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.

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...