Yeah, I know this is gonna be controversial. This isn't intended as a hot take, though, and I'm not in any way trying to dismiss Chrono Trigger's status as a classic or say it's bad. I just don't find it that enjoyable and I wanna say why so I can know if some of you guys actually agree with my reasons or not.
Chrono Trigger is one of the most acclaimed and beloved games of all time, and yet, after trying it many many times, I still don't think it's all that great. It is probably the game I have started and quit most times in my life. I tried to play it at many different moments since I was a kid, then as a teen, then in high school, once again in college, and now as an adult, and I always end up running out of steam at some point. Never finished, got so far as the Black Omen once and never did it or the side quests. I'm currently playing it again, and I intend to finish it once and for all this time, but this playthrough is making clear for me why I have always struggled so much with the game.
For one thing, I can see what the game has going on for it: it is incredibly polished, it is a luxury of a game. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, the variety of animations and little scenes and things you can do is nothing short of impressive. The game feels expensive. I suppose since it had so many great talents that were stars of the industry at the time (still are), Square wanted to get the most of them, it probably had a really big budget so the devs were allowed to go crazy with it, and it shows. The story was also very good and it hit a sweet spot between being complex enough to be interesting and engaging without sounding pretentious or alienating and simple enough to be easily enjoyable without feeling childish, and I don't think any FF ever topped that.
Now, to the things I don't like. There are basically two major problems that kill my will to progress in the game:
1- It takes too damn long to be able to fast travel. You might read this and be like "this guy is crazy, the game is literally about going into portals and appearing somewhere else". Well, the portals in the game don't act like fast travelling, just as regular doors, really. You have have to walk to get to it, you go through it, you appear at a predefined place and have to make your way to place you're actually going. Until you upgrade the Epoch so it can fly, basically in the end of the game, there isn't anything at all that will reliably teleport you to the place you want, you always have to go to the nearest portal and cross the rest by foot. I lost count how many times I had to rethread the same damn paths through freaking Truce Canyon and Guardia Forest, it gets to a point where I give up on doing stuff because I have to go through these same areas again, fight the same weak enemies again. Every. Single. Time. There isn't any vehicle that will facilitate transversal in the world map either (super weird considering this game is basically a DQ/FF crossover and these games always have these things) so, wanna go to that island? Sorry pal, no way to cross the ocean, go to portal X, then portal Y, then through a cave, fight the same enemies, then fuck you. Again, I know the flying Epoch solves this, but it comes way too late in the game and you have to struggle with this for most of it.
2- The combat is kinda dull and there's basically no sense of character progression. Yes, you level up the characters and they get stronger just like any other RPG, but that alone doesn't feel like progression. Aside from small things like being able to heal, or use magic, the characters don't learn new stuff that change the way you play or allow you to perform new powerful combos. They aren't very different from each other in the first place. There's basically three abilities: physical damage, magical damage and healing, and then you have each character do a combination of them, boom. Getting new characters usually don't represent getting access to game changing abilities, they will probably just do the same stuff other characters did in a different way (like Frog can do the same Crono and Marle already did, but combined; Ayla can only do physical damage as Crono and Frog already did, but stronger). Listening to Retronauts' episode on the game recently, they said CT feels like a combination of DQ and FF that gets rid of all the bad things of those games and boy, I couldn't disagree more. The battle system and character evolution simply strips away all the strengths DQ had (turn based strategic precision and resource management) and FF had (character based diversity of abilities and great progression with over the top combos and builds).
Sure, there are double and triple techs, and they are luxurious. The amount of programming and animating that it took to make all of them is impressive and part of the game looking so gorgeous, but, in the end, many of them are redundant, since most of them basically do more damage/ heal more HP. They have an interesting system where the position of the enemies influence the AoE but that wasn't really explored all that much. There might be more about the systems that I'm not aware of, but if there are, the game does a bad job making me use them, because I can get around doing the same thing every time. The boss battles are like puzzles sometimes, but still, you're just attacking and healing, just in a different pattern. In the end, I think the battles were intended to be more visually appealing than anything, as the variety and quality of animations is, again, fantastic, but in terms of gameplay, they feel very repetitive for me.
So yeah, I guess in a few words, the game has incredible production values but in terms of gameplay it isn't engaging enough for me and that ruins the pacing. It's tedious to move around and I don't feel like I'm getting stronger, and there are other contemporary RPGs with much better systems in those two regards. I suppose the huge appeal of the game comes from either people playing it when it came out (which I didn't), or people who don't care as much for the battle system as for other elements, like the story, graphics, characters, etc.
I'm ready now, come for me. Or is there anyone there who agrees with me?
Chrono Trigger is one of the most acclaimed and beloved games of all time, and yet, after trying it many many times, I still don't think it's all that great. It is probably the game I have started and quit most times in my life. I tried to play it at many different moments since I was a kid, then as a teen, then in high school, once again in college, and now as an adult, and I always end up running out of steam at some point. Never finished, got so far as the Black Omen once and never did it or the side quests. I'm currently playing it again, and I intend to finish it once and for all this time, but this playthrough is making clear for me why I have always struggled so much with the game.
For one thing, I can see what the game has going on for it: it is incredibly polished, it is a luxury of a game. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, the variety of animations and little scenes and things you can do is nothing short of impressive. The game feels expensive. I suppose since it had so many great talents that were stars of the industry at the time (still are), Square wanted to get the most of them, it probably had a really big budget so the devs were allowed to go crazy with it, and it shows. The story was also very good and it hit a sweet spot between being complex enough to be interesting and engaging without sounding pretentious or alienating and simple enough to be easily enjoyable without feeling childish, and I don't think any FF ever topped that.
Now, to the things I don't like. There are basically two major problems that kill my will to progress in the game:
1- It takes too damn long to be able to fast travel. You might read this and be like "this guy is crazy, the game is literally about going into portals and appearing somewhere else". Well, the portals in the game don't act like fast travelling, just as regular doors, really. You have have to walk to get to it, you go through it, you appear at a predefined place and have to make your way to place you're actually going. Until you upgrade the Epoch so it can fly, basically in the end of the game, there isn't anything at all that will reliably teleport you to the place you want, you always have to go to the nearest portal and cross the rest by foot. I lost count how many times I had to rethread the same damn paths through freaking Truce Canyon and Guardia Forest, it gets to a point where I give up on doing stuff because I have to go through these same areas again, fight the same weak enemies again. Every. Single. Time. There isn't any vehicle that will facilitate transversal in the world map either (super weird considering this game is basically a DQ/FF crossover and these games always have these things) so, wanna go to that island? Sorry pal, no way to cross the ocean, go to portal X, then portal Y, then through a cave, fight the same enemies, then fuck you. Again, I know the flying Epoch solves this, but it comes way too late in the game and you have to struggle with this for most of it.
2- The combat is kinda dull and there's basically no sense of character progression. Yes, you level up the characters and they get stronger just like any other RPG, but that alone doesn't feel like progression. Aside from small things like being able to heal, or use magic, the characters don't learn new stuff that change the way you play or allow you to perform new powerful combos. They aren't very different from each other in the first place. There's basically three abilities: physical damage, magical damage and healing, and then you have each character do a combination of them, boom. Getting new characters usually don't represent getting access to game changing abilities, they will probably just do the same stuff other characters did in a different way (like Frog can do the same Crono and Marle already did, but combined; Ayla can only do physical damage as Crono and Frog already did, but stronger). Listening to Retronauts' episode on the game recently, they said CT feels like a combination of DQ and FF that gets rid of all the bad things of those games and boy, I couldn't disagree more. The battle system and character evolution simply strips away all the strengths DQ had (turn based strategic precision and resource management) and FF had (character based diversity of abilities and great progression with over the top combos and builds).
Sure, there are double and triple techs, and they are luxurious. The amount of programming and animating that it took to make all of them is impressive and part of the game looking so gorgeous, but, in the end, many of them are redundant, since most of them basically do more damage/ heal more HP. They have an interesting system where the position of the enemies influence the AoE but that wasn't really explored all that much. There might be more about the systems that I'm not aware of, but if there are, the game does a bad job making me use them, because I can get around doing the same thing every time. The boss battles are like puzzles sometimes, but still, you're just attacking and healing, just in a different pattern. In the end, I think the battles were intended to be more visually appealing than anything, as the variety and quality of animations is, again, fantastic, but in terms of gameplay, they feel very repetitive for me.
So yeah, I guess in a few words, the game has incredible production values but in terms of gameplay it isn't engaging enough for me and that ruins the pacing. It's tedious to move around and I don't feel like I'm getting stronger, and there are other contemporary RPGs with much better systems in those two regards. I suppose the huge appeal of the game comes from either people playing it when it came out (which I didn't), or people who don't care as much for the battle system as for other elements, like the story, graphics, characters, etc.
I'm ready now, come for me. Or is there anyone there who agrees with me?
