* * * * * 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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URL to share (right click and copy)

Can I join at the last minute, or rather, about 10 and a half hours after the last minute?

@VickiL

YES!!! I'm sure Mustache'll add you to the list whenever he checks this thing.

Got to Tomoe just now. Shall continue later today! Never played a Phantasy Star (non-Online series) game prior to this for more than a few minutes. Remember to press start to bring up the menu to save at any time outside of dungeons! Didn't figure that out until after my first dungeon.

Is there a way to see what spells do without just using them? I know what some of them do because I recognize them from Phantasy Star Online (i.e. Foi in PSIV = Foie in PSO = Fire for normal HUMANS, same with RES being RESTA being HEAL) but others I have no clue. SANER? What is that? I used one and all the enemies kind of temporarily split in half for a split second and I was like... did their defense go down or something? There was no information given.

@Xbob42

I'm not sure if there's any way to see what they do in game. Mostly I've just been trying stuff out. But this is from the manual.

Techniques
Following are some of the Techniques your characters will learn. Some are reserved for battle only, while others can be used in Camp. All Techniques take up a character's TP, and the more powerful the Technique, the more TP is used. A Technique might not work in battle against a certain type of enemy or defense, but the TP is used up anyway.

Battle Techniques:

Affect one enemy on screen:
Foi, Gifoi, Nafoi blast the enemy with a bolt of flame.
Wat, Giwat, Nawat freeze the enemy by dropping the temperature of the surrounding area.
Vol kills the enemy by destroying its nervous system.
Tsu, Githu, Nathu fires an arrow of light at the enemy.

Affect all enemies on screen:
Zan, Gizan, Nazan suffocate enemies by turning the surrounding area into a vacuum.
Gra, Gigra, Nagra crushes enemies with a powerful gravity well.
Megid disintegrates the molecular structure of all enemies on screen.

Bolt kills enemies by destroying their nervous systems.
Gelun causes enemies to age quickly and reduces attack strength.
Doran slows down enemy reaction speed.
Brose suddenly expands enemy body mass to twice the normal size, resulting in damage.
Rimit interferes with enemy nervous systems, resulting in unconsciousness.

Boost Techniques: Use these Techniques to boost the abilities of your characters while they are in battle. These Techniques do not boost character HP.
Shift increases the physical attack strength of one active character.
Saner increases the reaction speed of all active characters.
Deban creates a shield before all active characters, increasing their defensive strength.

Healing/Restorative Techniques:
Sar restores some HP to all active humanoid characters.
Res, Gires, Nares restore some HP to one active humanoid character.
Anti cures one active character of poisoning, but does not raise HP.
Rimpa cures one active character of paralysis, but does not raise HP.

Arows revives one active character who has been knocked unconscious, but does not raise HP.
Rever revives one flatlined character and restores 1/4 of total HP.
Regen cures poisoning, unconsciousness or paralysis, or restores all HP to one flatlined character.

Travelling Techniques:
Ryuka teleports all characters to any city previously visited.
Hinas teleports all characters out of dangerous areas such as dungeons or labyrinths.

@Koovaps Thanks, that clears things up somewhat!

Going by Koovaps week 1 goals, I'm through it in about 2.5 hours. Got the main guys who are with you the whole time so far up to level 10. I'm amazed how much I've forgotten of this game. Really one major spoiler is about the only thing I remember about it. I'm much more familiar with the first 2 games.

@DeputyVanHalen

Same here about being more familiar with the first 2 games. I was working a bit blind in where to bring people to this week, and I was hoping for something closer to 4 hours, but I wanted to err on the lighter side of things. I think I was a bit longer than you, but probably not too much. Next week will definitely be longer.

@Koovaps

Man, i reeeally don't like when games do that stuff. Why not just "Fire?"

And those are some weird spells otherwise; "creates a vacuum?" Yowe. "Ages the enemy quickly?" Who thinks of this stuff?

@Mr_Mustache I like the overly-pseudo-scientific explanations, I just wish they'd give practical information on top of it. Here's Gra (Gravity): HITS ALL ENEMIES AND DOES A BUTTLOAD OF DAMAGE.

@Xbob42

Lets make an RPG together. We'll define how much damage a spell does by BUTTLOAD. or S-Load. Or truck-load. It would be solid, and people would understand.

@Mr_Mustache Exactly!

WIMPY
GIRLY
ADEQUATE
MAN-ISH
MANLY
BEEFY

MEGA
OMEGA
TRIMEGA
BUTTLOAD
TRUCKLOAD
S-LOAD
QUANTUM S-LOAD

@Mr_Mustache

Yeah, it's a bit dopey and inscrutable. We'll see just how many of these names I'll remember while playing.

Also, I'd play a CRAPLOAD of your guys' RPG!

Yay, I'm added! Now to not make any progress at all until next Saturday.

I'm playing now.

Is there a way when buying stuff to see if you already have it / if it is actually better than what you have? Doesn't seem to be.

@Xbob42
They already did that in World of Warcraft. I don't remember the words exactly, but their healing potions are named things like "Minor/Lesser/Mini Healing Potions, then Major/Super/Hyper, and when they ran out of adjectives they started making up stuff like "Runic Healing Potions" for levels above 80. They also had a little tooltip that described what range of HP would be restored, catered to your character's stats, what level they had to be in order to be smart/strong enough to uncork the bottle, perhaps even a little description on how it tastes I don't know it's been years since I booted that old game up.

But you know, Blizzard didn't have things like cartridge sizes and a timely translation to English to deal with.

Phantasy Star used psuedo-scientific descriptions for the techniques because it's a SCI FI world! You'll be delighted to know that magic does eventually come into play and that it's as English and mundane as you've always hoped. The fire storm spell is called "Fire Storm" and it produces a storm of fire. How exciting. None of that uncertainty of learning a spell with a weird name like NASAK and saving before testing it out in case it, oh, I don't know, kills off one of your team members or something.

Here's a tip: Try creating a battle-macro where you force Hahn to use "WAT" first, then Chaz uses "TSU" and Alys uses "FOI".

@Dark Weres Yes, I played World of Warcraft extensively. They had accurate descriptions of function, but the descriptions of the item itself was so boring.

The problem with the lack of description of actual function is that a lot of spells don't do anything that's immediately visible. Did I debuff the enemy? Did I attempt a one-hit kill spell and fail? I get literally zero information unless it's basic damage!

@Xbob42
Just look at the Operation Guide in the Wii Menu. They basically include all the information that was in the manual of the original game.

@Dark Weres ...I'm not playing on the Wii!

Never mind, game comes with a nice .pdf on Steam! Had to browse local files:



I mean, I know I could easily look it up online, but I like the idea of it just being this insular little community of us using the info we have at hand, what we figure out and whatever came with the game. Feels more connected that way! Like we're a community or something!

Xbob42 said:

I mean, I know I could easily look it up online, but I like the idea of it just being this insular little community of us using the info we have at hand, what we figure out and whatever came with the game. Feels more connected that way! Like we're a community or something!

YES! That's what I'm talking about! It's way more fun that way.