Chrono Trigger ported more times than Myst?

[BulletMagnet]

Oh, and those sealed chests. Talk to them in the past (600 AD), but don't open them. Then go to the future (1000 AD) and open them for an upgraded item, then return to the past for the other version of it.

I like CT (and JRPGs in general), but this is one of those inexplicable little "tricks" that pop up in games like this all too frequently, and make me nerd rage every single time...unless I'm forgetting something, the game NEVER so much as HINTS at this exploit, so the only way that almost every player will ever discover it is via an FAQ or something along those lines. I mean, when you're given no indication whatsoever that saying "no" could be to your advantage, why would you ever say anything but "yes" when you go up to a chest and it says "would you like to open it?"

Off the cuff, SMT: Nocturne did sort of the same thing with certain special chests, but as you got a little further in you could discover a series of hints as to exactly how they worked - why in heaven's name do so few RPG developers bother to do this?

Rant over...for now.

[Ganelon]

Well, it was pretty suspicious that only those chests gave you the option to open or not. And when it comes to RPGs, esp. CT, that sort of difference stands out. I actually saved before opening anything my first time. However, I'll admit it was just plain luck that I touched the 1st chest beforehand. When I saw that the other chests—which I didn't touch—had the same items in the future, I almost saved, accepting that only the 1st chest had special contents, before I suddenly realized that I had to actually touch the other chests before the contents would change.

If you want something impossible to figure out without a guide, try the Zodiac Spear in FFXII, which is obtainable from a chest only if 4 other specific and unrelated chests aren't opened or from another chest that only appears and spawns the right item 1/1000 of the time. Oh, and both methods also have particular equipment requirements as well.

[Obiwanshinobi]

The most cryptic unlockable in a jRPG I know about is that other ending in Valkyrie Profile.
Sylvan Tale for the Game Gear is yet another fan-translated Zeldoid.
According to kozo, Ys Chronicles on the PSP runs at 30 fps. If it's true, I wouldn't bother. Complete is still where it's at.

[Drum]

The most cryptic unlockable in a jRPG I know about is that other ending in Valkyrie Profile.
Sylvan Tale for the Game Gear is yet another fan-translated Zeldoid.

Secret ending in Knights in the Nightmare is just retarded.

[Skykid]

It's still *mostly* level grinding, but the background diversity makes up for it.

You know, I never really did much grinding in CT.[/quote]

I mean grinding as a matter of course, my apologies. I don't mean you need to do extra curricular grinding, just that you spend a lot of time fighting and not much else.

[BulletMagnet]

If you want something impossible to figure out without a guide, try the Zodiac Spear in FFXII

Heh, yeah, I have heard of that one, but having not played FFXII myself (for more than a few minutes, anyways) I couldn't cite it from personal experience. As for CT, honestly, all they had to do to quiet me down was have some random townie offer a hint as to the benefits of leaving the boxes "half-open"...or, heck, even just give some indication that after you first activate the pendant SOMEthing of interest happens apart from "Hey, you can finally open it now after being repeatedly teased up to this point! Want to do it?"

According to kozo, Ys Chronicles on the PSP runs at 30 fps. If it's true, I wouldn't bother. Complete is still where it's at.

Related question for the more tech-savvy than myself: does ANYthing on the PSP run at 60 FPS?

[Obiwanshinobi]

I can't see why emulators and some PSX games bought from the Store wouldn't run at 60 fps or so.
If none of PSP's native games does, even the likes of Lumines and Space Invaders Extreme, it's just... I mean, really, power saving already was an issue with GBA, but I'm sure at least some of its games performed better.
First PSP game I played was Ridge Racer in a store and I recall being fairly impressed by the fluidity of it, but at the time even 30 fps with textured polygons on a handheld would have been impressive.

[Hagane]

It's a game about winning the battles, and the key to it is having your dudes levelled up enough, which you earn by grinding. If the grinding game was more adventurous, as it is in Disgaea, I wouldn't mind terribly, but it's not.

There's no need to grind in TO except for the ambush battle. Good positioning (height, enemy movement and attack order, etc), item / class management and sending the proper characters against the proper enemies is enough. Saying that it absolutely needs grinding or savestates is akin to saying that you need to credit-feed to finish an STG.

So is Valkyrie Profile

Besides the obscure ending requirements and guts + autoitem, what's wrong with VP?

[Obiwanshinobi]

You need savestates to finish Tactics Ogre as it's too fucking long to be finished without them. That's one thing. You also need them to save a few characters that either die or survive in a couple of turns when you can essentially do fuck all about it but wait. There's more things you need savestates for in that game and if you claim otherwise, I don't believe you.

[Hagane]

You are right about the stupid swordsman you need to save. Forgot about that one.

Using a savestate because you need to do something else and then come back later is one thing, you make it seem as if you need savestates because the game is impossible to beat otherwise. Which is untrue, because you can beat every single battle except for the ambush and the dumb swordsman ones with strategy alone. I don't think the game deserves such a harsh treatment for a couple of badly designed battles.

Maybe you aren't balancing your teams well enough? Do you have good archers / long range characters? I'd like more info on how you play the game and what you feel needs savestating, besides those two battles.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Er, quite the opposite, I avoid saving during battles as it is glitched and sometimes does not record modified ground stats. Trying to win battles by abusing savestates is a bad idea.
I don't have any problems with my units now. Once the game allowed me to raise my dudes from the dead, it got better. It's just that my good will to carry on waned and I haven't touched the game for months now. As I seem to be well into the second half, I probably will finish it at some point for the sake of completion, but it made me seriously doubt if the Japanese take on turn based tactics is my thing. These games just are not as cleverly designed as their complexity suggests. If they are not all about grinding, then I wonder why grinding is so effective in those. Something's fishy.
I wish more jRPGs were like Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter. While grinding is an option there (necessity if you want to unlock everything), the sense of urgency is induced by the gameplay mechanics rather than narratives. I guess that's how the original Fallout felt before the patch. Valkyrie Profile only pretends to be like it.

[Hagane]

Well, grinding is just there if you want to lower the game's challenge. I don't like leveling up in general as a design choice, but grinding it's not mandatory in TO, especially since training is only optional. You can ignore it and finish the game just fine, except for the ambush battle. IMO the extra dungeon is much more of a problem since you do get extremely overpowered from there. Also, Princess Kachua pretty much breaks the game (you can kill entire enemy teams with her alone, TG Cid is a pussy compared to her), but thankfully those things come when the game is about to end and are still optional.

I disagree about the game getting better after you can resurrect your allies, I feel the game gets a ton easier and you need to plan your game a lot less since you can always get your characters back.

Personally I liked Ogre Battle's (the first one) take on grinding. You can power level all you want and you will breeze through the game, but your alignment will drop and people will hate you and see you as an oppressor rather than as a liberator. If you want to get a good ending, you must avoid grinding at all costs.

I'm still interested in reading in more detail what you dislike about VP.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Nah, you don't need to plan that much more without resurrection. You just restart a battle every time you lose a dude. It is called "dilution". It's nothing like iron man mode in, say, Warlords Battlecry III, where death of a character is permanent.
I like Valkyrie Profile a lot, but it's a fluke that I happened to have just the right mindset and time on my hands to appreciate it. Dungeons are on the lame side, so is platforming, the story reads like some fanfiction and and difficulty levels are a joke ("easy" is known to be harder than "normal", but not quite as rich in content, whereas "hard" has more content than "normal", but isn't really harder). Last but not least, some other ending is explicitly hinted, but the conditions to unlock it are cryptic as stated above.

[Hagane]

VP's story is pretty good for JRPG standards IMO, which isn't saying a lot, but I'd rate it higher than CT for sure. Maybe being a Norse mythology fan is blinding me? I like dungeons except for the random ones which are indeed lame (desing-wise, though they have some interesting enemies), and I liked platforming with the crystals (especially when you had to use the dust to get somewhere), though the fact that you can't die from a bad jump (well, unless you happen to land into a hard enemy I guess) takes away a lot of the challenge from it, though at least I think it's way better than modern Castlevanias in that regard.

Easy is harder than normal? I haven't played the game in a couple of years, why is that? Agree about the requirements for the special ending being retarded and completely impossible to guess without a FAQ.

My main gripe with the game is that you can't skip dialogue. I love the battle system and all the shit you can do (beating the hamsters in a single turn at level 30~ was one of the most satisfying things I've done in a game), but having to read all that stuff over and over, especially the hour long intro gets old fast.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I haven't noticed much in common with Norse mythology in Valkyrie Profile. Some names are taken from it and the valkyrie is a psychopomp, but that's about it. Depicted world is a typical Japanese fantasy patchwork without any distinctive traits of pre-Christian Norse material culture as far as I can tell.
I was pleasantly surprised by the attention to detail Vinland Saga showed as before it there seemed to be a gaping hole in Japanese pop-vision of medieval Europe where ~10th century should be.

[Hagane]

It takes some liberties (like fusing Valkyries with the Norns, replacing Jomurgand with Bloodbane, etc) and Ragnarok is pretty underwhelming, but the God's personalities are pretty faithful as far as I can remember.

Vinland Saga rocks yeah, though it doesn't have much to do with mythology.

[Obiwanshinobi]

It does, however, have depicted world as well.
I found the world of Valkyrie Profile disappointingly random.