Reanimatoin
Member
As someone who never had Nintendo consoles when growing up, I missed out on Chrono Trigger when it first came out. Granted, I was also only 4 when it came out, but still. And despite being a huge Square and Final Fantasy fan, I never bothered to pick up any of the re-releases or ports.
So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to play the original SNES version of the game, because why not play the proper version of the game as it was originally meant to be.
And my overall impressions? Holy FUCK, this is one of my favourite games now!
First off, the game looks incredible. All of the characters are unique, interesting looking and memorable. Characters that would suffer from generic design choices under a different artist stand out as a result of Toriyama's work. I never thought a frog and a robot could be two extremely well designed and individualised characters, but they were!
The environments look great too, especially when you visit the same areas over different times, you can instantly pick up on the differences whilst still knowing where you are. They're not exactly the same and just colour swapped either, the environments actually change depending on what era you are in, but they dont change entirely, just enough so that you know something has occurred in the years that pass.
The sprite work in this game is fantastic as well. Replaying older games in this style is always a treat as the artwork ages amazingly well. Sprite art will always retain its quality in a way that older 3D games simply cannot. You go back and play a game like FF7 and the 3D models look awful now. Granted at the time, they were revolutionary, but it just doesnt hold up well. Whereas a game like this will always look great, regardless of how long passes.
The music in this game is beyond comparison. An absolutely stellar soundtrack by two of the best composers of all time, Mitsuda and Uematsu. I would love for a remake of this game to happen simply to see how some of these tracks would sound with a full orchestra (and yes, I know there are some live performances, but studio work always sounds different). Some stand out tracks to me were Memories of Green, Frog's Theme and Corridors of Time amongst many others!
I could gush all day about how good the story is, but I feel most people already know that. One thing I will say, is how well the story made me actually care about the characters. Each and every one was given a detailed and touching backstory and it was something that you actually played through and experienced. Something that a fair few games nowadays don't do well enough. It wasn't just forced upon me with 20 minutes of dialogue, screaming "DO YOU SEE NOW? THIS IS WHY YOU CARE!" You get to know who characters like Marle are by playing the game, not by being told to like her just because!.
Also, I should talk about the game's design. It's perfect! There was not one point in the game where I needed to grind out levels, which is one of my most HATED things to do. The design philosophy is simple, fight the enemies you come across and then you will be at adequate strength to fight the boss! Simple! Now that's not to say that the game isn't challenging in certain areas, Giga Gaia gave me quite a headache for example, but it's more down to actually using a strategy in battles as opposed to just being overpowered. The fights actually make you think about how to approach them as opposed to just being subject to dominant strategy.
Although speaking of dominant strategy, the skills system in this game is pretty great. Each character gets their own set of skills they can use individually, nothing new there, but where the game shines is in the use of dual and triple techs. You see every combination of characters has their own unique team up skills that you can use if you level them up enough. And while this can lead to you using one party most of the time, it actually rewards and gives you incentive to try out different combinations, to see what new skills you can acquire.
All in all, I love this game. There are very few things that I can find fault with in it (enemy design mainly, nothing really stood out and the final boss looked kinda dumb). I think I clocked in at just under 20 hours for a first playthrough, and that is doing all the end side-quests in order to get the perfect ending. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough if you like JRPGs, or hell, even just good games in general, I would pick this game up any way you can because it was such an experience playing through it for the first time.
Now, when's Chrono Resurrection HD?
So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to play the original SNES version of the game, because why not play the proper version of the game as it was originally meant to be.
And my overall impressions? Holy FUCK, this is one of my favourite games now!
First off, the game looks incredible. All of the characters are unique, interesting looking and memorable. Characters that would suffer from generic design choices under a different artist stand out as a result of Toriyama's work. I never thought a frog and a robot could be two extremely well designed and individualised characters, but they were!
The environments look great too, especially when you visit the same areas over different times, you can instantly pick up on the differences whilst still knowing where you are. They're not exactly the same and just colour swapped either, the environments actually change depending on what era you are in, but they dont change entirely, just enough so that you know something has occurred in the years that pass.
The sprite work in this game is fantastic as well. Replaying older games in this style is always a treat as the artwork ages amazingly well. Sprite art will always retain its quality in a way that older 3D games simply cannot. You go back and play a game like FF7 and the 3D models look awful now. Granted at the time, they were revolutionary, but it just doesnt hold up well. Whereas a game like this will always look great, regardless of how long passes.
The music in this game is beyond comparison. An absolutely stellar soundtrack by two of the best composers of all time, Mitsuda and Uematsu. I would love for a remake of this game to happen simply to see how some of these tracks would sound with a full orchestra (and yes, I know there are some live performances, but studio work always sounds different). Some stand out tracks to me were Memories of Green, Frog's Theme and Corridors of Time amongst many others!
I could gush all day about how good the story is, but I feel most people already know that. One thing I will say, is how well the story made me actually care about the characters. Each and every one was given a detailed and touching backstory and it was something that you actually played through and experienced. Something that a fair few games nowadays don't do well enough. It wasn't just forced upon me with 20 minutes of dialogue, screaming "DO YOU SEE NOW? THIS IS WHY YOU CARE!" You get to know who characters like Marle are by playing the game, not by being told to like her just because!.
Also, I should talk about the game's design. It's perfect! There was not one point in the game where I needed to grind out levels, which is one of my most HATED things to do. The design philosophy is simple, fight the enemies you come across and then you will be at adequate strength to fight the boss! Simple! Now that's not to say that the game isn't challenging in certain areas, Giga Gaia gave me quite a headache for example, but it's more down to actually using a strategy in battles as opposed to just being overpowered. The fights actually make you think about how to approach them as opposed to just being subject to dominant strategy.
Although speaking of dominant strategy, the skills system in this game is pretty great. Each character gets their own set of skills they can use individually, nothing new there, but where the game shines is in the use of dual and triple techs. You see every combination of characters has their own unique team up skills that you can use if you level them up enough. And while this can lead to you using one party most of the time, it actually rewards and gives you incentive to try out different combinations, to see what new skills you can acquire.
All in all, I love this game. There are very few things that I can find fault with in it (enemy design mainly, nothing really stood out and the final boss looked kinda dumb). I think I clocked in at just under 20 hours for a first playthrough, and that is doing all the end side-quests in order to get the perfect ending. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough if you like JRPGs, or hell, even just good games in general, I would pick this game up any way you can because it was such an experience playing through it for the first time.
Now, when's Chrono Resurrection HD?