Chrono Trigger ported more times than Myst?

[Hagane]

From what I've read in that topic, you mostly complain about savestates which as far as I'm concerned it's a non issue (why would you abuse savestates in a strategy game?).

Only valid complaints I could think of right now would be the randomness that plagues JRPGs in general, sometimes producing hilariously infuriating situations (have 99% of chances to hit but the enemy parries anyway).

[Drum]

Don't bother with Vagrant Story OWS, game is a fucking mess.

[greg]

From what I've read in that topic, you mostly complain about savestates which as far as I'm concerned it's a non issue (why would you abuse savestates in a strategy game?).

If you've played the Super Robot Taisen Original Generations 1 and 2 on the GBA, abusing savestates is nearly mandatory.

[Skykid]

If you've played Gyakuten Saiban, abusing savestates is mandatory.

Fixed!

[Elixir]

Why would you savestate in Phoenix Wright?

Speaking of savestates, the upcoming Dragon Quest compilation for Wii is completely redundant as it's possible to savestate during battles, meaning it's impossible to lose. Also, watch the video.

[Hagane]

I don't know about SRT (if you DO need savestates it's a badly designed game), but you don't need savestates in GS except maybe for 2 since it has a lot of ambiguous solutions (something the rest of the saga doesn't have as far as I've played).

[Sumez]

Chrono Cross is not good. Pretty backgrounds and fabulous soundtrack, but it sucks nonetheless.

CC disappointed me when it came out, comparing it to CT, but it's still a damn awesome and amazing game from the golden age of the genre!

I think I wrote this once before on this forum.

[BryanM]

From what I've read in that topic, you mostly complain about savestates which as far as I'm concerned it's a non issue.

"Masturbation sim" = training grind. Where you fight yourself for EXP. Because just having one single level less than the enemy is a death sentence early on. It's "masturbation" because you're fighting yourself and getting no where financially/itemally.

I love parts of the game, but would not put it up there. 3/5 on the 'ole Icymeter.

[Hagane]

"Masturbation sim" = training grind. Where you fight yourself for EXP. Because just having one single level less than the enemy is a death sentence early on. It's "masturbation" because you're fighting yourself and getting no where financially/itemally.

I love parts of the game, but would not put it up there. 3/5 on the 'ole Icymeter.

Only time I've ever needed to do use that is when you get ambushed and Denim can get killed in one hit if he's underleveled. FFT improved that with non-story battles but I don't think the "masturbation sim" is such a big deal if you play intelligently.

[Obiwanshinobi]

What a turn-based strategy game is? A strategy game is like Heroes of Might & Magic III, where without strategy you are screwed, at least on certain maps. Tactics Ogre is nothig along those lines. 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.
Tactics Ogre is a pile of annoyances, like the fact you have to select your team for each battle BEFORE it starts, when you neither have any idea what sorts of terrain it'll take place on, nor which ground stats modifications the enemies will be prone to. "Playing intelligently" in such circumstances means starting every battle with random dudes in your team, taking a peek at terrain types and enemy stats, then reloading a save from before the battle and adjusting your team with the "foreseen" information in mind.
Don't even get me started on the octopus...

Don't bother with Vagrant Story OWS, game is a fucking mess.

So is Valkyrie Profile, but I enjoyed the US version. I need to have a crack at Vagrant Story anyways, for the sake of my research.

[Ganelon]

The strategy in Tactics Ogre isn't on such a macro level that it involves forming different teams to counter different situations. Except for the aforementioned duels that require Denim to be capable in melee, you don't need to adjust your party to have counters in place if your base group is balanced (or rather, unbalanced) well enough. In fact, constantly adjusting your team would help explain why you're not getting all the experience for your main party that you should be getting. The strategy is in knowing the proper class/item setups beforehand, experience distribution, as well as the actual battling. Now, that admittedly doesn't help the first-time player but then, it's not like players are supposed to 1CC most Cave shooters their first go either.

If you want to see grinding, try getting most of the special items in the PSP version of TO. That version also has ways to avoid grinding in the main story but it has MMO-style rare drops that encourage folks to waste dozens of hours trying to get a desired item by luck. Or play the original Dragon Quest, which has no skills that can bypass leveling. Now that's real and unavoidable grinding.

[Skykid]

Really getting into Chrono now. The boss battles are really well balanced and thought out in terms of original strategies. Quite challenging too. Things are opening up and the graphics are really nice. In snes terms it's a real sexy looker, and the enemies have loads of Toriyama character. I especially like all the beautifully drawn full screen sections (like the courtroom) as they really flesh the world out.

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

My only minor gripe is Chrono himself: he's somehow really characterless and his reason for getting involved in the ensuing adventure seems totally absent. Link is the undisputed silent RPG hero, but I've seen square do Snes heroes with more depth than this one.

[BulletMagnet]

Link is the undisputed silent RPG hero, but I've seen square do Snes heroes with more depth than this one.

Adol Christin would like a word with you.

[gct]

Link is the undisputed silent RPG hero, but I've seen square do Snes heroes with more depth than this one.

Adol Christin would like a word with you.

A silent word, that is. We know Adol does actually speak, however, but it is always a passive narrative like a retelling of past events to somebody in the future.

I can't remember needing any kind of battle strategy in Chrono Trigger. Maybe I should play it again, it has been at least 15 years since I last played it after all...

[BulletMagnet]

I can't remember needing any kind of battle strategy in Chrono Trigger.

You needed a little bit, in terms of taking along team members with attacks that could best take advantage of the enemy formations and such you encountered in an area - there was some trial and error involved, but seeing as you could switch characters pretty much anytime outside of battle it wasn't too bad.

[Ganelon]

I don't remember any challenge in Chrono Trigger... well, maybe some of the more innovative bosses like Son of Sun that require non-brute force methods of winning. I agree that the boss battles are balanced though in that they're constantly thrown out without being overbearing and most last long enough to be a bit worrying. Thankfully, CT is one of the few RPGs where elemental defense is logical and drastically affects results.

I'd say that CT is one of the pinnacle points of traditional RPGs. Even though it offers almost nothing new, it successfully blends interesting ideas (time travel, ATB, movement in combat, combination attacks, visible enemies, silent protagonist, ex-villain recruiting, vehicle use, multiple endings, etc.) from a bunch of other RPGs together into a very fine mixture.

[Obiwanshinobi]

What ChT did to jRPG is akin to what Shining Force did before - threw away all the filler and kept all the good stuff.

[Skykid]

I don't remember any challenge in Chrono Trigger... well, maybe some of the more innovative bosses like Son of Sun that require non-brute force methods of winning.

Yeah this is it.

In all honesty it's been a long time since I played a TB RPG (or any JRPG for that matter), but I quite like the quite inventive methods for dissecting boss weak points and adapting your characters strengths to them. They're not particularly difficult to decipher, but it's better than a repeated cycle of attack/heal/revive (although there's a lot of that too.)

[DragonInstall]

If you guys enjoyed the old school turn based rpg games, I think you should play persona 4. Best turn based rpg I've played.

I'm tired of all these action rpgs being spewed out personally. I wish FF would go back to it's roots, but that series just went to shit to appeal to the weaboo crowd.

[Skykid]

I wish FF would go back to it's roots, but that series just went to shit to appeal to the weaboo crowd.

So true.

You mention loads of ARPG's being churned out, got some examples? Personally I'm not really a TB fan. I can get into it, but I find it kind of tedious tbh.

That said if these ARPG's you talk about are 3D modern bullshit RPG's I'm not interested either way.

[Ganelon]

Pretty much all the tri-Ace stuff. All the Tales games. All the Monster Hunter clones. All Western-style CRPGs and RPG shooter hybrids nowadays. All MMOs. And even "traditional" JRPGs nowadays tend to be movie-fests without much exploration.

Times are tough now for RPG fans of the 90s. The last original traditional JRPG that I thought was a masterpiece was Xenogears. And the only upcoming RPG I'm looking forward to within the next year (with no info on the new Genso Suikoden) is The Legend of Heroes Ao no Kiseki. There's decent stuff on the handhelds but they don't tend to be as refined. For Square, the chibi artwork in The 4 Heroes of Light (and the upcoming Bravely Default) makes an otherwise interesting game quite unappealing.

[Skykid]

Pretty much all the tri-Ace stuff. All the Tales games. All the Monster Hunter clones. All Western-style CRPGs and RPG shooter hybrids nowadays. All MMOs. And even "traditional" JRPGs nowadays tend to be movie-fests without much exploration.

Times are tough now for RPG fans of the 90s. The last original traditional JRPG that I thought was a masterpiece was Xenogears. And the only upcoming RPG I'm looking forward to within the next year (with no info on the new Genso Suikoden) is The Legend of Heroes Ao no Kiseki. There's decent stuff on the handhelds but they don't tend to be as refined. For Square, the chibi artwork in The 4 Heroes of Light (and the upcoming Bravely Default) makes an otherwise interesting game quite unappealing.

I thought 4 Heroes of Light was the reverse: graphically interesting but the game was severely lacking any soul. I think I gave it 3 hours before moving on, wasn't feeling it. That was TB tho.

Before that, Dragon Quest IX, which began well but after 10 hours was so dry and formulaic I lost all interest. I had a try of Tri-Star Infinite Undiscovery which was diabolically bad and Resonance of Fate, whose character designs were an instant turn off and the game got boring really quickly.

Oh and FFXIII got a few hours. Yuck. Reminds me why I steer well clear of that series these days.

When I think of ARPG I think Zelda style: simple and fun straight up battling with no screen changes. Anything like that worth looking at?

[Mortificator]

Quintet's Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma might be my favorite non-Zelda action-RPGs. There's Ys I & II Complete and Ys (III): The Oath in Felghana are very good, though those use experience points. And for Western developers there's Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, though I haven't got around to playing past the first boss, so I don't know if it gets crappy later on.

Chrono Trigger had enough difficulty to make the final fight against Lavos feel appropriately epic. It wiped me out a couple times, even though I completed all those sidequests that open up after Death Peak.

[Obiwanshinobi]

If you like Quintet games, check out Granstream Saga.
The only professionally developed in recent times game in the vein of Zelda that isn't by Falcom I can put my hands on would be 3D Dot Game Heroes. Lovely voxel graphics (best looking 3D game on the PS3 if you ask me), but I haven't played it.
Falcom games rock hard and should be played on a PC. There's also Wander Wonder by Compile for the PC, but it's only in Japanese.
If you can put up with loading times in Blood Omen for the PSX (PC version might be trickier to get to work), there's no reason not to give Legend of Mana a go. Just pretend it's not a Seiken Densetsu game and you should be fine (I believe it would have been better off labelled as a SaGa spin-off).
Last but not least, on ye olde PSX there is Brave Fencer Musashi. Quality-wise it's not up to the Zelda standards, but hunger and fatigue features give it a peculiar vibe I like.
There's the lovely Threads of Fate too.
Other Square games from that period worth checking out: dungeon modes in Tobal 1&2 and Ehrgeiz, as well as Cyber Org, although these are essentially dungeon crawlers (not much overworld exploration and dialogue).
I can't remember the name of a PSX game I've only read about: some action-adventure/city sim (?) hybrid. Something about a tower of bones? There was hunger, fatigue and a day/night cycle in that game too if I understood correctly. Any ideas?
P.S. Found it - the name's Tail of the Sun.

[Ganelon]

Well, I'm normally not a fan of top-down ARPGs but my favorite is Beyond Oasis (The Story of Thor) so if you haven't given that a try, you should. There's a later prequel called The Legend of Oasis (Thor) that's also fun but slightly less amazing.

As for more modern ARPGs? Come to think of it, the last original non-Falcom ARPG that I enjoyed was Brave Prove (from Data West of Rayxanber fame) on the PS from back in the late 90s. Many US fans would probably point to the original Alundra and you can't go wrong with that either. Quintet's last ARPG was Brightis but be warned that it's a far cry from the company's SFC trilogy.

One game that doesn't get much mention is Vampire Kyuuketsuki Densetsu, which has a pretty unorthodox overall system (necessitating an understanding of Japanese unlike most ARPGs) but still plays like an ARPG at heart. In more recent times, there are also a few Shining and Summon Night (RIP Flight Plan) ARPGs but they appeal to select audiences, which don't include me.

[Skykid]

Well, I'm normally not a fan of top-down ARPGs but my favorite is Beyond Oasis (The Story of Thor) so if you haven't given that a try, you should. There's a later prequel called The Legend of Oasis (Thor) that's also fun but slightly less amazing.

I did Story of Thor way back in the day. It was good, although it lacked certain traditional RPG elements (like towns) that made it feel a little hollow. The graphics were great and the fighting system was tight though, I enjoyed it.

As for more modern ARPGs? Come to think of it, the last original non-Falcom ARPG that I enjoyed was Brave Prove (from Data West of Rayxanber fame) on the PS from back in the late 90s. Many US fans would probably point to the original Alundra and you can't go wrong with that either. Quintet's last ARPG was Brightis but be warned that it's a far cry from the company's SFC trilogy.

Alundra was a lot of fun. I remember getting to a puzzle that was nigh on impossible however. That game melted my brain.

[Ganelon]

Well, maybe Fray would work for you since there's a town acting as an intermission after every level. For someone who enjoys shooters and considering Zelda an ARPG, then it should be good fun.

[Drum]

I recommend you play Virtual Hydlide.

[gct]

Wow! I've never played Alundra but this looks like my kind of ARPG. Thanks guys.

[Barrakketh]

Personally I found Secret of Evermore even better than Secret of Mana.

I ran into a game-ending bug late in Secret of Evermore and raged so fucking hard that I couldn't make myself play through the game yet again to beat it. I think this was back in 1996.

I'm using the FAQ to refresh my memory, but it was when you have to recover the Diamond Eyes late in the game before you go to Omnitopia. When you go into the "area" to fight the boss and it has those teleporters that take you to random areas? Well, I never got onto the platform with the boss and escaped using Wings, then saved after picking up supplies.

So, the game ending bug...when you go into the boss area some gates rise up and lock you in it. Guess what I discovered when I returned? Yep, the gates were still there and I couldn't reach the boss.

Really getting into Chrono now. The boss battles are really well balanced and thought out in terms of original strategies. Quite challenging too. Things are opening up and the graphics are really nice. In snes terms it's a real sexy looker, and the enemies have loads of Toriyama character. I especially like all the beautifully drawn full screen sections (like the courtroom) as they really flesh the world out.

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

You know, I never really did much grinding in CT. The only exception(s) was abusing the hunting grounds in 65,000,000 BC so I could trade for items, which could then be sold for more useful equipment. And even that isn't necessary, it's just one of those things I started doing on clean runs. If I killed everything in an area I found I was always leveled up enough to take on whatever was next, unless you wanted to take the bucket at the End of Time early on in a clean game or fights that you're supposed to lose.

Now, if you're a power gamer type you can play it differently and I started to do this as I played CT again in my 20's. Grinding-wise, there's one spot on the Mountain of Woe that has a respawning Rubble (AFAIK it's the only one in the game) that you can abuse to get mid-ethers and shit-loads of Tech Points. You don't get experience from it (though some of the enemies before it reward some), but you can quickly get every single skill unlocked before going to the Underwater Palace.

There was some abuse of a certain boss on the Black Omen. If you to to the future and work your way backward you can fight it multiple times, which yields the best defense items for female characters if you use Aya's Charm. If you destroy it in the past, it won't appear in later time periods.

Speaking of Charm, you can steal a Haste Helm from one of the Lavos Spawn you encounter (pretty sure it's on the Black Omen). Chrono with the Rainbow and a Haste Helm rapes faces. You can also steal some Nova Armors (my personal favorite) from those fat winged dues on the Omen (whose name I can't recall right now).

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.



...of course, I guess it's still level grinding compared to something like Terranigma but I compare its leveling pace to games that all but require you to stop progressing with the plot and actually grind. For instance, I've been doing that with Genius of Sappheiros. A party split in a game with no leaked experience? Congrats, you have to go level up all the characters you haven't been using! That game also has some mean random encounters (fuck you, Mind Flayers).