Posts Tagged ‘review’

I can’t believe it, but it’s been 4  years since my last review of a video game. I guess I am just not that great at finishing what I start sometimes. Yet I have a review for a classic remake of a classic game – Super Ghouls and Ghosts. This is easily one of the most difficult SNES games I have ever played and one of the reasons that it took so long to do a review is because I had to really work up the courage and the discipline to get through it. Unfortunately, I was not very well rewarded with this game, but I’ll get to that later. So… here we go!

Table of Contents:

  1. Foreword
  2. Story
  3. Gameplay
    1. Basics
    2. Chests
    3. Weapons
    4. Armor
  4. Review
    1. The Good
    2. The Bad
    3. The Ugly
  5. Final Thoughts

Foreword

In case you are not quite sure what this game is, it is actually a remake of a remake of remake! Yes… that’s right, third generation remake but a classic side-scrolling platformer nonetheless. To understand where this game comes from, one must understand it’s past. The game began as “Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins”, an arcade console running on the Motorola 6809 chipset in 1985. It was also released on the NES, Commodore 16, and many other game systems. Three years later, a new version of the game was created called “Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts which was released on the Capcom System 1 (CS-1) for the arcade and on various computer consoles such as Amiga and Commodore 64. Finally, in 1991, Capcom decided to release a remastered version of the original game directly for the SNES. Hence, the game was born as a remake of a remake or a remake but it is still legendary in its style and platform skill. I should mention that the series continued and spawned many other titles including Demon’s Crest, Gargoyle’s Quest, Ultimate Ghouls ‘N’ Ghosts, etc. So despite being old enough to drink, rent a car, get married, and even start losing some hair, the series is still alive and kicking today.

Story

(( WARNING – Some Spoilers Ahead… you were warned))

Hey dude! Bring Back 2P Chains!

The story is very simple and only moderately different than the storyline from the previous games. Essentially it works like this: You are Arthur King of the Br…ahem… the Great Knight. You are in love with Princess Prin Prin (yes… that’s her freaking name… come on!) and hope to make many young Arthurs (even though the entire Arthurian legend involving Guinevere and her husband are ignored – that’s mostly a European thing so you can’t blame Japan for not knowing the full story). In the middle of the night you are just hanging out with the Princess and trying to figure out if she wants to be called “Prinny”, “Princess P”, 2P (not really but oh well). While you talk, you get this weird sensation of something coming closer and closer (the game actually uses a unique approach of the Mode 7 engine) to your castle. Suddenly.. CRASH! A Red Demon steals your girl for no apparent reason.

Get Your Princess in This Castle

So now, Arthur is pissed and leaves Cam…er… the castle, to seek revenge on the demon lord Sardius because he magically knows that’s who took her. Also, this same bastard has been stealing girls for a while so Arthur knows that she is being held captive in this castle at the end of the world. You get to hop through the window and go into the…erm… graveyard that Prin Prin keeps outside the castle. Maybe you have a red flag here?

Arthur will brave all the horrors of Sardius’s minions and the weird worlds they inhabit. All the while he must collect magical weapons, deal with landscape that changes all the time, and often gets forced to run around in his underwear… seriously, I’m not making this up. You travel through the graveyard, into the umm… ocean at the edge of the graveyard, down into the magma core of the earth, through a weird living tooth monster land, up a rainy monster tree, through a frozen wasteland, into two parts of a castle and finally to the throne room to face Sardius himself.

Unfortunately, there are some things you were not told, as it turns out, Sardius really only took 2P Chains (I don’t care, that’s what I am going to call her from now on) because he thought she had this thing called the “Goddess Bracelet” because… you know… evil Satan-like demons love to hold things owned by gods and goddesses, it won’t burn them up or anything #maybenottrue. Plus, this bracelet is so powerful that if Arthur touches it without the magical God…er…Gold armor, he can’t live either. However, because 2P Chains is a bit of a blue-haired airhead, she accidentally dropped this priceless artifact somewhere along the way. No… of course she doesn’t remember where, she just dropped it while the red demon was taking her to the castle.

I did not sign up for this!

So after you have trudged through 6 planes of death, often in just your underwear, you finally beat Sardius’ minion, Astaroth (and his jealous brother Nebirtoh – the dude is actually green) and you hope to save hottie 2P Chains and get some double P action, only to find out that you have to do it all over again because the actual bad guy can’t be beaten by anything but the VERY THING she dropped. You get sent back to the beginning. Only now that bad guys KNOW you are coming and so everything got massively harder and they called in all the reinforcements for each kind of monster. Plus, all the boss monsters have now taken steroids and have entire playbooks about how you beat them last time. That means that the monsters are harder, the maps are more complex, the bosses cannot be beaten the same way, and if you don’t somehow find this mythical “Goddess Bracelet” before you get back to the castle of Sardius, you will not be able to beat him. Dude! 2P Chains really blew it this time! Maybe you ought to talk to that hottie Guinevere over (*smacked with the ‘canon’ stick*) .. ahem… sorry, where was I? Oh yeah! You have to beat the “Fiend” Sardius using the Goddess Bracelet that 2P Chains dropped on the way after you have combed the entire map again to look for the long lost amulet.

Why do my pants have a face?

Ultimately, you get to face off  against the Fiend Sardius who stands a full two stories above you. You can shoot him with the lightning bolt power of the “Goddess Bracelet” (though it is actually pretty unwieldy). But for some strange reason, his ‘crotch mouth’ (a staple of the final baddies in this series it seems), spits out ice-like platforms to allow you to jump up and blast his blue, white-bearded, face, repeatedly until he finally blows up. Hooray! You have defeated Sardius and saved Princess Prin Prin! You can now ride off in the sunset with your blue haired girl. However, the game couldn’t possibly let you go of their massive franchise so you are actually greeted with a “The End…?” screen because… well… Sata..erm… Sardius is an eternal bad guy and he likely will want to steal your princess again sometime because that’s what eternal bad guys do so don’t get too comfortable. Roll Credits!

 

 

Gameplay

Easily the most difficult thing about mastering this game is understanding the unique mechanics of the game’s controls. Arthur is able to execute double jumps, use variety of weapons, upgrade his armor and ultimately use a type of ‘charge up’ to complete the most powerful use of each weapon. Some of the weapons in the game are fantastic and work very well in a wide variety of situations while others are completely useless, even for basic combat. Oh yes, and don’t forget the various treasure chests in the game. You will find yourself battling all manner of horrors throughout the map stages. There are zombies, ghosts, wolves, flying demons, faeries (I’m not talking Tinkerbell here), monster fish, giant bears with clothing, and countless others. You must jump, scream, claw, and strive through over 7 different levels with all varying kinds of environments from a graveyard, to the ocean, to this horrifying tooth cave of death, etc. Each stage has a boss at the end that seems to fit the genre of the stage you are playing and these monsters range from the normal (giant birds of death) to the really weird (mushroom coral monster anyone?)

Basics

First of all, the character has some basic moves. Arthur can move left and right in the standard fashion of side-scrolling games. He can also climb ladders if you position him over them and press the “Up” button. If you press the jump button one time, Arthur will do a basic jump that generally gets him across normal gaps or up small platforms. However, if you press jump once and within a 2-3 seconds, press it again, he will double jump which will generally get him across everything else and can even be used to jump up to different levels instead of climbing the ladders (especially useful for speedrunners). You can also change the direction of the second jump by pushing right or left with the arrow key while also pressing the second jump button. Sometimes, the only way to get over a particular obstacle is to do a ‘zig zag jump’ wherein the player pushes a direction such as left while pressing jump for the first time, then pressing the opposite direction (right in this example) and jump again. In this situation, Arthur will jump at a 45 degree angle one way, then jump another 45 degree angle the opposite way.

Chests

I CURSE you!


The other prevalent thing you will find in this game are treasure chests. These are generally unseen until your character jumps at a certain area on the screen or does a particular motion in a certain map space. When you do this properly, a chest will appear and seem to ‘jump’ out of the ground nearby. The wise player will learn the ‘hot zones’ where these appear. Sometimes the chests will drop weapons (discussed next), sometimes they will drop armor (discussed a little later), and sometimes they will release a magician who will cast a spell on you. This spell is probably one of the most annoying things in the  world because you have no control over what you are turned into. Arthur may become a goose, a bee, an old man, a little girl, a pig, or if the game is really being evil to you, a baby. Why is the baby so evil? Because he is very slow and if you get hit by any enemies, you will get stunned and be unable to move for a few moments. If that happens while you are in the mix with a bunch of baddies, you will almost certainly die. But without the treasure chests and the potential for any number of weird things that might happen with the magician’s curse, you can’t get any weapons or armor and without those, well… why are you playing? You will also encounter various jars that are either carried on enemies or sitting around on the map; usually these will just give you cash bags (worth various points based off the dollar amount) or glowing knight statues which will give you 200 points for free. On a rare occasion, a jar will give you a weapon, often whether you want it or not. So let’s look at weapons next, shall we?

Weapons

Why don’t I have a sword?

So you can jump around the map and double jump, but how does he attack? Well, that is pretty simple. You start the game with a lance (weird since this is Arthur… famous for using a SWORD… *canon stick waves menacingly above me* but that’s not important, heh…) that you throw, much like a javelin or spear. It is great for basic damage and flies in a straight line when shot. What makes this even funnier is that the box of the game and the cartridge shows him carrying a sword but there really is no such weapon in the game. You may also find a variety of other weapons including the crossbow which is VERY useful as it shoots a projectile in front of you and at a 45 degree angle above you which will take out most flying creatures after a few hits and there are plenty of those! You may also find the torch as a weapon of interest but it is best saved when facing slow enemies, large enemies, or those that can’t move much as it flies up, then falls down at an angle and creates a fire geyser. You also have a throwing ax which is very slow but does some decent damage if used on the right enemies – it will fly up at a 45 degree angle and then go straight down on whatever is below it.

Beyond these, most of the other weapons are useless. There is a pitiful throwing knife that, although it is fast, does very little damage and goes straight out like a lance (so why not use that since it’s more damage anyway). You will also find a scythe which is basically like a boomerang but does very little damage unless it happens to strike an enemy flying at you as it returns. Then there is a weird, rotating knife thing called the ‘tri-blade’ but it doesn’t try to hit anything… seriously, it lazily glides out from your character’s head, goes down then straight and continues this strange up and down meandering pattern. However, much like Castlevania games, you have no choice about changing weapons – if you touch the weapon when it comes out of a chest, you will lose the weapon you had and be forced to use whatever weapon you just got.

Sometimes, the appearance of the items on the map are so unfortunate (like, if you need the crossbow because you know that there are four flying demons in the next section of the map but you randomly get a useless tri-blade from the chest) that it’s actually better to kill your character (the game gives you an infinite number of continues so… eh?) than to pick up the weapon. Now the great king of the Britons is reduced to committing seppuku… what is the world coming to? Lastly, there is the Goddess Bracelet which you can ONLY get if you have the Gold Armor and we’re going to get to that part now.

Armor

I’m too sexy for my pants

Ah yes, one of the unique quirks of the game is the way your character takes “hits”. Many platform games both past and present will give the character a ‘life bar’ or ‘hit points’ or something like that to gauge how much damage you can take. However, this is not the way that Super Ghouls and Ghosts works. Nope… you basically have two hit points. If you have not been hit, you wear ‘steel armor’ which is gray and similar to what you’d expect from a knight. However, if you get hit while wearing the steel armor, Arthur decides to run around in his underwear… literally… yup, the hero of Arthurian legend running around in white boxers with red polka dots on them. If you get hit again while Arthur is in his undies, you die – geez… I hope they were clean.

This is not Bronze…

But don’t fear, you actually can get additional suits of armor to help you with your quest – as long as you aren’t always in your undies… don’t be a weirdo anyway. The first upgrade you get is called the “Bronze Armor” which is awfully strange because it’s… umm… blue green? If you are hit while wearing the Gree-Ronze armor, Arthur simply returns to his steel armor meaning that you can take 3 hits in this armor before you die. Not to mention, when you have the ahem… Jade… Armor, each weapon looks different and is more powerful. The lances make a neat laser noise, glow blue/green and do more damage. The crossbow becomes a laser pointed set of tri-arrows that blast in three directions. The axes look more like you are tossing flying guillotines and the scythe looks more like a throwing star to name a few changes. However, if you are hit once and return to the steel armor, your weapons are only the boring standard weapons again. If you want to keep the awesome power-ups and take more damage, then you need the Gold armor…

Fear Me!

If you somehow manage to not get hit by all the horrible monsters in this game while wearing the Jade armor, you will eventually open a treasure chest that gives you the Gold armor which is obviously the best of the breed and it makes Arthur look pretty bad ass. Seriously… he is like a gold ball of awesome with a neat feather. It also gives him access to a wide array of shields that may appear in the chests but most sources agree that the shields are pretty much useless unless you are really good with them. In addition to the awesome look of the armor, that means Arthur can take 4 full hits before he dies and that’s like… invincible in this game. He gets to keep the awesome power-ups of his weapons from the Bron-reen armor and even learns how to do magic! Well… one spell anyway. But it is also ONLY with the Gold Armor that you can hope to wield the Goddess Bracelet. In fact, without the Gold Armor, the Goddess Bracelet will NEVER appear in a chest. So until you get REALLY good at not getting hit by the hordes of monsters, you will never be able to beat the ultimate bad guy and win the game.

The secret to this game is basically to learn what weapons you are best at, learn how to use the double jump with high effectiveness, and well… not get killed. The fact that you cannot even beat the game unless you can keep the Gold Armor and find the Goddess Bracelets is proof positive that the developers of this game were sadists. They only want to watch you suffer! But if you get good at leaping, weapons swapping, and using the map to your advantage, you can eke your way through and beat this game… twice.

Review

Ah! Now we come to the part you’ve all been waiting for, my review! Yes, even though I have been gaming for over three decades and consider platform games one of my talents, it took your boy RGB here a VERY long time to beat this beast. I only played this game a few times when I was younger and would usually avoid it if I remembered what’s good for me. But now I managed to make it through this game by dedicating about 4 hours per night over the course of a week or so until I beat it. Now, I’m not going to lie, I made liberal use of the “Save State” feature on my emulator several times until I memorized the maps and the enemies. However, I actually made it all the way through the game with no save states until I arrived at Sardius’ throne room so I felt your pain all the way through. This game has some very nice graphics for the era, a really cool mix of weapons and plenty of goodies to keep you moving. However, it is frightfully difficult and occasionally darn near impossible. Without further ado, here are “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” of Super Ghouls and Ghosts.

The Good

I feel so dirty!

First of all, this was released very early in the SNES library – within six months of the console’s launch – yet it seemed graphically stunning compared to the other games of the time. The developers used a unique mixture of nicely painted but static background layers, full motion front layers to illustrate rain and snow, and a mind numbing use of the Mode 7, pseudo 3D capability of the SNES. In fact, it the fourth stage, Arthur is traveling through a ‘living cavern’ with a floor that changes from a pulsating tan skin (ew!) to a writhing mass of gesticulating teeth (WTF?) all while Arthur must float around on membranous mucus platforms while avoiding steam vents and ax-wielding brutes. The game designers used Mode 7 to make this horrifying stage rotate around Arthur  while he avoids geysers of death and ground with teeth. Likewise, when you are on the ocean/ghost ship stage, the developers used gentle shifts of the Mode 7 technology to make the boat ‘sway’ in the water and to make the waves rise and fall on Arthur as he pilots a raft on the water of death. While it’s true that Super Mario World (the launch title of the SNES) used many of these features as well, they were not as potent because of the more cartoon-like design of those characters. Super GnG was not afraid to scare the crap out of you with dark landscapes you might find in a vampire movie , truly scary looking monsters (well… the ghosts were pretty lame but I digress).

Next, Super GnG took the standard approach of a platform game such as side-scrolls, creative jumping, map distractions, etc. and took them to the next level by adding weapons, power ups, landscape that transforms as you interact with it (such as a rock suddenly shifting when you step on it or waves crashing over a map and wiping out almost all of the places to stand), and an endless array of monsters to beat. I would almost go as far as to say that the game established many of the standards found in later platform games. You really have to learn what weapons work best against a certain enemy, figure out how to not die while attacking that enemy, and use jumping in a way that really pushes you to the limit of your own ability. As someone who considers themselves skilled at platformers, not even the best muscle training in the world can prepare you for some of the crazy things this platform makes you do. It takes a short time to learn but a long time to master.

Lastly, the game keeps its creepy air with a clever mix of humor but never overdoes either piece. No matter what you do, you always feel like this game wants to kill you (and it does) and even the slightest wrong move can make you die horribly. That, mixed with the altogether terrifying look of the monsters (final bosses aside), keep you feeling creeped out and quite uncomfortable. But these ingredients are exactly what makes this game awesome! You feel the macabre sense of the world but still get a laugh at a dude running about in his underwear or bears in clothing. The game has an atmosphere to it that is both creepy and fulfilling at the same time. If only you can NOT DIE long enough to enjoy those things.

The Bad

Despite the fun and challenging aspects of the game, it is not without its flaws. As with many games that were pushing the limits of a new system, Super GnG has some aspects that did not quite flesh out when it was released. For instance, when you go through the world the second time through, the amount of monsters is literally doubled in almost every stage. Not only does this challenge the player, but it also challenges the hardware. When you face a map full of baddies, especially ghosts, each one has its own individual sprite layer that forms independently around the others and this stresses the game’s rendering engine to a high degree. So much so, that many sprites at once can cause screen to flash violently enough to trigger seizures and cause the player to die while the game is trying to answer all the sprite requests plus the inputs from your controller that its trying to process.

Next of all, the more you think about Super GnG and Super Mario Brothers, it’s easy to see how one could consider them copies of one another. After all, when you start out on Super Mario World, your character is “small Mario” who will die if he’s hit. However, if you happen to have a mushroom to make “big Mario” or a cape to make “Flying Mario”  and you hit an enemy, you will lose that power up and go back to “small Mario”. Plus, the ultimate bad guy in the game steals the Princess for no apparent reason (especially Bowser, he just stole Peach to be a dick). Mix that with a creative use of Mode 7 graphics to change the rotation of things on the map and it starts to feel like Super GnG was a weird attempt by Capcom to steal Nintendo’s secret sauce for platform games. They didn’t win though, but it is notable.

Fear our crotch mouth!

Finally, the ultimate bad guys look pretty freaking dumb compared to some of the other monsters you have to face. For instance, Sardius’s minion, Astaroth and his more powerful form Nebiroth look pretty dumb. Not to mention, Sardius himself looks pretty underwhelming when you consider the alternatives. I mean, seriously… these guys look like Santa Claus got pissed off, grew a crotch mouth and tried to take over the world. From a game that has ax murdering monsters that appear out of thin air, zombies that look pretty terrible, and enemies that move all over the map, I expected SO MUCH MORE from the ultimate bad guys. They basically stomp around (they don’t even jump really), spit lasers at you, and shoot fire from their crotch mouths. It’s such a let down! You want to HATE the ultimate bad guy of this game, especially after you have to go through the game TWICE just to beat him. Yet… all you get are these weird dudes who you honestly feel sorry for more than you fear. I mean, the crotch mouth is pretty scary but only if it was like… a real head. I simply didn’t feel like it was worth it to go through all the trouble just to beat these idiots.

The Ugly

For everything this game had in awesome graphics, spooky sounds and worlds, and challenging platforms it is pretty great. I can accept the similarities between it and Super Mario, look past the idiotic styling of the demon overlords and the graphic glitches. But there are a few things out of this that I simply cannot accept and are part of the reasons that I will not be in any hurry to replay it.

First of all, doing this game twice is damned idiotic! I understand that in the arcade format of this game, it makes sense to double the game time so that the arcade (and Capcom) can squeeze more quarters out of you. But when it was ported to the SNES, that should have been less important. Now, it’d be a different story if…say… you had to go back through a world that had been radically changed after your first encounter with the bad guy (think World of Balance versus World of Ruin in Final Fantasy III/VII or the time-based changes when you changed the past of something in Chrono Trigger to impact the future) but Super GnG doesn’t do this. Nope! They just make you replay the whole game because Sardius is a jerk and he hates you!

Lame endings are for losers

Second of all… this story is freaking dumb! I mean, seriously, at least be a bit creative as to why you care about fighting the bad guy and saving 2P Chains. She just randomly gets kidnapped by Satan, you have to go through a maze of death just to learn she was an airhead and dropped something that Sardius wanted and you have to go save her. Yes, I get it, this is a hack and slash ghost game so I should not have my expectations so high but to make a story that is so devoid of any value, you’d at least hope that the ending would be good and it’s not. Nope… you are just stuck wondering if the Eternal Evil™ will return and you don’t even get to carry a real sword. You just basically ride off into the sunset with your blue haired bimbo of a girlfriend who probably almost got you killed because she’s a forgetful klutz. It’s very unfulfilling after all the hell you went through…twice… to get to the end. Of course, it’s at least slightly better than the end sequence of the NES version of Ghosts ‘N’ Goblins because it is at least in…well… English… that ending was so bad that it ranked on WhatCulture Gaming’s Most Insulting Game Endings.

Finally, the world repeatedly tries to kill you. That’s right, every. single. stage. tries to murder you mercilessly and the developers just laughed about it. Normally the first stage of a game ‘eases’ you into the crazy but not Super GnG…oh no… halfway through the stage the waves crash over the map and if you aren’t standing on a rock, you will die. Then, the second stage has indestructible guillotines plus hordes of ghosts and a raft ride of death that tries to kill you. Then, in the third stage you are surrounded by lava that tries to kill you and fire-breathing bears in sweaters that try to kill you. The fourth stage is the god awful stage of skin and teeth where even the world tries to kill you. The fifth stage is full of rain washes and disappearing platforms that try to kill you. The sixth stage has FUCKING avalanches that try to kill you… oh and ice-breathing bears in sweaters that try to kill you. I could go on and on but I won’t. I fully respect that there are some games that really make you work hard to get through them but they usually entice you with a good story or some areas of the game that let you breathe easy. Nope… not Super GnG… the world hates you, the developers hate you, your princess is a bimbo who got herself in trouble, and you have to march through hell twice.

Final Thoughts

So now I come to the end of a game that I really wanted to love, especially since it took me so long to actually get around to beating it. There is no doubt about it, this game will challenge even the most seasoned of platform runners. You will find yourself immersed in a macabre world that is almost likened to a horror genre game but with just enough quirky weirdness to make you smile and laugh a little. It is a stunning example of even the beginnings of what Mode 7 graphics could do (and eventually did) and how it could be used in varying degrees. The uniqueness of this game will make it stand out in anyone’s mind and you will have a fine time tuning your skills high enough to beat this monster.

However, this game left much to the imagination as it was somewhat too powerful for the hardware it was written on. It also had a really stupid requirement to complete twice. Now, I should note that i have actually played two other games from this franchise: Gargoyle’s Quest (think being the bad guy in a Super GnG world) and the beautiful Demon’s Crest which did the replay the world mechanic quite well and made you want to do it. I know that Capcom can make repeating a whole game interesting, they just did not do it with this game. You will also find that the game’s final bad guys are downright dumb so don’t expect too much and you might not be let down. If you can ignore the double play action, the somewhat stupid ending, and the levels with murder in their eyes, you will be able to find a lot of great things about this game to love.

It’s very easy to become accustomed to a certain way a game operates as many of those playing platform games in this era did. Capcom succeeded in taking that type of gamer and pushing them to their utter limits in order to live in their world. There is something of an artistic poetry to being able to master each weapon in this game and the right time to use them. It’s a great achievement when you learn how to navigate the levels, memorize the hot spots for treasure chests (especially knowing they will always appear), reach the fully Gold Armor clad Arthur, and beat a game that is so darn difficult that it lands on many of the “Hardest SNES Games” lists that are out there on the internet. Yet the amazing success you have in beating something that you know took the effort makes the other things in this platform game not as hard to accept.

Ultimately, this game was a defining point in the SNES game history, a turning point in the formula for platform games, and a humorously twisted approach to Arthurian legend. If you fancy yourself a master platform gamer, I urge you to give this a shot but don’t expect you’ll be able to just breeze right through it, even with cheat codes. I often will try Game Genie/PAR codes on games at various occasions just to see how the world will respond to them and I can assure you that even the best cheat codes don’t make this game much easier to play. To be true to yourself as a gamer, only use cheat codes after you have made it through cleanly. If you’ve been putting off Super GnG for a while, now is the time to give it a go!

Good luck… seriously… you’re going to need it!

Finally Working on a New Game to Review

Hey everybody! I am enjoying the fact that I have one more month of free time (more or less) until I start teaching classes again. As a result, I am trying to play through an RPG that I have never played before. It took some tweaking, but I was finally able to get a Sega Genesis emulator to start working (WAY more complicated than an NES/SNES Emulator). I tried playing an old favorite of mine, Toe Jam and Earl, but I simply could not motivate myself. I took a bit of time to play through and beat Bastion (a newer RPG/Platform game on the PC) before delving back into the emulator world. Finally, I ended up selecting Phantasy Star II (Probably stylized form of “Fantasy” to avoid trying to cash in on the success of ANYTHING with Fantasy in it and avoid a lawsuit with Nintendo). It’s cool because it takes the old-school RPG into a space age world. I know that the series was hugely successful and even now there is an MMORPG series of the same name but it’s only available in Japan and some European markets.

So far the game has been fun to play, it’s definitely a unique system and I am still getting used to the way Sega did things with the Sega, Master System, CD System, 32X, etc and finding the right pieces to make it work but I am coming along. It’s a very different RPG, that’s for sure. Nothing like fighting battles with monsters on this weird, blue grid that looks like the cover of the Neuromancer book and having a character who cannot fight in my party – seriously – the girl character Nei is not capable of fighting – her whole purpose is to heal which is cool but weird. Anyway, I am still very early in the play through, only halfway through the first dungeon, but I hope that I can get more accustomed to the game’s controls and rhythm enough to finish it and write a review before my classes start.

Stay tuned!

Final Fantasy V – The Missing RPG Link

RGB is back in action with yet another review! This time I chose to review the often mysterious Final Fantasy V for the SNES. I hope you enjoy reading this review as much as I enjoyed making it!

  1. Foreword
  2. Story
  3. Gameplay
  4. Review
    1. The Good
    2. The Bad
    3. The Ugly
  5. Final Thoughts

Foreword

As I eluded to in my post regarding Final Fantasy II/IV, there were actually 3 Final Fantasy games created for the SNES but due to some continuity issues, Final Fantasy IV was released as FF2 in America, the real FF5 was skipped and then FF3 was released even though it was technically FF6. So, FF5 is the only SNES Final Fantasy that never made it to America until emulation made it happen.

Let’s get visual here to understand where this fits:

fftimeSo what we have here is basically a great game that Square didn’t publish in the USA. Why is that? Well, it is very simple. The original game was designed to be a direct sequel of FF4 (FF2 USA) – and you can tell – but it also featured  the job system introduced in FF3 (the actual one, not FF6).  For whatever reason, Square felt that the game would be too jarring for the US gamer and the inclusion of the job system would be too confusing for people who were expecting a game that played very similar to what they knew as FF2. In the end, the game was never released to America on the SNES.

However, as the emulation world began to explode in the USA in the early 2000’s, a team of fans created the first ever fan-subbed version of a video game. Later on, the game was re-released in many different formats – Playstation saw it released with the Final Fantasy Anthology, GBA saw it released as ‘Final Fantasy V Advance’, it was even released for iOS. But for my intents and purposes, I played the ‘De-Jap’ translation of the game on my SNES emulator. I am, however, going to use the names and styles of both English translations rather than strictly the De-Jap (for instance, I refuse to call the main character Butz as he was improperly called in the translation but I don’t want to call Cara Krile as that just sounds weird).

Now! Without further ado! I bring you the RGB review of the classic RPG: Final Fantasy V!

ff5intro

The Story

(( WARNING! Some Spoilers Ahead!))

The game opens rather abruptly with a young girl, Princess Lenna of Tycoon, pleading with her father not to leave without her. King Tycoon mounts a dragon (called Hiryuu) and tells his daughter that the wind is getting very weak and he is worried about the wind crystal. After some discussion, King T flies off into the distance and Lenna cries before going back inside. Next, the king arrives at the wind palace where the crystal is stored and tries to calm the people stationed at the palace. The King goes in to the Crystal Room and watches with horror as the crystal shatters into shards. Next the story returns to Castle Tycoon and Lenna realizes that the wind has fully stopped now and she is very worried when Hiryuu returns to Castle Tycoon without her father on its back. She resolves that she will take the Hiryuu to the palace and check on her father even though the Chancellor requests her to wait. However, the Hiryuu appears to have been badly injured and Lenna sets out on foot.

Now we are taken to a boy and his Chocobo – the main character Bartz is a wandering adventurer who tends to explore the world on the back of Boko, his yellow chocobo. As he is resting in the woods near Tycoon, a huge meteor strikes the ground nearby and he goes to investigate. Upon arriving, Bartz finds Lenna unconscious at the meteor impact site and wakes her. Just as she is coming around, a guy with partial amnesia named Galuf stumbles out of the meteor. Galuf remembers that he was supposed to go to the Wind Shrine as well and decides to go along with Lenna. Bartz, however, decides that he doesn’t want to get mixed up in that mess and bids them farewell. However, Bartz begins to feel guilty leaving a young girl and amnesiac man to fend for themselves but just as he begins debating whether or not to go back for them, an earthquake strikes him and traps him in a valley. Soon, he meets back up with Lenna and Galuf and decides to help them. The team ends up finding their way into a pirate’s headquarters and convinces the pirate captain, Faris, to sail them to the wind shrine using his pet hydra as an engine. Unfortunately, the boat is shipwrecked after battling a monster in a valley. The group of 4 makes their way through the ship graveyard and arrives at the Wind Shrine.

ff5shatterUpon arriving at the crystal room, the party realizes that the Wind Crystal is gone but the shards begin to shine and declares the four party members to be the “Warriors of Dawn”. King Tycoon appears as a vapor and warns them that the other three crystals are in danger  and the party must save them or the world will be destroyed (sounds familiar eh?). The team attempts to save the Water crystal by climbing its tower. Upon reaching the top, they face an enemy and this crystal shatters, giving its powers to the Warriors of Dawn. The team rushes to Karn to attempt to save the Fire crystal and find that the brilliant engineer Cid (sounds familiar, too, eh?) created a machine that uses the power of the crystal to make a ship that runs without wind and powers many machines. The team rushes to stop the machine with Cid’s help only to find that the machine has been cranked up to its highest power level and it has overloaded the crystal. As soon as the team arrives to the crystal, it is destroyed and the same reaction occurs. With Cid’s help, the team attempts to save the Earth Crystal but find that its temple is actually a machine in of itself that is designed to activate a flying weapon system when it sensed it was in danger – yup – now it is in danger. So the team must battle a flying fortress after Cid makes the airship capable of flying high enough to reach it. Just as you might have guessed, the team battles through the fortress only to witness – a shattering crystal that reacts to the heroes – oh and then the whole thing falls out of the sky.

Finally, Galuf meets up with Cara, his granddaughter, when she arrives in a meteor after the fortress falls and she restores his memory. Turns out that Galuf is actually from another world. He and 3 other warriors sealed a monster named Exdeath and sent the crystals to THIS planet when he was unable to be destroyed. However, the 4 crystals sealed his power. Now that they are broken, he has been reborn on Galuf’s world and Cara is freaking out! Galuf confirms that he must now go back home and save the planet. He and Cara hop back on a meteor and return back to Galuf’s homeworld while the other teammates are left behind.

Bartz and crew are now stuck with a moral quandary – their world is about to fall into nothingness since all of the crystals have been destroyed. But Galuf told them that he had to fight alone and he took the last working meteor back to his homeland. But that won’t stop Cid! He and his grandson, Mid, work together to create a power source that can allow the team to warp and save the world. The team warps to Galuf’s world and land on an abandoned island. When they attempt to sleep, a monster captures them and takes them prisoner to Exdeath’s fortress. Meanwhile, Galuf and his team have staged an attack on Exdeath’s fortress via the ‘Big Bridge’. Exdeath shows Galuf that he has captured his friends and warns him to cease his attack or he will kill them. Galuf storms the castle himself and saves the other three teammates. But just as he does so, Exdeath activates a barrier around his whole area and the force blows the team to a distant island.

The team finds out that this world is actually a twin world to their own and that when Exdeath was sealed, the warriors split the crystals into two pieces, creating two worlds. But if the crystals in this world are destroyed, then the two worlds will be reunited into one so Exdeath must be beaten before that can happen. The crew begins making their way to each crystal in this world only to find that Exdeath is already one step ahead of them. They find out Exdeath is actually a spirit that is stored in a tree in an Ancient Forest and the key to maintaining that seal is embedded in the eldest tree. The team attempts to reach the tree to destroy the key only to have Exdeath torch the forest and make it impossible to speak to the Guardian tree. The team faces Exdeath at the tree and are promptly beaten while Cara attempts to save them. At one point, all of the characters are blown back by Exdeath, Galuf stands up and takes Exdeath himself. He manages to weaken Exdeath enough to send him back to his castle at the cost of his own life. Cara wakes up and finds her grandfather is dead but his spirit returns and grants Cara all his powers.

ff5voidOnce the rest of the team awakes and get word of Galuf’s demise and final gift. Newly impassioned, Bartz, Lenna, Faris and Cara try to take Exdeath’s castle. They get help from Zeza, the last remaining of the original warriors. Zeza and his team destroy the power on one of Exdeath’s barrier towers, costing Zeza his life but allowing the team to attack the castle. The team climbs Exdeath’s tower and he appears to fade away but the crystals are already shattered and the two worlds have merged. The team seeks out a sage who says he has important news about Exdeath. Upon reaching the sage, Exdeath appears as a splinter that had lodged itself in Faris’ hand. He beats the sage and now is restored to full power. He also shows them the power of the Void which was unlocked when the final  crystal broke. This power allows him to banish entire cities to the “Cleft of Dimensions’ which is basically a hole in the fabric of time and space. He banishes Tycoon castle, the Ancient Library, Bartz’ hometown of Rikks, and a few other places.

With the help of Mid, Cid’s grandson, the heroes find that there are 4 tablets in this world that seal the power of the weapons used to banish Exdeath and some of the strongest powers in the world. Only by collecting these weapons and magic can they hope to beat him. Of course, the team collects the weapons as well as the ultimate spells (Meteo, Flare, and Holy), summons (Bahamut, Leviathan and Odin) and powers. They storm the Cleft of Dimension and take him on once and for all. Upon beating Exdeath, he loses control of the Void and it engulfs him. The new, Void controlled, Neo-Exdeath faces the Four Warriors of Dawn and is defeated. The crystals are restored. The land returns to normal (as a merged land) and the credits roll… end of story.

Gameplay

ff5menuThis game plays almost identical to its predecessor, FF4. In fact, the world map and the character ‘status’ screen look very similar to that of FF4 except that the characters’ faces are replaced by their sprite. This is likely because of the Job system (which I will discuss next)  in that when you assign a character a new job, their appearance (clothes, headgear, etc) changes. This game features the good ol’ Active Time Battle System (ATB) that I cheered about in other posts. However, this one is truly the next evolutionary step. See, in FF4, the game had an ATB but you really had no way of knowing when the character would be ready to act until their sprite became highlighted on the battle screen. In this game, the developers wisely installed an ‘Action Bar’ which builds on the right side of each character’s HP on the battle screen. When it fills completely, it is that character’s attack! This same bar appears in FF6, 7 and most others in the FF series for many generations (I don’t know if it is in modern FF games because I have not played them). This is the first of many evolutions you will see happening in this game.

ff5jobThe next element of interest in the gameplay is the use of the “Job” system. You remember all those times I mentioned in the story (see above) where the crystals shattered and reacted to the team? Each time you get a crystal shard, it gives your characters more “Jobs” they can take. This includes some common things like Black Mage, White Mage, Summoner (Caller), Monk, Knight, etc. There are also some other, stranger classes, such as the Berserker (he literally just goes berserk), the Trainer (think Pokemon), and even the scientist (he makes potions). This is also the first game to show Blue Mages (think Gau the wild boy from FF6), Time Mages (spells such as Demi, Slow, Haste, Stop, etc.), Magic Knights (enchant swords) etc. Basically, when you assign a character a Job, their appearance changes to match their job as well as their equipment must be modified to match. With each battle, you gain a certain amount of Ability Points (ABP) that help you earn levels in your job. So, if you keep someone as a Black Mage until they have reached Master (Job Level 7 in that case), they now have full access to the Black spells in the game even if you make them a monk! This is because each character has a primary and secondary skill. The primary is assigned by default from the Job (say BlkMagic for Black Mage) and then you can select a second skill even if the character has not reached full Master in that Job. For example, I made Cara my mage most of the time and I started her as a White Mage (or rather started Galuf as a white mage and she got his powers) and she eventually maxed out the White Mage. So then, I made her Job Black Mage but assigned a secondary skill of WhtMgc. The end result? A mage who can use the most powerful BLACK and WHITE spells! Likewise, I made Lenna my Summoner early in the game and then later needed a Time Mage so I changed her job to Time Mage. Eventually she became a Master of the Time Mage job so I made her a Summoner and then assigned a second skill of TMagic – the result? A bad-ass Summoner who could also stop you, haste the team or drop Meteo on you (Meteo is the strongest Time Mage spell). It was this job system that made the game ‘unusual’ for the American Market but I have no idea why.  In fact, the Job system was the ULTIMATE core for the Final Fantasy Tactics Series which later on became huge in America.

Now, I will admit that when I first started using the job system, I was confused. I couldn’t figure out what jobs I wanted the people to do and what benefits/drawbacks each job provided. However, after a few hours of game time, you start to see areas where certain jobs would be very helpful and certain jobs would be useless. For instance, in one particular area there were several monsters which took no damage from Magic but if I turned two of my teammates into Monks, the most powerful physical class, I could destroy the enemies easily. Admittedly, I didn’t get REALLY good at bouncing people from class to class until about halfway through the game but by then I had extensive time giving people different classes and I was able to figure out the best mixture for them all. It is certainly something that isn’t natural to a player of SNES RPG’s at the time but it takes very little time to get really good at using the Job System.

Outside of the standard RPG gameplay elements, FF5 offered only one more notable difference – climbing. Now, don’t misunderstand me, it is pretty common to have your characters climb stairs or ladders in almost any SNES RPG of the era but what about climbing walls or climbing vines? There were many times that you could not advance in a particular area of the game if you didn’t happen to figure out that you could climb vines or walls. Granted, you may look silly at times having your characters walk mindlessly against the wall and pressing the action button but if I didn’t do that alot, I would never have known that Odin’s temple (where you get the summon Odin) was reached by climbing a wall in this rather uninteresting cave. This is also the first RPG (especially in the Final Fantasy series) that featured the ability to ‘fall’. Yes, I know games like Zelda and later games like Chrono Trigger allowed you to ‘fall’ through holes in the floor to get to other places but I don’t think your standard RPG’s of the time did that. In fact, I can’t think of one time that you could fall into a hole in FF4. But in FF5, holes are EVERYWHERE! In fact, there is even a job class (Geomancer I believe) that helped you detect holes in the floor so you don’t fall in. Weird but interesting nonetheless.

ff5subBeyond that, the game offers you many methods of travel that you are quite used to with the old FF games. You start the game riding the Chocobo Boko (and yes the music is almost the same as it is in FF4). There is a point in time where you get to take off and ride a Black Chocobo (flying) and it has a similar crazy music to that of FF4. One unique ride that you get to take from time to time is the Hiryuu. Granted, IT flies you more often than you actually get to fly it but there are various times in the game where you can just hop on the Hiryuu and go somewhere as the story requires. You get a few opportunities to drive Faris’ pirate boat with her Hydra pulling you. After Cid’s creation ‘the steam ship’ destroys the Fire Crystal, he modifies it to use standard steam and you can drive it around the waterways. Later, the ship is modified to become an airship (which of course is my preferred transportation) that can be transformed into a boat for the sea or uses special equipment to climb to higher altitude (only used to fight the Earth Crystal’s palace when it becomes a fortress). However, there is one new transportation item that is highly unusual for games of the time – a submarine! At one point in the game, Cid and Mid transform your boat/airship into a submarine as well so you can go underwater, ride on the sea as a boat and later fly an airship. It seems trivial but the inclusion of submarine capability makes certain areas completely accessible only when using that format, it opens a whole layer of the world that was previously not available. I can’t think of any RPG at the time that included a submarine and even in the rest of the RPG stock for SNES, I can’t recall seeing a true submarine (though Earthbound uses ones briefly). Another thing that makes the transportation unique in FF5 is the fact that ALL of the ships you get are actually the same one. in FF4, you got to a point where the crew had a hovercraft, an airship for the overworld, an airship for the underworld, an airship with a drill and the Big Whale airship for space. That sure is an awful lot of vehicles just laying around, it almost seems wasteful. In FF6, you get all kinds of different airships, etc. But not in FF5, you just keep the same one and they modify it as needed which is a nice nuance.

What about the other elements of gameplay? Well, the music in the game is FANTASTIC and I think that the music really fits the environments you are in. The game still features the classic “Song of the Crystals” (aka the rising and falling harp music) in various crystal rooms. It features the Main Theme of Final Fantasy which is found in FF4 as well, you would remember this music playing in FF4 when Cecil and Kain depart Baron for the first time and you see the prophecy scroll on the screen, it is the same song that is played when the FF4 crew battles Zeromus and all of the people on Earth send their “Wishes” from the Tower of Wishes in Mysidia (*cough* house of prayer *cough*). Also, the music for scenes involving Exdeath is horrifying for SNES games, it is this heavy dramatic music with, suspenseful harps,  electric guitars and this chilling music that sounds like a twisted monster laughing as part of the melody line… you just have to hear it. By and large, you will find many of the music pieces you heard in FF4 appear in FF5 even if they are slightly different.

One final gameplay element that deserves some recognition is the enhanced amount of sprite movement. In the other RPGs of the time, the sprites did very little aside from walking and occasionally jumping or bowing their head. Not so in FF5! Granted these are still 16-bit sprites so the amount of functionality they have is limited but this game features a few interesting sprite motions that I didn’t see before now. You will see the first obvious use of the ‘hand wave’ that the sprites in FF6 did enough to make you nauseous, it features many instances where the sprites literally knock each other over, in one comical storyline, the hero, Bartz, is kicked by a sheep into a pasture, etc. There are scenes where Exdeath blasts your party with magic beams that look like Darth Vader blasting people with the Force. When I think of the way sprites moved in FF4 and the way they moved in FF6, I can clearly see how FF5 was the evolutionary stage of this feature.

I could go on and on about this but I am sure that you would like the actual review, yes? Well, now that I have gone over the main focus of the game, it is time for the review!  Enjoy!

Review

All in all, I was very pleased with FF5. The game features a solid storyline, it reminds me fondly of my favorite RPG, FF4, and shows itself to be a true classic in the Retro RPG space. The game easily bridges the gap between FF4 and FF6 and it’s a shame that it never made it to the US during the SNES era. I suppose that if all things are created equal, I could see why the job system proved to be unusual to the American RPG playing population but I am glad that it made its mark in the future. Those expecting a standard issue SNES RPG of the era will be dissatisfied but if you want something new and interesting that still reminds you of your old friends, then this is the game for you. In my standard fashion, I will review the Good, the Bad and the Ugly for Final Fantasy 5!

The Good

First and foremost, the storyline for Final Fantasy 5 is an enjoyable and fresh one that kept me wondering well into the final stages. I have read a few other reviews that say that the story was lame and predictable but I am not exactly sure what these folks are comparing it too. The story features many of the common core elements of any good RPG storyline – world in peril, hero rises, team of heroes forms, heroes fight, evil looses, world returns to peace. But all of these things are the stuff of almost any good legend and they are not carried out in stereotypical ways most of the time. As explained earlier, the game is a direct sequel to Final Fantasy 4 and you can certainly see many of the same things – the four elemental crystals, the four crystals in another world, the ultimate danger being released when the crystals are damaged/taken, etc. But that is where the similarities end. The elements will actually stop functioning when the crystals are destroyed (as far as I know the story of FF4 didn’t point to any dire problems if they are taken other than the evil seal), the world has been literally cleaved in half and neither world truly knows about the other. Overall, I was quite confused about what was happening when the game began and even after the story was revealed, I didn’t know what to expect. Once they actually released the bad guy, the game makes you FEAR HIM (more on that later). The story did have some stale points such as leaning on the prophecy of old for hope and such but the game didn’t live and die by these items. When the game finally reaches its conclusion, you really cared about the world and you really were drawn into the personal lives of all the people that the game parades in front of you. I felt a great sense of accomplishment and success when I completed the game and restored the world and I think that is very important! Also, unlike the mute Crono from Chrono Trigger, the hero of FF5, Bartz, speaks a lot and you can see how his internal moral compass forced him to make the decisions he needed to make and drove him to be the hero.

Another thing that I really like about FF5 was the thing that made it what it is – the job system. Yes, it is a major switch from what was expected at the time the game was released but it was orchestrated well. In an RPG, it is common to see characters fall into ‘archetypes’. There is the brash main hero with his sword and special power, there is the support girl who likely becomes the love interest later on, there is the mysterious ninja/fighter, there is even the mystery girl who is her own person and quite brash. Your support characters likely end up being white magic users (Think Rosa in FF4, Merle in Chrono Trigger, Nina in Breath of Fire, etc.) then your mysterious ninja/fighter usually has a love interest for the mystery girl (Think Edge and Rydia in FF2, Locke and Terra in FF6, etc.) In this game, you can literally make the characters do exactly what you want them to do and then mix and match the functions that you like. For instance, Bartz worked as a Knight, a Monk, a Samurai and even a Dragoon. When the last battle came, he was able to use the Gill Toss skill (Samurai) that allows you to throw your money and do 9999 damage each time, he also had the ability to do the Jump technique like a Dragoon (allowing him to be safely off screen during many of the mega spells ExDeath uses), and his time as a knight made him able to hold the Excalibur sword in Both hands to double the damage (Knight) so he could also do 9999 damage with each sword slash. I also talked about how I turned Cara into a Black and White Mage capable of using either of the most powerful spells in those fields. Now, I didn’t make Faris do much  besides thief job and time mage because I really liked the ability for thieves to move fast (allow me to run in the dungeons/buildings) and see hidden doors and hallways but the fact remains that I could have had her do whatever skill I wanted. Basically if you wanted to make your characters as specialized as possible, the game allowed for that and you saw many benefits in doing so. Few other games of the time allowed as much specialization as this and it meant that every person who played the game could pretty much build the party in whatever way they see fit. I am sure many people could even add some levels of difficulty by changing the party to all blue mages or something of the sort and attempting to beat the game. Whatever way you like to play your game, FF5 allowed you to do so.

ff5exdeathThe last thing I want to point out about the great things offered in FF5 is the amazing evilness of the final boss – Exdeath. You might recall from my discussion of Chrono Trigger that I really disliked it’s final boss. I felt that the game hyped him up so much only to let us down in the final battle (remember the dumb dancing robot of doom). In the case of FF4, the main baddy for most of the game was Golbez and you certainly feel the chill when the echoing minor chords that signified his theme began playing but he later becomes a good guy (of sorts) and you have only a short time to really develop the anger and passion to really battle the true boss – Zeromus. Neither of these was the case with FF5! You don’t even really meet the ultimate bad guy, Exdeath, until halfway through the game but when you do… oh my goodness… what a monster! Everything that Exdeath does reeks of pure evil! From the first moment that you meet him, he strikes fear into your heart and he continues to incite fear and anger with each interaction. You start to feel somewhat like a tiny fish in a fishbowl at the liberty of this monstrous thing that can strike with little or no warning. While it could be said that the recycling of the old ‘ultimate and historic evil’ adage to explain Exdeath, that entire mentality is pushed to the curb when you learn that he is essentially an ancient tree that collected the souls of all the evil and badness in the world (although it is kind of a weird story). With everything that Exdeath does, you see no sign of humanity within him, he truly is a monster that you cannot help but be scared of (the music doesn’t help). I am further reminded of the evilness he is capable of when he hijacks himself as a SPLINTER into a whole new world to destroy. Then, when he starts using the Void to literally erase entire areas of the map, you not only fear him but you hate him in a personal and indignant sort of way. When you finally face him and he becomes ‘one with the Void’ (aka Neo-Exdeath), not only is all trace of humanity gone but now he even says that all he wants is to turn the whole world into the Void for no other reason except so that everything will cease to exist. Holy shit Batman! After beating him and knowing that this monster of Hades can no longer do any harm, there is definitely a sense of catharsis that you don’t get with vanquishing many other RPG ‘ultimate evils’. The only time I have been moved as much by killing a monster is when I took out Kefka in FF6 (Yes, Sephiroth was worse but I was so damn tired of fighting him the 50th regeneration that I didn’t care anymore). As I expressed in my discussion on CT, I really want to feel like I want to be the hero of the RPG and beat the bad guy. I got both of these when I played FF5 and you will too.

I want to go on and on about the many good things this game offers including some of the great moments (such as finding out the Faris is a girl), watching Bartz attempt to communicate with a Moogle (yes they are in here) and ending up feeling like a medieval knight trying to talk to the minions from Despicable Me. Or about the totally crazy dungeons the game puts you through including the deadly library of doom, the underwater tower of Walz where you actually can’t breathe and so on. However, you can play the game to get those things. So we’ll move on to the bad parts of the game.

The Bad

Despite all the good things this game offers, there are a few things in it that I didn’t care for. Granted, some of the things that I dislike are due to the fact that I played the game on the fan-translated SNES port as opposed to the GBA version or various others but we’ll get to that. The game has a few things that are just annoying.

First, as I mentioned before, I chose to download the De-Jap fan translation of the SNES console which means regular people just like me were in charge of translation As a result there are some things that were translated very badly. First, the main character in the standard translation is actually named ‘Butz” (think Bah-tzu in romanji) instead of Bartz. I am sorry, but I refuse to refer to the good guy as someone’s bum! There were some sections of the story where I actually had to go “excuse me?” such as the time that I was told that the only way to save the Hiryuu is to fly the Hiryuu to the Valley of Hiryuu and kill the Dragon Hiryuu dragon killer (that actually is the Dragon-Killer plant). Or the mystical pot (freaky enemy that you can’t beat) who is referred to as ‘PotHead’ among others. At times, the translators literally just quit trying to translate things – for instance – in the 3rd (or 4th) tablet dungeon where you have to go to the sea trench, the enemies are weird and fugly but you never knew what you were fighting because ALL of the enemies’ names on the battle screen were simply ‘Unknown’ even though I know they had names. Sure, I picked up a few “There” instead of “their” grammatical things but I can overlook those since there aren’t instances like those in Tales of Phantasia’s Fan translation where you would see this extremely important plot point simply replaced with ‘(complete later)’ REALLY? So yes, I can download one of the many actual translations of this game but it might not technically be ‘retro’ by then.

The second thing I noticed that I disliked about the game is that it is TOO SIMILAR to FF4. Yes, I know… FF4 is my favorite game and it seems only sensible that I would be excited to live there again. There was some of that in the game but when it comes down to it, I am trying to review the game on its own merits but if you count the number of times I typed “FF4” when describing the game (Go ahead… I’ll wait while you use CTRL+F) it becomes painfully apparent that the developers on FF5 REALLY wanted to make FF4-2 (hey they made FFX-2 later, right). For instance, the sprite for Bartz when he’s a Dragoon… dude – it’s freaking Kain from FF4, don’t believe me? Download the game, you’ll see! Or what about the crystals? They seem to get in more trouble than Princess Toadstool in the Mario world. When I was trying to find the crystals in FF5, I uttered the phrase ‘I am sorry Bartz but your crystal is in another castle!’ at least 4 times. Oh yeah… later on you meet some dwarves in the depths of the earth… there are 5 of them and they look IDENTICAL to the sprites for the dwarves in FF4 – they even say “Lalli-Ho” and jump up. You can easily see that these guys might have been intended to show that the Dwarves lived on after FF4 but began to die out. They don’t do anything in the game, they are just there – digging a hole for no apparent reason. Guess who the ultimate summons in the game is? Bahamut! Guess what happens when you try to get Odin as a summons in FF5? You have 1 minute to do as much damage as possible before he does his death slice and bifurcates the entire team JUST LIKE FF4. The list goes on. I think that if the game had been released in the USA just behind FF2, it would have had enough similarities that it would have done well but c’est la vie.

Lastly, although I enjoyed the fact that the game had many ways to travel, I found that travel was much more difficult than I had expected. Sure, when you are in the early stages of the game, it makes sense that you can only travel to certain areas until you are ready to go to others but when you are in the endgame, it really should not be that difficult to get around but it WAS! For instance, you can only get to one area if you fly the airship to this place, get your yellow Chocobo and then walk him through this tiny area of the map, make your way to the desert, and run like a madman with your head on fire…etc. And as much of a novel invention as the game’s use of the submarine was, that sucker was hard to use correctly. When you travel underwater, you really can’t tell where you are without looking at the map repeatedly and even then you may only see points of interest on the sub map even if they don’t necessarily line up with ‘upper world’ map points. It is also quite difficult to use landmarks to figure out where you are. Since you essentially travel around in 3 different worlds (the first world, Galuf’s world, the merged world) which have many similarities to each other, it is really hard to figure out where you are and the world doesn’t look very different from place to place. I can’t count the number of times that I flew to Castle Surrogate when I was trying to fly to Castle Kuzar for instance (Trust me, if you have played this game, you are nodding your head like a bobblehead on a washboard road right now). Plus, there are certain places that you can’t get to without the submarine even though it would be much easier to fly there. Furthermore, when Exdeath starts opening Void holes all over the place, it is REALLY easy to accidentally fly into them which causes a seemingly useless cutscene where you lose control of the airship because you are in the Void and then suddenly the game goes back to normal. The only Void entrance you actually want to use is the one over Tycoon Castle as that takes you to the ‘Cleft of Dimensions’ where you do the final stages of the game but I don’t even think you can go through the Void until you actually complete all four of the Tablet dungeons…. of course it would sure suck to be transported to the Void when you were not completely ready because you can’t really leave.

Okay, these items mentioned are just the bad stuff… there are still some things that really make me cringe. For the final portion of the review, I want to discuss the UGLY things in FF5. You have to just suck these up if you want to enjoy the game.

The Ugly

So there are lots of awesome things about Final Fantasy 5 and there are lots of annoying things about them. Among those annoying things, there are a few that are downright horrible. I can give you many reasons to enjoy this game but you will have to accept a few things that may be hard to swallow.

ff5memeFirst of all zOMG Random Encounters! The random encounters in FF5 S U C K ! Now I am aware that the random encounter has long been the staple for RPGs. I mean… come on! Who didn’t do the famous RPG technique where they walked circles around a city fighting as many baddies as they could fight to gain levels? That’s all good and well,  as those encounters occurred every… eh… 10 seconds or so? In FF5, they occur almost every 5 seconds. In some areas it is WORSE! For instance, in the Deep Sea Trench Dungeon where you get the third tablet (or fourth depending on what order you choose) there is a random encounter every 2 map squares.I AM NOT KIDDING. It has been many years since I have felt the urge to hurl my game controller into a wall but I almost did that with this game. Several times, I was walking through a dungeon and I would actually shout “really?” and occasionally a curse word. In the submerged Walz Tower (where you get the final crystal shard for the Mime job) you have 7 minutes to climb to the top, beat the guardian boss (Gogo… remember him?), and then run back out or you will all die (that’s what sucks about underwater places with no air). No big deal, right? SURE! It would not be a big deal IF FF5 didn’t have random encounters cranked up to HOLYCRAPYOUWILLDIE but they do! By the time I went through that dungeon, and got out, I had 30 seconds remaining. If I didn’t have a thief with the run ability and characters already leveled to 99, I probably would not have made it through on my first try. But it gets worse! When you finally reach the inner sanctum of the Cleft of Dimensions, the dungeon where you finally face Exdeath for the final fight – not only are there random encounters every 3-4 squares – they are HARD! Many of those monsters can deal 4500 a pop to you characters. But the way that I really determined that the developers of FF5 are truly sadistic sociopaths is in the final floor before you get to Exdeath. Do you recall those monsters dealing 4500 damage I mentioned?  So you have been through 4 floors of this madness without a save point. You have to beat a REALLY hard monster to make the last save point appear. By this point, your characters are probably down to under 1000 HP and almost no MP, one of them might even be dead. You survive this monster guarding the save point and you are screaming in agony. Well… you finally use one of the TWO cabins you have left (a tent won’t restore all HP/MP at this stage in the game) and you are excited because you might actually have the energy to face Exdeath. Now you have a problem…. you have to RUN through the last…oh…250 squares to get to the door that takes you to Exdeath. This little area is CRAWLING with monsters that do lots of damage. Ok.. no big deal! You can run away from most battles to save your MP/HP, right? WRONG! At least 65% of the monsters in that little stretch between you and the final boss WILL NOT LET YOU RUN AWAY! One of them has an attack that deals about 6,000 damage. So what happens if you are beaten up bad? Sure… you can run back to the save point, sleep in a cabin and restore back but that will be your LAST cabin EVER and you STILL have to run BACK THROUGH HELL to reach the last boss and you MAY NOT GET AWAY from battles. Even with the use of those handy ‘save state’ options in my emulator, I still didn’t make it to Exdeath without being dropped to around half my max HP. Developers for FF5? You guys are twisted and evil people! Yes, I know the games are harder in Japan but just… ugh.

The first ugly item I mentioned is a great transition to the second one. The game has a very limited supply of good items to keep your characters alive. Sure, there is the standard fair of potions and hi-potions, ether (for MP), elixirs (later on) and the various things you need to recover from status ailments. But once you reach the higher levels, there are not a lot of items to help you out. For instance, there are NO stronger HP restoring potions than Hi-Potions and those only restore about 200 HP. Are you kidding me? Bartz alone would have to quaff…like… 40 of those to reach full HP. Sure, you can use Elixirs but you can’t BUY them anywhere and in the entire play-through, I collected about 40 Elixirs total. There are also no other MP restoring items beyond the standard Ether… do you KNOW how many Ethers it takes to restore 999 MP? Like… 30… and when you have to restore 999 MP for 4 characters… 120. Wow! now, this wouldn’t be a big deal if the game offered you the ability to buy Cabins. In FF4, I remember that if I went to the Namingway Village on the Moon I could buy Cabins. Sure, the cabins cost around 10000 GP a piece but at least you had the option. NOT in FF5! Just like the Elixirs, I never found a place that I could buy the cabins and throughout the whole game I think I found about 25 cabins and that was IT. The game is clearly designed to make things much harder as you reach the higher levels and I get that. However, there needs to be a certain amount of checks and balances to keep the game reasonable and FF5 pretty much throws that out the window when you reach about level 60. Furthermore, there are some messed up items in this game that you are likely to encounter. The first one is the Bone Mail that I discovered in a pile of Dragon Bones in the Hiryuu Valley in Galuf’s world. They offered some of the best defense for armor-capable character jobs until you get some of the special armor in the merged world. Yeah… but if you use ANY healing things (spells or items) on someone wearing this armor, it HURTS them. Okay, I thought the  game was playing with my head so I decided to try casting Fire on my character wearing the Bone Armor (thinking that since undead are usually hurt by fire and curative items, it might backfire) unfortunately it makes the damage 4X higher… that is great to know AFTER I killed Bartz during a hard battle. Don’t get me started on the Cursed Ring… it also offers you high defense but slowly drains your HP as you go and if someone casts a death spell on you it WILL work… EVERY TIME. Developers? Did you not get held enough when you were children? You have some warped minds! So let’s recap… the game has lots of baddies that hurt you pretty badly and the random encounters are set to psycho so you are likely to take more damage overall. Then, you have the lack of good items and the presence of many evil items and you have a bad mixture. Sure, I know that if you train the scientist class high enough they can make Elixirs but they can’t make cabins…

This brings us to my final ugly thought about Final Fantasy 5. The job system makes it easy to cheat. Now, considering that the game is harder than most RPGs of the era, the fact that you can cheat doesn’t necessarily count as a bad thing since you almost HAVE to cheat if you are going to survive. But I found that the way that the job system is built is good in theory – make several things available that would not otherwise be available and let the character pick and choose. Well, here’s this thing with that. Even after you reach Level 99 for all of your characters (which I did right before I started the side quests but prior to entering the Cleft of Dimensions) you still get Ability Points (ABP) after every battle. The harder the enemies you beat, generally the higher the amount of ABP you will receive after battle (one monster of death in the final stage of the Cleft of Dimensions gives 199 ABP each time) . When  you consider that most of the job levels only require between 20 and 100 ABP per level (obviously the higher the level of a job, the more ABP it takes) you can see how taking a person with zero levels in a particular job to a harder area in the game (maybe the Deep Sea Trench with its ridiculous random encounter rate) and beat a few battles, you can max out almost EVERY job class. Furthermore, classes such as the Monk class are kind of unbalanced because they can do ridiculous amounts of physical damage and they usually hit twice per combat round. If you get a Lvl. 99 monk character, he can do almost 9999 damage (Split across two hits) to a single enemy and if you do the Kick technique (think of Yang from FF4), you can easily do about 4500 damage per enemy which is enough to kill almost anything. All this is to say that if I took a character through Deep Sea Trench twice, they could build up to almost master level  for say a black mage and a monk – this means that they could use the Monk’s kick attack as well as cast the most horrific Black Magic spells in the game which makes them a killing machine. If you repeated this process for all characters in your party but maybe had two people max out black mage and two max out white mage, you could have an unstoppable killing party – well, until you run out of MP (see item two above). Especially in the magic using jobs, it is pitifully easy to have someone master an entire field of magic and then shortly thereafter max out another field and then you have situations like the one I mentioned with Cara in my game, I made her able to cast the strongest black magic and white magic in the game so as long as she could keep her MP up, she could decimate almost anything. So this is the rub… the game makes things very hard but it also makes it easy to cheat if you know how to use the class system and don’t mind some elbow grease (or grinding as the MMORPG’ers like to say).. is that a bad thing or not? I leave you to decide. Personally I think that anything that can so sharply polarize a game is not a good thing.

Final Thoughts

So now we come to the end of my review for Final Fantasy 5 and my what a wild ride it has been. This game is most definitely a game that serves as a good connector between FF4 and FF6. If you liked FF4, odds are you will also like this game but if you hated FF4, I doubt you will like this game. But since I loved FF4, this game is a very good game in my mind. The game features all of the ingredients to make it a great RPG. It has a good story that draws you in quickly but also keeps you guessing until the end. It features a great use of the ATB but includes the first ever use of the ATB bar. FF5 is one of the first in the FF franchise to establish several elements that became staples of the future games including Espers, Moogles, Blue Magic, and various other elements. Yet is also the only entry in the franchise (that I am aware of) which features a world tree like the Secret of Mana series and the only RPG of the time that features a submarine. The ability to change between jobs makes the game more interesting but also can make it too easy in some respects. As always, the music of the game is terrific and shows the great variety of sounds that 32bit consoles were capable of at the time. The final boss is one of the best final bosses I have fought in the SNES RPG world and I was greatly satisfied when I finally beat him.

Unfortunately, the greatness of the game is a little overshadowed by a few items. If you want a good translation of this game, do yourself a favor and get either the GBA version of the game or the Playstation version (not sure about the iOS version) because you will likely enjoy the story more. Also, be forewarned that the game will look graphically very similar to FF4 and you will see a great deal of things that remind you of the it when you play FF5. Don’t kid yourself, learning to get around in this game is not going to be easy. You will have 3 totally different worlds to travel through and many locations are extremely difficult to find if you are not paying attention to the entire layout of the world map. Prepare yourself to spend a lot of game time just traveling from point A to point B.

This game is H A R D! It is obvious from the get-go that Japanese games are naturally harder than their American cousins. The random encounters make this game exceedingly challenging, especially as you climb to the higher levels. Be prepared for murderous dungeons with encounters frequently and an overall lack of curative items that will make the game insanely difficult. In fact, there are two bosses in the final dungeon, Omega and Shinryuu that are designed to be impossible to beat. Those that have actually beaten them have expressed that it took everything they had to survive the incident and most FAQ writers specifically avoid encountering these monsters. You will find that although the Job system is a unique element to the game, it is possible to use it to achieve results that seem like cheating even though it serves to balance out the gameplay. If you are not ready for a very hard game, you will not like this game one bit.

In the end, the game is a great RPG with many elements that make it terrific. Those that love FF4 or Final Fantasy Tactics will enjoy this game very much and it is an obvious evolutionary milestone between FF4 and FF6. If you are ready for a challenging RPG that was often forgotten by the Final Fantasy world, you need to check this one out. The game may be very challenging but I think that the story and the end sequence actually make it worth the try, not to mention the joy you get out of beating a REALLY evil final boss. Give this one a try but don’t say you weren’t warned! That’s it for now!

Chrono Trigger – The Legendary RPG

If a retro gamer were to approach a group of nerds who are at least in their late 20’s or early 30’s and ask them what the best RPG of all time is, you are likely to hear at least half of them (probably almost all of them) shouting the words “CHRONO TRIGGER!” In the world of RPG’s, Chrono Trigger is the stuff of legend. The game came out in August 1995 (in North America) with little fanfare but it literally turned the world of console RPG’s on its nose. the game set more standards in RPG epicness than any other console before and arguably more than any other RPG ever made. If I were to approach the same group and simply shout the words “Chrono Trigger!” without asking about their RPG preferences, I would likely be met with cheers of support and make instant friends. I have played this game more times than I can count but have never reviewed it on here. Per the request of one of my site fans, I decided to review the legendary RPG “Chrono Trigger”.

  1. Foreword
  2. The Story
  3. Gameplay
  4. Review
    1. The Good
    2. The Bad
    3. The Ugly
  5. Final Thoughts

Foreword

Before I start this post, however, I want to discuss a few items. I have always thought Chrono Trigger is a great game and I hope that this post reflects my high opinion. The thing that I disagree with is that I don’t think the game needed as much hype as other gamers give it. It is one of the best RPG’s out there even though it is not my favorite RPG. When I expressed to some readers that CT was not my favorite, this was somehow misconstrued as “RGB doesn’t like Chrono Trigger”. I do like the game and you will see why. I just like the story and concepts in some other games better. Lastly, before I review a game, I feel it is only logical to play it recently so that I have a fresh opinion. This case is no different. I played CT from beginning to end right before this post. Also, I promised myself that I would try to play the game as though I have never played it bef0re and try to give opinions based off that. Are we clear? Okay! Enjoy my review of the game, the myth, the legendary…CHRONO TRIGGAA!!

Chrono Trigger Intro

The Story (highly condensed)

Welcome to Truce Village in 1000 AD. The sound of ‘Leene’s Bell’ rings clear and loud to signal the beginning of the Millennial Fair in Leene’s Square. We are introduced to Crono, a spiky red-haired youth who is woken up by his mother so he doesn’t miss the fair (Trivia Note – The main character’s name is technically ‘Chrono’ but when the game was ported to the American SNES, the name variable only allowed 5 characters instead of 6). Crono heads out to the door only to be reminded that his childhood best friend, the brilliant girl genius Lucca Ashtear will be showing off ‘her craziest invention yet’. When Crono arrives at the fair, he meets a pretty blond girl who appears lost or so excited that she can’t focus. Crono bumps into her and knocks her over, dropping her pendant. When Crono returns the pendant, the girl identifies herself as Marle (I always pronounce it like Mar-Lee) and asks if he wouldn’t mind exploring the fair with her. Crono agrees and the two soon find that they enjoy each others’ company. Together Crono and Marle find their way to Lucca’s invention expo. It turns out that the girl genius has created a short distance teleporter which she dubs “The Telepad”. After very little convincing, Crono agrees to be the guinea pig and steps on to the telepod. Lucca and her father Taban (also a brilliant inventor) fire up the telepod and ZOOM Crono appears on the other side of the teleporter. Excited by this, Marle says that she wants to try it next. When Marle steps onto the telepod, however, something reacts to her pendant and she is sucked into a blue vortex and vanishes leaving her pendant behind. Crono agrees to go through the vortex the same way as Marle in hopes of saving her. He holds the pendant and steps on the device. In much the same way, he disappears into the vortex only this time, the player sees him travel through a whirling colorful mist and POOF he ends up in Truce Canyon 400 years in the past (600 AD).

From here, we learn that Marle is actually Princess Nadia, princess of the Guardia Castle in 1000AD but she bears an uncanny resemblance to Queen Leene, the queen in 600 AD and the namesake of Leene Square and Leene’s Bell. Turns out that the real Queen Leene has been kidnapped by someone and was being searched for but when Nadia (Marle) was found wandering in Truce Canyon, they assumed she was the queen and called off the search. Your character heads to the castle and meets Marle even though everyone thinks she is the Queen. However, Marle soon vanishes and says she feels that she is being ‘torn apart’. Turns out that because her heir, the real Queen was not found, Marle ceased to exist! So, the game now unfolds into the true theme of the game – time travel.

You are soon reunited with Lucca who has called the vortex a ‘gate’ and has created a device called the “Gate Key” to allow you to transport through time. Eventually, you save the real queen and restore Marle but then you end up zapping off to 2300 AD, 301 years after the ‘apocalypse’ is triggered by an interstellar monster known as “Lavos”. You eventually learn that Lavos landed on earth in 65000 BC and has been absorbing the life force of the planet ever since. As the story progresses, your characters meet other people such as the cave girl Ayla from 65000BC. You meet Frog (originally a human named Glenn) from 600 AD. Robo the robot from 2300 AD and, if you follow the right path,  Magus joins you even though he spends the first half of the game as the main enemy.

Ultimately, the game’s major turning point occurs when the characters accidentally appear in 12,000 BC in the ‘Zeal Kingdom’ after the team interrupts Magus as he was summoning Lavos.It turns out that Queen Zeal, the leader of the kingdom created a massively advanced society by drawing upon the power of Lavos using a tool called the “Mammon Machine”. She introduced magic into the world and ushered into what appears to be a utopia. Unfortunately, the exposure to Lavos’ energy corrupts the Queen and she becomes so absorbed by the desire for power and immortality that she becomes the human manifestation of Lavos. Her actions in 12,000 BC cause a lasting scar on the entire future of the world and eventually she creates a trans dimensional  fortress called the Black Omen that allows her to exist as an immortal even at the cost of every fabric of her human conscience.

Finally, the team infiltrates the Black Omen, destroys the Mammon Machine, destroys Queen Zeal and must face off against Lavos itself (himself?) when its pawn (the Queen) is destroyed. After destroying the outer shell of Lavos, the team must battle the Lavos processing core and eventually Lavos ‘s true form, a highly evolved form of human conscience.Their exposure to the direct energy of Lavos causes them to realize that Lavos represents the highest form of human life and that the desires of the many humans Lavos controlled were combined into a single being… the ultimate wish of humans. Once the team beats Lavos, the space-time continuum is restored to normal and the future of the world is forever changed.

If you follow the steps to what many refer to as the “Best Ending” (though various events may change some portions of this) then this is what will happen. Crono wakes up in his house and is being summoned to the castle to stand trial for his involvement in the kidnapping of Princess Nadia (Marle). When he arrives, he ends up meeting with the king as all of the people from all of the different time frames (Kino from 65,000 BC, King Guardia XIII from 600 AD, and Doan (leader of the remaining people  from 2300 AD) who show that they are all ancestors of Princess Nadia and how Crono’s adventure not only saved the world but also made Nadia’s ancestors leaders of society throughout history. Crono and Marle are zoomed off to enjoy the Moonlight Festival which is the final event of the Millennial Fair. You can walk around and talk to most of your old friends right up until you go back to the telepod. At this point, you see a parade of the characters from the other eras as they return to their worlds – Ayla and Kino to Prehistory, Frog and King Guardia XIII to 600 AD, and Robo and Doan to Post Apocalypse. Lucca agrees that her Gate Key should be destroyed and the time machine (you acquire in the game) should be dismantled. The end credits roll as Marle and Crono go flying across the world in the time machine.

Gameplay

Example of the battle system from Chrono TriggerChrono Trigger launched a NUMBER of gameplay innovations that are part of what made it such a legendary game. The first element is the on-screen monster battles. In other RPGs of the time, most fights were strictly ‘random encounters’ (Outside of boss battles of course) wherein your characters would walk around on a world map and suddenly the screen would shift to a battle and bring up the menus for attack. Not in Chrono Trigger! The enemies you fight actually show up on screen (usually walking around or hopping out of hidden spaces). At this point, the battle music would start and you would suddenly have the various menus in a normal RPG battle screen. When the enemies are defeated, they disappear from the screen and you no longer fight them. Most of the time, if you kill the monsters in a particular room, they won’t come back unless you leave the area. Did I mention that CT also uses a derivative of Active Time Battles (much like I talked about in my FFIV post)? They do! Faster characters (and monsters) attack faster than others.

Another innovation found in CT was the use of ‘Techs”. Most other RPGs of the time featured specific character archetypes. The warrior folks can attack with weapons, the fighter guys can attack with their hands or karate or whatever, and the spellcasters cast magic. The secret to defeating a particular boss was usually to find the best individual actions for each character to perform to win. In this game ALL characters have techniques. Each battle ends with the characters earning experience points to allow them to level (up to 99 in this game), gold to help you buy stuff, and Tech Points. After a character earns enough Tech points, they are able to learn a new technique… sometimes many techs. Later in the game, your characters learn elemental magic such as Fire, Ice, Lightning and Shadow. But it doesn’t end there! Your characters can learn Dual Techs and even Triple Techs (the largest party at any given time is 3 characters). The Techs you learn depend on who you have in your party when the points are awarded. For instance, if you often travel with Crono, Lucca and Marle, you are likely to have the Ice and Fire Sword Techs (Crono and Marle or Crono and Lucca respectively) and you are also likely to have the Antipode tech which features Ice and Fire mixed together (Lucca and Marle). You might eventually get the Delta Attack which is Lightning, Fire, and Ice (Crono, Lucca and Marle). However, if you travel with Frog, Robo and Crono, you are more likely to learn things such as X-Strike (Crono and Frog)  or Maximum Cyclone (Crono and Robo). I never got any triple techs with that group but that is not to say that they don’t exist. Also, you can equip your characters with different colored orbs that you find along the way which will allow you to use certain triple techs even if the teammates don’t naturally have triple techs.

Many of the RPGs at the time of Chrono Trigger had a relatively linear storyline in which a particular chain of events lead the player through the full storyline from start to end with very little variation. One of the greatest innovations in this game was the more open storyline offered to the player. At the beginning of CT, the game’s storyline is relatively linear even though your characters are jumping through time. Midway through the game, the players are taken to the “End of Time” location and at this point the player can choose to attack the final boss at any time. Also, there are opportunities such as whether or not to fight Magus the second time or forgive him which can change the story of the game. Depending on the current storyline events your team has completed, going after Lavos changed the ending you received and the game becomes less linear. Finally, in the last chapter, “The Fated Hour” the player has completed all of the storyline up to the final boss fight but the player can choose to complete none, some, or all of the side quests. Each side quest required a varying amount of skill to complete and some were far more challenging than others even for a high level player. When the player completes ALL of the side quests, they STILL have multiple different methods in which they can engage the final boss and the decision they make can change the ending they receive. This was something that was completely unheard of at the time that CT was released.

The final gameplay innovation and possibly the greatest (or second greatest) innovation in Chrono Trigger is its accurate depiction of time. In the history of console RPG’s, no other RPG has come close to properly representing time travel and time manipulation better than CT. Other RPG’s tried to show time passed for the characters by random messages like “10 Years Later…” but these games didn’t make the player “FEEL” that time had passed. In Chrono Trigger, if the character completed an event in 600 AD, hopped through a gate and went to 1000 AD, the players could clearly see how an event in the past changed the future. For instance, when Crono finishes the first story arc in 600 AD (restoring Queen Leene to the throne), the King of 600 AD says that the kingdom must create some sort of justice system to punish future criminals. When Crono comes back to 1000 AD with Marle and attempts to return her safely to the castle, he is imprisoned and…you guessed it… subjected to the Guardia legal system. In another example, there are special treasure chests that are sealed by magic from 12000 BC that your team does not figure out how to unlock until later. If your character opens one of these treasure chests in 600 AD, it is NOT present in 1000 AD but if your character opens the chest in 1000 AD first, they can go back to 600 AD and the chest is still there. Even one of the main enemies in the early part of the game (Magus) has a story that explains why he acts the way he does because of an event in the past. Many of the end game side quests can only be accomplished by carrying out events in a specific order and time including the “Sun Stone” quest where you must beat a monster to acquire a ‘moonstone’ that is drained of energy. You take the moonstone to a location in 65000 BC and when your heroes zoom to 2300 AD the moonstone has become the Sun Stone (well, after completing a slightly humorous quest in 600 AD).

Lavos "Rain of Destruction"I could continue to write about the many innovations in this game but the review would become needlessly long but I will touch on a few quick points. First, the music was very good for the era and still has some of the most memorable audio tracks from any SNES games (the main Theme… Marle’s music-box style theme, Robo’s techno mechanical theme, etc.). The game made a terrific use of Mode 7 Graphics for many different aspects of the game including flying the Epoch, Lavos’ ‘Rain of Destruction’, and even some of the game’s version of cut-scenes (in the SNES version, not the PlayStation version). The game’s package and manual included artwork by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame. Etc. Etc. But one of the final important things to discuss is the ability to use the New Game+ feature once you complete the game. When you beat the game, you unlock the New Game+ which allows you to start the game over from the beginning but keep all of your equipment and experience. This feature allows you to actually try all the other endings and to see what different results you might get if you did things differently in the game. Unfortunately, beating the game on New Game + does not change the final ending or any of the story.

Review

This part of my discussion on Chrono Trigger is one where I must tread lightly. To some gamers, saying anything negative about this game is the equivalent of blasphemy in religious circles. However, I must be bold and express my thoughts in an accurate and informative way. Is this game legendary? Yes! Is this game one of the most innovative games of the time? Yes!  Is it worth all the hype? No. Is it the best RPG ever? No. (I will pause to give those of you who disagree time to scream your insults. …. There… ready to move on? Let’s go!)

When the game was released, it received very little media coverage in the USA. In fact, I don’t think I even saw a commercial for it. It literally appeared on the shelf one day at my favorite game store with a price tag of $80 which is roughly equivalent to $125 in 2014. Let’s put this in perspective… Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a hot RPG for the PS4 today and on Amazon, even the Collector’s Edition only costs $50. Hopefully this helps drive home how expensive Chrono Trigger was at the time it was released. Even so, if you read the back of the game box and saw the images from the game, you could be easily convinced that it is worth the money – I know I did. From the moment that the player plugs in the Chrono Trigger cartridge (or ROM file) and starts up the game, it is apparent that this game is a whole other world of SNES RPG and a whole other world of RPG altogether. But in keeping with the spirit of many of my other reviews, I will start by discussing the Good, then the Bad and then the Ugly.

The Good

ooh! Time Travel!This game is amazing! Don’t get me wrong! When you look at other competing games of the time, Chrono Trigger offers a wealth of things that make it legendary. The graphics of the sprites and the world they inhabit are wonderful given the power of the SNES hardware at the time. The majority of the game world has smooth edges and quality finish. The sprites, though still sprites, are much more active and interesting to watch than others of the time – Crono moves his head, laughs, dances, even shows distress with full sprite motion which was relatively unheard of at the time. The game transitions from game area travel to battle and back to travel seamlessly which makes the progress of the story easier to follow. As mentioned earlier, the game makes highly effective use of Mode 7 graphics and even uses them in ways that were unusual for the time (such as the race with ‘Johnny” the robot across the wastelands of 2300 AD). I also enjoy the ‘wavy lines’ you see when your characters travel through a gate. The colors change rapidly and the color lines change direction quickly. Sure, it looks like an acid trip in some ways but that’s cool. It reminds me of the time travel sequences from the opening theme of the old Doctor Who.

I also think that the music is one of the things that makes this game so awesome. Every single song on the soundtrack fits perfectly where it appears on the game. When you are in the forest, the music has this weird forested feel where the sounds are kind of muted and the main melody sounds like it is composed of actual forest sounds. The desolate music and the solemn bell that rings when you are walking around in 2300 AD seems to fit the appearance and life of those who survived the Apocalypse so well. I still enjoy listening to the Zeal theme with its Kashmir sounding harps and Dobro music  that seems to fit the weird utopia in the world theme of that place and so on. The music really does a great deal to make the game seem organic. I mean, come on, there is even a ‘meow’ noise that plays when you try to ‘talk’ to one of the many cats in the game. Who thinks of that? Sure, I get kind of tired of hearing the ‘elephant’ sound when certain monsters attack and the ‘whistling’ sound of other monsters but that just serves to get your attention when you are mesmerized by whatever lush environment the game has you walking through.

Another great part about Chrono Trigger that really makes it a great game is the battle system. Again, other RPG’s at the time focused on random Crono casts Luminaireencounters as one walked around the map and then when a battle was triggered, the game would transition into the menu driven battle system that is the standard for most RPGs even now. Not CT… you could actually see most of the monsters as they approached and you knew that if you got too close to another monster, it would attack you. If you were tricky (or high level) you could avoid some of the monster fights by walking around the monsters which brought a more live-action element to the game. But once you were in a battle,  you found a battle system that was a cool mix of the old style battles (menu driven) but had some new elements such as the Double and Triple Techs, the Active Time Battle system which made battles between fast and slow characters more realistic. I also like that this is one of the first RPG’s of the time where the magic attack and techs were shown from start to finish. If Crono is going to blast someone with Luminaire, he would jump into the screen, bow his head as if to enchant and then unleash his zappy wrath upon the foe. As I mentioned before, depending on the other characters that you had in your party, the types of techniques learned were different. It was wise to change party members frequently so you could see all the cool different techs that the crews could learn. Furthermore, with only three party slots to fill, you really have to think HARD about the enemies you expect to face in this or that dungeon so that you bring the right party members. Sure, you could change them instantly once your characters go to the End of Time but that doesn’t’ help if you are being owned by the boss who’s immune to fire damage and you only have your fire casters and lightning caster in the party.

Lastly, the story itself is very complex. Do notice that I added the phrasing “Highly Condensed” to the end of the “Story” heading? That’s because if I typed the entire storyline of this game out on my blog, you would be reading for hours before you even saw the review. The story is not perfect (as I will discuss in the “Bad” section) but it is certainly complex and far reaching. The game’s story is written in a way that screams ‘It’s complicated’. You will spend the first half of the game wondering what the heck is going on and the second half of the game eating tiny morsels of what is going on until you suddenly empty the pantry and want more crumbs. Any game on the SNES hardware that can make a story as long as CT and as complicated deserves some merit. I can’t imagine the amount of compression that had to be performed just to fit the data on the game cartridge even though I can’t find any record of the game including an FX chip or any other on-cartridge chip (Think Starfox or Mega Man X2). That tells me that the programmers must have done some crazy stuff to make this game as big as it is. I think it seems only sensible that the developers released a PlayStation version of the game with CD-quality cut scenes and then a Nintendo DS version with even more storyline. Unfortunately it came too late for the SNES.

The Bad

One of the game’s strengths is also one of its weaknesses – the story is too complex. Now, don’t get me wrong, a great story is vitally important to a game. The problem with Chrono Trigger is that the game’s story was built with such complexity that it also seems glaringly incomplete in areas. For instance, there is a great deal of time between Pre-History (65,000 BC) and the Dark Ages (12,000 BC) and the player is left wondering how on earth the people became so advanced. Also, there is a great deal of time between 1999 AD, the “Day of Lavos” which brought on the Apocalypse and 2300 AD which is the farthest in the future that the game goes. Even upon completion of the game on the best possible ending, the game still does not tie in all story arcs. The game paints this amazing story in this world and gets the player excited only to leave them unfulfilled when it is completed.

In a similar fashion, the game has too many endings there, I said it! The game has TOO MANY ENDINGS. I am totally cool with a game that offers you a few different endings and even some modified versions of the same endings. But there are so many endings in Chrono Trigger that it is highly frustrating. If I did the research right, there are at least 7 distinct endings to the game and some of those endings change slightly based on certain events (Did you beat Magus the second time and restore Frog to Glenn? Did you save Lucca’s Mother? etc.) But then again, the game has enough unique options and potential areas that could change the ending that one must question if we have actually found all the endings. While I certainly get that the creators wanted to make sure the game had replay value for years to come (it still does almost 20 years later), it also cheapens the value of the ‘best ending’ because one must question if this really is the best ending.

The last of the ‘bad’ parts of this game is the way that the Active-Time Battle System runs sometimes. I already expressed that I think that ATB is awesome and one of the ways that the game excels but it can also be its downfall. It’s one thing to get beat up by the baddies, have a chance for one or two people to attack, then have another baddie wave, etc. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t seem to take into account some of the speed bonuses it offers. You can find ‘tabs’ around the world that are supposed to increase a particular attribute (i.e. Power Tab or Speed Tab). However, it really seems like you must feed the characters EVERY speed tab you find just to make them a 1/2 second faster. The unfortunate result is that almost ALL battles seem to have the exact same battle order regardless of circumstances. This means that if you are in an area where battles are frequent such as the Tyrano Lair, the Ocean Palace and various others, it seems mind numbingly repetitive to face battles. Oh gee… Crono is attacking first.. what a surprise (sarcasm)… oh look there comes Marle… wow I didn’t see that coming… oh and *Gasp* now Lucca is attacking however did I guess? . Seriously…. that is what it felt like in most of the battles. Most of the time this is not too much of a problem but when you are fighting bad guy A and you KNOW that you need to do a particular Dual Tech to really damage this guy, you find you are constantly waiting for the characters action bar to fill up even though you have given them enough Speed Tabs to make them have Roid Rage. To make matters worse, if you are fighting an enemy who uses some kind of status attack that makes your characters confused or berserk, you may literally have to sit for round upon round of attacks from the enemy (and even your own team) until the status wears off. You would think that if all characters got a status the made them freeze, the game would at least give you a timer or something to know how long you have to sit there. Granted, I know that if all your characters have some kind of ailment that does not go away (like a freeze or something) then the battle simply ends and you have to return to your save point but it makes the great advancement of the ATB seem like a nuisance more than a cool bonus.

The Ugly

Now the two worst things about this game in my mind can be discussed. You can disagree with my next few statements if you would like but please understand that these are my opinions based off my extensive experience of playing retro games and RPGs and even modern games. The two worst parts about this game are actually two of the main characters: Crono and Lavos. The ultimate good guy and the game’s final bad guy! You can prep your tomatoes now…

cronoderpFirst of all, let’s talk about the main hero, Crono. WHY DOESN’T HE TALK? Seriously, this is one of the most annoying things about the main hero. I believe that a good story in an RPG requires the main hero to develop and grow and change over time. For example, the main hero in my favorite RPG, Final Fantasy II, Cecil, he starts the game as – by all intents and purposes – a bad guy. As the game progresses, he changes his ways and he grows. NOT CRONO. Nope, the dude doesn’t talk at all. So basically, we see all of the other people around him (Marle, Lucca, and Frog especially) grow and change as the game progresses. You start to feel for the characters and can even watch Marle falling for Crono as the game progresses. You even see the bad guys like Magus and Queen Zeal change over time (the latter becoming more insane as the game progresses). But not Crono… he doesn’t talk so therefore he cannot grow as a character. Now I KNOW what you are going to say! He doesn’t talk because you, as the player, are supposed to be Crono and your thoughts are his thoughts, your words his words…etc. MALARKEY! I can’t find myself emotionally engaged and attached to a character who does not express what is going on in the game. Last I checked I am not a 17 year old dude in Truce Village so how can I know/feel for the character.Sure, he nods his head in response to some questions and the fact that he goes along with the gang shows that he agrees. However, I can’t CARE about Crono as a hero. Why does Crono care if Lavos destroys the world? Does he even care that Marle has emotions for him? Does he care about Lucca’s heart? His lack of dialogue makes it impossible for me to really connect to him. If you want me to care for the character, he needs to grow and change as the story does and I have to see him motivated if I am truly to motivate myself as the player. Yes, I know that many characters of other RPG’s don’t talk either but most of them don’t necessarily have a story that is directly dependent on their actions alone or if they do, you can at least PICK what words your character says but this is not the case with CT. Still don’t believe me? Then answer this… in one instance of the game (spoiler alert) Crono ‘dies’ and the team carries on without him. You CAN actually beat the game without ever resurrecting the HERO! Granted, it’s not the best ending but it can happen and that is my point. What other game can actually be beaten without the hero? None that I know… Sorry CT but I really don’t like your hero.

Second, I think that game does a great deal to build up the horrific nature of Lavos as the game progresses. One Meme I found on the internet explains lavosmemeLavos pretty clearly “No talking,  no warning, just a horrifying scream and start killing shit”. This is how Lavos is presented throughout the game. Anyone who has played this game will connect the “gurgling water scream” of Lavos with chilling memories. When you battle him the first time you see this giant shell thing with a head that you cannot describe and he constantly changes attacks to match those you have fought before. Yeah… he is scary… UNTIL YOU BEAT HIS SHELL. Once you beat his shell, the only logical thing your team thinks of is “lets go through this hole in his face and see if there is something inside. Once inside you beat the mecha suit Lavos which looks like a pipe monster. Then you fight the REAL LAVOS he’s a.. umm… lunatic dancing robot of doom… WTF? (The picture caption to the right says: LAVOS Because when you think “Alien Parasitic Killing Machine” you think of a dancing alien.”). Seriously… look at how ridiculous this final boss is. If he is the highest form of evolution, I am thankful that I believe Darwin was full of it. LOL. With all the hype leading up to the boss, you finally fight him and he looks like a weird, chicken alien thing. Not to mention, if you read some of the internet chatter about him, the rumor is that Lavos is actually the Right Bit (little robot next to the chicken thing) and the middle character is just another support unit. But the bits bring me to another reason why I think that Lavos is a dumb final boss is because of his bits. Okay, I have seen some bosses do WEIRD things like Gygaz in Earthbound saying weird stuff as you fight him or bosses that do weird ultimate attacks. Lavos… THROWS A ROBOT AT YOU! Really? I mean REALLY? How am I supposed to take the dumb chicken dancing robot seriously if he also throws his own supports at you? I can’t. For all of the awesomeness that you are lead to believe about Lavos, he is a major letdown. In fact, he’s not even that hard to beat. Sure, if you read my review about RunSaber you will see that the final boss is extremely lame. YES but the game doesn’t hype him up the whole time either… now do they? When I see all the crazy stuff that Lavos does and how he exists throughout time and space, I expect to feel like I am challenging a demigod when I am in the final battle but instead, Lavos barely feels like a boss at all. Sorry but that is not acceptable!

Okay, I will now allow you to hurl your vegetables at me… okay… good! Now on to the conclusion!

Final Thoughts

So in summary, let me review. Chrono Trigger is a great game. It has an awesome graphics engine built into it that uses Mode 7 in new ways and breathtaking background environments. The music soundtrack is one of the best ones for the SNES era and if you visit OverClocked.Org you will here some amazing reworkings of the soundtrack. I also really liked the way that battles are carried out in the ATB, the extensive use of dual and triple techs and the on-screen enemy system. Lastly, I think that the storyline is really cool and is something that really was a paradigm shift in the gaming world and has yet to be properly mimicked in any other game.

Unfortunately, I am not a big fan of the game’s complete story. While I find the story very interesting, I feel that the length and breadth of the game was so large that many story items were not really addressed in a clean way. Secondarily, the games ridiculous number of endings makes the game feel like it was a bridge too far and a bridge that will never be completed. Lastly, the ATB is an awesome concept that took the RPG world by storm but due to other game mechanics in Chrono Trigger not quite adding up, the ATB ends up being more of a frustration than an asset to the game.

Worst of all in Chrono Trigger are the hero and the final villain. I believe that Crono makes a weak main character because the story does not really show his personality growing and advancing in the same way that the stories of the other characters are advanced. I simply cannot care as much about the main character and his mission when he seems like such a flat character that can even be left out of the game and still allow completion. I also think that the second and third forms of the last boss, Lavos, completely destroys any respect I had for this boss. What appears to be a psychotic killer mollusk ends up being a dumb dancing robot who throws things at you. I wish Lavos was cooler but he really isn’t. Now let’s address the actual questions I posed at the beginning of my review.

1.) Is this game legendary? Yes it is! The game did so many amazing things that were previously unheard of in the RPG world. No other RPG since has done such a good job at representing time and its relative flow nor has any other game at the time truly tested the limits of what the SNES console was capable of performing. Chrono Trigger set so many standards in the RPG world that continue to appear in modern games. Thanks to this game, the industry saw what RPG’s COULD be and changed things for the future of RPGs in general.

2.) Is the game one of the most innovative games of its time? Yes! I will wholeheartedly agree that this game broke plenty of new ground. It made the switch to on-screen battle and did away with random battles (sort of). It properly handled issues related to the flow of time in a way that few Sci-Fi movies even come close to. The use of double and triple techs in battle and the use of specialized attacks based off party members was a huge hit too. As I said earlier, the way that CT used Mode 7 and various other technologies made the game seem much more advanced than other games at the time. There is no doubt that the game did some amazing things and helped set standards that we still find in modern RPG’s. In many ways, Chrono Trigger was the progenitor of modern console RPGs.

3. Is it worth all the hype? No… I am sorry but it is not. There are many amazing things that the game does but they are not necessarily the first ones to do them. For instance, the Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu II) was released in 1993, a few years before Chrono Trigger. It featured a derivative of the real-time combat system used in CT and versions of the ATB. It featured a spiky haired character who did not talk much and he was accompanied by two other girls, one a yellow haired girl which a striking resemblance to Marle, and a red-haired sprite who looks similar to Lucca without a hat. In fact, when I saw Chrono Trigger’s box cover at my game store back in the day, I wondered if it was some kind of sequel to Secret of Mana. SOM also used the Mode 7 graphics to achieve many of the textures and graphics as CT did. So what I am getting at is that CT is not entirely a new concept (although I could say it is a refined example of many other games of the time). And honestly, when you boil it down, Chrono Trigger is a very standard RPG in that you have a hero trying to save the world from evil using a cool sword who is accompanied by other cool people (including a love interest). The heroes blast through baddies with magic spells and cool weapons, etc. Yes, the time travel element is a new device in some ways but not entirely. If you consider each “Time” to be likened to a separate world, RPG heroes have been blasting to other worlds since RPG’s began – the only major difference is that the ‘time worlds’ are linked together in the story of CT more closely than alternate worlds in other games. Chrono Trigger is unique but when you boil it down, it really is not much different than other RPGs of the era.

4. Is it the best RPG ever? In my opinion – No it isn’t. There are a number or reasons why I feel this way and I hope you will understand my angle. First of all, for me to call something “The Best RPG EVER”, that means every part of the game has to be the best ever. In Chrono Trigger’s case, I think that the story has many incomplete portions that leave me feeling unfulfilled – if it was the best RPG, I could not find anything wrong with the plot. Second of all, the best RPG ever needs to have a cast of truly remarkable characters that the player is devoted to and CT does not have this. Yes, some of the characters really grow and impress me such as Frog, Marle and Lucca, heck Magus’ story is even pretty cool – unfortunately THE MOST IMPORTANT character, Crono does not impress me much as a hero. If CT were the best RPG ever I would really want to BE that hero and I have no desire to become Crono. Another important thing preventing me from calling CT the best RPG ever is the ridiculousness of the final form of the last boss. Lavos is massively cooler when you see that he is this giant screaming killing machine but when you actually fight him in his final form, he is a dumb monster. I find him to be a major letdown as a final boss. I am not afraid of the inner core of Lavos AT.ALL. So when I finally do beat the inner core, I have lost all respect for the boss that I used to fear. I would have expected the inner core to be something more sinister than the dancing robot who throws stuff. I feel good that I put the abomination out of its misery but I feel bad that the game lets you down so much on the last boss – the ultimate fight of the game. The perfect RPG would have a final boss that I am scared to fight, who packs a wallop, and then makes me feel exhilarated when I defeat them – Chrono Trigger’s last boss does not offer this so it cannot be the best RPG ever.

At long last we have come to the end of my review of the epic Chrono Trigger. I hope that you have found my review helpful and that it increases your interest in the world of retro games. Until next time… this is Retro Gamer Boy signing off!