Secret of Mana Review

There aren't a lot of good things you can say about the year 2020, but if I had to find a silver lining, it's been that I've had plenty of time to tackle my gaming shames and backlog. One of the glaring oversights in my background as a retro gamer and RPG buff was the Squaresoft classic Secret of Mana. Part of what has kept me from getting to this game was not having a convenient way to play it. Thankfully the Collection of Mana for Switch went on a steep sale earlier this year, providing a cheap and easy opportunity.

Background:

Secret of Mana is a fantasy action RPG that was originally released for the Super Nintendo in 1995. The game tells the story of a boy, a girl, and a forest sprite who are on a quest to stop an evil empire from activating an ancient weapon called the Mana Fortress. Combat in the game takes place in real-time but uses a cooldown meter for physical attacks and a ring menu system for casting magic. This review is based on the UK version of Secret of Mana which was included in the Collection of Mana for Nintendo Switch.

Pros:

• This is an especially pretty game, especially considering it came out in 1993. I loved the cute sprites, bright color pallet, and rich, varied environments.
• As you would expect from a 16-bit Squaresoft RPG, this game features a great soundtrack. It features everything from traditional fantasy pieces to some interesting experimental tracks. A few of the tracks have loops that are a little too short for my taste, but overall, it's a great listen.
• Some of the writing is pretty amusing. While the dialog can be a bit stilted at times (more on that later), each character has a distinct personality that shows through. I also liked the way some of the characters inverted traditional RPG tropes (e.g. NPCs being prejudicated against the legendary hero and a princess on a quest to rescue a knight).

Cons:

• For lack of a better word, the gameplay of Secret of Mana feels janky. The hit detection in combat always seems little off and the AI for your party members is wildly inconsistent. I often ran into issues with my characters getting stuck on objects in the environment or zoning out in the middle of a boss battle.
• Combat doesn't flow smoothly due to having to wait on a cooldown meter for basic attacks and the action freezing every time you open the magic menu. This game is ambitious for attempting to do party-based action combat with a magic system in 1993, but we've come a long way in terms of action RPG battle systems since then.
• While some parts of the dialog are entertaining, the overall story and script are very disjointed. As a result, certain lines of dialog and, even a few major plot events, feel like they are coming out of nowhere. (Upon reading about this game's development, I found out that this may be the result of some rather extreme constraints placed upon the English localization staff.)
• The nested rings that serve as the game's menu system work ok for battle but I would have liked more organized traditional menus for use outside combat. The ring menus off so little information that it makes it necessary to use the game's manual to look up the attributes and effects of items and spells. Several of Square's RPGs that predate this one offered more informative and practical menus.
• The world of Secret of Mana is very large and intricate, but there are no maps in the game. I'm pretty good at memorizing the layout of areas in games so I was able to work around this (I am far too stubborn to draw maps, however). I just don't understand why in-game maps were omitted when most other SNES games had them.
• The ability to save your game is very limited in this game, which can lead to a lot of frustration and lost progress if you're not careful. Since I was playing via the Collection of Mana, I was really glad that save states were also an option.

Secret of Mana's strong presentation and personality helped a lot with this game's appeal and were just enough to balance out the gameplay issues to make it a decent experience. I can see why this game made such an impact back in the day but it doesn't hold up nearly as well as other 16-bit RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 5 & 6, or Terranigma.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: About 30 hours

In classic fantasy fashion, pulling the sword from the stone signifies that you are The Chosen One.

Unfortunately, being The Chosen One doesn't make you popular in this game.

The full party: Boy, Sprite, and Girl (they don't come with default names)

Every good SNES RPG needs some Mode 7 aerial travel. 

Tales of Symphonia Review

While it didn't quite make my original list of gaming shames, getting into the Tales series has long been on my to-do list. After all, it's the number #3 JRPG series (after Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest), so it represents a pretty big hole in my gaming experience as an RPG aficionado.

I consulted with a lot of Tales fans to find out where I should start this prolific series. The responses I got varied wildly; often one fan's favorite entry would be a game another fan despised. However, almost no one seemed to object to the 2004 GameCube hit, Tales of Symphonia. It also helped that the remastered version was on sale on Steam for $5. 😁

Background:

Tales of Symphonia is a fantasy action RPG that uses a combo-based combat system, similar to a fighting game. The story follows Lloyd, a teenage boy serving as a bodyguard for his childhood friend. Collette, who has been selected to go on a cross-country religious pilgrimage. While this game is a part of the long-running Tales series, its story is completely approachable on its own.

Artistic Qualities:

• This game went the extra mile with character design. Not only are the main characters all a distinct cast of anime people, but even the most basic enemies have detailed models and unique animations. Part of the fun of entering a new dungeon was seeing what new monsters I would encounter.
• The characters, while fairly tropey by today's standards, are well developed and likable. The dialog is generally solid but at times can be a bit too chatty, especially considering the huge volume of dialog in the game as a whole. 
• The story has interesting themes; it heavily focuses on discrimination and WW2 allegories while also mixing in some Norse mythology and sci-fi. The tone, however, is all over the place. At times the game jumps back and forth between grim drama and very light anime comedy. It was often jarring but did keep things from feeling stale.
•  I tried my best to keep up with Symphonia's lore and backstory. After a while, I began to feel like the game's writers made it complicated for the sake of being complicated (there are lots of alliances and betrayals, secret organizations, conspiracies, etc).
• There are fully voiced story-centric cutscenes as well as dozens of text-based support conversations. Sometimes after a long cutscene, it was frustrating to immediately get pushed into several additional heart-to-heart scenes in which the character reacted to the major events of the previous cutscene. Many of the support conversations were amusing but sometimes felt like too much.

Gameplay:

• This game has a very smooth difficulty curve. While there were a few bosses I had to try more than once, I never once had to grind. As those who have read my previous RPG reviews probably know, this type of balanced difficulty is something I highly value.
• Symphonia's battle system is fast-paced and mostly fun but has little strategic depth. Most enemy encounters, even boss battles, are just a matter of spamming your best combos and healing. I could see a lot of players liking the combat's simplicity, but for me, I would have liked something with a little more substance in a game of this length.
• This game featured lots of systems that I barely used. For example, you can cook food and have characters get assigned special titles. Whether or not I used these seemed to be of little or no consequence.
• Symphonia's campaign offers a few sidequests but is a mostly linear experience. That worked out well for this game; I liked feeling that I was always making progress (especially since I streamed the whole game on my Twitch channel).
• Like many older JRPGs, you can only save on the world map or a few specific save points. In dungeons, save points have to be unlocked using an item called a Memory Gem. Each dungeon has one Memory Gem that is dropped by one random enemy somewhere in the labyrinth. The game designers probably set this up as a way of ensuring that a player thoroughly explored the dungeon and had reached the necessary character level before advancing. However, I found this frustrating if I needed to stop playing mid-dungeon and couldn't find the Memory Gem. 
• I really liked how dungeons featured puzzles instead of just combat and treasure. Not all the puzzles were executed well, but I generally liked what they were going for.

Conclusion:

As I got into the game's later acts, I was feeling like the campaign was padded to be much longer than it needed to be. However, as Symphonia's credits rolled and I reflected on the 50+ hours I had spent with the game, it still left a positive impression; it was certainly a fun ride overall. It'll probably be a while before I play another Tales game (next year at the earliest), but I can see why this series is so popular and I will certainly return to it someday in the future.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 56 hours, 27 minutes (main campaign and a few sidequests)

Note: Streaming a full Tales game, as I did with this one, is a big commitment. It took almost four months of streaming nothing but Tales of Symphonia every week in order to finish it. I will likely stick to streaming shorter games from now on.

Acknowledgment: This post is part of the #Blaugust2019 event held by Tales of the Aggronaut. For more info about Blaugust, check out this article.

Persona 4 Review

Compared to last year, 2018’s release calendar has been fairly light. While some gamers might be
lamenting this, I’ve found it has been an excellent opportunity to go back and check out some titles from prior years that I missed. Thus, I’m jumped right into tackling yet another “gaming shame”, the Megami Tensei franchise. Except for two spinoff games, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and Shin Megami Tensei Synchronicity Prologue, I haven’t gotten the chance to get into Atlus’s hugely popular RPG series. A friend was nice enough to lend me his copy of Persona 4 for PlayStation 2 back in April and it's taken me a while to finish the game and put together my thoughts.

Game overview:
Persona 4 is an RPG in which the protagonist and his friends must investigate a series of grisly
supernatural murders that have been taking place in their town. The wrinkle is that the investigators are all high school students and must juggle their school and social lives in addition to gathering clues, fighting villains, and rescuing potential victims.

Observations:

• Persona 4 begins with an incredibly long set of introductory cutscenes. During the first two hours or so of the campaign, the game only requires player input two or three times. Putting non-interactive segments this long in a video game would probably even give a director like Hideo Kojima pause. Thankfully, the writing is pretty good, so this lengthy introduction still has entertainment value, but I still wish it the game’s designers would have broken it up a bit.
• As the two hours’ worth of introductory material makes clear, Persona 4 focuses on developing its characters and story above all else. I found the central murder mystery to be interesting and enjoyed getting to meet the whole cast of characters. The English language voice-overs for these characters are excellent and add significantly to their personalities.
• Atlus made some interesting choices regarding localizing this game. Despite being a 100% English translated game, locations, characters, and events all use their Japanese names (the game is set in Japan, after all). The dialog even includes honorifics with character names. It took me a little while to get used to hearing English-speaking characters calling each other -san and sempai but I have to give the voice actors credit for making it work.
• Much of the gameplay reminds me of old-school dating sims like Tokimeki Memorial. The game follows the daily life of its typical anime teen protagonist over the course of a year as he goes to school, hangs out with his friends, works a part-time job, investigates a serial murder case, and battles demonic forces (I described it as “anime” for a reason). How and with whom the player elects to spend the hero’s time will affect his personal stats. Points in the hero's qualities like "knowledge" and "expression" open up new pathways for interactions between characters but also can affect his combat performance as well.
• Since the hero juggles his high school life and his evil-battling life, I break the gameplay down into two modes: school mode and quest mode. School mode plays much like a visual novel or a dating sim (especially like the aforementioned Tokimeki Memorial). During the classroom segments, the protagonist may be asked questions by the teacher or may have to take exams. Scoring well on these segments improves his “knowledge” stat. After class, the player can elect to have their character attend after-school activities, work a part-time job, or spend time with his friends and family. These activities either boost general stats like “diligence” and “understanding”, or increase the “Social Link” score, which affects combat attributes when in quest mode (more on that later).
• Outside of all the usual high school activities, the player can enter quest mode after school. The quest consists of gathering clues about the murder mystery that the characters are trying to solve by talking to NPCs and exploring dungeons to track down suspects or rescue potential victims. There are about eight dungeons in the game and the player is given a month or two of in-game time to finish each one; missing the deadline to complete a dungeon results in a game over. Thus, managing the character’s time between school mode and quest mode is crucial. 
• The dungeons themselves are themed after each character’s inner struggle (similar to Psychonauts) but the layout of each is procedurally generated with the exception of the boss room. Most of the dungeons are eight to twelve stories tall and require and a considerable amount of time to finish (about three to five hours each in my playthrough). Running out of MP and items often means that dungeon runs have to be spread out across multiple in-game days in order to restock supplies. While I thought the character-specific theming was pretty cool and I didn't mind the procedure layouts, I couldn’t help but wish that the dungeons were a little shorter. After getting to about the sixth floor or so in a given dungeon, I found myself being a little bored of the slow dungeon crawl and wanting to just get to the boss as quickly as possible so I could advance the story.
• The combat is in the form of traditional turn-based battles in which each character in the party can summon a demon (aka a Persona) to use special skills. Most of the strategy of regular battles involve figuring out the right skills to exploit enemy weakness and execute combos. The protagonist can collect new Personas by finding Tarot cards in the dungeon and can swap between these demonic allies in mid-battle. The rest of the characters only have one fixed Persona that they stick with for the whole game. This leads to the protagonist being the only strategic variable in boss battles which makes them less interesting than they could be. It’s important to note that bosses and regular enemies alike can exploit your characters’ weaknesses as well, which can mean that a bad roll of the dice can wipe out your whole party even during a basic encounter.
• In addition to acquiring new Personas, the protagonist can also fuse his Personas together to form new more powerful ones. The power of these fused Personas is a function of the Social Link scores you’ve built up with each character. Every character has an affinity with one of the arcana of the Tarot deck, which correspond with the 22 races of demons in hell (yes, this game has some dark themes in it). Hence, the hero’s decisions in school mode can have a significant impact on his progression in quest mode.
• The connection between the school mode and quest mode of the game manifests itself in some ways that are interesting and others that are jarring. Since the dungeons take place in a hellish parallel dimension to the real world (did I forget to mention that?), things going on in school mode, such as the weather, can reflect the situation in quest mode. For example, rain and fog in the school mode portion of the game foreshadow the death of a character in the dungeons, representing a quest deadline. Since checking the local news is part of the player character’s daily routine, the weather report takes on a foreboding tone that adds to the sense of tension in the story. However, there are other times where this connection didn’t work for me. If you finish a quest mode objective earlier than the game expects you to, you’ll be prompted each day with a message that says something like “you are waiting for the situation to change”, and nothing of any consequence will happen until the original due date for that quest passes. For the first half of the game, I appreciated having this bit of downtime to meet all the characters and develop the Social Links. Yet, as the game went on, I had completed most of the social links that I was interested in and found myself wishing I could turn the clock forward past all the mundane school days and get to the next main story beat. Another instance where the connection between quest mode conflicts with school mode is the relationship between social links and Tarot Arcana. When a character asks the protagonist if he’d like to hang out, the player is prompted with a message indicating the benefits of this social interaction on the strength of his Personas. I found that this made my character seem like some sort of psychopath who weighs all of his interpersonal relationships based on the perks they’ll confer to his personal arsenal of demons. I realize that this prompt is just clarifying a mechanic in the game, but the direct acknowledgment of it in this context highlights how creepy the whole thing is.
• Regarding the character-specific theming of each chapter of the quest, Persona 4 attempts to tackle some rather heavy themes such as anxiety, depression, sexuality, and gender identity. These are ambitious subjects for a video game to tackle (especially a Japanese game from 2008) and the execution sometimes feels a little clumsy by 2018 standards. That being said, I really have to commend the game for trying. Generally, Persona 4 achieves its goal of developing each member of the cast into a relatable person that the player can sympathize and root for.
• While I didn’t know this going in, Persona 4 has multiple endings and it is extremely easy to accidentally get the bad ending. There is a key set of dialog tree decisions during a scene late in the game that determines which ending you get. To me, it seemed unclear which choices would lead to which path. I ended up reloading the scene several times only to get different variants of the bad ending each time before ultimately giving up and looking up the exact path through the dialog tree to get to the good ending. Thankfully, the game explicitly prompts the player to save the game right before this crucial scene.
• Something that is often said about the Persona series is how stylish it is. I agree. The music and character animations give the game an extra helping of personality over pretty much any other RPG.
• Some notes on how I played this game: I played on the easy setting and used a PS2 emulator so that I could make liberal use of save states. I have no regrets about either of these decisions. Losing progress due to large gaps between save points and getting wiped in unforgiving battles would have significantly hampered my ability to enjoy and finish a massive game like this.

Overall, I found that the gameplay of Persona 4 was interesting at first but lost its luster as the game went on; it was the strong characters and compelling central narrative that kept me on board for the 70+ hour campaign. I'm really glad I got to experience this landmark game and I know it will stick with me for quite some time. That being said, the investment of time and mental/emotional energy required to tackle a game as large and deep as this is something that I'm only prepared to handle occasionally. In all likelihood, it will be quite some time before I'm ready to dive into another Persona title.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 73 hours

If you would like to pick up a copy of this game while also supporting this blog, check out the Amazon affiliate links below:
Persona 4 - PS2
Persona 4 Golden - PS Vita

Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles Wrap-up

Over the past few weeks, I've been tackling one of my "gaming shames", the Ys series! On my Twitch stream, I played through the first two entries in this classic action RPG franchise. Here's a quick write-up of each title in the Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles + package:

Ys 1 Chronicles +
Even though the version of Ys 1 that I played is a modern remake (circa 2011) of the original game, it still serves a clear reminder of how games were back in the late 80s. Thus the game is interesting from a historical perspective but its wildy unbalanced difficulty and opaque player messaging made it tougher than it needed to be. Much of my time with the game consisted of wandering around trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do next. When I reached the first boss, I found that I had to grind my character up to level 6 (out of a max of 10) before I could even make a dent in the enemy. Naturally, I went into the second boss battle expecting something similarly tough, only to take down the enemy without losing more than a few HP. The game is also without any of the modern conveniences such as fast travel or an automap. Late in the game, I started following along with a guide and I wish I would've caved in and started doing that sooner. However, despite all these issues baked in from the original 1980s design, I found myself intrigued by the world and themes that the game presented. It also helped that the anime-style character artwork and epic soundtrack were right up my alley. Ultimately, my experience with Ys 1 was not a smooth one but it was enough to show me that the series could develop into something I would really enjoy.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 10 hours, 18 minutes (normal difficulty)

Ys 2 Chronicles +
The seconds Ys game picks up immediately after the first (at one point in their development , they were two chapters of the same game). Despite the short period of time between the two games, Ys 2 was a surprisingly significant leap forward in accessibility. While the labyrinthine dungeons and lack of automap are still there, I was happy to find that the difficulty scaled in a manageable way and that the game did a much better job of informing the player of their next objective. As a result, the second entry of this action RPG series flowed much better even though the game world was larger and the quest was longer. After having adapted to the sudden difficulty spikes of Ys 1, there were actually some cases in Ys 2 where I was over-prepared for boss battles and ended up finishing them much faster than I expected. The "bump combat" system, carried over from the first game is a bit more lenient in Ys 2, though it's still easy to for a bad angle of attack or getting pinned by two enemies to result in nearly instant death. Bump combat was a fun thing to try in the beginning of the series, but I'm glad Ys moved on from it in later installments. Overall the game retained the elements from Ys 1 that I liked while smoothing out many of the issues that I had (at least to the extent one could expect in 1988). Assuming this cycle of refinements built upon a strong basic action RPG foundation continued as the series progressed, I'm pretty excited to play a more recent entry in the Ys saga.
Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 12 hours, 42 minutes (normal difficulty)

If you're trying to decide if the Ys games are for you, I'd suggest watching the intro video to Ys 2. If that combination of high fantasy vistas, anime characters, and power metal makes you feel something, you should probably give Ys a try.

In addition to the PC version that I played, there are also PSP and mobile versions of Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles.

Disclosure: The Amazon links on this page are monetized affiliate links.

Ease into Ys

It's been too long since I've tackled a Gaming Shame or done a Twitch stream, so I'll be killing two birds with one stone with my new series "Ease into Ys"! I'm on a roll with Zelda-like games after coming off Blossom Tales, so I'm taking this opportunity to finally dig into Falcom's classic action-RPG series! I have zero prior experience with the Ys franchise, so I decided to start at the beginning with Ys 1 & 2 Chronicles.

Streams will start this evening on my Twitch channel. I'll be announcing each individual streaming session on Twitter, so be sure to check there if you'd like to know when to tune in!

Metal Gear Solid 3 (3DS) Review

Mission compromised

It turns out I was much closer to the end of MGS3 than I thought at the time I wrote my impressions! As result, most of what I said there is applicable to the game as a whole. Thus instead of writing a full review from scratch, here are some of my observations from the 3rd act of the game followed by some closing thoughts:

WARNING: There may be some spoilers ahead.

• As I had said in my impressions, the fact that they crammed a fairly demanding PS2 game into the tiny and underpowered original 3DS is a technical feat that I continued to marvel at for most of my play-through. However, a lot of the big action set pieces that may have been gripping on the PS2 in 2004 felt drawn-out and excessive on the 3DS in 2017. After getting a few minutes into one of these scenes, I found myself wishing that they would wrap up so that I could return to regular gameplay and have full control of Snake again.
• There are a couple of other artistic excesses that get in the way of the gameplay experience. Most glaring of these is the "boss battle" with The Sorrow. In this scene, all Snake can do is slowly walk by the ghosts of every enemy he's killed. Other than that, there's no other interaction involved with this scene, but it goes on for an extremely long time. While I realize that director Hideo Kojima may have been trying to make some kind of philosophical statement here, this section is not at all enjoyable to play. I ended up just tilting the analog pad forward while watching TV to keep myself entertained as I waited for this part to end.
• While it may have just been the way things were back in 2004, to the modern eye, the sexualization of the female characters comes off as pretty immature. Female characters in MGS3 are usually in various stages of undress, even in segments of the game where it seems completely tonally inappropriate.
• The last few boss fights (i.e. after trudging through The Sorrow) represented some of the best action sequences of the game. However, in some cases, these required the sort of speed and accuracy that the 3DS control scheme just cannot provide. As a result, I had to rely pretty heavily on auto-aim on some these which was a lot less exciting than lining up shots myself would have been. 
• Though most of the action cut scenes fell a little flat for me, there were definitely some dialog cutscenes (especially the ending) that were surprisingly compelling. Kojima is at his best when he's weaving political intrigue and betrayal, rather showing Ocelot spin his revolvers around for the twelfth time.

Ultimately, the experience of playing Metal Gear Solid 3 on 3DS was less than ideal, but I'm glad I finally got around to playing it. I think a linear story-based action game is exactly what I needed after a sprawling open-world RPG like Breath of the Wild. However, throughout my play-through, I couldn't shake the feeling that MGS3 just didn't make a ton of sense as a 3DS game. The combination of clunky controls and a form factor ill-suited to watching lengthy cutscenes detracted significantly from what this game was trying to accomplish and I suspect that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been playing it in longer sessions on the PS2. Thus my recommendation would be if you have the option of playing on the PS2, go with that, but if portability is a big selling point to you, the 3DS version still manages to preserve a decent amount of what originally made MGS so popular (perhaps more so if you have a New 3DS).

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: 14 hours, 48 minutes (main story on easy difficulty)

Note: I suspect this game would have had a shot at a 4-star score if I had played it on PS2.

 No-kill play-throughs are for hippies!

Gaming Shame #2: Metal Gear Solid 3

 

Metal Gear Solid 3 is a gaming shame for me for two reasons:

1. I've been meaning to give the Metal Gear series a second chance after dropping it with MGS2.
2. My wife bought me a copy of this game on 3DS back in 2012, and I still haven't touched it.

With my shiny new Nintendo Switch rapidly making my 3DS and Wii U obsolete, I figured there was no time like now to finally dig into this portable Cold War mission. Here are my thoughts now that I'm about half-way through the game:

•  I'm kind of amazed that my original 3DS is capable of running a PS2 game so well. While the size and resolution of the 3DS screen do leave something to be desired, I can't help but be impressed with how good this game looks and sounds in spite of hardware limitations.
• It's immediately apparent that MGS3 was meant to be played with dual analog control, but unfortunately, since I don't have a Circle Pad Pro or a New 3DS, I'm stuck with having to use the ABXY buttons to aim. This set-up is definitely not as fast and accurate as I would like, but I'm managing to make it work.
• To compensate for the less-than-ideal controls, I decided to power through this game on easy mode. This way Snake can survive taking a few hits while I take a little more time to line up my shots.
•  I forgot how loaded with dialog and cutscenes Metal Gear games are. The beginning few hours of the game probably contains more cutscene time than actual gameplay time. On the PS2 this was probably fine, but on 3DS I'm keenly aware of how much time I'm spending just staring at these lengthy non-interactive scenes.
• The juxtaposition of serious political themes and wacky over-the-top characters is really bizarre. In one moment, the game is covering the effects of the Cuban Missle Crisis on US-Russian relations, in the next, I'm in a boss battle with a man that shoots "bullet bees" out of his mouth.
• The inclusion of the blatantly James Bond-inspired opening theme song "Snake Eater" is incredibly corny, but I kind of like it anyway.

While returning to the 3DS in a post-Switch world hasn't been easy, I've been mostly enjoying my time with MGS3. The convenience of playing this game on a device that I can easily toss into my lunchbox without a case means I can work gameplay sessions into small gaps in my schedule without much pre-planning. The only downside is due to the verbose nature of Kojima games, I've spent many of my lunch breaks just watching 30-minute long cutscenes. At my current rate of progress, I'll probably be finishing up Metal Gear Solid 3 and writing my review within the next 2 weeks.

Never thought I'd be taking a scenic forest stroll on my 3DS

Nothing interferes with the quest for nuclear disarmament quite like bullet bee wounds

Chrono Trigger Review

Showing up 20 years late to the time travel party

People have been waxing poetic about this game on the internet since the days of dial-up, so I’ll get right to the point: Chrono Trigger is an all-around great RPG that combines the best of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Most RPGs that I’ve played and loved have been a mixed bag of components (story, battle system, world design, etc) in which a few of these elements have been the amazing shining stars that make the game great, while the other parts just get the job done in the background. For example, the Witcher games have a really engaging plot and setting with fairly mediocre combat distributed throughout. What makes playing Chrono Trigger such a fascinating experience is that while no one aspect of it is mind-blowing, every component of it is high-quality and comes together to form an exceptionally well-rounded package.

From a gameplay standpoint, there are a couple of welcome upgrades compared to other SNES RPGs. First and foremost is the use of on-screen enemies rather than random encounters. It is really nice to be able to clear a room completely of enemies and then be able to explore it uninterrupted.  The fact that these battles happen on the main game screen rather than a separate battle screen helps make the transition between exploration and combat much more fluid. As for the battle system itself, I was initially somewhat underwhelmed by it, but over the course of the game it expanded in interesting ways and I ultimately came to really appreciate it. The “Tech” system makes party composition very important since each character's abilities interact with others differently. This had the effect of making a given set of three characters really feel like an interdependent team rather than just three individuals performing their own specialized jobs. The use of elemental weaknesses also had a little bit more depth than the traditional “use the water spell against the fire boss” trope, which was definitely appreciated. I was also glad to see that the difficulty curve remained fairly smooth and consistent throughout the entire game. Generally, every time I hit a wall with a boss, the solution was to revise my strategy rather than just grind: this is a sign of a well-balanced game. Outside of combat, progressing through the game is a fairly linear affair, but that’s perfectly fine as it helps maintain the pacing of the game. The only gameplay element that wasn’t particularly strong was the mini-games. The challenges that involved racing, timing, or precise character movement were often unwelcome obstacles to proceeding through the game that didn’t play all that well, especially on a touch-screen, and even with a proper controller weren’t particularly fun. Thankfully these sequences are few and far between.

In addition to the gameplay, Chrono Trigger is also well-rounded artistically. As I mentioned in my preview, the graphics and music are a great display of the SNES's technical capabilities and continued to impress for the entire duration of the game. The overall plot of Chrono Trigger is fairly straight-forward by modern game standards, but I'm sure it would have really stood out back in the 16-bit era. Narratively, where Chrono Trigger really succeeds is in the individual character moments. The combination of distinct character animations and strong writing during character interactions and backstory scenes really does a lot to give personality to each member of the party. In my experience, the best RPGs and fantasy/sci-fi stories make the party of characters feel like a quirky slightly dysfunction family, and Chrono Trigger absolutely nails that feeling. However, sometimes this presented a dilemma for me as only characters that are active party members get to speak during most cutscenes. Thus I was often torn between selecting party members based on combat strategy verse picking the characters I most wanted to contribute to the dialog. I realize that the game is probably set up this way for replay value purposes, but for my play-through, it meant that some of the less vocal characters like Ayla and Robo often ended up getting sidelined even though they were fun to use in battle.

After all these years, it feels really good to have finally experienced this classic game and to see first-hand why Chrono Trigger is so lauded by RPG fans. With this "gaming shame" crossed off my list, I'm definitely curious to look into more recent Chrono Trigger inspired games like I Am Setsuna and Cosmic Star Heroine, as well as the Chrono Trigger semi-sequel, Chrono Cross. That being said, this is a shaping up to be a busy year for games. Between new releases, my backlog, and the remaining items on the gaming shames list (which will be getting expanded soon), it's going to be tough to fit it all in.

Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Completion Time: 32 hours, 8 minutes (campaign and all side quests)


PSA:
As I have mentioned in previous Chrono Trigger posts, I strongly discourage buying the Android version of this game. While it played fine for the first several hours, I eventually encountered unavoidable game-breaking bugs and had to switch to a different version of the game in order to continue. Thus I recommend checking out either the original SNES game (which is also available on the Wii virtual console) or the Nintendo DS version.

Gaming Shame #1: Chrono Trigger

This is a game I've been meaning to get around to for the majority of my life, and I decided that I would kick off 2017 by finally diving into this landmark RPG. As someone who's played and loved most of the other other SNES games by Square and Enix, I somehow missed out on their very first collaboration (back when they were still two separate companies).  Part of my dilemma in starting this game is that while there are multiple ways to play Chrono Trigger (Wii virtual console, DS cartridge, mobile port, SNES emulator), each presents some significant trade-offs. When I came to accept that a PC port was unlikely to happen any time soon, I ultimately decided to pick up the Android version while it was on sale for $5.

At this point I've sunk about 10 hours into the game, and have been having a great time chipping away at it in bed each night on my tablet. It took me a little while to get used to playing a game like this with a touch screen, but now it almost feels like second nature. One concession I did have to make was switching the battle mode from "Active" to "Wait" before boss battles to keep me from getting lit up by the enemy while scrolling through the spell and item menus; I'm just not as fast on a touch screen and I would be with a proper controller. Other than that one minor gripe, I've been pleasantly surprised with how nicely the game plays on Android.

As for the game itself, it's immediately apparent to me why Chrono Trigger is such a classic:

• The battle mechanics have some pretty unique little twists when compared to other 16-bit RPGs.
• The difficulty curve thus far has been very smooth, no need for grinding yet.
• The character animations do a great job of giving the sprites personality. You can tell an animator like Akira Toriyama was involved.
• The music and graphics are really beautiful. Square had clearly mastered the SNES hardware by the time this game came out.

I'm going to continue working through this one bit by bit and am excited to see how it progresses. It seems like an almost absurd prospect to write a review for such a lauded classic, but I'll attempt to neatly wrap up my thoughts once I finish Chrono Trigger at some point in the next few weeks.

Gaming Shames

 So far my blog posts have come in the forms of impressions, reviews, and my special series "Demo Hotness". Today I'd like to roll out another special post series, "Gaming Shames". In a couple of posts in the past, I've made mention of the term "gaming shames", but never really gotten into much detail about what this term means for my purposes with this blog. A gaming shame is a major game or franchise that, as a seasoned life-long gamer, I'm embarrassed to say I have zero experience with. Throughout 2016 I've managed to play through the majority of my backlog, so as a new year's resolution of sorts, I've decided to finally fill in some of these gaps in my gaming background. Here's a quick list of a couple of my gaming shames with a little blurb about why each is on the list:

• Chrono Trigger
• I love the SNES, I love RPGs, but somehow missed the game that is supposed to be the pinnacle of 16-bit role-playing.
• Phoenix Wright
•  It popularized visual novels in the West and is referenced in the gaming media all the time.
• Dragon Quest 4 or 8
• My social media avatar is a Dragon Quest sprite, yet I've only ever played the first 3 games in the series... kinda makes feel like a phony
• Castlevania Symphony of the Night
•  I've played almost every single Castlevania game, except for the one that many claim is the best.
• Persona
•  I hadn't even heard of this series until about a year ago, and now I feel like I hear people singing its praises all the time. I'll probably start with P4.
•  Secret of Mana or Ys
• I'm still trying to figure out where the line is drawn between "action adventure" and "action RPG", maybe some of these classic examples will help me sort it out.

Since I still have a lot of other games to tackle this year, I'm not committing to playing all of these in 2017. Over time this list will likely expand as I find out about more must-play classics that I missed back in the day. Next week I'll cover some of my impressions of the first of these gaming shames I'll be taking on, Chrono Trigger!  I'd love to hear if some of my fellow gamers have similar lists like this, so feel free to give some of examples of your own gaming shames in the comments below or tweet them using the hashtag "#GamingShames"!

Acknowledgement: The word cloud image used in this post was created with Tagul. Check them out at https://tagul.com!