The Time Egg

Let me start with a little disclaimer.  This is my favorite game of all time hands down.

Chrono Trigger.  Ever heard of it?  I don't blame you if you haven't.  Originally released on the SNES, it has never had much of a following.  In fact, I didn't even know it existed until about 1998, when I asked a guy at my local GameStop if he knew of any awesomesauce RPGs.  They had one copy, and wanted 120 dollars for it.  I almost bought it.  Anyway, I let it pass by but I was intrigued, so I did some digging and found out what it was about.  Then one of my friend's older brother borrowed a copy from someone and let me play it for a few days.  I was sold completely and utterly.

I picked up a copy of the snes version a few years later for about 40 dollars.  I played the heck outta that thing.  There are at least 7 endings in the original version (I could google it and find out but I don't want to), and I found about four of them before I played any other game.  There are TONS of things to do in this game, besides the main story line(s), and you don't have to recruit all the characters to do it.  But I digress.

There are now three versions available, the SNES, the PSone (which comes with Final Fantasy IV, another good RPG), and the DS.  I own all three, and here's why.  The SNES version was my first copy, and I don't think I can ever get rid of it.  The PS1 version included a couple bonus features the SNES didn't, and had animated cinematics.  Nothing terribly fancy, but still pretty neat.  The DS version is a masterpiece.  It completely remastered the sound, cleaned the graphics up a bit, left in the cinematics from the PS1, added a new dungeon, a few new items... the list goes on.

*Possible spoiler alert, I make no promises, you've been warned ^_^
The general story line is... you play as Crono, a young nobody from a small town.  You go to the Millenial fair, which happens once a millenium (shocker there, I know) where you bump into a young girl.  Your geeky friend Lucca has built a teleportation machine, and your new friend demands to use it.  Long story short, you end up going back in time 400 years.  And that's just the beginning.

**Definite spoiler alert
There's intrigue, there's time travel, there's a lot of changing things in the past to effect the future.  What got me though was the fact that when you beat the 'final' boss, you're only... maybe an eighth of the way through the game, if that.  What you find out is astounding... Turns out you and the bad guy's goals are a lot closer to the same than you think, you just didn't know what your real goal was yet.

**Okay, spoiler alert over

So now for gameplay.  For the most part, leveling is straightforward.  Beat enemies, get XP/money/skill points, stats go up, learn new abilities.  What I thought was neat though was the separation of level XP and skill XP.  Skill points unlock your new abilities, and XP levels you up.  Sounds more confusing that it is.  Leveling both skills and stats are linear... you don't get to customize your party members, but they all have clearly defined roles.  For example, Crono is your heavy hitter crit whore speedy mcspeedpants.  Frog (yeah, he's a frog man.  Long story, possibly my favorite character) is a more solid utility fighter, uses magic to heal the party but packs a punch physically too, and is very slow compared to most other members.  There are 'Tabs' that you can use on anyone to increase any specific stat by one, but they are very rare (i.e. there are power tabs, magic tabs, etc).  Something I've found is rather unique to CT is dual and triple techs.  Essentially, you team up with a partner to do something devastating, usually more than you could do separately.  For example, Crono and frog team up for an X-Strike on a single enemy, since they're both sword fighters.

Combat is pretty straightforward.  Run into an enemy (literally, there are no random encounters here) fight them wherever you are in the zone.  Another thing I really liked was the active/wait system.  Basically, while you're flipping through you menus you pause combat.  It's an option, but one that I think is amazing for a party based menu driven combat system.  You have an action bar just like in FFVII or other similar RPGs, and you get to take one action every time that fills up.  Another cool option that CT offers is changing combat speed.  Basically, you control how fast turns are.  At the slowest setting, you could see 10 seconds between bars filling up.  At the fastest, it's nearly instant.  This doesn't make the game easier or harder, since the enemies are slowed or sped up too, but it really cuts down your idle time, at least if you're on the wait system.  On the active system, I'd rather have the longer bar fill up because I'm slow at menus.  Other than that, you have your regular Attack option, Items, Techs, Defend and Flee.  Pretty straightforward.

Items are your run of the mill stereotyped  RPG  items: potions, status cures, etc.  Equipment on the other hand was very well done.  There's three types of armor.  The most common is unisex, but there are male and female only armors.  Sometimes you'll find something that's unique to a certain party member (example:  Lucca's dad makes her a armored dress and later a hat), but for the most part, it's again really easy to see "This has better stats, this cuts fire damage, etc."

Weapons are another story.  Each character has their own weapon that is unique to them, and can't use any other weapon.  Crono uses katanas, Frog two handed swords, Lucca guns (think like an airsoft gun, or a very powerful BB gun).  Every character has an "ultimate" or more appropriately "best in slot" weapon.  There are of course special effects on some weapons that might make using them more attractive than something that hits harder, for example a sword that gives you a passive Haste spell all the time, but again, really easy to see and weigh those things.

Anyway.  There are a ton of things to do in this game, from minigames to exploring to hunting rareish monsters to changing jerkfaces in the future by talking to their ancestors in the past.  It's relatively easy to 'beat' this game, but that's where the multiple endings come in.  I still play this game, and I beat it probably the same week I bought the SNES version.

DS owners, if you're looking for an amazing RPG with some 90's anime nostalgia, get this game.  Heck, half the reason I bought a DS was for this game!  Now that I think about it... I bought this game before I bought my DS >.>

If you're not a traditional RPG fan, you probably won't like this game.  I cried, I laughed my head off, I got angry when the characters go angry.  I loved it.  I give this game 12/10.  That's right, I cheated and gave it 120%.  It got extra credit for being so amazingly amazingpants.

So until next time, rock on, level up, and roll for loot.