Chrono Trigger DS

[rg4619]

Both games were great. Chrono Cross lacked the strong sense of cohesion we often expect from a story-driven RPG, but I thought the individual components (world design, overarching plot, text quality, battle design) were very good.

Trigger had some significant flaws too, so I always thought it was a bit overrated.

[Shadow Kira01]

Originally Posted by Sety

It was controversial in that it simply had too many characters, weak gameplay and mediocre music. CC's music really was alot less inspiring outside of those few spectacular pieces.

Too many characters? Chrono Trigger's main cast is less than half of the recruitable characters of Chrono Cross, how is it many?

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

Too many characters? Chrono Trigger's main cast is less than half of the recruitable characters of Chrono Cross, how is it many?

CT has 7 characters, CC has 30+ and you only get hints to the back ground story of some of the character and practically none for the others.

[Freeter]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

CT has 7 characters, CC has 30+ and you only get hints to the back ground story of some of the character and practically none for the others.

Did anyone really care to learn the backstory of random chef guy and anorexic rocker? I think there was a rat and a lizard somewhere in that mix....

CC didn't utilize its alternate worlds gimmick as well as CT did the time travel. The game seriously needed more moments where your actions would affect the other world.

Spoiler for best moment IMO:

Taking Serge's childhood friend from the alternate world into his world and showing her their "spot", now that was a trip. So glad he ended up with her and not that annoying Kid.

I still wish Square would just retcon CC and do a new sequel. The CT crew deserves better.

[kujoe]

Originally Posted by Freeter

Spoiler for best moment IMO:

Taking Serge's childhood friend from the alternate world into his world and showing her their "spot", now that was a trip. So glad he ended up with her and not that annoying Kid.

I still wish Square would just retcon CC and do a new sequel. The CT crew deserves better.

Actually...

Spoiler for CC ending:

That ending photograph? Popular speculation is that Kid (or Schala, or a merging of both, beats me...) finally finds him again in the new world at the end.

The person's face is covered, but an official art book has shown the original design to be of Serge wearing some ceremonial clothing. It's actually a wedding picture if I'm not mistaken.

[Sides]

Originally Posted by Freeter

I still wish Square would just retcon CC and do a new sequel. The CT crew deserves better.

That would be really awesome. A sprite based sequel fot the (N)DS(i).

[Benoit]

From what I know of Chrono Cross, it is fundamentally incompatible with Chrono Trigger. There are two main time travel theories. Chrono Trigger uses the one where there's only one world. Chrono Cross uses the one where there are many worlds (dimensions).

[kujoe]

That's because CC isn't about time travel per se. Rather, all the time traveling in CT leads to the creation of parallel worlds, which CC is more focused on. All the time traveling by Crono and co. and the abduction of Schala simply have sown the seeds for the plot of CC.

The two stories are related in this sense, or in other words both take place having a shared history or timeline. But in CC, the focus is completely on different characters and on Schala herself, part of the reason which, is that it takes place around twenty years after the events of CT.

[Elehayym]

Originally Posted by Sety

It was controversial in that it simply had too many characters, weak gameplay and mediocre music. CC's music really was alot less inspiring outside of those few spectacular pieces.

I never had any problem with CC having lots of characters, just like I never had problems with games like Suikoden etc
I did find the group of "main" characters - and with main I intend the ones more central to the story like Kid, Harle, the Dragon Knights - interesting enough and that was enough for me, the rest are obviously meant as a bonus and I wouldn't expect them to be developed a lot (even though a lot of them are linked in a way or another and I did find that interesting too).
Anyway I also didn't like very much the english translation and I think their choices had bad effects on some of the characters

And about the music, I love the soundtrack but I guess it's about tastes Even though many of my favorite tracks were remixes from the Radical Dreamers soundtrack.

That said, I can understand why it would disappoint who was expecting it to be similar to CT. I did enjoy both games in different ways though.

[Socko]

Snes emulator

[DragoonKain3]

Wee! Just got my copy today, and I'm still amused that they chose to keep CT's original cover, where you see Marle charge up Chrono's sword with fire. XD

Too bad I can't play it in the forseeable future..

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by kujoe

That's because CC isn't about time travel per se. Rather, all the time traveling in CT leads to the creation of parallel worlds, which CC is more focused on.

That Chrono Cross isn't about time travel is irrelevant. Chrono Cross indeed posits that the time travelling during Chrono Trigger creates parallel worlds, but my point was that Chrono Trigger does not.

Every time you time travel to the future in Chrono Trigger, you can already see the results of your actions. Those results, and how the time travelling mechanic in the game works, point to a single timeline.

[kujoe]

Ah, now I see where you're coming from. I assumed that you were mainly talking about the plot of the two games.

Every time the concept of time travel enters a story, it always ends up being flawed or problematic in a theoretical sense anyway. To be honest, I just look past these things and just focus on the main story.

[Shadow Kira01]

Originally Posted by kujoe

Every time the concept of time travel enters a story, it always ends up being flawed or problematic in a theoretical sense anyway. To be honest, I just look past these things and just focus on the main story.

The main story of both Chrono Trigger is centralized on time traveling, while in Chrono Cross is about parallel worlds caused by time traveling.

However, I do agree that the concept of time traveling itself is flawed and problematic, because anybody can come up with a list of questions out of curiousity and interest, yet not even the best scientists in the world can find the solution to it.

[kujoe]

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

The main story of both Chrono Trigger is centralized on time traveling, while in Chrono Cross is about parallel worlds caused by time traveling.

That's true, and that's why CC stems from the events of CT.

That's exactly where the main connection between the two games lie. One could say that the multiple endings of these games further support this.

The problem is, such connections are either not so clear or made rather late in CC, so we have SE trying to reiterate this connection more in all these CT remakes. For the PS version, we have some additional scenes. Two noteworthy ones are...

Spoiler:

Crono and Marle getting married, and Lucca bringing in Kid as an orphan.

For CT DS, it seems we finally have more on...

Spoiler:

Schala leading towards the events of CC.

The scenario writer of CT and CC is Masato Kato, the same guy, so it's not like these two games weren't made without thought to the other. But this is the same guy who wrote for Xenogears and Xenosaga. And we all know how complicated those games turned out to be. While the stories themselves aren't bad, I just wish that they were more cohesive and clear on some points.

[IchiKyo]

wow... Square enix seems to put all effort on Chrono Trigger...
After Japanese version getting US and Japanese Translation, the US version get French Translation... Good news for european/french players...

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by kujoe

The scenario writer of CT and CC is Masato Kato, the same guy

He wrote all of Chrono Cross, but Chrono Trigger's scenario was by more than one person. The only part of the game that is entirely his is 13000 BC.

Originally Posted by IchiKyo

After Japanese version getting US and Japanese Translation, the US version get French Translation... Good news for european/french players...

Only good news for the French players. It makes the other Europeans who bothered to learn English wait longer.

[kujoe]

Originally Posted by Benoit

He wrote all of Chrono Cross, but Chrono Trigger's scenario was by more than one person. The only part of the game that is entirely his is 13000 BC.

To be more specific, he wrote the script a some scenarios from Yuji Horii's story draft if I'm not mistaken. I'd say he was pretty involved nonetheless.

Right now, I'm debating with myself if I should go out and get this game all over again. I still have to finish FFIV for the DS.

[Shadow Kira01]

Originally Posted by kujoe

To be more specific, he wrote the script a some scenarios from Yuji Horii's story draft if I'm not mistaken. I'd say he was pretty involved nonetheless.

Right now, I'm debating with myself if I should go out and get this game all over again. I still have to finish FFIV for the DS.

Based on your previous post, I actually thought you finished Chrono Trigger DS already. Considering that the game is around 50 bucks, its not really worth it to replay the game after playing it once (snes/psx) or twice (snes + psx). FF4 is a good game. I have yet to play it though. I intend to play it sometimes next year. Chrono Trigger is also on my list. As for myself, I need to finish 3 games: Rune Factory, Luminous Arc, and Summon Night: Twin Age.

[kujoe]

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

Based on your previous post, I actually thought you finished Chrono Trigger DS already.

No, not the DS version. I've read some info about it, especially concerning the added content. But I did play the SNES version many times, and have seen the PS anime scenes. I didn't get it for the PS, something which I kind of regret from a collector's point of view. Maybe I can still find it somewhere, but it seems the DS version is the more definitive version now.

And yeah, Luminous Arc 2. That's another one I've been thinking about.