Chrono Cross

Finally able to check this one off.  Despite having a fair number of flaws, most of which are regressions from Chrono Trigger, it's by no means a bad game.  Anyone who overlooks it is doing themselves a disservice.

I get the feeling that a lot of the hate this game gets is because it isn't exactly like Chrono Trigger, but with a new story.  The battle system is different, character progression is different, and the way equipment and skills are handled is also different.  The thing is, the battle system is actually pretty neat.

I like the Stamina system, it works a lot better than a traditional ATB system and works with the element grid to open up a lot of strategy that Chrono Trigger never had.  The move from the traditional experience point-based level-up system to a story-based level-up system reduces grind and keeps you moving forward in the story.  You can still grind money and drops, of course, but that's at your own discretion.

Equipment being mostly crafted rather than straight-up purchased is an interesting move, but it's not handled poorly.  There aren't extreme shortages of a critical material or anything.  The final tier of equipment requires you to put in some effort and use the summoning mechanic that you might otherwise ignore, which may very well get you to use summons on a more regular basis if you end up liking that sort of play style.  Skills being split into regular "Elements" and the more traditional techs is interesting, since you can allocate elements at will, regardless of color.

As for the final boss battle, well, there's two ways that it can play out.  This is even hinted at with the Cryosphinx fight.  You can do it the traditional way, by dealing enough damage that the final boss dies, or you can do it the right way.  Just prior to the fight, the game goes to great lengths to suggest that each of the elemental colors have an associated tone, and that producing these tones in the proper order results in an "elemental melody".  It also hints that you should follow up this sequence with the Chrono Cross.  Doing this will instantly defeat the final boss, regardless of HP, and net you the best ending.

If you're like me and want to see both the bad and good ending, then don't be like me.  I stupidly saved my clear save over my "just before the end" save, so if I want to see the bad ending, I have to go all the way through the game again.  Unfortunately, the game doesn't let you continue a clear save, it forces you to select New Game + or Continue +, neither of which will let you hop back in where you were.  If you save to a different slot on your memory card, you can just reload your save and do the fight again.

Despite logging a number of personal complaints about the game, I still largely enjoyed my play time and will definitely come back later for some New Game + action.

Everything after the break will be talking about final boss strategy, so... don't click "Read More" if you don't want to read more.  If you came directly to this post from a search result or something, you may wish to stop scrolling down.

Summer of RPGs 2017

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I have an RPG backlog that I need to get through.  So basically, this summer, I'm gonna do just that.

The plan is to get through as many of the games as possible.  To make this a bit easier, I'm not counting games that I want to buy, but haven't yet.  The list is thus pared down to the following:

• I Am Setsuna (PC)
• Chrono Cross (PS1)
• Final Fantasy 4 (PS1)
• Dark Cloud 1 (PS2)
• Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
• Etrian Odyssey 4 (3DS)

Currently, I'm playing through I Am Setsuna, and plan to proceed down that list from top to bottom.

To make things go faster, I'm trying very hard to not be my usual self.  This means saving my typical completionism and as much other grindy activity as possible for later.  I already know that Chrono Cross will be made a lot harder by not grinding, due to how it hands out random stat boosts periodically in lieu of traditional level-ups.

Some of the titles in that list are in the situation where I started playing them a long time ago, but forget the story, where I was, and where I was going; thus in those games I'll be starting over from the beginning.

The more observant of you may notice that this gaming project also involves finishing two of my most procrastinated gaming projects: Chrono Fever and Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time.  Gotta get it done.

Unlike what I did with Rogue Galaxy, there won't be session posts for these games.  In fact, if I post anything, it's generally going to be a tweet or two.  I do plan on doing overarching summary posts, though, so stay tuned for those.

Also, the end of the summer doesn't necessarily mean I'm just going to stop playing.  I'll likely still continue, the whole "Summer of RPGs" label is just a nice way for me to try and remain focused on the task at hand.

Because I've gotten a fair distance into I Am Setsuna, there will probably be one of those "overarching summary posts" coming up soon, so stay tuned.

Chrono Fever: Time for Chrono Cross

Didn't I say I'd do Final Fantasy 4 next and finish off Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time?  Yes, yes I did.  However, I've already delayed Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time so much, what's a little more delay on top of that.  I need some Chrono Cross in my life.

For whatever reason, people like to ignore the existence of Chrono Cross.  I don't know if they genuinely don't know about it, or if they're purposefully denying its existence.  Whatever the case, Chrono Cross is a really good game, and they're missing out on it.  Yeah, I know, it's different from Chrono Trigger.  Yeah, I know the battle mechanics changed completely.  It's still a really good game, and not worth overlooking.

So, for anyone who doesn't already know, I'll recap my experience with Chrono Cross.  A long time ago, I got the game and started playing it.  While I didn't get to the second disc, I still got pretty far in the game.  Then, for whatever reason (or the lack thereof), I put it down and haven't played it since.  Being that I don't remember where I was or what I was doing, I'm just going to start over.  Which is fine by me, since I don't fully remember everything that happened.

All of that was typed in advance of actually starting Chrono Cross.  I don't really plan on doing session posts like I did with Rogue Galaxy, but I will post if something interesting happens.  After the break will be kind of a summary of the beginning of the game.

Chrono Trigger DS Sidebar Update

Since everyone's maxed out, the table was just a bunch of zeroes and stars.  So, I've changed it to reflect what I'll be working on with a lower priority than Bravely Default SCIENCE! and Chrono Cross: the six items found exclusively in the Arena of the Ages.

Once again, I've played around with the CSS, partly to stroke my own boner, and partly to get around Blogger's own boner-stroking and a CSS nuance.  The list of items is an unordered list, with the normal bullets hidden and the Unicode "empty checkbox" and "checked checkbox" characters placed in front via CSS classes.  However, I had to get around a CSS nuance in that placing the HTML entities for those characters in the content rule of the li:before just caused the entity text to be printed literally instead of being properly interpreted as an entity.  My first attempt at addressing that was just to copy and paste the actual characters into my CSS, but Blogger decided to be helpful and turned them back into entities, which got printed literally.  So, stackoverflow to the rescue, and I'm using regular old C-style escape sequences.

I mean, yes, I could just stick the character, or the entity representation thereof, in front of the text and just use a bunch of <br /> tags.  But that's not how I roll.

Anyway, since I mentioned Bravely Default SCIENCE!, I might as well say that the first thing up is a bit of an in-depth look into what affects the power of the Rejuvenation special move, with the goal of getting the number on the sent move to be as high as possible.  Even though the amount will be recalculated on the recipient's side and they won't see the full number without perfectly replicating the setup used to generate it.  If I had a second 3DS and a second copy of Bravely Default, I could test what actually does get transferred...

Final Thoughts on Chrono Trigger DS

Now that I'm done with the stat maxing, I feel like this is as good of a point as I can get to talk about the game one last time.  I still have the six items you can only get from Arena of the Ages left to actually obtain, but I'm not feeling very pressured to go get them.  I'll post about them specifically once I go back and get them.

As far as the gameplay goes, it's still the Chrono Trigger we know and love.  The redesigned menu system that takes advantage of the touchscreen is nice.  The range of options allowing for toggles between classic gameplay elements and newer stuff that takes advantage of the second screen was also nice.  I welcomed that as well, opting to use the bottom screen for all my battle menu stuff and leave the top screen uncluttered.  I did enable the classic battle UI for a while, but the smaller screen and the smaller font size really made it feel cramped.

The new items were an interesting touch, though I think most people wouldn't have cared if they hadn't been added to the game.  The stats on some of the helms and armor are basically combining together other items, which is really neat in the post-game.  For instance, if you get three Angel's Tiaras out of Dimensional Vortex, your female characters can be under permanent Haste and status protection.  That's basically the same as if they had a Haste Helm and a Vigil Hat equipped at the same time.

The new areas, however, are kind of clunky.  For my stat maxing, I did get into a rhythm for running through the 12,000 BC and 1,000 AD Dimensional Vortex areas (the 2300 AD one didn't require as many runs), but in general, they feel like a romhack that isn't completely polished.  I've touched on this before.  There are too many unavoidable battles.  Also, these areas differ from the rest of the game in that you can trigger a battle with an enemy that's onscreen without having to make contact with them.  The only enemies in the rest of the game that do that are bosses.  Just saying.

Arena of the Ages is kind of neat, however, it needs better integration with the game.  I know it exists in a parallel space or whatever the story is, but when you send your monster out for its 10 minutes of game-time training, there's nothing that tells you that it's come back.  No audio cue, no dialog box, nothing.  You just have to remember to check.  Most of the time, I didn't.  Additionally, you'll notice I said "10 minutes of game-time traning".  Yeah.  You can't send your monster away and then put the system in sleep mode for 10 minutes, because that stops the game's timer.  You have to leave it open.  Not an issue if you're actively playing the game, but if you just want to power up your monster, it's annoying.  Furthermore, it gets reset when you start a New Game +, without even telling you, so all your hard work will go away.  To fix this, I'd suggest four things, two of which would be backed by options:

1. Either an audio cue or a dialog box to direct the player back to Arena of the Ages when their monster comes back from training.  This would prevent the player from forgetting about their monster.
2. When starting the Arena from the main menu (and perhaps only from the main menu), have an extra option available to speed up time, so the player can train their monster faster.  This would allow a player like me who's completed everything else to do this without having to sit around doing nothing for 10 minutes between menu selections.
3. Don't reset the Arena of the Ages when starting a New Game +.  It just doesn't make sense.
4. Make the monster come back after 10 minutes of real time, not 10 minutes of game time.  This would be somewhat addressed by my second suggestion, but I think the difference between game time and real time is still an important distinction to make.

Then there's the issue of the re-translation.  It's in this weird gray area where it's trying to be more accurate than the original, but still keeps a lot of the original's stuff.  Frog's dialogue not having the dialect is just a slap in the face to classic gamers.  On top of that, items and techs were renamed, even when their renaming doesn't really make sense.  It led to me being confused for about 99% of my gameplay, because I couldn't easily tell what I had gotten and what I was still missing.  I don't know if the amount of storage space in the cartridge is an issue that would be run into, but I would've preferred having the option to choose between the new and old translations.

Overall, even with its flaws, I think the DS version is probably still the version to recommend these days, just because the SNES version is a kind of expensive collector's item, and the PS1 version has its loading times.  Console gamers these days are more likely to have a DS or a 3DS than a SNES or a PS1/PS2.  Plus, portable Chrono Trigger?  Hell yes.  I'm aware that there are mobile ports, but... if you're going to play games, do it the right way: on a platform that's meant for it, or your personal computer.

Chrono Trigger: Level 99 Character Analysis

This is probably only relevant to a small portion of the player base for Chrono Trigger, but I don't really care.  It applies to people who have max-level characters and have used tabs to improve or max out Power, Magic, and Speed.

Chrono Trigger has seven characters to choose from, as you probably already know by now.  While any party can be used to some degree of success, surely some characters stand out above others, and some might even be less desirable than others, right?

Well, right.  I'll go into each character a bit, in order by permanent acquisition, then discuss dual techs and triple techs, then give my objective opinion on what the best party is.  Spoiler: if you've read my Twitter or talked to me in real life, you probably already know what that party will be.  All of this will take place after the break, since it's kind of a wall of text.

Chrono Trigger DS: Last Spekkio Run

This run went pretty well, despite being slower than my personal best.

The run went pretty well.  Triggered a stupid accidental fight in 600 AD Guardia Forest after getting Marle back, and triggered the fight before Yakra.  Other than that, everything was relatively straightforward.  I don't know how I'm managing to improve the R-Series split so much, but hey, I'll take it.

Also, I figured out what LiveSplit was comparing my times to.  Apparently, it was set to Best Segments instead of Personal Best.  Changing it over made the delta times accurate once again.  I kinda wish I could load the splits for the previous post and remake the screenshot.  Since it's all stored in an XML file, it should be relatively simple to do, but LiveSplit doesn't seem to have that capability right now.

I still have to get Frog back so I can give him his 10 remaining magic tabs, and get to Dimensional Vortex so Crono and Marle can get their last stat boosts, but... feels good man.

Chrono Trigger DS: Penultimate Run

I improved a couple splits and got my sum of best down below my prediction of 47:30, but overall it was worse.

I had two accidental battles: one in Lab 16 and one in Arris Dome.  All the deltas after the first are off because LiveSplit was dutifully comparing segment times to something other than my best segment times.

As you may notice, I added my personal best time to the layout.  It's just a text element that I'll have to manually update, but whatever.  As you can see, though, there's a lot of room for improvement, but I just don't see where anything can be improved upon.

Next run will be the last one I'll ever have to do on this version of the game.

Chrono Trigger DS: They Can't All Be Personal Bests

I, uh... don't quite know what happened here.

Other than my standard scapegoat of "miscellaneous terrain snags", of which there were a few, I actually thought things went pretty well.  Got the battle skip just before Yakra, knocked out the guards in the castle, and didn't trigger any unnecessary battles.  So... yeah.  There's always next time, I guess.

Chrono Trigger DS: Still Improving

So, the latest batch of optimizations gave me this run.  It's not as fast as it could have been, but I can work through it, right?

Thanks LiveSplit config, for making my "best segments" layout
component just show my current split times.  Thanks a lot.

The optimizations are as follows:

• Holding A on the world map to instantly enter locations
• Using Lightning 2 instead of Luminaire with Crono
• This makes the Guardian + Bits fight take a hit from Lucca to seal the deal, but it's still faster
• Using Lightning 2 on the 5 random Acids/Alkalines instead of regular attacks
• Basically not switching Crono to Luminaire until the Spekkio fight, where we can do it without time penalty while Lucca and Robo are taking their turns.

Overall, I felt pretty good about that run.  Didn't I say I'd never beat my previous time?  Anyway.

The two green splits in there indicate that while I was still ahead on overall time, those splits were slower than my personal best time.  That's why my sum of best is no longer the same as my fastest run.  I don't know why the Dragon Tank and Spekkio splits don't show the faster times under Best Segments, nothing I change in LiveSplit makes that happen.  In future runs, I'll just have the Sum of Best beneath my split times and that'll be it, because I don't feel like wrestling with LiveSplit's config.

I did, of course, trigger the stupid battle just before Yakra's room, as well as an accidental Alkaline battle in the Factory.  Other than that, nothing accidental happened of note.  Miscellaneous split-second terrain snags, etc.  I'll worry about them if they're still happening when I stop being able to improve so significantly with each run.

I'm really beginning to wonder how much of this is applicable to the SNES, where I never did get much faster than 51 minutes (in-game time, of course).  I know the new equipment from the DS version is helping me, but how much is it helping?

Right under my damn nose

So, you may or may not recall that since I moved last, I was unable to locate my PS2's RCA A/V cable.  I had a perfectly good S-Video A/V cable, but no screen that took S-Video as an input without an adapter of one or another variety.

Yesterday, I had the genius idea to use a four-way system selector to just automatically convert S-Video to RCA video, which would solve my problems.  There so happened to be such a system selector in my dad's entertainment center, uselessly sitting there between the VCR we never use and the TV and audio receiver, with the VCR as the only thing plugged into it.  So, with a little backwards shuffling of the VCR to make cables reach, I hooked it up directly to everything and extracted my prize.

I proceeded to hook up everything, including the PS2.  Excited that I was going to get to play Guitar Hero once again, I opened the controller pocket on the travel case I have for my PS2, which also houses my memory cards.  There, sandwiched between the two controllers, I saw something.  It looked oddly like a set of red, white, and yellow RCA male plugs.

Yeah, so that happened.  The cable was in my damn PS2 travel case the entire fucking time.  Go me.

So, what does this mean?  Well, other than being able to play Guitar Hero again...

• After finishing Chrono Trigger DS, and the Bravely Default SCIENCE!, I can finally get to the last half of Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time and play me some Final Fantasy 4.
• After that, I can finally play through Chrono Cross.  A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I played through a significant portion of the first disc, then for whatever reason I set it down and didn't come back to it.  Now that I've completely forgotten where I was and what I was doing, I'm just going to start the story over again.
• And then, who knows what?  I'm hoping I can entice some friends into playing Melty Blood or Fate/Unlimited Codes at some point (or maybe even Garou: Mark of the Wolves or The Rumble Fish).  I'm not particularly amazing at fighting games in general, and usually play troll strategies with no real regard as to whether or not I win.  This works well considering I have friends who, just like me, aren't tourneyfags.  Thus, using mainly strings of basic attacks and the occasional special move or super is quite appropriate.

Chrono Trigger DS: Holy crap this Spekkio run

Take a look at this.  TAKE A FUCKING LOOK AT THIS.

Man, I'm never gonna beat that.  Knocked out both guards in the prison escape.  Still missed the battle skip just before Yakra (it's pixel-perfect, to be fair).  Everything else was nigh-on perfect.  I knew I could save time over my previous run, but... this much?  Seriously?

I mean, there's plenty of little fiddly bits I can optimize.  Things like my battle speed setting, and figuring out faster ways of getting through the few fights I actually fight.  But those optimizations are only going to save a handful of seconds.  I'm predicting that a 47:30 is about optimal for this glitchless run.

I may try my hand at the glitched version of this run, once I finish the stat maxing that I'm doing.  I don't think the fade-out menu glitch even works on the DS version, so it'll be on SNES.

Chrono Trigger DS: Timing Myself with LiveSplit

LiveSplit is a timer for speedrunners that lets you break up your run into sections, or "splits", so you can compare runs and track your record and whatnot.  Its highly customizable interface, devoid of window manager decorations, is mostly designed for livestreamers; but there's absolutely nothing preventing it from being used just for personal tracking, as I'm doing.

You can set graphics for the game title and each split, and these show up in your layout.  This is totally optional, but really neat.  I went on some sprite-ripping websites and grabbed the sprites for the various things I needed to decorate the layout for my Spekkio run.

The difference between in-game time, that I've been using up until now, and real time, is noticeable in longer runs.  The in-game clock turns off for certain things, including but not limited to the jet bike race in Lab 32.  It also doesn't show precision below the minute level, so you can't tell if the 0:50 you just got is a low 0:50 that could have been a 0:49, or a high 0:50 that's closer to 0:51.  You have to get out a stopwatch and time from when you bring up the menu to when it changes, and that's just silly.

So basically, from now on, I'm using real time to time my runs.  Speaking of that, here's my very first run timed in real time.  I'm splitting on the last damage number in each fight (only Dragon Tank and Spekkio take multiple hits lol), except for Spekkio, I'm splitting when the victory pose happens since I haven't gotten the hang of counting HP yet.

The run had a few issues.  Didn't get the pixel-perfect battle skip just before Yakra.  I accidentally triggered Johnny's introduction of XR-RX, the scorekeeping robot for the jet bike race.  I also accidentally mashed A instead of X on the 5 random acids/alkalines fight for my second set of turns, which meant Robo used Shock.  Also accidentally triggered the second fight in Proto Dome.  And as always, miscellaneous terrain snags.  The in-game timer, which I always look at when I save after the fight, said 0:49, but I went to the menu and shortly thereafter it changd to 0:50.  We don't care about in-game time anymore, but since I've used it for all my previous runs, it's still a semi-relevant comparison to make.  It's also interesting that for this run, it's off by less than a minute.

Overall, 49:22 isn't too bad for this run, considering I've done it a lot, and I'm doing it without the fade out menu glitch and the save anywhere glitch.  I am, however, using instant escape, as well as running around Spekkio's room.  I was expecting the real time to be significantly longer than the in-game clock.  I'm beginning to wonder if I could break my old in-game time record of 0:51 on SNES/PS1.  Also, I have another few layout elements that I'll be using after this run, for showing best segments and sum of best.  They were irrelevant for this run, so I left them out.

Chrono Trigger DS: Endings Festival

I finally remembered to do it on one of my Dimensional Vortex runs.  I went through and got all the rest of the endings.  "Then what's the point of all the stat maxing?"  To get stats maxed, duh.  You don't need nearly the stats I'm going for to beat Lavos, and that's really all there is about getting all the endings.

It's kind of sad, I had to load up an old post of mine to remind me when exactly I had to go beat Lavos to get each ending.  The only one I ever remember is the one you get for defeating Lavos after seeing Schala use her pendant.  That's also typically when I remembered I still needed endings in each run.

Also, there was something I was wondering about the ending named "A Slide Show?".  Aside from the name of the ending having changed to "Memory Lane" in the DS version, I've always seen the method of getting it listed as "defeat Lavos after seeing Schala use her pendant, but before powering up yours".  That's an incredibly small window of opportunity to obtain that ending.  Just to see what happens, I decided to beat Lavos before seeing Schala use her pendant, immediately thereafter, and as soon as possible after powering up my own pendant.

Before Schala uses her pendant: What The Prophet Seeks
After Schala uses her pendant: A Slide Show?
After powering up my pendant: What The Prophet Seeks

So, yes.  It does have a really small window of opportunity, on par with the length of both opportunities for the developers' ending.  I suppose that's appropriate for the ending where Crono actually talks.

As far as the stat maxing goes, it's kind of annoying having to get all the way to the end of the game for a once-per-game stat boost, but... I signed up for stat maxing, and I'm not going to rest until everything I can max has been maxed.  It came as a total surprise to me that there were additional stats that could be increased via the Dimensional Vortex areas, but since then I've gotten pretty good at speedrunning through each Vortex.  It also helps that Lucca maxes what she can max from Dimensional Vortex long before Crono or Marle will, so for the majority of the runs, I don't have to speedrun the Temporal Research Lab and do that weird bit where you have to use an alternate party.  I never did remember to change my party before getting trapped.

So, now that I've gotten all the endings, the only things left to get for Extras Mode completion are the accessories that are exclusive to Arena of the Ages, which I've been neglecting since it resets on every New Game +.  It also requires you to send your monster out, then wait ten minutes of real time for it to come back, just to raise the monster's stats and whatnot before you do fights to get said items.  So, I've been putting it off for the very end, after I'm done with the Dimensional Vortex runs.  But to be honest, it'll be a lower priority.  I still have some unfinished business in Bravely Default-land, after all.  Nope, I haven't forgotten about the SCIENCE! I wanted to do, both to compare money-making setups, and to see how one could send the best Rejuvenation possible.

Slight Tweaking

I tweaked the Chrono Trigger DS stat maxing table for Dimensional Vortex.  I rotated it so each character is a column rather than a row, which allowed me to make each individual stat that gets raised by the final battle of each Dimensional Vortex be a row, to more clearly show which stats get raised for which character.

To keep the table from being cluttered, I've done away with the N/A entry for stats that weren't raised for a specific character.  Those table cells are now empty.

I even came up with a neat way to apply the "this character is in the party" CSS to a column or row, that's a lot simpler than what I had been previously doing.  Here's an excerpt, the full thing is much longer.

.ctds[data-party-cols~="1"] tr :nth-child(2), .ctds[data-party-cols~="2"] tr :nth-child(3), .ctds[data-party-cols~="3"] tr :nth-child(4) {   color: #CC9900; }

The key is the "data-party-cols" attribute.  Any attribute beginning with "data-" is ignored by the web browser.  These attributes were added for the sole purpose of allowing pages and JavaScript applications to have a standards-compliant way to have custom attributes.  Here, I use it on the table tag, which has the .ctds class, to denote the column(s) that should be marked as "character is in the party", and the numbering ignores the column that contains the stat names.  The ~= operator looks for the value provided within a space-delimited string of characters, so it's really simple to specify that more than one of the columns should be marked as "in the party".  I used a similar approach with a data-party-rows attribute to revamp the table showing how many tabs I have left to get for people's tab-related stats to be maxed.

Edit (later that day): I just realized after finishing a run through each Dimensional Vortex that Crono and Marle need 10 Dimensional Vortex runs to max their Hit stat, and... I need 10 Spekkio runs to finish getting tabs.  This also means I no longer need to grab tabs hidden in the environment, or charm them.  Dunno how it worked out so perfectly, but hey, I'll take it.

Double Edit (2015-02-24): And of course I've tweaked the CSS again.  Now I can set the party in one place and the CSS tells both tables what they should look like.  It's still the same basic concept as shown in the example, though.

Chrono Trigger Grinding Script

A while ago I mentioned I'd written this, and needed to give it a once-over before making it public.

Then it sat there.

I did nothing.

And continued to do nothing.

Such is my style, you should probably be familiar with this by now.

However, I remembered about it earlier, did the aforementioned once-over, and here's the post making it available to the public.

Unfortunately, I can't just give you a file download, as it's written in PowerShell, and PowerShell is annoying about scripts you've downloaded.  Essentially, it won't let you run them.  So instead, you can harness the power of copy and paste (and save!), and do so with this pastebin link.

For the example in the Get-Help documentation to work right, you should name the script ctgrind.ps1 when you save it.

Have fun!

(by the way, the fact that I'm releasing this while still working on permanent stat boosts in the DS version means that I'm fairly confident that none of the new areas offer better grinding that still fits my criteria)

Chrono Trigger DS: Dimensional Vortex Stat Maxing

The final battle of each Dimensional Vortex raises select stats for the character that's required to be in the party for the battle.  Some of them are raised pointlessly because that character maxes that stat through levelling, but for the rest, if you have the patience to repeatedly do New Game + runs to the point where you get the upgraded Epoch, you can get the stat boost over and over.

Time Period	Character	Stats raised (+Amount)
12,000 BC	Marle	Speed (+2) Hit (+5) Stamina (+5)
1,000 AD	Crono	Speed (+1) Strength (+5) Hit (+5)
2,300 AD	Lucca	Speed (+3) Magic (+5) Stamina (+5)

As you can see, Crono's Strength and Lucca's Magic are pointlessly raised.  Kind of sad that the only character to get full benefit is Marle, but it's interesting in that her Hit stat controls her damage output.  I'm nowhere near max on it yet, so it'll be interesting to see if the Venus Bow continues to be her best option once it's maxed.

Speed is also a pretty pointless stat for it to grant, since Speed Tabs are very common.  A run through Black Omen, charming all the Panels, and getting all the chests, produces at least 15.  I know, I know, not everyone plays the game like I do, so I guess the speed boosts are fine, but...  they coulda put that in Evade or something. *grumble*

I've updated the progress box thingy on the right to include the meaningful stat levels that benefit from this.  For the spots where it says "N/A", it's because that character doesn't get a boost to that stat.  I also omitted stats maxed either through levelling, or tabs.

Overall, it's neat, and I will be farming the stat boosts, but they could have given better bonuses for Crono and Lucca.

Chrono Trigger DS: Spoiler-Filled Post About the New Ending

As both my previous post and the title of this post suggest, spoilers ahead.  There is one non-spoiler that I can put here, though.

The method of accessing this ending is via the bucket in the End of Time.  Once you've completed all three Dimensional Vortices, using the bucket will show a menu allowing you to go to The Day of Lavos, as well as the new boss fight, called "Time's Eclipse".

I'll give you a jump break to hide the spoilers.  'Cause I'm nice.

Chrono Trigger DS: 2300AD Dimensional Vortex

Same thing as before.  Dimensional Vortex already sufficiently covered in a general manner, so we'll break on through to the specifics.

Ha ha.  "Break".  And I'm using a jump break.  Ooooookay.

Chrono Trigger DS: 1000AD Dimensional Vortex

I feel like I summarized the Dimensional Vortex areas pretty well in my last post,  so in this one I'm just going to jump straight to explaining what you get out of this Vortex.

Did I say "jump"?  Tee hee...