a far superior sequel, it doesn't do anything right whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.1671292]

it's actually funny because there are people even in /vr/ hating games just because they were popular and well-received. Please take those disgusting fedoras and beards elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.1671293]

>>1671284
That's irrelevant because monsters die just as well with single attacks. You don't need a cannon when a rifle does the job. Time is the only valuable resource in CT and you're wasting it with every second you're not attacking.

[Anonymous No.1671294]

>>1671251
I've played a shit ton of old JRPGs and Chrono Trigger is by far the very best one in my opinion. It blows every Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest out of the water, for example.

Look, we can all have opinions. It's almost as if you're not objectively correct about any of the dumb shit you say. Fancy that.

[Anonymous No.1671297]

>>1671294
>I've played a shit ton of old JRPGs and Chrono Trigger is by far the very best one in my opinion.
In your opinions, maybe, but Dragon Quest 3 and 5, Romancing SaGa 3, Final Fantasy V and Super Mario RPG all have vastly superior gameplay, to name but a few.

[Anonymous No.1671298]

I just couldn't get over the retarded time travel in CT, I guess you have to play it at an early impressionable age.

[Anonymous No.1671306]

>>1671298
Are you one of those "time travel is impossible so I can't take this fantasy story with magic and talking frogs seriously because of it" people?

[Anonymous No.1671310]

>>1671297
Super Mario RPG is really good, but I didn't like its gameplay better at all.
Final Fantasy V had the best subsystem (the class system and "hero" class) and most interesting (mechanically) final battle of any JRPG I've played (because you actually had to make a build that could win, if you didn't cheat and use guides or whatever), and it was among the best for me, but I still think Chrono Trigger overall was a better experience in both cases.

For some reason Dragon Quest games just uniformly don't really speak to me beyond the gameplay they provide (which is basically the distilled essence of what a 'jrpg' is, which I like but it's not Cocaine or anything) and it's kind of weird that I keep/kept playing them despite that.

I never played any Romancing SaGa games, and I've actually never been exposed to them. So I can't compare there.

[Anonymous No.1671323]

>>1671306
They give you a lengthy explanation how time travel works, which is alright, you can define it how you want, if time travel was powered by rainbow dragon farts in the CT universe I wouldn't have cared either, but after establishing how it works, they completely ignore how it works, which is fucking bullshit. Even preschooler storybooks have more consistency.

[Anonymous No.1671324]

>>1671323
When do they say anything that they violate?
Whenever you do anything the timeline can change, right?
So what's the big deal

[Anonymous No.1671327]

>>1671310
Pro Tip: Never trust a game with "SaGa" in the title.

[Anonymous No.1671328]

>>1670893
Holy shit, don't you dare compare Planescape Torment to the clusterfuck that is CC. I will download myself over the internet and fight you TRON style.

Planescape liked to go off on meandering philosophical tangents, but it wasn't anywhere near as hard to follow as Chrono Cross.

[Anonymous No.1671340]

>>1671310
Dragon Quest has best gameplay, becaus eit doens't focus on battles. Battles in DQ are minigames. Real gameplay is epxloration and puzzle-solving.

[Anonymous No.1671342]

>>1671324
CT's time works (before CC saved it with the discarded timeline explanation) as a single line where the future changes when you change the past. This is established with the Marle/Queen explanation. But if you go by that you never meet Marle because ten minutes after meeting her, she goes back in time and prevents the whole event from happening. Which also means she prevents the time travel. Which means it plays out again because she now exists, which then prevents itself..

Then there's the bullshit where you use the Epoch from the timeline that you erase to erase it, have a party member that shouldn't exist after beating Lavos, somehow get someone from the ruined future AFTER beating Lavos, etc etc. It really wouldn't have taken much effort to play within your own established rules, but nooo

[Anonymous No.1671343]

>>1671328
Please, P:T was embarassing D&D fanfiction. Don't act like it was somehow better than that. It reads like it was written by a 15 year old.

I know people like it a lot, but people also like Drizzt and even Witcher novels a lot, too. Doens't change the fact that it's hideous literature.

[Anonymous No.1671354]

>>1671343
People have this idea that unless something is dry existential/coming of age wank written by an english professor it's terrible fiction.

Well, I disagree with you. I like pulpy shit and sci-fi and fantasy, and I think it's fine if there's a bit of pocket philosophy and silly humor.
It doesn't all have to be Catcher in the Rye.

[Anonymous No.1671370]

>>1671297
>Dragon Quest 3
Great but many missed it being a really old game. It's one of the best, though a little bland, especially by today's standards. If we're take off nostalgia goggles while we destroy Trigger, have fun with that one on a NES. SNES re-release was one of the best RPGs though, but would you play it over... Tales of Star Oceania Weebo fest, I bet many of you wouldn't, but I won't critique your tastes.

>and 5
>Romancing SaGa 3
>Final Fantasy V

Must be awesome to have been Japanese.
We could just pick any jRPG out of a hat these days with emulation and re-releases, like Shin Megami Tensei 1... but it's a bullshit argument because they never came out in English. That's like saying The Lord of the Rings isn't a great set of novels because out there in Norway someone never published a better tale two years after, but now it's downloadable on your Kindle.

On another note, if there's a translation of Saga 3 that is actually complete, please link. There's some abandoned ones, this much is known.

>Super Mario RPG

Chrono Trigger is just as fun as this, and equally clever. Chrono Trigger is also more mature in comparison. I'd say it's more groundbreaking for Enix to try what they did with CT than to applaud Square and Nintendo for adding platforming (a no brainer for a Mario style RPG). They tried something new and created great characters and enemies while Mario RPG had... a giant talking sword. Nice. Good game though.

[Anonymous No.1671372]

>>1671343
Look, buddy, I'm not going to pretend Planescape doesn't have problems. And when I say Planescape, I'm talking about the whole setting in its entirety.
But I still love it. And part of loving something means being able to recognize its flaws and care for it regardless. Which is something Cross fans apparently cannot do.

As far up its own ass as Planescape was, it doesn't even hold a candle to the sheer anal directed gravitational pull of Chrono Cross.

[Anonymous No.1671379]

>>1671370

And for the record, no, DQV is ugly and boring. Saga 3... who cares, no one has played that. Final Fantasy V = status aliments to win the game. Please!

[Anonymous No.1671389]

Planescape Torment is a narrative masterpiece as far as Infinity engine games and Western RPGs in general. We can't even compare these vastly different styles to a jRPG, let alone Cross which was developmentally neutered and challenged as a game.

[Anonymous No.1671392]

>>1671379
>status aliments to win the game
How is this a bad thing? FFV one of the very, very few JRPGs where debuffs and status effects actually matter when used by the party. I'd say it rather speaks in favor of the game instead and am not really sure how it makes the gameplay worse than Chrono Trigger. Use status ailments to win the game. Use combo techs to win the game. What, you'd like for the game to not be winnable at all?

[Anonymous No.1671396]

>>1671392

Bosses are a joke in that game because of this programming oversight. There's no way they intended for this amount of cheapness.

[Anonymous No.1671397]

>>1671372
>As far up its own ass as Planescape was, it doesn't even hold a candle to the sheer anal directed gravitational pull of Chrono Cross.
Bullshit. Both games were ridiculously pretentious yet hideously amateurish at the same time. All the while terribly fucking up their respective source material, might I add.

[Anonymous No.1671406]

>>1671396
Put that into perspective. Yeah of course now you have the internet and FFwiki and know that half the bosses can be Slept or Confused, one of the sections of Neo Exdeath can be killed with Odin from the Magic Lamp, and so on and so on. But that's exactly like going on the internet, reading about the locations of SMB's warp pipes for the first time, then complaining about how SMB is too short and easy. Or watching a longplay of a puzzle game, replicating the moves and complaining about how the game's too easy that way. FFV is a puzzle game, it's a game about exploring your class and ability menus. FFV's gameplay is exactly that great because you are always experimenting and discovering new ways to kill bosses, and status ailments do add to the diversity of combat. I've been replaying FFV many, many, many times as SCCs lately and it's mindboggling how many ways to beat bosses and new weaknesses I've found compared to my first few original playthroughs.

I honestly believe Chrono Trigger's "hit them with any Combo Tech while their tail is up!" doesn't really have nearly as much depth, but to be frank very few JRPGs have.

[Anonymous No.1671407]

>>1671389
>Planescape Torment is a narrative masterpiece
My god, I have nothing. Just... Oh fuck.

No, no it isn't. It's badly written. It's amateurish. For a D&D-based game, it's fine. But it's a piece terribly written D&D fanfiction. It bad. The writing is so bad it's unsalvageable. Every single paragraph in the game screams "the writer wasn't an actual writer!"

[Anonymous No.1671432]

>>1671397
At least I can follow Planescape without a fucking dissertation guide next to me.

> Planescape
> What is the nature of man? Are our beliefs what constitute ourselves, or is it the world around us? Can we alter our own reality by the basis of our own perception? Let's talk about it for twelve pages accomplishing nothing. This is not actually important. You have amnesia, go here to advance plot.

> Chrono Cross
> You're the catalyst for change in a world that died because you were born. Humans are evil. The future came to the past to keep the present in stasis, but the future past is pissed off because it had no past that was allowed to exist! Humans are evil. You are not yourself. HUMANS ARE EVIL. Time is a construct which has broken! Your father is a cat.

[Anonymous No.1671434]

>>1671407

Read the rest of the sentence.

>as far as Infinity engine games and Western RPGs in general.

Besides, a 'writer' is simply one who writes.

[Anonymous No.1671442]

>>1671434
Words have several meanings. The writer also is someone who writes professionally. Thus, someone who does write can also fail to be a writer.

You called it a narrative masterpiece. It's not. period. The rest of your sentence either directly contradicts your own statement (as you now seem to claim) or is irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.1671447]

>>1671407
Your entire argument has, for the past maybe four posts or so, been, "The writing is terrible." Congratulations! We fucking get it.

However, understand that what what constitutes good writing is a relative, qualitative thing. It depends on the reader. Twilight was a best selling series of novels. You are not going to change anyone's mind, and no one can do the same to you.

The actual argument was, that regardless of Cross's actual quality, it is just really bad at even conveying what its writing is trying to say. This is not a good thing. And an infodump by ghost children on a beach leading to the space beyond time is not a good way of conveying what is left to be said.

[Anonymous No.1671472]

>>1671354
What we learned today: If it's not James Joyce then it's bad.

[Anonymous No.1671475]

>>1671442

no u

[Anonymous No.1671483]

>>1671354
>I like pulpy shit and sci-fi and fantasy
You liking them doesn't make it good writing.

Did I say P:T is unenjoyable? No. I only said it's terribly written. The prose is bad. You can not claim it's well-written.

You can claim that you personally ahve enjoyed it, or that some enjoyment can be derived from it in general despite all the technical flaws and all the amateurish msitakes.

[Anonymous No.1671484]

>>1671342

the only real contradiction in CT is the marle paradox. other than that it's consistent - the characters alter the timeline every time they move through time, and they are personally immune. there are fan theories that make sense of it.

[Anonymous No.1671487]

>>1661996
>I never could fathom how Chrono Cross drew the ire of so many

It didn't. It's just a few very vocal fanboys who think that Chrono games are supposed to be about the protagonists of Trigger. How they got so infatuated with the one-dimensional cardboard heroes, I don't know. Probably from reading too many fanfics. Cross is excellent on its own and groundbreaking as sequel.

[Anonymous No.1671489]

>>1671484
Technicalities making sense isn't even important. The story should make sense. Chrono Trigger's story is cohesive and coherent. There's an artistic point to all of the procedings, and the player knows (or thinks that he knows) what's going on and where it's going at all times.

Unlike Cross, which goes on random tangents and then just floods you with explanations on wh everything's that's randomly happening is OK according to the in-world logic (which is the free magic-and-dimensions wildcard, the silliest, hackiest plot device of them all).

[Anonymous No.1671490]

>>1671483
You see to know about this stuff. What's the better written game you know? Just out of curiosity.

[Anonymous No.1671492]

>>1671484
>and they are personally immune

Then why did Marle disappear, as a direct result of the timeline changing?

[Anonymous No.1671493]

>>1671489

I agree. CT is a story that can be followed, CC barely is. I just wanted to correct that post.

[Anonymous No.1671497]

>>1671492
That's why it's a contradiction. They fucked up, that one scene in the beginning is a plot hole.

[Anonymous No.1671498]

>>1671490
Killer7.

[Anonymous No.1671502]

>>1671492

like I said, it's a paradox. there are fan explanations of it, but it seems to be one of the few flaws in the game.

[Anonymous No.1671513]

>>1671489
lol plot holes are now "technicalities" (as long as it's Trigger) and everything that's not served to you with an explanation on a platter right away is horrible horrible writing (as long as it's Cross, when Trigger does it, it's GENIUS).

[Anonymous No.1671514]

>>1671498

[Anonymous No.1671515]

>>1671490
It isn't easy to find a video game that's actually well-written, but better written than P:T, that's doable.

Any of the Gyakuten Saiban / Ace Attorney games. They aren't great literature, but they are professionally written. The script had an actual editor. Professor Layton Games. The script had a real editor. Vagrant Story - it's still fantasy schlock, but at least it's not amateurish, just commonplace and corny at worst.

The games that are increasingly well-written are modern Nintendo games, especially their entertainment software. The tutorials in games bundled with the 3DS is very well-written. It is factually outright great.

Modern Naughty Dog games are poor games, but they are professionally scripted. It's b-movie stuff, but b-movie scripts are still way ahead in terms of writing quality. These are written by poor writers, as opposed to inspired amateurs. Just more professional in every single regard.


Here are some games with scripts that are not well-written at all: all Metal Gear Solid games; Final Fantasy X-XIII; Fallout and sequels (sans 3 - it's boring as sin, but it's professionally written); Baldur's Gate; P:T: etc.


Here are some games that actually have gameplay-centric writing that isn't literary or cinematic and hence works best for the medium: Super Metroid; LoZ: Link's Awakening; UFO: Enemy Unknown; Dragon Quest III.

[Anonymous No.1671521]

>>1671513
"Plot holes" is what pulp fiction fans obsess about. Actually, they're not really a thing. Writing can have no "plot holes" and still be incoherent, meandering and unfocused or otherwise bad. Alternatively, the text can stretch logic quite a bit and make the most artistic sense that way.

Following fictional rules is unimportant for enjoyment; stressing the importance of the absense of "plot holes" is an amateurish misconception. Good writing is what's really important - good characters, a plot that makes sense artistically (and not magically, numerically, scientifically or what have you), and a delivery that does not obscure storytelling.

[Anonymous No.1671524]

>>1671515
> Fallout 3
Sir, I disagree with you.

[Anonymous No.1671526]

>>1671514
It's an exprience easily on par with Shadow Of The Colossus. Try it someday, it's an industry milestone for in-game storytelling.

[Anonymous No.1671527]

>>1671524
Plot =/= writing. The plotting is just as silly, but the delivery is more or less decent. Unlike Fallout 1-2, which had adequately inspired plots, but actual writing on the level of childish fanfiction.net scribbles.

[Anonymous No.1671529]

I haven't gotten around to playing it yet, but I'm guessing PCSX-R is the right emulator to go with?

[Anonymous No.1671530]

>>1671526
> Comparing Killer7 to SotC.
I will fight you.

[Anonymous No.1671534]

>>1671530
You simply haven't played killer7, have you. You're judging it based on second-hand knowledge of some sort, a Youtube video or some article or other, or other games by the studio that you've played. Because your replies are seriously weird.

[Anonymous No.1671536]

>>1671527
Okay, wait.

"Writing" encompasses a lot of things, which includes plot. The writer is responsible for plot, pacing, phrasing, delivery, et all. There's a lot of shit that goes into writing.

Are you talking about the delivery? The pacing? I'm not trying to be snide here, I'm genuinely trying to figure out what you mean by writing, because you've been saying "writing" a lot without qualifiers, and I'm suddenly confused by what you think you mean.

[Anonymous No.1671543]

>>1671536
The prose. It's often called "writing." I'm talking about actual, technical prose right now, because it's the very basis of written storytelling. You can't tell a written story - no matter how good the story itself may be - if you simply can't write.

I used Fallout 3 for a reason. It's nothing special, but I wanted to compare it to Fallout 2 in particular. The plot in F2 is more interesting and inspired than in F3, but F2 is amateurishly written (same goes to P:T). F3 has a boring clichefest of a story, but the prose is at least moderately competent. It was written by a hack, but a well-trained hack, and then it (most of it, at least) was clearly edited by a professional.

That's the grand difference. Even though "writing" encompasses more than just wordsmithing, if the prose is as wildly incompetent as it is in P:T, the rest is barely even relevant when talking about writing.

Again, that doens't mean that it's unenjoyable, especially for a not very well-read player, or the player who would willingly overlook the flaws and seek for the upsides.

[Anonymous No.1671556]

>>1671521
>good characters, a plot that makes sense artistically (and not magically, numerically, scientifically or what have you), and a delivery that does not obscure storytelling.

So Saturday morning cartoons are the pinnacle of storytelling? Good to know.

[Anonymous No.1671561]

>>1671556
I don't quite remember saturday morning cartoons with actually good characters or plots that make much sense, though. Certainly not the TMNT series.

[Anonymous No.1671568]

>>1671561
What? Each turtle has a distinctive, fleshed out personality, the plots made a whole lot of sense artistically (Shredder does something, they prevent it + shenanigans) and delivered without obscuring the storytelling.

[Anonymous No.1671617]

>>1671543

Fallout 3's writing doesn't hold a candle to New Vegas, to state otherwise is asinine.

>>1671487

This. Most people who played both loved both. But a handful of morons love to scream at the top of their lungs whenever Cross is mentioned. Its hilarious how cyclical these "debates" are. Its just autistic Trigger kids displaying their ignorance at the expense of undermining their base.

[Anonymous No.1671625]

>>1671617
>Most people who played both loved both.
This is simply not true.

[Anonymous No.1671628]

>fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction

[Anonymous No.1671651]

>>1671625
Trigger sold 2.3m (SNES+PS1) and Cross 1.8m (PS1). The overall reception for Cross is very positive and just a google search away for you to verify

So there are two options here, either somehow the majority of people who played CT didn't touch CC and refused to rate it while at the same time a completely different set of people bought and praised it, or the very obvious one, that you're plain wrong.

[Anonymous No.1671656]

>>1671543
>Planescape: Torment
>amateurish writing
>wildly incompetent
>worse than Fallout 3

Jesus fucking Christ buddy, you got me. I am legit mad at this.

[Anonymous No.1671662]

>>1671543
I'll have to stop you right there. Fallout 2's plot is just as lame and boring as 3's, if not more so.

In fact, it's essentially the same fucking thing. You have to leave your isolated homeland to find a GECK, Enclave shenanigans ensue. If anything, 3 fleshed out some actual events in there. I certainly would never call Fallout 3's story impressive or memorable, but Fallout 2 is just as guilty.

Really, it's more about diehard fans of the first two games having a permanent stick up their ass over Bethesda making 3 and always trying to find any excuse to bitch about it than anything.

[Anonymous No.1671671]

>>1671662
The problem with Fallout 3 is that the "choices" in the game are typically binary, or false. Likewise, the general morality in Fallout 3 was presented in a simplistic, black-and-white way instead of the shades of grey that was typical for the Fallout franchise before then. The story itself in Fallout 2 was never really the draw, and only was there to provide justification for your exploration and journey through the wasteland.

New Vegas did a fairly good job of addressing these problems in FO3, though.

[Anonymous No.1671680]

>>1671651
Overall reception of Justin Bieber also is very positive. Please. Even according to popular opinion, Chrono Trigger is considered one of the greatest JRPGs, while Cross's very claim to be even good, let alone great, is always debated to hell and back.

>>1671656
You haven't read the post properly, have you.

>>1671662
Fallout 2 was unquestionably more inspired than F3. There's a vast difference between inspiration and professionalism, though. F1-2 have poor gameplay and poor writing, but they have their upsides. Fallout 3 is much better executed on every level, but is less inspired in every aspect. And I only mentioned either to better explain what I meant under "writing" in that particular post.

[Anonymous No.1671683]

>>1671656
This, I have yet to encounter a game with the same level of writing, dialogue and voice acting.

>deionnarra's experience in sensory stone scene
>"I will wait for you in Death's halls, my love" voice acting
>a whimsical sidekick who ISN'T annoying

[Anonymous No.1671686]

>>1671680
>Overall reception of Justin Bieber also is very positive
>Even according to popular opinion, Chrono Trigger is considered one of the greatest JRPGs

So CT is the Justin Bieber of jRPG?

[Anonymous No.1671702]

>>1671680
The overarching storylines of Fallout 1 and 2 are poor because they aren't the focus of those games. You can't take that to mean that the writing in the game overall is poor because the writing encompasses the various factions, quests, towns, characters, etc. which were actually good, and certainly better than Fallout 3. As for the gameplay, I don't see how the gameplay is poor in the first two Fallouts. Tactical combat relying on stats and RNG isn't bad, just different from what we typically see in modern games. It also fit the tone of the Fallout world. Fallout 3's gameplay is near identical to the Elder Scrolls series, which has been clunky from the start. I see no reason to put it on a pedestal as you seem to be doing.

[Anonymous No.1671706]

>>1671680
>You haven't read the post properly, have you.

You said the plot of Fallout 2 is amateurishly written, then said the same applies to Planescape: Torment while later saying that Fallout 3's prose is "moderately competent" (i.e. better than Planescape: Torment). You also said the prose of Planescape: Torment is wildly incompetent, which is also bullshit.

I understood what you said perfectly. It's just that what you said is a load of crap.

[Anonymous No.1671710]

>>1671706
Completely true. So. Where did I say that Fallout 3 is a better game? All I said that it had a more competently written script, which is perfectly true.

[Anonymous No.1671715]

>>1671702
I'm not putting F3 on any sort of pedestal. It's an atrocious game. F1-2 are not too good, but still better. BUT the fact is, F3's writing/editing is much more professional that either F1-2's or P:T's.

[Anonymous No.1671719]

>>1671680
>someone claims fans like both games
>wah wah they don't!
>claim is then backed by facts
>J-Justin Bieber is popular too!

What is it with you Trigger fanboys and your inability to grasp context?

[Anonymous No.1671729]

>>1671710
>>1671715
>All I said that it had a more competently written script, which is perfectly true.
>F3's writing/editing is much more professional than P:T's.

Neither of these are true, though. At all. If I was to describe the writing of either Fallout 3 or Planescape: Torment as "amateurish" or "incompetent" I would hoist those words onto Fallout 3 much quicker than I would PST.

[Anonymous No.1671730]

>>1671686

the difference is that CT is critically acclaimed.

[Anonymous No.1671739]

>>1671730
Not as much as its superior sequel.

[Anonymous No.1671741]

>>1671719
You said that everyone who's played both love both, which is wrong, period. This thread is full of people who played both, but hate at least one of them.

[Anonymous No.1671746]

>>1671739
>DS version
>57 critics vs 16 critics
>CT actually won GotY

You're kidding, right?

[Anonymous No.1671747]

>>1671729
You would be wrong, then. Your appreciation of the game as a whole must be clouding your judgement or something. Fallout 3's script is passable, while F1-2 and P:T's (and also BD1-2 et al) scripts are simply bad from the technical standpoint.

F3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect - these game have all been edited professionally, unlike the 90s CRPGs. They're still droll fantasy crap, but, I wills ay that again, a real professional editor was hired in each case to even out the prose. No editor can improve the story, but every editor can improve the prose, and improve they did. Unlike in the 90s games listed above, where everything went into the game as is.

[Anonymous No.1671748]

>>1671739

You guys are fucking comical lol...argumentum ad populum now? Too bad for >>1671730

Face it, no matter how you gauge "successful" sequel, Cross qualifies. You hating it is indicative of your poor taste, not others. You retards keep digging yourself deeper and deeper, and it is starting to lose its charm. At this point I almost feel a shit load of you are pretending to be moronic because you're undercover Cross fanboys, but I won't give you guys that much credit.

[Anonymous No.1671749]

>>1671739
But that's an inferior port to a handheld console that was made 12 years later, kid.

Quit embarassing yoruself.

[Anonymous No.1671753]

>>1671748
At this point you're merely shitposting. Here are the parts of your post that constitute shitposting:

>You hating it is indicative of your poor taste
> You retards keep digging yourself deeper and deeper
>At this point I almost feel a shit load of you are pretending to be moronic
>but I won't give you guys that much credit.

I would like Cross fanboys to please stop shitposting on /vr/.

[Anonymous No.1671759]

>>1671746
>quantity over quality

>GOTY
Awarded by whom?

[Anonymous No.1671764]

>>1671749

What does "it won GoTY" even mean you fucking imbecile? You mean a publication or site awarded CT with a GAME OF THE YEAR AWARD? Outstanding. I'm pretty sure Forest Gump also won an Oscar, and Britney Spears has tons of Grammy's, but ...what does that indicate exactly?

You should really stop posting brah

>>1671746

>kid
>inferior port

Keep moving the fucking goalposts. I have enough screencaps from this thread alone to shut down any Trigger discussion in the future. Keep making complete fools of yourselves, I'll keep capping.

[Anonymous No.1671768]

>>1671764
>Keep moving the fucking goalposts.
I don't need to. You're comparing a home console release to a decade-old handheld port/rerelease, and the latter still holds up majestically even according to the critics. What's your argument?

[Anonymous No.1671774]

>>1671719
Hey.

I'm totally capable of admitting that both games sold well. Cross received a lot of positive reviews at the time of its release, and it accomplished exactly what it was intended to do (which was to make money).
That doesn't mean it's good.

Also, fuck you for generalizing.

Actually, I think most of the jRPGs of that era are pretty bad in retrospect and do not hold up to scrutiny. There was a brief but pronounced period leaning towards excessive Evangelionesque bullshit with somewhat wonky or forced translations, and an emphasis on complexity over actual content.
I think a lot of Japs got excited with the medium and kept trying to top each other to the point of detriment.

I still enjoyed Cross, but I enjoyed it more as a collection of ideas than as a collective whole. I appreciate many individual things about it. Put together, it is a clusterfuck.

[Anonymous No.1671776]

Hilarious how all the Trigger fanboys get fucking wrecked in every CT/CC thread

[Anonymous No.1671794]

>>1671776
Yeah, the greentext and reaction images sure showed them. Time to rest until another time to make a Cross "appreciation" thread comes up and the game's shat all over again for it's numerous flaws.

[Anonymous No.1671796]

>>1671768
>What's your argument?

there's no argument, just ad hominems and disregard of common sense.

[Anonymous No.1671808]

>>1671776

I have to disagree, its not even so much them getting wrecked, they wreck themselves.

>It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.

That is all there is to it really.

[Anonymous No.1671813]

>>1671774
Once again, THIS PARTICULAR CONVERSATION IS NOT ABOUT WHETHER EITHER OF THE GAMES ARE GOOD BUT THE RECEPTION OF BOTH AMONG THE FANS.

Also Trigger received a lot of positive reviews at the time of its release, and it accomplished exactly what it was intended to do (which was to make money).
That doesn't mean it's good.

[Anonymous No.1671823]

>>1671764
I just love being able to prove my intellectual superiority by laughing at fools on the internet. It fills me with such euphoria.

[Anonymous No.1671841]

>>1671813
Reception of both among fans is: Trigger - is one of the best JRPGs ever. Cross - is a mess, wait but I liked it, wait but I didn't.

Here. And quit that shitty argument. Cross was not nearly as well received as Trigger was.

[Anonymous No.1671857]

Somewhere in this thread lies the infamous Azure Horizon. I just know it. He's a gay rapist and he absolutely loves Chrono Cross.
That is not a joke.

[Anonymous No.1671860]

>>1671857
What's that, some kind of tripshit?

[Anonymous No.1671861]

>>1671841
> Gamefaqs

[Anonymous No.1671865]

>>1671861
It's the vox populi. Answers the question of "fan reception" perfectly.

Cross apologists: told.

[Anonymous No.1671872]

>>1671865

As someone who just stumbled here, the only ones who were "told" were the Trigger fans.

I mean look at the title of this thread. For whatever reason, you all were compelled to come in here and validate your poor taste, and will use anything at your disposal to assist, even a shitty site consisting of 12 year olds.

Frankly, you should all be embarrassed. While I love Trigger, I have now learned to be mindful of claiming to be a "fan".

[Anonymous No.1671874]

>>1671747
>F1-2 and P:T's (and also BD1-2 et al) scripts are simply bad from the technical standpoint.

Can't believe you're seriously trying to pass this off as objective fact, especially given that still, to this day, Planescape: Torment is held up as one of the best written games ever. To compare it to Fallout 3 of all things is laughable. You sound like you're just trying to be contrary to both popular and critical opinion.

[Anonymous No.1671886]

>>1671865
>those 1/10
>those irrational MUH TRIGGER QQ titles

If anything this proves that the vocal hardcore Cross hating minority is batshit insane. Reviews with ratings of 6 or above might be worth reading, but anything lower can be safely dismissed.

[Anonymous No.1671893]

>>1671886
>anything that doesn't agree with me can be dismissed
this is why nobody takes Crossaders seriously

[Anonymous No.1671913]

>>1671893
There's a difference between reviewing a game critically and bitching and moaning about it not being first game 1.01. People can have legitimate if somewhat overblown problems with the pacing, the interface or design choices that lead to a lower than expected rating. However giving the lowest possible rating to a critically acclaimed game just proves you hate it no matter what and that your drivel isn't worth reading.

[Anonymous No.1671924]

>>1671872
I'd say they're pretty equal, actually!

Trigger fans talk about how absolutely terrible and without merit Cross is as if their opinion were objective fact, getting madder and madder as the posts goes on, and Cross fans respond by saying it was perfect and 2deep4U, with lots of smug personal attacks on the side. Fedoras optional.

It's fun to watch.

[Anonymous No.1671937]

>>1671913
1/10 is usually an indicator the reviewer is just mad but I could easily see Cross getting a 4 or 5.

[Anonymous No.1671942]

>>1671937
Also, "critically acclaimed" might mean something in film or literature where reviewers aren't just nerd shills, but video game reviewers are as useless as tits on a bull.

[Anonymous No.1671968]

We just keep ignoring the legitimate problems listed with Cross that have expressed by several people in this thread. It's sad really.

Regardless of opinions, Chrono Trigger is an achievement in gaming history, Cross is just an OKAY tie-in that happened to have a big budget. Thankfully it did because there are some very redeemable qualities and it can be still be enjoyed, but the game is a mess, plainly stated.

If there's going to start another thread on Trigger, then we can get to the real talk. Slinging mud here is just defensive and derailing, blindly hitting nothing and with no truth, just weak bait.

In short: no u

[Anonymous No.1671993]

>>1671968

What are you talking about? It has been stated countless times, the pacing. Disc two feels rushed, and suffers as a result. Its a legitimate concern, but one that doesn't turn a gem into a turd.

You want to know what I have NEVER seen in this thread, or any other? ANY cristiscism on Chrono Trigger. So many of you truly believe it has achieved some sort of nirvana state, and its pathetic. Every album, novel, film, and game has weak points, but true greatness shines through regardless.

Another thing to note is the passive aggressive declarations that "Chrono Cross was just an ok tie-in/its MESSY". Said who? The high school dropout? Learn to articulate points like an adult and then come back here.

[Anonymous No.1671995]

>>1671937
When I review things, I don't even give a number. You only need one of these things.

Buy
Fans will enjoy (Especially true for games based on animes and such)
Fans will dislike (for blasphemous sequels but are still decent in their own right, like DMC2)
Rent
Skip

[Anonymous No.1671996]

>>1671968
I have literally never seen a Cross thread that did not immediately derail into this. Either Trigger fans lunge in like sharks, or Cross fans start talking shit about them unprovoked.
Everyone hates everyone else, and there I have absolutely never seen any conversation about anything else related to this game.

There was one Cross thread a couple months back, that dared to ask what people would change about Cross given the chance.
It got about twenty posts, then died.

[Anonymous No.1672018]

Cross threads alwys boil down to the same exact complaints.

1. It's not a sequel/it's a horrible sequel.
...to which posters calmly explain that it is (as in >>1669962), and then the complain shifts that they merely don't like *how* it's a sequel, or shift to complaint number...

2. Kato hates Crono/is an angsty edgy CT-hater/he didn't even write CT, that's why Cross sucks/isn't a "true" sequel.
...and somebody always has to debunk the myth of Kato being an intern on the CT development team (a myth that persists despite him being the only credited scenario director and despite stuff like >>1669597). The point is then dismissed, or shifts to saying that without Horii Kato's writing is stale.

3. The writing/story doesn't make any sense.
...usually expressed in terms of specific events. Somebody always explains it as simply as posible (>>1669950, >>1669914) and then the complaints shift to childish tantrums as in >>1669927.

4. Gameplay is too complex/ditched the best points of CT.
...always said in contrast to CT, and people always point out that CT is just press A to win, that the dual techs are useless, and that Cross lets you customize nearly all battle aspects while still being simple to use, as in >>1671281. This complaint is usually shut down, but it can devolve into "well *I* don't like it!"

5. Bad pacing/infodumps.
The only valid compaint, and Cross fans will easily recognize it as such. So it'll be the one tha shows up the most as the thread progresses, usually with a layer of "BAD writing (because *I* don't like it), because it's the only one that'll hold any water.

That's about it, really. These threads will always be the same, because Trigger fans that hate Cross because it dared question the strenght of Crono will always throw tantrums of increasingly illogical proportions as others explain to them that their points don't make sense. And then it all goes to shit when Cross fans start get annoyed and call those who prefer Trigger retards.

[Anonymous No.1672053]

>>1672018

Bravo. You win.

[Anonymous No.1672108]

>>1672018
But Trigger fans ARE retards. Their too busy worshiping their paint by numbers baby's first RPG to enjoy a game with actual depth.

[Anonymous No.1672117]

>>1672108
>Cross
>actual depth
Oh, you.

[Anonymous No.1672182]

All i can say is that dual and triple tech are just kind of "there" in both games, i don't really think they are too useful at all, sometimes a single character using a spell or attack can perform better in a single turn than wasting both char's turn

also both games are baby's first rpg in terms of difficulty if you ask me

[Anonymous No.1672198]

>>1672018

>forgetting the worst part of Crono Cross

[Anonymous No.1672219]

>>1671224
>devoid of logic
>anything is magically possibly at anytime
What part of 'it's magic/time travel; i ain't gotta explain shit,' did you not understand? So you dislike it. Whoopdie shit.

Know what I dislike? Trigger. It was inane rubbish; a classically linear bullshit game with near zero character development, an easy-to-follow babby's first RPG storyline (zomg teens save teh world from pandimensional horror, so fresh!) and oh-so-edgy DBZ character designs.

It introduces absolutely nothing new to the jRPG genre at all yet gets beatified as the end-all and supreme example of jRPGs. How the fuck does that work? 'Oh. You did nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing special and you didn't even do what you actually did accomplish in any specifically interesting, provocative or well-done manner. Let's canonise you! You deserve sainthood! You must be elevated to sacred cow status! No one must ever point out how horridly trite and plain you are. Ever. Lest they be beheaded. Chronohu Akbar!!'

To its credit, the in-game sprite work was nice and music good, but for me, that's about it. The gameplay is crap. It's a press-A-to-win sorta game. Just set the battle system to memory, spam all your best moves and bring plenty of curative items with you to heal between battles. If you have ever seen the game over screen in CT, you really need to quit jRPGs altogether.

[Anonymous No.1672312]

>>1672198
Nigga what, Nikki is fucking awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRTyXJKDZXA

[Anonymous No.1672317]

>>1672219
>Trigger: A classically linear bullshit game with near zero character development an easy-to-follow babby game, and DBZ character designs
Besides the character designs and being "easy to follow" which, people in this game are arguing that Cross is actually easy to follow. Cross is exactly this. Its linear as fuck, the only characters with any development are Serge and Kid (who you don't even really have to use), the rest of your party are stand ins. Easy to follow is subjective, but it

>Just set the battle system to memory, spam all your best moves and bring plenty of curative items with you to heal between battles.

This can be said about almost every RPG on the planet. Its just the nature of the beast. Sure some games have certain bosses where you need to use strategy or diversify your tactics, but its almost always the same. Cross is actually identical to Trigger in this regard, where you use your strongest attacks, maybe use Eagle Eye or a tech, try to keep your stamina from fully depleting and heal when necessary.

This thread really needs to die. Its seriously just Cross fanboys vs. Trigger fanboys and its just gotten down to ad hominem. Both games are decent, but they both get a lot of undue praise.

[Anonymous No.1672345]

>>1672317
Cross is not press-A-to-win. The Element Field sees to that. I like the idea that in lieu of Magic, which was a human achievement reached by the people of Zeal (in the CT timeline), Elements were Dragonian/Reptite inventions that filled nearly the same purpose but were far more intricate, universal and useful.
Anyway, you can't spam your best moves in CC because your best moves require a full Element Field. If all your characters are the same innate, sure, you can try spamming, but you won't get far because enemy skills/elements will fuck the Field up for you.

As for development...
That one character, Kid, saw more development than the entire cast of CT combined, friends/allies and enemies alike. And you're forgetting Harle (who is also Kid, but treated as a separate character) and Lynx. They had some greatly intricate development themselves.

I like how you only object to those two points, leaving the others alone. Does this mean you agree that CT's introduction of absolutely nothing to the jRPG genre and trite storytelling means it can't possibly be the best jRPG ever? Cuz it ain't.

[Anonymous No.1672351]

>>1672345
what are you babbling about? the game can be easily beaten without using a single summon ever

[Anonymous No.1672354]

>>1672345
>>1672317
>both games are decent but they get a lot of undue praise
In what world does this mean CT is some fucking god game? They're both decent, they're both worth a playthrough. Neither are anything special and thats pretty much that.

[Anonymous No.1672363]

>>1672317
Nigger what Mojo alone had more character development than all of Trigger's cast together. He awakens as a cursed doll and loathes his existence but traveling with you makes him come to terms with his origin.

Meanwhile from beginning to end..
>MARLE: TEEHEE I'M A SPUNKY PRINCESS
>LUCCA: TEEHEE I'M A SPUNKY INVENTOR
>AYLA: AYLA PUNCH THINGS
>FROG: GLOOMGLOOMGLOOM
>MAGUS: BROODBROODBROOD
>ROBO: Actually had some development
>CRONO: ...

[Anonymous No.1672365]

>>1672345
>That one character, Kid, saw more development than the entire cast of CT combined
Kid barely saw any development whatsoever. Don't kid yourself about her quality as a character.

[Anonymous No.1672374]

>>1672365
I agree.

Her character doesn't develop very much at all. Shes just a key piece to the story of Chrono Cross. Don't confuse her involvement in the plot with character development.

[NESfag No.1672384]

>>1672351
I only used a summon once when playing the game because, like I said in my previous post, none of the gameplay system 'depth' matters at all because the best solution to 99,9% of the fights is to spam Attack3. It's the safest, most efficient move for everyone.
The only exception to this are 2 boss battles.

[Anonymous No.1672390]

>>1672018
Cross is badly written not because I don't like it, but because it has inane story told in an inane way.

Whether it's a good or bad sequel is irrelevant. Whether it makes sense according to it's own invented rules is irelevant. Whether Trigger was an all-time masterpiece or a piece of forgettable crap is irrelevant.

Cross is a prime example of an overwritten esoteric anime plot that falls apart as it progresses, and then ties it's loose storytelling by inventing random magical happenstance that is devoid of any artistic or entertainment value.

As for gameplay, both CC and CT are bad video games. They're modern repetitive, stupid, linear story-first JRPGs.

>to which posters calmly explain
Ha ha. See >>1671236 or >>1671748 etc. I wouldn't bother quoting all the examples of Cross fans ITT being irate retards and shitposters, you can do that yourself.

[Anonymous No.1672406]

Cross Connoisseur explaining a flaw in Trigger
>the story is flawed because <well researched reasons and arguments>

Triggernigger explaining a flaw in Cross
>IT SUX BCUZ IT SUX WAAAAAH MUH TRIGGER

[Anonymous No.1672408]

>>1672018
Kato WAS an intern. He wrote a lot of CT, but he was supervised by much more talented and influential people.

Just look at other games by Sakaguchi and Horii. These are some of the most influential games in the genre, and they're quite like CT. Then look at other game by Kato. It's a niche, overwritten sequel that's quite hated (see >>1671841 ) by the playerbase.

Kato was a hired pen pusher. As a writer/director he failed miserably to produce a major influential product even after his involvement in CT, and failed to secure a directorial job afterwards, unlike Sakaguchi and Horii, who were making stellar games before CT and went on to make further stellar games after it.

[Anonymous No.1672428]

>>1672408
Didn't he get stuck in a career deadend writing quests for FF11? I thought he quit his job at Square because of that game.

Or was that the xenogears team?

[Anonymous No.1672434]

>>1672428
Yep, he wrote for FFXI, and he didn't do too well.

[Anonymous No.1672437]

>>1672363
Your arguments can't be taken seriously when you do shit like that.

Each character has their own arc in the game, relating to developing them in some way.

>Frog
>Feeling worthless in the beginning because he lost the hero medal and the masamune broke, living as a hermit, resenting Magus for changing his form and for killing his mentor. Crono gets the masamune fixed and returns the hero medal, offering Frog a chance to redeem his past failures. After the events in Zeal, Frog can choose to forgive or forget and let Magus go, or exact his revenge on magus (canon ending is Magus joining, so Frog forgives and forgets). Then finally he gets approval from Cyrus during the side quests at the game.

Thats one character, just like you argued, that gets a good amount of character development throughout the game.

[Anonymous No.1672446]

>>1672437
Magus himself does undergo a drastic recovery from the dark lord who's legitimately gone evil to a tragic hero supporting the characters.

Unlike Cross, where nobody is a real character and everything happens to everyone at all times.

[Anonymous No.1672458]

>>1672374
Now that I think about it, do any characters in Chrono Cross show character development?
I'm pretty sure there's Harle, and... ... that might actually be it.
Radius?

[Anonymous No.1672460]

>>1672458
No, the whole game is disconnected happenstance.

[Anonymous No.1672486]

>>1672458
Pretty much all of them go through an introduction, a key scene and a resolution when finding their level 7 tech. There's also some extra stuff in important scenes, and the fortune teller.

[Anonymous No.1672718]

>>1671764
>inferior port

[Anonymous No.1672907]

All I got from this thread is that a video game is a video game because it's a video game.

[Anonymous No.1672918]

>>1672907
I want people to seriously consider the proposition that Chrono Cross is actually quite un-RPG-ish, because your characters can't get stronger in the game unless you progress. You're basically locked in to wherever you are in the game at that point, with some flexibility for side quests and buying magic

[Anonymous No.1672925]

>>1672460
i think an NPC, Garai, gets the most development

[Anonymous No.1672941]

>>1672918

That sounds alot like FF13.

[Anonymous No.1673494]

>>1672907
WHAT IS THIS!!!!

[Anonymous No.1673503]

>>1673494
Gensou Shoujo Taisen

[Anonymous No.1673542]

>>1671529
Generally that or using Retroarch with mednafen to emulate.
Here, take this, this is usually my go to site when I want to emulate a new system or looking for news about emulators.
http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

[Anonymous No.1673718]

>>1672918
The game is balanced so that you don't need to grind. Capping level-ups keeps a baseline difficulty instead of letting you steamroll through flaming demons because you spent three days hitting bushes.

Also tons of RPGs have some sort of diminishing returns system, it's not exactly a novelty.

[NESfag No.1673801]

>>>1672918
>The game is balanced so that you don't need to grind.
That's ridiculous. I like CC but you can't claim that. The game's not balanced, everything is piss easy, unless it's the first video game you ever play in your life, there is no way you can die in the game except against a couple of bosses.
They wanted it to go with a "no level / little progress" system; and they could have turned that into a quality by making stats more based on the player tactics and use of different characters attributes etc but because they didn't have the guts to do that because they were afraid people who wouldn't understand or who suck at the system would be pissed off and the say the game is too hard; they made EVERYTHING piss easy so that everyone can win super easily and be content.
Like I said you can just spam "attack 3" during 99,9% of the game and hardly ever need to heal, the system doesn't matter; I know "press attack to win" is what you often hear against jrpgs and it's almost never true and over-exagerrated to say that; but in CC it's as simple as that.

CC has plenty of qualities, the graphics, the musics, you can even like the story/characters etc all you want; but saying it's 'balanced' is just a lie, how every enemy your face (except maybe a couple) are so obviously underpowered compared to the player, it's not even a matter of opinion. CC is the most casualized I've ever played, even goddamn Mystic Quest has more challenging and interesting gameplay; and that's coming from someone who likes CC a lot.

[Anonymous No.1673815]

>>1673801
>Mystic Quest more challenging
I'm sorry, no.

[Anonymous No.1674057]

>>1672437
He didn't develop. His story progressed. There is zero change in his position relative the story.
Same with Lucca, Marle (I always renamed her 'Nadia,' even from my first playthru cuz she looks like my sister in ZOMG ANIME form and my sister's name is Nadia... little did I know that Nadia is her actual name), Ayla and especially Crono. Ayla's pretty bad, but fucking Crono's the worst.
The only character that actually does have some development is, ironically enough, the one that shouldn't have any feelings or emotions... being a machine and all. Robo (total bro... Brobo?). He develops from an order-following automaton to an emotional wreck to a decision-making and selfless cybernetic being.
Frog's boohoo woe-is-me bullshit is not development. The fucker could have been changed back to human and he just... /chose/ to remain in his cursed form. Because that's more emo and can get more sympathy. Cry more, faggot.
Fuck that grenouille queer. He's the literal definition of arrested development: being in an emotional/developmental state from which one is unable to progress, either by choice or extraneous circumstance. With this emo bullshit, it's a fucking choice. Boo-fucking-hoo. Now lick my balls and heal me a couple hundred HP.

Kid, Harle, Lynx and Serge all developed as characters as the story progressed. The rest are mostly bullshit placeholders, admittedly, and don't matter, but those four/three (depending on how you view Harle and Kid relative one another) show some real growth.

[Anonymous No.1674106]

>>1674057
>He didn't develop. His story progressed. There is zero change in his position relative the story
I couldn't read past this, the autism is strong with this one.

[Anonymous No.1674121]

>>1674106
Are you referring to yourself in third person?

[Anonymous No.1674640]

>>1674057
> Serge developed as a character
> Frog did not

[Anonymous No.1674703]

>>1674057
>He didn't develop. His story progressed.
How are those two sentences fucking different?

[Anonymous No.1674721]

>>1674106
>>1674703
Oh. So you just don't know what character develoment is.

That guy is correct. It's not passive movement, it's change. Read up on the terms.

[Anonymous No.1674727]

>>1674640
That's true, Serge doesn't really develop at all. He's like most of the Trigger cast. Unless you treat Serge as your avatar and follow the post-game advice to learn from your journey.

>>1674703
Easily. I can be a whiny emo fag, have something happen to me and still be the same whiny emo fag at the end of the day.

[Anonymous No.1674730]

omg chrono cross probably one of the best rpg on ps1

[Anonymous No.1674746]

>>1674057
Your arguments are half decent, but they're presented in such a way that I can't take you seriously.

>a boo boo boo
>cry more faggot
These are not doing your argument any favors and it makes you look like a vehement Cross fanboy and trigger-hater.

Its funny how these games have such passionate feelings (positive and negative) when there are literally dozens of better games out there.

[Anonymous No.1674905]

>>1674746
I dislike them both quite a bit. Cross, at least, had some semblance of character development so while I prefer Cross to Trigger, I nonetheless still care for neither in particular. So you're wrong. In not a fanboy or hater of either game but mostly ambivalent to both excepting the near total lack of character development in Trigger (excluding Brobo, as I said already, who's awesome).

Furthermore, the use of 'boo hoo' and 'cry more' is just a bit of flourish or pageantry. You know. Something to draw attention. And clearly it did. You commented. Others commented. It did its job.

[Anonymous No.1675145]

>>1674727
>Easily. I can be a whiny emo fag, have something happen to me and still be the same whiny emo fag at the end of the day.

Welp, never really thought of it that way. There it is, then.

[Anonymous No.1676642]

>>1661996
Best PSX emulator for Gnu/Linux?
I tried to run CC yesterday on PCSX.
Once you push "start new game" the screen goes black and nothin happens.
The isos are fine. I remember them working on Windows a couple of years ago.

[Anonymous No.1677669]

I just started it and I'm hit with a nonsensical fmv, retarded maze, and a fetch quest for scales, I'm just getting a kind of bleh vibe from it. I'd prefer to boot up final fantasy IX but should I press on? does it get better?

[Anonymous No.1677678]

>>1677669
I actually like 9 better but you should stick it out a little longer imo.
Like all rpg's it starts off lame

[Anonymous No.1677713]

>>1677669
Do what the fuck you feel like. No one here is going to suck your dick for playing the game. The first hour or so is worldbuilding with a village boy doing village boy things. If you want to save the universe with the power of friendship from the get-go then go ahead switch game.

[Anonymous No.1677818]

I have a question.
Would you think that CC is a product of its time?
I've recently played Xenogears and LoD and left me thinking they were trying to have deep stories and unique mechanics but have aged badly. Is this a thing of early 3d jRPGs?

[Anonymous No.1677837]

>>1677818
nah, your just a young ass fag who is playing it for the first time after playing new age "super movie 3d action rpgs". stories dont change with time. its why Shakespeare and Tolkien are still classics years later.

4/10 nice try troll

[Anonymous No.1677839]

>>1677837
>comparing shakespeare with crono cross

disgusting iliterate /10

[Anonymous No.1677845]

you fanboys are what is wrong with vidya, cunts

[Anonymous No.1677847]

>>1677839
>thinking video games cant be art
>any year after 1980

grow up fag

[Anonymous No.1677885]

>>1676642
Did you use PCSX or PCSX-reloaded? The black screen may be due to a plugin issue. Did you try using a software render plugin? That one's sure to work most of the time.

If it truly is a PCSX issue, try ePSXe version for Linux.

>>1677837
He never said stories change with time. Learn to read what other people writing instead of just namedropping popular authors.

>>1677818
Chrono Cross is most definitely a product of its time, and this is clear because of its status as a (very expanded) remake. If you play Radical Dreamers, you'll notice that the core themes and story are there, but it doesn't try to be too deep or too complex and there arent any unique mechanics.

Fast forward 3 years and one Evangelion craze later, and Chrono Cross' story is turned into a convoluted conspiracy regarding the meaning of life with unique, customizable mechanics.

I wouldn't say it's a thing of all PS-era JRPGs though, it was mostly a Squaresoft phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.1678132]

>>1677818
>Would you think that CC is a product of its time?

It's the product a fanbase that had a decade time to mature deserves. Where Trigger's themes were aimed at children, Cross' themes were aimed at young adults.

[Anonymous No.1678757]

>>1677837
> "I notice that a lot of jRPGs from this time try to be really complex and unique to the point of detriment. Do you think that indicates something?"
> "it indicates you're a faggot who doesn't know shit you little bitch. i bet you like halo."

Wow. Bravo, 4chan. That made me laugh.

[Anonymous No.1678962]

>>1676642
Plugin issue. Try Pete's software plugin. pcsx is fine.

[Anonymous No.1680150]

>>1662391
>dependent on having party members with the right element, you usually can't guess what that will be beforehand

What the fuck are you talking about? You can see a party member's innate element, an enemy's element, and if you're not a retard, you'll have your whole party equipped with a wide range of colored elements. There's no guessing involved here.

>you are forced to have the worst element half way through the game
>black
>worst element

git gud

[Anonymous No.1680154]

>>1678132
Correct. Trigger's themes were aimed at kids and adults, while Cross was aimed at teenagers.

Immaturity is what defines Cross as an experience.

[Anonymous No.1680158]

>>1662746

The most succinct and concise post I've ever read in a Chrono Cross thread. Well done.

[Anonymous No.1680187]

>>1662746
>>1680158
So self-congratulatory. Do you feel better now? "Thank God Corss is better than Trigger is every way! Whoever doesn't see that is intellectually inferior! 'DBZ guy" fans only like Trigger because of Goku and stupid!" - is this really the kind of argument that intelligent people use?

[Anonymous No.1680196]

Well I know what type of thread to make when I'm bored now. Thanks Chrono fans on both sides, I needed something to laugh at all morning.

[Anonymous No.1680207]

>>1677669
>I'd prefer to boot up final fantasy IX but should I press on? does it get better?
No

[Anonymous No.1680208]

>>1680187
I haven't even watched a single episode of DBZ. In fact I only know that it exists because of 4chan.

[Anonymous No.1680215]

>>1680207
Let me tell you, the first time I played FF9 was 3 years ago and I got to the Lifa tree and stopped. 2 years ago I got to Terra before the boredom set in. Recently I tried again and made it to Memoria which I know is nearly the end but I can't summon enough fucks about the story to want to conclude it.

[NESfag No.1680219]

>>1680215
>Lifa Tree

it's iifa tree

[Anonymous No.1680224]

>>1680215
I'm not sure why you're telling me this but okay

[Anonymous No.1680571]

>>1680154
>Correct. Trigger's themes were aimed at kids and adults

Ah, but that is not what that post claimed at all. I know you Triggerniggers all suffer from dyslexia, but you could at least try understanding single-line sentences before replying.

[Anonymous No.1680701]

>>1662205
>tfw true ending
>manly tears
>one day, somewhere, somehow...the star-stealing girl will find me

[Anonymous No.1680712]

>>1680571
Regardless of what that poster was saying, it is the truth. Trigger is simple, while Cross is juvenile.

[Anonymous No.1680718]

>>1680701
> The true ending brought me to tears!
You mean the one that lasts five seconds and then shows a girl running around tokyo for fifteen minutes?
That shit is fucking awful. That is not how you end a game.

The alternate endings are far better. Literally any of the endings you get for fighting the Time Devourer before you're supposed to are better endings than the real ending.

[Anonymous No.1680727]

>>1680718
>long-ass speech
>five seconds

The true ending had quite a meta vibe to it as if it's addressing the player. GAME OVER GO GET A GIRLFRIEND

[Anonymous No.1680730]

>>1672345

you can easily beat almost every encounter in the game without even knowing what the element field is.

secondly, none of the elements are interesting because all they are is "deal damage in [x] color"

[Anonymous No.1680741]

>>1680701

[Anonymous No.1680742]

>>1680730
>secondly, none of the elements are interesting because all they are is "deal damage in [x] color"

Actually, less than half of every color's elements deals direct damage. This ain't Trigger, you know.

[Anonymous No.1680754]

>>1680742

wow, heals are so different.

also,

>implying "turnred / turnblue / turngreen" count for shit because they are completely unnecessary in every encounter in the game

[Anonymous No.1680763]

>>1680754
>block opposing elements
>fuck with stats
>apply various statuses
>utility spells like undead killing and temporary invincibility

>durr healing

[Anonymous No.1680768]

>>1680763
>tfw I beat Chrono Cross
>tfw I only used heals, Eagle Eye, and the character based specials.

[Anonymous No.1680791]

>>1680718
>he hasn't seen the speech by Kid to Serge where she says she'll find him even she has to go to the ends of times to get him out of the endless loop where he's stuck in

[Anonymous No.1680796]

>>1680763

but what are you blocking when every enemy does 5-10 damage to you throughout the entire game?

how do you have time to fuck with stats when you can kill every enemy in the game in a couple hits (excluding bosses)?

same with status ailments?

[Anonymous No.1680813]

>>1680791
>she'll find him even she has to go to the ends of times
>endless loop where he's stuck in
"Good" writing right here. FFX-grade stuff.

[Anonymous No.1680824]

There is no endless loop in CC wtf are you smoking.

[Anonymous No.1680830]

>>1680768
> Needing Eagle Eye
git gud

[Anonymous No.1680847]

I have been waiting an eternity... just for this very moment...

Meaninglessly hurting one another... The disappearing life-forms... The words that become deleted... The thoughts that become buried... The pool of cells that slowly evaporate... The echoes of consciousness that slowly fade... Love to hate... Hate to love... Why are we born? Why do we die? Evolution? The "survival of the fittest?" What is there to be achieved from harming one another... killing one another...

The "eggs" that we call planets... And the innumerable "spermatozoa" which gather around these that we call life-forms... When one of those countless seeds inseminates a planet, a new universe is born. But until that occurs, hundreds of millions of years will pass, and innumerable life-forms will be born, then die... That is the be-all and end-all. Everything exists for that one moment. All so that the universe can evolve into the next dimension... Does that make us all just pawns? Are each of our short lives nothing but a cheap sacrifice just so the one chosen life-form can be born?

[Anonymous No.1680851]

>>1680847

No. That is not the case! Each and every one of us has a chance of becoming that one chosen life-form which inseminates a planet. Yes, it could be "you"... Genes and environment... Each of us tries to do his best under the limited conditions we are each dealt.

Each life-form that attempts to eke out a decent life for itself forms a link in the golden chain that leads to the creation of a new universe. If one link is missing, there will be no future. There is no such thing as a useless life-form... No such thing as a pawn! Every single thing in the whole of nature is perhaps just dreaming a dream of "life"... All of them are also perhaps nothing more than a dream dreamt by the planet before it is born.

Oh, but yes... Eventually all dreams will return to Zurvan... to the sea of dreams...

[Anonymous No.1680870]

>>1680851
Still makes more sense than bringing Doan to the past in Trigger

[Anonymous No.1681008]

>>1680813
>love story
>"it's FFX-grade stuff"
>"I don't need a love story in my fantasy games"
>"love sucks, lol"

[Anonymous No.1681048]

>>1680870
> wait who the fuck is Doan
> look him up
> He's the old guy you give a seed to in Bad Future and then fuck off never to see again
> Still makes more sense than bringing Doan to the past

When does that happen?

[Anonymous No.1681068]

>>1681048
Might wanna watch the ending again

[Anonymous No.1681072]

>>1681008
Not all love stories must be overwritten, overblown magical, timespace-spanning yet perfectly out of character and unmotivated passions, brah.

[Anonymous No.1681078]

>>1681008
> He thought the love story in FFX sucked!
> Therefore, he must think all love is stupid!
Nice converse error.

[Anonymous No.1681226]

Chrono Cross is great, Satchbag tells it like it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iall_4SJkTQ

[Anonymous No.1681245]

>>1680824
>There is no endless loop in CC wtf are you smoking.
The same thing that makes them think CC is good beyond its looks and music.

[Anonymous No.1682515]

Excellent game, wish more RPGs were about an individual's role in the world.