Final Fantasy 4 Dropped

It's sickening how much of a free ride Final Fantasy games get these days, given how shit most of them are.

They all suffer from the same critical issues:

• Random encounters
• Physical attacks alone are not enough, you have to use magic
• Spells cost too much
• MP recovery items are ridiculously rare
• MP recovery items don't recover enough MP
• If they can be found in shops at all, MP recovery items are ridiculously expensive
• Inns gradually cost more and more as you progress through the game

However, there are some other issues that I'm only 100% sure apply to Final Fantasy 4, so here's a separate bulleted list:

• Can't tell what items do when looking at them in the items menu (I have all these things like UniHorn and HrGlass1, but what do they do?)
• Can't tell what the stats are on a piece of equipment, whether it's in your inventory or if you're looking at it in a shop
• Many menu sequences are cumbersome and unintuitive, such as when using a Potion, first there's the opportunity to move it around in your inventory, and then you use it, but if you want to use another one straight away you have to re-select it again
• I've only ever gotten one Remedy, and I used it (I haven't seen it in any of the shops I have access to)
• Potions and the Cure line of spells have different recovery values seemingly per-use, but also in-battle vs. out-of-battle
• I reached a "Training Room" that gave me basic instructions on how to play the game only after having played the game for several hours, most of the things it told me about I'd already figured out on my own by feeling around in the dark
• Said "feeling around in the dark" was the only way I was able to figure out how to "sheathe my sword" during a fight where it was apparently required to not fail horribly (by "sheathe", they mean "unequip", and there's a hidden menu where you can change your weapons during battle)
• Randomly dropping money when running from a fight
• Enemies can often take three or four actions each before you get a turn
• Actions all have different activation times, but the game never explicitly tells you this
• Edward is a pussy and runs away when you're trying to heal him
• Items and MP are consumed even when their target becomes invalid during the activation time (i.e. I was trying to heal Edward but he hid like a coward during Cure2's activation time, Tellah still loses the MP for Cure2)
• Cecil, for story reasons, gives up being a dark knight and becomes a paladin, only to deal far less damage even once you level him back up to where he was to begin with, and then he gets subpar white magic because "lol paladin"
• The writing feels very stiff and robotic, even if the story is somewhat decent
• Trying to make me care about certain completely obnoxious characters when they heroically sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the party
• Constantly cycling who's in my party so I can't just go level up somewhere and reduce the game's crap-factor through grinding
• A certain boss has a weakness to metallic weapons, so he casts a spell on the cave he takes up residence in to make anyone with metallic items equipped be unable to move, so basically I have to equip total shit equipment in order to do anything in the cave, except I can't do anything because I can't deal damage worth shit
• The effect that gets put on a character with metal equipment is Paralysis, but unlike normal Paralysis, it can't be Esuna'd away (though oddly it goes away if the character dies and is revived)
• Tellah says "don't worry, with my magic, we're invincible", yet the effect still persists
• Said boss also deals 9999 damage per hit when I have maybe a tenth of that as max HP, and wipes my party before I can deal any damage whatsoever thanks to the activation times on everything

If you need a reason why I'm dropping Final Fantasy 4, just read all the bullet points.  It's a shit game, and if you like it, you have shit taste in video games.

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.

I Am Setsuna

I found out about this game from a post on /r/chronotrigger.  The game is completely separate from Chrono Trigger, but happens to take a fair amount of inspiration from it, hence it caught the subreddit's eye.

What's the story?  Spoiler-free, of course.  Well, a very wintry world is under constant threat from monsters.  To keep them at bay, every ten years, a sacrificial pilgrimage is done.  A powerful magic user journeys to a place called the Last Lands, protected by a guard.  Once in the Last Lands, the sacrificial rites must be performed for the monsters to be appeased.  This game follows the story of the currently chosen sacrifice, a girl named Setsuna, as she and the members of her guard undertake the sacrificial pilgrimage.

How exactly does the whole "inspired by Chrono Trigger" figure into it?  Most of the similarities are graphical in nature, but there are also tech names and late-game weapons that reference it.

I'm not counting the save system because so many other JRPGs work in the exact same manner.  You know the drill: you can save whenever on the world map, but in an actual explorable area where there's enemies and possibly bosses, you have to find a save point.  It lacks the auto-save of newer RPGs, which might catch some people off-guard, but it's not too big of a deal given that you can save anywhere on the world map.

It's very blatantly not a Chrono Trigger clone, though.  It contains extra mechanics that allow you to formulate completely different types of strategies.  Rather than gaining tech points and unlocking new techs every so often, you simply gain another slot where you can put a tech, and you can customize what your tech list looks like to suit your strategy.  You can also customize those techs slightly with the game's Flux system.  I'm not going to delve too much further into it here, since this is a review, not a tutorial.  The bottom line is: if you try to play this game as you would Chrono Trigger, you're doing it wrong.

I find the Flux system to be very interesting, because it addresses an issue that Chrono Trigger and a lot of other JRPGs have: generally speaking, you want to save your MP for boss fights and go through regular fights with just your regular attacks.  However, here, you actually want to be constantly using techs in order to get Fluxes to occur so you can power up.

One thing that the game very notably lacks: inns.  This is unusual, even for a JRPG.  You basically just have to use a Tent on the world map instead.  NPC dialogue in one town mentions that there used to be an inn there, but due to monster attacks the number of travellers decreased and it went out of business; perhaps this is the reason behind the worldwide inn shortage.

As much as I love the game's beautiful art style, I would really love to see a climate other than "constant snow" done in this same style.  That said, the snow in explorable areas is handled with a reasonable amount of attention to detail.  Namely, as you (and the enemies) move around, you leave a path of trampled snow behind you.  Since the game is constantly rendering snowfall, if you venture away from an area and back, you'll find your tracks have been covered by more snowfall.  It works.

The game's music is rather interesting: the soundtrack is almost entirely piano.  This is a neat stylistic choice that I feel complements the game's setting and story very well.  The piano is capable of expressing a wide range of different emotions, and the soundtrack handles that perfectly.

Enemies move around their "home" areas, and you can use this to your advantage: sneak up behind them and you start with full ATB meter.  If you're strong enough, you can easily use this to finish things in one turn while taking minimal damage and quickly move through an area.

Positioning of the enemies and your party matters greatly, and the game affords you have a fair number of options for adjusting positioning.  One example is the tech Demi, which pulls enemies closer together while dealing damage to them.  Another example is Cyclone, which knocks enemies back a fair distance while dealing damage to them.  Many techs will also reposition your characters in a reasonably intuitive manner: healing techs often have the character run away from enemies for a set distance before the actual casting animation happens, whereas offensive techs could leave a character surrounded if used improperly, or leave them too far away to take advantage of anything that affects close-by party members.

My end-game strategy just sort of fell into place.  I was using Flare, with a support item that restores some of the casting character's MP when they kill things, and then I got Luminaire.  With it, the Luminaire+Flare dual tech, Supernova, opened up.  Combined with a weapon for the character using Luminaire that restores some of their MP when they hit things, and the fact that most battles are against three or four things that Supernova can easily one-shot, and I was moving through areas spamming Supernova, one-shotting everything, and having the characters' MP get completely refilled in the process.  The remaining character was really only necessary for the occasional heal or use of a tech in case Supernova didn't actually kill something.

Overall, the game is really good and I would definitely recommend it.

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.