* * * * * Chrono Trigger - Week 5 * * * * *

(Plain English: Scroll down to the bottom of the "OP" if you're lagging behind for previous weeks)


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue:
i Okami Club
ii Fire Emblem Club

Epic Center:
01 Ogre Battle
24 Secret of Mana
39 Phantasy Star IV (cont'd)
67 Earthbound (cont'd)
99 Breath of Fire II (cont'd)
110 Paper Mario (cont'd)
123 Golden Sun (cont'd)
136 Chrono Trigger

(ALL VINTAGE EC GAMES ARE CONTINUED IN THEIR OFFICIAL DISCUSSION THREADS!)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Hello, true believers! Welcome to Negative World's newest RPG-centric Club Hub, springing off the heels of the Fire Emblem Club. Way back when, Nintendo Power introduced a monthly walkthrough / in depth Role Play Game section (right around the beefiest SNES RPG era), but since they aren't around anymore to use it, Negative World will bring it out of the ashes, dust it off, and roll with it (two things of note: #1, this is not in reaction to Nintendo Force Magazine at all -- I know that because I thought of it in the shower this morning, so THERE; and #2, I just looked up "Epic Center RPG" on Yahoo, and there is apparently another RPG-based site that has that, ugh. I guess we're looking at a "Ghostbusters" / "Real Ghostbusters" thing now... Whatever..).

For anyone who grew playing SNES RPGs, and were a fan of them, they surely resonated to the point where they still hold office as some of your favorite games of your entire videogame life, systems, generations, and decades later. The NW Epic Center (run primarily by myself, with the aid of some special friends occasionally) will help to expose some of those games that didn't quite get the recognition they deserved, and also to relive some of the greatest games EVER as we play through them again -- together -- and open up a whole new dialogue on these lost treasures.


Next up..



Chrono Trigger is held by many (myself included) as The Greatest RPG of All Time, pun not intended. It is a benchmark title in the genre, and even after 20 years the game is discussed daily and held in high regard, even in the face of juiced-up, HD "masterpieces." Is simpler sometimes better? Sure, but we're not talking "Dragon Warrior" simple here; we're talking 16-bit perfection at its finest. I'm personally a bit worried about pursuing this game once more; it's been a long time since my last jog through it, and I'm afraid I might have the rosiest pair of glasses that any shot of nostalgia could ever produce. We find out later this month, for better or for worse. (C'mon, it's gonna be fine -- we're talking Chrono Trigger here!! THE BEST, JERRY, THE BEST!!)

Sunday, August 30th marks the start of Week 1 (if you prefer to start your own quest AFTER Sunday, like Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, thats fine!). Golden Sun ran 6 Weeks. GameDadGrant will be our DUNGEON MASTER for this one, and we figure the playthrough to run about the same length. Less than two months. I'm told the total quest should last you between 20 and 30 hours.


See ya soon!!


CHRONO TRIGGER

Dungeon Master: GameDadGrant

You Did It! Chrono Trigger Complete:
VofEscaflowne
Scrawnton
Mop it up
Ludist210


Week 4 Complete:
GameDadGrant
mrbiggsly
DapperDave

Week 3 Complete:
Mr_Mustache (and Mrs_Mustache!)

Week 2 Complete:
Smerd
Dark weres
warerare
sirmastersephiroth

Week 1 Complete:
Anand

Triggermen:
HammerLord
Koovaps

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5

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@Jew Drop
No, Phantasy Star 4 is nowhere near as difficult as 2. That's not really a bad thing though.

@Mr_Mustache
It should be pretty easy to set up macros. You select a character, then a skill, and it gets entered. Once you have Hahn join you, and when all three of them learn their element techniques (FOI, TSU, WAT), enter a macro that includes all three, and try to arrange it so that the slowest one goes first. Once you have 4 or 5 characters in your party, you might have to rearrange them for character speed, but as long as the combo-skill is kept together and uninterrupted it should go off without a hitch.

@Dark Weres

I figured out the Triblaster last night on my own (holy S, that packs a punch!); can you do a 4-person Macro w/ Rune?

Didn't finish up last night, but I'm working on Part 3 (found Professor Holt, oh no!). I COMPLETELY missed Kupul (?? I forgot the name of it) the first time somehow, and I ended up in some cave. I'm not even sure if that is where I was supposed to go, but tried to Revive Hahn and warped out instead, haha!! Oh, spell names.... I returned to a town, slept, and started my journey anew. And then found that town super-fast. What the heck.

I think I Saved in Tonoe? Didn't finish it out yet.


I like a lot of stuff about this game so far, but by far the worst is the spell names. I know you can look 'em all up and memorize 'em..but I prefer not to have to do that. Fire is Fire, Lightning is Lightning, Heal is Heal. Also, I wish that when your health was low there was a graphic indicator besides a simple 2/45 or whatever. Hahn was incredible close to death one time; had he been wheezing, or huddled over, or the window went green (ala Dragon Warrior) I'd be like "oh no, HAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHN!," gazing upwards toward my ceiling, spinning in my chair. Instead I was like "oh man, you're almost dead." And then I RES'd him.


EDIT- There is another tab, "Tech?" maybe? I might be mixing Tech and Skills up. Anyway, I'm asking about the one we aren't talking about previously. I learned Crosscut, and it says x1 next to it. What does that x1 mean exactly? I'm attacking one guy? I have only one to use? Each fight? Until I sleep again? Until it recharges? I feel like I need to save those. I also ask because the instruction manual gives you a free Macro to try, and one of them is Rune's cold attack dealy. But it isn't standard MP stuff, its that other x5(?) thing.

@Mr_Mustache
AFAIK there isn't a 4-person tech with RUNE, but if TRIBLASTER isn't available to you for one reason or another, you can combine his HEWN spell with either a fire or ice tech to create FIRE STORM and ICE STORM.
"Skills" count down separately from techs. Think of them as Pokémon's move-counts, or D&D's spell-memorizations. They are also usually character specific in that rarely will you see two characters with the same "skills".

I've had the tech names memorized since Phantasy Star II, so I was actually kind of upset to see them changed for Phantasy Star Online. FOI became FOIE and WAT became BARTA due to the possible ways to translate certain letters, and no longer needing to dance around name size limits, the NA prefix became RA for reasons unknown, maybe one of the techs may have become a swear-word in some language, the SA prefix became AL because it apparently had to look closer to "all" before the newer generations could understand that it turns single-target techs into area-target ones, I wouldn't be surprised if for a Phantasy Star game in the future, the developers just threw up their hands and turned what was once "SARES" into "RESTOREOFHEALTHTOSELFANDNEARBYALLIESFORAROUND20POINTSPLUSMINDSKILL" because they'll have the space and the game players of the future can't be arsed to take a minute out of their day to learn a code as simple as old-school Phantasy Star techs anymore). That didn't stop it from being a good game of course, just a less immersive one, one that felt less like Phantasy Star and more like "any other RPG"

This is probably why we'll never have Skies of Arcadia 2.

Dragon Warrior was the worst offender though. HURTMORE was quite possibly the least magical sounding magic-spell name in the history of people making up magic, ever.

@Dark Weres

Haha, HURTMORE is pretty bad..

Alright, unfortunately I'm unfamiliar with Pokemon Move and D&D stuff, sooo..what is an easier way to remember those things, and how do I replenish them? Am I just allowed to use them whenever I can?

I'm sorry.

@Dark Weres I'm sorry... Did you just say Phantasy Star Online felt less like Phantasy Star and more like "Any other RPG" because of... spell names? Yeah, FOIE AND BARTA WERE SO FUCKING OBVIOUSLY FIRE AND ICE. Resta was TOTALLY obviously a heal spell. MEGID AND GRANTS. LIGHT AND DARK SUUUURE.

I hope you were talking about some other game because your post read like a rant from an insane person!

@Xbob42
I'd say the crazy person is the one complaining that the spells aren't named something mundane so that they wouldn't have to actually play the game and use it to learn what it does. Y'know, doing what the people who originally played Phantasy Star IV on their Genesis did if they didn't feel like reading the manual. A good chunk of the people who are fans of the game today.

I'm not saying PSO became identical to all other RPGs, here. Phantasy Star Online felt like its creators found the canon half burnt and reconstructed whatever they could from vague memories. There was a lot wrong with it even if you ignore tech names: numans becoming little more than sci-fi elves, robots using healing items, the once iconic slicers/slashers being implemented completely differently, laconia now just being a high grade of silver that emits heat, the list goes on.
Phantasy Star II was where the series really started to differentiate and rise out of the sea of RPGs, Phantasy Star Online was and still is a good game, but it was where the series started to fall back in.

MEGID has a subplot of its own in this game. I don't remember whether it was a secret sidequest, though.

I haven't gotten to sit down and play yet, but I've been reading the thread. The list of what spells do will certainly come in handy.

@Mop it up

How are you playing? All of them are listed on the VC in the operations guide.

PS2 Sega Genesis Collection

@Dark Weres If your argument is that PSO is where the series started to decline, I'm going to disagree vehemently with you. That game was fucking incredible. It brought online RPGs to consoles and was fun as hell. It not staying 100% true to the "fiction" is hardly some huge deal.

@Xbob42
I'm not saying that either, I would even argue that having PSO stick 100% to the series canon would have worked in its detriment. You couldn't have canonical numans, because being that they're genetically perfect humans that stay in top physical condition for most of their lives, the game would be broken as a game where you can choose what race you are and what races you get to play with.
My point is that players are too spoiled in having everything handed to them. They start fussing and spitting if there isn't a tooltip explaining the purpose of every little grain of sand before they walk across it, and now game developers can't even make little "code" elements of their game for the players to decipher, even if they're as trivial as spell-names, because they'll either drop the game and tell their friends not to buy it, or cheat and look online for the answers so they don't have to deal with what they consider to be little more than an inconvenience rather than an immersive and challenging element.

@Dark Weres See, here's where I disagree: I don't think it's immersive. My character is just casting this spell that he has named, and he has no idea what it does? Not even a hint? The enemies all... wiggled a bit. What does that mean? Maybe if you keep risking your precious TP and using it a million times you'll figure out that it lowers defense by 50%... maybe. ...because you deal slightly randomized damage.

I'm perfectly fine with obtuse mechanics and spell names, but make it a part of the gameplay. If they had descriptions in the manual then they clearly wanted you to know what these spells did. I'm all for figuring things out! Just make sure it's something that can be figured out without me spamming an ability a billion times and hoping something happens. "Oh, this is a one-hit KO spell, it just didn't work the first 50,000 times, well, that's useless. *SIGH*"

@Dark Weres

Geez, DW, I was just asking that Fire be called Fire... Lighten up, bud. I wasn't MAD, I just dont' want a template for "every fight."

Anyway, the description of the spell has FIRE in it. If they're going to do that and get a new name, why not avoid the word "Fire" altogether? "Summons a molten pillar of heat!" or some crap. Obviously they know what "fire" means.

If they want to have special names for stuff, like XBOB said, they can. No problem. Why not start us out with BASE stuff though, or an idea? Final Fantasy has "Ultima, Doom, and X-Zone to name a few, but they also have Fire, Ice, and Tornado.

EDIT- Also, and in-game description would help oodles..

I'm really glad to see people enjoying the game, naming conventions aside. I think I have to go ahead and start using the macro system more, though. I haven't really taken advantage of any sweet combos yet. I tend to push straight through RPGs as simply as I can until I figure I should use the other systems the game offers. For this reason I usually upgrade weapons and armor every other town I get to, so I see a more significant improvement. Sure, guys occasionally die, but I deal with it. Also, I do like the Talk function, cause I'm always forgetting where I'm heading next.

@Koovaps

I did "Talk" by accident last night, and I thought it was pretty neat! I totally forgot what I had to do, haha.

They do "Journal" or "Log" in a lot of games 'now' it seems. I know Tales of Symphonia told you EXACTLY what was going on if you picked it up after a long while.

@Mr_Mustache

I think it's interesting that there is a "Look" command for items that tells you what the item does, but there isn't one for spells.

@Jew Drop
Old games are filled with all kinds of oversights like this, usually due to memory issues. As it was, the game had to use a higher capacity cart in the original version and released for $100 because of it. They also likely assumed that most players would've played a previous PS game and most of the spells had the same or very similar names in all of them. I'm also pretty sure there were descriptions in the manual.

Week one completed. I never found Triblaster, but I'm from the old school mentality of never using offensive spells or combos until the boss fight. I'll probably look into it next time I'm grinding.

Seems most of us are finished with easy Week 1, but there are definitely a few stragglers. Hope you guys are able to finish up. I'm really looking forward to putting up Week 2 goals late tonight!