Stuff I Played: Chrono Cross

Stuff I Played is where I write about games I recently played. It’s not really a review, just a short write up of my totally subjective thoughts as the formed in the days after I finished playing something.

Chrono Cross is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time.  Cross on the other hand is a divisive game to say the least. While it was well regarded and critically acclaimed at release over the years it has developed something of a reputation as being a bad game, or at least a disappointing one. Having played it now, I can say that I really enjoyed Cross, but I also totally understand the negativity surrounding the game.

The main point of contention Trigger enthusiasts tend to have when it comes to Cross is that it lacks a clear link to Trigger. This is initially true, it’s setting and characters are totally different. Of the 7 playable characters from Trigger none are among the 44 playable characters in Cross. At most, some of them are talked about or appear in minor cameos. The two games share no common locations either, with Cross being set entirely in an archipelago isolated from the setting of Trigger, which is referred to throughout the game as “the mainland.” Because of these factors, a lot of people have said that Chrono Cross is not a “true” sequel to Trigger, but that’s where they're wrong, Cross only works as a sequel to Trigger, and that’s where the problems start for me.

See, these games are about time travel. Which is usually a red flag but in the case of Trigger the story was well told enough that it all was very easy to follow. Any time events in the past changed the present or future the changes were set up enough in advance and the change was shown well enough that it all clicked in the players mind. It’s called one of the best games of all time for a number of reasons and this is chief among them.

In the case of Cross though, it’s not so easy to follow. Running a Google search for “Chrono Cross plot” will auto complete the search with “confusing” and “doesn't make any sense” and while it is pretty confusing I do think it mostly makes sense.  Serge and company never do any significant time travel in the game, it all exists in exposition that is backloaded into the last few hours of the game. So much of this games plot remains a total mystery to players until very late in the game when it’s all dumped on you at once. Like I said, it all mostly makes sense in the way Time Travel stories need to (you don’t want to split hairs too much with these things) but it comes at you so late and fast that processing it all can be overwhelming.

Not only that, but the time travel stuff is all built on the events of Trigger. To understand anything that’s going on in this game demands you have an intimate knowledge of that game’s events. The stuff with the Dragonians for example is all building off the events of the prehistoric era of Chrono Trigger, something explained in terms only someone who has played Trigger will understand. The entire plot of Cross is designed to tie up a loose end from the events at Trigger’s Ocean Palace, one of that game’s most crucial and memorable points, again explained in only terms someone who played Trigger will be able to really follow. I haven’t played Trigger in over two years and while I was able to at least identify when Cross was calling back to that game, the specifics of what I needed to know were often lost to me.

It all reeks of a game that was rushed through production late in development to meet deadline. If you've ever played Xenogears (which Cross writer-director Masato Kato also worked on) you’ll know what I’m talking about. I’d love to see this game get remade and be given the time it needed to have its story fleshed out and told properly, because there are a lot of cool ideas here, even if they are going to be lost on the vast majority of players. For now, if you’re really interested in sorting it all out there is this handy timeline(s) which might end up giving you a headache.

Outside of the story the game play is solid. There are no random encounters; enemies roam the map and making contact with them triggers a battle, similar to what many JRPGs have adopted in recent years. Combat is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't played it, but it’s all designed around preventing the player from spamming a single powerful spell for the entire game. It’s nice and not nearly as complicated as some people have made it out to be. I actually found the system to be very simple and intuitive. Leveling up is no longer an issue either. The game lacks a traditional level up system in favor of scaling the players stats to the point of the game they’re in based how many bosses they've beaten.  There are random stat boosts gained after minor battles but I never found the need to grind for those. Whenever I got to a new area I was always right where I needed to be for the game to be not too hard but not too easy.

One final thing before I wrap this up, the soundtrack is handled by veteran composer Yasunori Mitsuda. Mitsuda is one of the greats and he did most of the heavy lifting on the Chrono Trigger’s sound track when he was just starting out. He did some of his career best work on Cross and that’s not a statement to make lightly. Just listen to Time's Scar.

Overall I really did enjoy Chrono Cross despite my misgivings about how the story is told. That said, while I would recommend Chrono Trigger to pretty much everyone who isn't a total degenerate, Cross is something I can recommend only to those like myself who are really into the genre and even then you should probably take that recommendation with a grain of salt. This one is not for everyone.

Currently playing: Mass Effect 2

New Year’s Resolution

My new year’s resolution is to become a better writer. Full stop.

I feel like I’m already a competent enough writer. I guess I can string together a handful of words and make something that reads alright. My main problem is that as it stands I don’t really do all that much writing.

So that’s what this is for. I want to make that change. I want to write more often. Not think about writing often, I do that enough. I want to write as often as I can, about whatever. I need to just stretch my legs a bit and work out some of the kinks with my style figure out what my voice is. You know, “writer stuff”. I already started this earlier with my "Stuff I Played" post. But I want to do more than just write about video games. So expect more in the future.

So that’s my new year’s resolution, 20 days into 2014.

Stuff I Played: Mass Effect

Stuff I Played is where I write about games I recently played. It’s not really a review, just a short write up of my totally subjective thoughts as the formed in the days after I finished playing something.

So I finally played Mass Effect. Sometime around June of 2012 I bought an Xbox 360 just to play these games and a small smattering of other games, but since then I've only ever played Lost Odyssey and Dust: An Elysian Tail to completion. To make matters worse, in the time between me shelling out for the 360 and now most of the games I bought the system for (namely Mass Effect and Deadly Premonition) have been ported to the PS3, which I already owned. Funny how that works out…

I played Mass Effect on the recommendation of a new acquaintance. I had actually tried to play it once before, closer to the time that I had dropped the cash for the games and console, but quickly lost interest in what I was doing. See, the game opens with this really exciting mission where a ton of cool stuff goes down and then about an hour into that you arrive on the Citadel and have to convince the galactic council of everything that happened while you were there. This mostly takes the form of you kind of running in circles and chasing leads for a bit and while it really does help you become acquainted with the world of Mass Effect I never could bring myself to get excited about finding proof of something I saw happen so that I could convincing some alien jerks who don’t seem to like me very much that I’m not crazy. I still feel this way having gone through it a second time, but luckily the sequence doesn’t take all that long to complete and once you’re done the game recovers quick and gets going.

Everything once you get to leave the Citadel really does move at a nice clip. Even the extended talky bits on planets like Noveria were more engaging to me that what had preceded it on the Citadel (this is likely because the stuff on Noveria was being uncovered for the first time while the events on the Citadel felt somewhat redundant to me). I especially liked how each planet was its own little closed circle with a unique cast and story arc that helped build to the games conclusion. It helps strike a nice balance between linear and non-linear progression that is need to tell a compelling story in these kinds of games without sticking the player on a straight line from start to finish. Apparently this is kind of a Bioware thing because I also thought it was cool in Dragon Age: Origins when I played that in the way way back.

The members of your squad were all pretty cool too. I never got too interested in Ashley or Kaidan because I guess the appeal of chatting up all the different Aliens and getting to know more about their worlds and cultures was more intriguing to me than whatever the other humans on the ship felt like talking about. The world of Mass Effect feels uncommonly fleshed out for a piece of modern science fiction so getting to hear Wrex and Garrus tell me about who they are and how they become who they are and what their respective races are like was something I really enjoyed. 

The romance stuff felt kind of silly to me though. I had initially decided to go with Ashley because I couldn't figure out where Liara was on the Normandy, so after I had shifted gears to Liara I got an awkward little scene near the end of the game where the two characters decide to confront Shepherd about who he wants to be with. I thought this was pretty funny so I’ll put it in the win column.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Mass Effect.  Third person cover based shooters aren't the kind of games I usually play and I was REALLY bad at the combat in the beginning, but luckily the game never punished me too badly so long as I made sure to save often. By the end of the game I felt pretty awesome and could take on anything I felt like assuming I didn't act too dumb, so that was neat. As it stands, I've decided to space out the remaining games in the trilogy with an unrelated game in between them. I feel I need to give them a little breathing room so I don’t get too burnt out on the mechanics.

Currently playing: Chrono Cross