Unimpressed with Chrono Trigger

[NeoVamp]

It's called projection.

It does seem a lot of people here have bland personalities themselves.
I mean, you're supposed to project yourself into the game. your feelings are Chrono's. you are Chrono.

I guess a lot of people prefer the have the feelings choice made for them, oh I'm Cloud.. here are my feelings about this subject!

No, I was Chrono.. I traveled through time, I experienced going to a creepy dead future, I was happy when I was in the prehistoric era.
I was impressed when I first saw Magus' castle, I felt sad when Frog told us to leave. I was sad when Robo got torn apart.

not some badly written character's feelings, they were my feelings.

[EmperorIng]

I was going to mention that it would be pure semantics to bring up the HOIIIII and OPA? in Ico and that no one would be anal enough to mention them, but hey looks like I was wrong. I'll stop using Ico as an example (in this topic) even though for all intents and purposes he is pretty darn quiet.

[Bottino]

The GBA fire emblems actually make you (the player) appear in the game as a mysterious wandering strategist and the characters talk to you. It's quite awkward but I always thought it was cool they did that.

Yeah, that was cool feature indeed.

I was going to say that the silent Chrono is the only thing I didn't like about CT, but I think you've convinced me otherwise. Square writing is terrible. I remember playing FFVI (III) and thinking how wooden the characters felt. I still love the game, but couldn't give a crap about them as characters.

*TERRA attacks and fries Narshe's soldiers.
LOCKE " she doesn't remember anything, let's be friends and save the world"

* CYAN's family and friends get's killed by Kefka.
" Hey man, forget about that, let's save the world!"

It's great game ( i'm currently playing the version for the Playstation ), with great music and gameplay, decent story, an interesting antagonist( Kefka) and bad writing ( decent as far Square games goes ).

FFVII, on the other hand, is an average game at best, with terrible writing, terrible characters, an interesting setting and average gameplay with a bunch of crap to do in order to compensate that. It was a game sold and advertised purely on it's FMV's.
I always get a good laugh when some says that " IT"S THE BESST GAME EVARRR".

[tomaitheous]

I not only don't mind the silent protagonist, I kind of prefer it. Especially if the character is young (teens). I'm sick of the over dramatic, "I might be young, but I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna save the world/avenge my family/etc". At least with the silent protagonist, I can eliminate some of that. When I was a teen, this didn't bother, but now that I'm quite a bit older - it bothers me to no end (get off my lawn!). The Ys series has the main protagonist as silent and I think it works great. There's plenty of story and character development/buildup, without the main character directly saying a word.

As for Chrono Trigger, I enjoyed the game when it first came out. It had a certain charm about it. I didn't think it was the best thing ever, and nor would I give it a 10 out 10 - but I've replayed it over the years a few times and enjoyed it each time. It just has a certain charm about it.

I can understand if it doesn't click with some people; not every game will (whether good, mediocre, or bad). That's just the way it works. That said, I used to really enjoy the SNES Final Fantasy series when I was younger. Having replayed them recently, I find most of the story simple/cliche/eye-rolling and the dialog just as insane (as already pointed out by someone else). I couldn't even get through FFV - I felt like the story and dialog was written for 8 year olds (especially the more you advance in the game). Final Fantasy III remake was in the same reign, but given that it was on the NES originally - I kind of gave it free pass (it has its lighted hearted story/charm about it).

FF7 is OK, but has some really cheesy dialog/story parts that just don't mesh. I don't think I ever want to play FF10 again - ever. Once was enough. FF12 was alright, but it didn't feel like a FF game. I couldn't get into FF8. FF2-Famicom sucked IMO (boring). I haven't played through FF6j in quite a number of years, so I'll reserve judgement on that. That leaves FF9, my favorite FF game to date. I've played through it quite a few times. It's a throw back to the NES days; it presents itself as cheesy, whimsical and light hearted, but it has its dark/serious parts (done in the opposite manner of FF7).

[j_factor]

FF9 was definitely the best in terms of plot and writing.

I feel like I should give Chrono Cross another try. It just didn't grab me at all, back in the day. I don't remember anything in particular that was horrible about it.

[gamevet]

My copy of FFIX is still sitting in it's shrink-wrap.

[EclecticGroove]

FF9 was definitely the best in terms of plot and writing.

I feel like I should give Chrono Cross another try. It just didn't grab me at all, back in the day. I don't remember anything in particular that was horrible about it.

I dunno. I think 12 is probably the best in the series. Even if you hate the main character. It doesn't really start to fall apart until the end when it does the now typical "here is something with next to/no foreshadowing we just pulled out of our asses".

I swear sometimes I think they just feel they get to the end, feel they need more content all of a sudden, and scramble like hell to add it... they did that with 8, 9, and 12.

But generally speaking, I feel Square has done fairly mediocre to somewhat interesting stories. They tend to make some decent to good characters, with some very bad ones here and there. Writing wise... yeah, not great, but usually it's good enough to get by. I feel the move to voice acting is probably a bit too early. It's one thing to read the same dialog over and over again, another to hear it over and over again. I think the space used to give those random npc's speech could be used better to give them way more variety in text. Even games that have done it much better like the Mass Effect series I felt could have been better served with a bit less speech and a ton more content added via text dialog. Keep the voice acting to the main characters and special situations, at least till the storage space and all is so huge that space isn't even considered a limitation to worry about at all.

One thing Square does excel at making tho? the world their games live in, at least most of the time. They have excellent music, good/interesting sounds, and almost always have great art design (even if the particulars of it may not be to your liking).

I think that level of detail they bring to their games both allowed people to gloss over some of the shortcomings, as well as completely ignore others to love the games. FF 7 had a good mix of elements, and was a bit more simplified than previous FF games. That it was visually impressive to many people (at the time), and with some very flashy cut scenes to move things along, or even just show off, certainly made it the top pick to a number of people where the game was their first FF, or even their first RPG.

[Zebbe]

Chrono Trigger is my second favourite RPG ever (the top spot goes to Phantasy Star IV, the best game ever!). Sure, the time travel story brings some plot holes, the graphics aren't full screen in battle, silent protagonists suck in these kinds of games (not only because it minimizes the main character himself, but also because the writing of other characters are affected by it, e.i. "You did this!", "OK, you think we should go there" etc.) and the music quality and composition isn't perfect. But overall, the story is original and quite well thought out, most characters are lovely, the battle system is really fun and it looks great.

What left me unimpressed was the sequel, Chrono Cross. What an awful game that was. Sure, looks and sounds great. But the gameplay system is just a bad rehash of FFVII and VIII, the story sucks and made no sense and when one of the way too many characters asks his dimensional counterpart to join their already too big team, the game becomes a parody of itself. My mind doesn't approve the existence of Chrono Cross, therefore Chrono Trigger stands as a single game and not part of a series to me.

[EclecticGroove]

Chrono Trigger is my second favourite RPG ever (the top spot goes to Phantasy Star IV, the best game ever!). Sure, the time travel story brings some plot holes, the graphics aren't full screen in battle, silent protagonists suck in these kinds of games (not only because it minimizes the main character himself, but also because the writing of other characters are affected by it, e.i. "You did this!", "OK, you think we should go there" etc.) and the music quality and composition isn't perfect. But overall, the story is original and quite well thought out, most characters are lovely, the battle system is really fun and it looks great.

What left me unimpressed was the sequel, Chrono Cross. What an awful game that was. Sure, looks and sounds great. But the gameplay system is just a bad rehash of FFVII and VIII, the story sucks and made no sense and when one of the way too many characters asks his dimensional counterpart to join their already too big team, the game becomes a parody of itself. My mind doesn't approve the existence of Chrono Cross, therefore Chrono Trigger stands as a single game and not part of a series to me.

Cross had the potential to be a really good game. It looked and sounded great, it had some good characters and parts of the story were great.

But yes, I wish they had gone the FF route... just make it stand on its own entirely, with only the token tie ins to the previous game. Trigger wrapped things up pretty well... and Cross just kind of forced its way into the continuity in a very sloppy way.

[Zebbe]

Chrono Cross would have been better off as a game of its own in another series. I also thought Chrono Trigger wrapped things quite well. Cross didn't fix what was left, it just made things confusing.

[Mega Drive Bowlsey]

A lot of dialogue in RPG's seems banal, inane or innapropriate in light of whatever has just happened in the game, even the best RPG's suffer from this, but I feel that's been largely down to the translation process they undergo when going from the Japanese script to English. My pet hate is the way characters just repeat someone's name pointlessly, usually in scenes which deal with relationships, so for example you'll have a scene where three or four characters react to a situation or piece of news by saying "Jack..." in an utterly bizzare loop until you suspect that they're trying to hypnotise someone. It's not just RPG's that suffer from this, Japanese animes are rife with it.

I'm really not getting the grief that some people give FFVII either and suspect it's largely down to people hating, for whatever reason, the amount of love it gets from people and especially people for whom the game was their first experience with an RPG. Well it was far from being my first RPG experience but I still love the game and understand why it's so highly regarded to this day and am mystified as to why any RPG fan worth his or her salt would be unable to see this. FFVII is not extremely highly regarded because of hype, flashy cut-scenes or FMV, it's because it's a deep and genuinely moving story that covers life, death and everything inbetween. The series rapidly went downhill afterwards as far as I'm concerned, FFVIII disappointed me after the heights of VII, IX was marginally better and I found FFX on the PS2 to be practically unplayable and that WAS hyped up!

[Black_Tiger]

A lot of dialogue in RPG's seems banal, inane or innapropriate in light of whatever has just happened in the game, even the best RPG's suffer from this, but I feel that's been largely down to the translation process they undergo when going from the Japanese script to English. My pet hate is the way characters just repeat someone's name pointlessly, usually in scenes which deal with relationships, so for example you'll have a scene where three or four characters react to a situation or piece of news by saying "Jack..." in an utterly bizzare loop until you suspect that they're trying to hypnotise someone. It's not just RPG's that suffer from this, Japanese animes are rife with it.

I'm really not getting the grief that some people give FFVII either and suspect it's largely down to people hating, for whatever reason, the amount of love it gets from people and especially people for whom the game was their first experience with an RPG. Well it was far from being my first RPG experience but I still love the game and understand why it's so highly regarded to this day and am mystified as to why any RPG fan worth his or her salt would be unable to see this. FFVII is not extremely highly regarded because of hype, flashy cut-scenes or FMV, it's because it's a deep and genuinely moving story that covers life, death and everything inbetween. The series rapidly went downhill afterwards as far as I'm concerned, FFVIII disappointed me after the heights of VII, IX was marginally better and I found FFX on the PS2 to be practically unplayable and that WAS hyped up!

Most people love big dumb Michael Bay style movies and empty marketing machine pop music. I'm not going to waste my time trying to explain how FFVII is the RPG equivalent, because you can't convince pop entertainment fans either as they usually make the same arguments you just did.

All I will point out, is that FFVII had a big impact because it was commercially successful at a particular time in both one generation and in gaming history. It then limped on based on nostalgia and typical casual-gamer popular-opinion-adoption (see GameFAQs polls). It was commercially successful because of hype and flash. Commercials showed 100% fmv cinema footage cut and narrated like a blockbuster film trailer. People flocked to it because it was full of cgi. People accepted the RPG factor because it stripped away almost all of the RPG gameplay from the series. It was the ultimate noob JRPG hand-holding experience and the mini games helped the game feel deep and epic to those who had previously shunned RPGs. But it might have been the last entry in the series if it hadn't spammed cgi backdrops and used fmv for animating them and the cinemas.

Your criticisms of other RPG's stories/dialogue is actually part of the problems of the storytellingof FFVII. Which is why I'm not going detail the rest. But, as disappointed I was at the time by the dumbed-down gameplay, it's the story that is the games biggest flaw.

[goldenband]

Most people love big dumb Michael Bay style movies and empty marketing machine pop music.

I wouldn't say that most people love that stuff as much as...that it entertains them without offending or challenging them, for want of a better way of putting it. It's safe, and sells in large quantities precisely because of that.

Making a lot of money in media often means satisficing, and/or giving people a product that none of them really like, but that no one in their "group" will reject. (There's a term for that phenomenon -- the _____ dilemma -- but I can't think of it.) (EDIT: Ah, I think it's the Abilene paradox.)

[twood1130]

I enjoyed FFX myself, far from the greatest FF game, but was good in my book. It's much more linear than the rest of the series, and I think that's part of what makes people dislike it.
I hear a decent amount of hate for the main character too, although I think Tidus was okay as far as FF protagonists go.

FFXII was my least favorite by far, story was much more boring.

[Mega Drive Bowlsey]

Most people love big dumb Michael Bay style movies and empty marketing machine pop music. I'm not going to waste my time trying to explain how FFVII is the RPG equivalent, because you can't convince pop entertainment fans either as they usually make the same arguments you just did.

All I will point out, is that FFVII had a big impact because it was commercially successful at a particular time in both one generation and in gaming history. It then limped on based on nostalgia and typical casual-gamer popular-opinion-adoption (see GameFAQs polls). It was commercially successful because of hype and flash. Commercials showed 100% fmv cinema footage cut and narrated like a blockbuster film trailer. People flocked to it because it was full of cgi. People accepted the RPG factor because it stripped away almost all of the RPG gameplay from the series. It was the ultimate noob JRPG hand-holding experience and the mini games helped the game feel deep and epic to those who had previously shunned RPGs. But it might have been the last entry in the series if it hadn't spammed cgi backdrops and used fmv for animating them and the cinemas.

Your criticisms of other RPG's stories/dialogue is actually part of the problems of the storytellingof FFVII. Which is why I'm not going detail the rest. But, as disappointed I was at the time by the dumbed-down gameplay, it's the story that is the games biggest flaw.

So, let me get this straight, you're equating me to being a Michael Bay fan because I rate FFVII highly? I am a film fan, a fairly knowledgeable one, and wouldn't go to see a Michael frigging Bay film if you paid me! I played many RPG's before FFVII as I said and have played many since and, although I do not regard it as the greatest I've ever played, I certainly give the game it's due credit. You see I'm starting to believe that the hatred that FFVII generates in certain circles stems from the fact that it brought people to the genre in droves and that, as a consequence, some people completely mistakenly or out of sheer arrogance, take your pick, see that as proof that it was solely because of hype or style over substance. Argue this point until you're blue in the face if it pleases you but do not lump me in with the masses of braindead cinema goers the world over just to try and prove your point.