All in all, it's a stunningly well-designed game, made all the better by how well the different time periods mesh together into one adventure. I've seen some people complain about how the adventure grinds to a halt when you're trying to recruit Frog—and it is admittedly tiresome to tromp from era to era looking for bits of the Masamune—but the time travel itself works really well.
The periods all have their own heroes, villains, and story arcs, all of which spill into the rest of the timeline and build into one overarching adventure. It's a setup that has the potential to become incredibly messy and confusing, but Chrono Trigger manages it all effortlessly.
Sitting now at the halfway point, I'm interested to see where they take it. Most of the major players have been introduced at this point, as have all the time periods.
I know that Lavos eventually destroys the world, and that Magus is the one responsible for awakening him, but it's unclear where the group goes from here. As I've delved deeper and deeper into Chrono Trigger, the one thought that has occurred to me again and again is, "Wow, this game really lives up to its reputation. It's often hard for older games, especially older RPGs, to live up to the praise heaped upon them posterity.
When talking about the impact of games like Final Fantasy VII, you often have to say, "It doesn't look like much now, but back in , it was the most incredible thing anyone had ever played. Final Fantasy IV is an amazing game, but it's well-regarded in part because we're willing to forgive its stilted writing and one-dimensional story, which leans heavily on an endless series of heroic sacrifices for its drama.
This game is not like that. Chrono Trigger was released in , when Square was at the absolute height of their powers, and its shows. It's gorgeous—one of the best-looking games on the Super Nintendo. Its score is scintillating and its characters are distinct, which makes the battle system feel less broken than it does in Final Fantasy VI. It's striking how well it holds up in Playing through it on my trip has been like discovering a really good television show long after it's completed and finally getting to see what all the fuss was about.
My only regret is that I'm not playing it on my TV, because in some ways it feels like almost too big of an adventure for my little 3DS. While time travel was a novel mechanic, it wouldn't have been nearly as memorable had it not been for the colorful cast of characters it allowed Crono to encounter during his journey. The intelligent Lucca and sassy princess Marle were introduced from the start, but only by accidentally warping through time did Crono meet the lovably gallant Frog, broody Magus, brawny Ayla, and, of course, the almost-human Robo who apparently loved Rick Astley.
All of these characters had a surprising level of depth, and every single one of them had a memorable personality. Chrono Trigger's side quests led to powerful weapons and equipment, but it also included lengthy character-specific sub plots that provided insight and back story to each member of the party. Discovering how Frog became a frog fun fact: He wasn't always an anthropomorphic amphibian , or what that dastardly Magus was really up to made us feel all the more attached to those characters, and those plots lent an incredibly personal element to a game that was otherwise quite grand in scale.
Current page: Page 1. Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more! Chrono Trigger has issues with confidence and deals with it by both setting its standards far too low and by throwing everything it has at you from the very beginning.
You play as the mute and quite annoying for it Chrono, whose name alludes to time, which is the central theme of this game. After accidentally inventing a time machine Oh, Japan , you wind up several hundred years in the past. Presumably the world is going to collapse in on itself eventually somewhere down the line, so why go to so much trouble to stop an apocalypse that is almost definitely going to be foreshadowed by another one a few thousand years later?
The only character who is directly affected by these events is a robot character who belongs to an era after the apocalypse has occurred called Robo. This is what I assume people will eventually call Robocop once he retires to California to open his own surf supplies store. Yet if he stops the Apocalypse from happening, he runs the risk of having never existed in the first place.
Everyone else will be long dead before it happens, so why go to so much trouble? Another issue I had planned to raise in this game was that, if the main characters have a time machine, why not just go to a specific moment in time, when the Space hedgehog is playing with some Legos with its back turned, and then whack it over the head with some kind of giant coconut?
Showing that clever bit of initiative that they used to be known for, Square actually has that base covered. This is an innovation that I think the game has to be most commended for. As soon as I saw I could do this, I took my barely leveled up part, which consisted of a female mechanic and a Shakespearean frog, and jumped in.
And while fighting, something odd and completely illogical happened. I reset the game. Because while it was good to know I could complete the game in this logical manner, I wanted to see what happened with the rest of the story.
So well done Square, for tactfully nabbing an extra 16 hours from my life. As for the story itself, it seems to teeter between interesting and boring, though never veering too radically in either direction. I blame this largely on the fact that the main characters would be right at home on Dora the Explorer, or any other kids TV show. They all look very colourful and interesting, but this is just to distract the player from the fact that you could fit all 7 of their back-stories on the back of half a playing card.
0コメント