* * * * * 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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@Zero I thought to check further down because you can't fool an Xbob twice! ;)

@Zero

Its like a book, you goon! It says TABLE OF CONTENTS.
You're just a grumpmaster. Complaint after complaint after complaint..after complaint. What gives, brah?

Anyway, this is your 3rd EC thing we've done? (you did Ogre Battle and SoM, right?) The format has been the same.
Stuff at the top, big picture, personal story, Weeks 1 through Current, "Leaderboard." Glad you've ignored it.. *sigh*

--And Level 10 is WAY too low. Halfway through Week 3 here, my guys are at 26.

Week 3 stuff: Guilded it up before I started this week's stuff. Translation is funny a lot of the places.
And I hate battles like the one with the carniverous forest where you HAVE to retreat. I was kicking its ass for like 20 minutes and burning through TONS of items. UGH.

@Xbob42

You may soon become my best EC friend (though Gojira puts up a good fight).

And seriouslah, its like 2 mouse wheels away. Not exactly digging for buried treasure here.. C'mon, Z....

Jesus Christ.

I haven't got to play much of week 3 yet since we've had huge tornadoes in the area the last couple days, but I'm hoping to get back to it tonight. So far I've only picked up the new guys and went to the first town on Dezolis.

@Mr_Mustache I only did Ogre Battle and that was more straight-forward, check once in the regular post made about the week, "oh there are 3 maps this week?", never had to go back and check.

I have no idea why you are so bad at taking constructive criticism that could make your stuff flow better. Or maybe I'm just really good at it, since you kind of have to be when you run a website.

@Zero

Oh, I forgot about Mana. I thought you did it? It feels like we play every game together.

It isn't constructive criticism when you tell me how poop everything is when other Non-ShadowLink people have no problem """deciphering""" my incredibly cryptic "OP." I wonder how long it took XBOB. 4 seconds? Cripes.

I read through both of your ACen things yesterday, in their entirety, and you can't be "tasked" to scroll down twice? Z-Man, c'mon brooo.

--Can't we just talk about Phantasy Star IV? Jesus Christ.

@DeputyVanHalen

Yeah, dude, stay safe. Gosh.

Mr_Mustache said:

@Zero
It isn't constructive criticism when you tell me how poop everything is when other Non-ShadowLink people have no problem """deciphering""" my incredibly cryptic "OP." .

'Other "Non'Shadowlink" people have no issue'?

ludist210 said:

EDIT: Regardless of what game we choose, can we please, PLEASE make it into a new thread? Each RGC has its own community thread, I don't see why each Epic Center can't either.

PogueSquadron said:

There's also the issue if someone is late to the party on something. If they want to join in on OB Discussion(orSoM) discussion, they can't without bringing it up in the middle of another game.

I was lttp with Path of Radiance and it was nice in that thread not to be posting over other people's conversations about a game they played months ago.

nate38 said:

As for the big thread argument, I don't really see how a single huge thread makes more sense. I actually never bothered looking into this Epic Center business because the thread title is always so long and strange, and with so many pages I figure it's too late to jump in, whatever the current topic. Just seems more complicated than having a separate thread for each a la Retro Game Clubs.

Zero said:

It might help if we had the weekly goals in the OP, I had to search for it a few times..

Xbob42 said:

@Zero I hope we get that into the OP, would be much easier.

Zero said:

@Mr_Mustache Well this is why it might have made the most sense for the dungeon master to run the thread, but that would require separate threads for each game, and... yeah, not getting into that again.

Zero said:

What the.

No offense but the OP is kind of messy. Week 3 is at the top, then a few other games, then Phantasy Star IV week 1, and then text, and THEN the other weeks? Who would even think to go further down to check for other weeks?! Why aren't they just at the top where all of the weeks for games and stuff are?!

Six people. SIX. And those are just the ones willing to speak up and say something.

And your response to every single one of them has either been a variation of this:

Mr_Mustache said:

@Zero
You're just a grumpmaster. Complaint after complaint after complaint..after complaint. What gives, brah?

Or a condescending, 'I GET it, what's wrong with EVERYONE else?!'

Not once have you tried to understand anything from our point of view. Not once have you bothered to understand WHY separate threads would make for a far more user friendly experience and a far more intuitive OP. As long as you're fine with it, *everyone* should be fine with it. You don't see an issue with this attitude?

Zero is right. You're terrible at taking constructive criticism.

@Mr_Mustache It's not that I can't be tasked to scroll down NOW, it's that I had no idea that there was anything down there, since the layout didn't suggest that there would be more weeks below the text. I'm just saying, it could be more intuitive.

I mean, I'm fine now, I'm just offering suggestions for how to have other people not run into the same thing.

@Shadowlink

You need a vacation from this thread. Departing now.

EDIT- I wouldn't DREAM of "constructively criticizing" yours or anyone's thread on here, regardless of what problems I might have with them. Unbelievable.
EDIT2- This is total bullsh. Thanks, brahs.

What the heck are you talking about, everyone constructively criticizes THE ENTIRE SITE, which is how it gets better. Why else would I even have a "REQUESTS" thread? 90% of it is people saying "Why doesn't Negative World..." and sometimes I disagree, but usually I think "oh, yeah, good idea..."

Now whether I ever find the time to do anything about it is a whole other story.

Constructive criticism for things that lots of people use is not a bad thing. It's sort of a necessity at times.

@Zero

Wild idea: LETS TALK ABOUT PHANTASY STAR IV.

Tim isn't even playing this game and he's posted more than anyone.


EDIT- Having an issue with a site (ie: can we see some boxart for games?) is different than crapping on someone's thread. We're different people, different people do things differently. You have absolutely no issue with "Launch the Rocket" being the HUGE GAME DESCRIPTION for the iconic Tetris, but you take huge issue with having to scroll down twice. Incredible. I guess if your cousin did this thread he could do whatever he wanted. Hoooome cookin'!

--We do reviews mostly differently (until you had me edit mine to fit a template), people use different graphics, other folks make different types of threads, but I don't see you saying "Hey Davoid, what is up with your Etrian Odyssey thing?" Hell, he doesn't have links to ANYTHING on NW about the game at all. I guess you guys should cruise over there and bitch about that for a spell; imagine how lost you'd be when you wanted to talk about Etrian Odyssey III but OTHERS were talking about Etrian Odyssey IV already. OH NO! Would I say anything? HELL NO. Why? Because it is FINE, and that is the way that HE wanted to set it up. He obviously did things that way because he thought it looked good. And SirMasterSephiroth does his reviews because he thinks that looks good. And Roy does his Game Entries that way because he thinks it look good. And I did this the way I wanted to..until someone complained it was too confusing and I changed it a little..and people (some not even INVOLVED with the whole damn thing) still complain.

Yeah, its your site ultimately, but in the grand scheme of things, how is this even ANYTHING?

Yeah not to pile on but I completely missed the links to each week until Xbob pointed them out. The OP is kind of noisy, with all the different colors and switching between paragraphs and centered and lists and links and such. You've got links to every week, but there's a link to Week 3 right at the top and then a link to Week 1 half a page below that's among links to other weeks for prior games, and then Week 2 is all the way near the bottom right above a list of users. I figure if you're going to link to the current week right at the top, might as well put the rest of the links for the current game there, right? It's nbd now that I know where everything is, but I didn't realize that and was skimming back a few pages to find the Week 2 goals when I was doing them.

I completed Week 3. (and a little more, actually)

@nate38

Text limit.

I'd have all the weeks right there, but then stuff falls apart and "functions"/code show up. You can only have so much there. Back doing Fire Emblem, I could only have links to the last 5 weeks. Pretty annoying. Every time I tried to add more it'd be BRACKETFEST '12. Links are a lot of characters..


I'm sorry, I figured everyone (with any thread?) inspected the entire "OP." (I hate that term so much. Always bugged me.) Do most people just click to the latest page and not read the top at all? (Like, this isn't Yahoo where the best part of the article is the comments.) I guess I work tremendously different than other folks do. We've determined I do things "my way" a lot, but..how do you guys do it? Its not like it was hiding in there..

@Mr_Mustache I'm not crapping on anything, I offered a small piece of constructive criticism that makes a lot of sense. You take everything so personally though, when the natural response for most people would be "oh I see what you mean."

And you're right, it's not the same as running a site, because you don't get CONSTANT requests to change this, fix that, add this, "where is that?", "why did you do it this way?", etc.!

Doesn't HTML circumvent text limits? Editors can use HTML...

Mr_Mustache said:

@Zero

Wild idea: LETS TALK ABOUT PHANTASY STAR IV.

Tim isn't even playing this game and he's posted more than anyone.

A) No I haven't, and B) Isn't this supposed to be the Epic Centre thread? Lotsa games in here. I even played one of them. I didn't realise you had to be playing the current game in order to be able to post.

Of course if that's the case one would wonder why the previous games are in here at all. You can only post if you're playing the current game it seems.

Ahh, irony.


Look, bottom line: Zero has a requests thread for people to make suggestions, because he uses those suggestions to make the site better for everyone, which encourages new users.

You can either do the same thing here where you take peoples suggestions on board, or you can ignore everyone who ever raises an issue and continue to offer the Mustache Thread Navigation Training Course™.

One of those methods will be more inviting to new people and encourage people to play. The other method will discourage people. See if you can guess which one is which, and then ask yourself do you want more people playing or less?

Your call.

@Mr_Mustache For something like a game thread I often just scan the OP, and if there are updates I sort of hop to where I think the updates are without necessarily reading through everything again.

@Shadowlink I do agree though that if you're not currently involved in things you should butt out a bit. I think that you just kind of like baiting Mustache sometimes.

@Zero

Sometimes, but that's super obvious stuff- Which I do to everyone. You know, like feigning ignorance about NASCAR, or mocking Halo with Stephen. Or calling you a hipster . It's all part of my wacky sense of humour.

On this topic I am 100% serious. I might not be currently involved in *this current game*, but that doesn't mean I'm not involved with the club concept in general. And believe it or not, I actually want to see it succeed- i.e. More players. More players is GOOD. That's what every one of these suggestions is aimed at, making the experience better.

...And instead we get met with dismissive sarcastic responses. That's beyond annoying.

A little example i'd like to illustrate would be one of those current affairs/opinion website things that launched here the other year. And it was designed with one very unique feature- Unlike nearly 99.99999% of websites out there, it scrolled *horizontally*.

Readable? Sure. Completely and utterly unintuitive? Absolutely.

I guarantee that 'feature' alone cost them piles of potential readers. They've since changed it to a more traditional vertical scroll. Instead of, you know, telling anyone who commented on the horizontal layout to stop complaining, and then condescendingly 'teaching them' how to scroll horizontally.

Mustache, if you want to stand by your thread. This is all that needs to be said.

@gojira

HAHAHA!!!