Chrono Trigger

I started this because I needed another game to play on the bike. You know, something slower paced. Easy to start and stop. The art is interesting so far. I had a moment of triumph where I refused to buy a new sword for Crono because I could just feel in my bones I was going to get a newer, better one for free and then I did!

I was really concerned if I'd like this because I bounced off FFVI so hard but that seems like much less of a concern here. Lucca and Marle seem like much more interesting characters and they're not portrayed so... seriously. The entire thing doesn't take itself seriously, it's clearly trying to be funny. And to be fair, FFVI was funny, but it just gave some severe whiplash, melodrama to absurdity and back again.

The combat is also better. Timing (I get it) being an aspect beyond just atb is really good!

I dislike how old school jrpgs expect you to have all the time in the world to just talk to everyone until you happen to talk to the right person to advance the plot.

Other than that standard old school game lack of handholding I'm really enjoying it right now.

I do wish it was easier to look through all the techs, it's a lot of scrolling through.

I have been playing through a lot of this game. It's pretty fun. I might be playing it too quickly to properly digest all of the reasons why I like it. I've been trying to be more mindful and not write as many notes during.

Some gripes. I really think that the UI is a little bit in my way. Having the stuff on the second screen is better than having it on the main screen. I tried classic settings because I felt like I couldn't pay attention to what was happening on the screen because I was trying to pick my character's stuff at the same time. I was just missing stuff that was going on there so I thought classic would help me do both. It's so cramped.

The dinosaur dungeon takes too long and there are just too many fucking fights. This thing literally broke me until I realized that I could save scum because what would happen is you fall through the floor and then you have to refight the things that you just fought. It's like, why? It's like, oh I can just reload the save state before I do all the button pressing and then I won't fall through the floor.

This has killed every other game for me today though. I did feel a pang to play a little bit of Metroid Dread but I was like, let's just keep grinding on this.

Thoughts about characters? Well I like most of them. They all have their own charm and I think that's partially just because there are fewer of them. (I'm gonna keep comparing this to Final Fantasy VI just because they're both super great SNES JRPGs and VI is the one I played recently and bounced off hard.) But part of the issue that I had with Six is that there are so many party members that I'm supposed to care about and then they just keep going in and out of the party. It's just hard to build an attachment and I find that very frustrating about JRPGs.

For the most part people stay. You get to keep at least your core three: Chrono, Marle, and Lucca. Then Robo stays as soon as you get him too. Alya and Frog dip in and out but it doesn't feel like forever between it. I do really wish you could play with the fourth party member although I wouldn't be able to juggle the ATB effectively at that point.

Maybe I should try the wait mode or a slower game speed but that seems also worse in it's own way (making combats take longer).

One thing I do love about these older games is that you can finish them a lot faster, as we've seen with the Metroids and this game. I am finishing games more quickly than I can write post-mortems about it though.

I found out that Crono's name only doesn't have the H in it because of character limitations. I don't know what's dumber: that they wanted to name him Crono, that they couldn't name him Crono because of the limitation, or that they were unwilling to fix the limitation.

Like his name as is isn't so good or anything but it's at least less on the nose. You could imagine it being a character's name in the universe as opposed to the one with the H or it's just like, "Oh it's time boy. I named my child Time."

I do feel like it is bogging me down with too many little fights. That would be my biggest complaint so far.

Got through the ocean palace, lost a Crono, gained a Magus. All quite standard.

Oh I see. We're doing a fetch quest through time.

Moving through the side quests here. MAYBE WE COULD JUST CHECK THE BASEMENT FOR THE RAINBOW SHELL?! The chancellor could have tried harder here.

I think if this game has a miss, it's that there's not more of stuff like the campfire scene leading into Lucca's side time travel journey. That scene is so dread inspiring and I up entered the password the first time because I didn't understand exactly what it wanted me to do. I reloaded the save to go do it again, which I think is a testament to how powerful that is. Obviously she would go back and redo that moment if she could in the exact same way. I would go back and redo that moment if I could and it's not even real and it's not even my mom.

Too many fights here in the end game dungeon. I've also definitely settled on Crono, Robo, and Ayla as my main 3.

I do like how Lavos just seems to be some kind of entity. It's not a dark demon with goals. It's just some kind of...animal that wants to become the "perfect life" or whatever?

Also it's Cell?

If we're so worried about Robo not being made in the future he could just hang out here. Frog too!

I got what the wiki says is ending 1B. It's a very good ending.

This game holds up. I think compared to it's contemporaries and even now, it does a good job at a lot of things. This has to be the best turn based combat on the SNES, it and Super Mario RPG. The characters exude personality and are easy to keep straight. They each have very clear lanes that communicate a lot very quickly, which is really important in this era.