It's no secret that Chrono Trigger is my favorite video game of all time.
There's really not enough praise I can pour onto it.
It's without question one of the most perfectly executed, laser focused, and cohesive works
I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
However, for all of its brilliance, its cleverness, and its timelessness (see what I did there?),
it also has some slightly troubling behind the scenes stories regarding the workload
and stress that were endured by the development team to make it happen.
In other words, brilliance of this kind comes at a price, and in Chrono Trigger's case
that price was paid heavily by young developers seeking to prove themselves to legendary figures at Squaresoft.
In my Chrono Trigger review I talked about Yasunori Mitsuda's experience, how he worked
himself nearly to death and ended up in the hospital, but I didn't have a chance to
talk much about Masato Kato—the story planner and script writer.
If you don't know who this guy is, he's the one responsible for some of the most badass
cutscenes of the NES era with the Ninja Gaiden titles, but in his interviews for Chrono Cross,
he expresses a level of candid bitterness that I'm finding more and more common among
these poor developers who worked at Squaresoft during their golden years, and honestly who can blame them?
This seems to be the attitude of Kato toward Chrono Trigger when you look at his responses,
and the most interesting thing about this sort of subdued resentment is that it seemed
to be a driving force for him creatively in how he approached both of its follow up projects,
Radical Dreamers, and Chrono Cross.
It's also likely the best explanation for the change in tone that so many Trigger fans
make a point to address in their criticism of Cross, but I'll get to that a little later.
Many people who played Chrono Trigger before Cross, and saw the way the game ended, might
have wondered why there was any need for a follow up to it at all.
Well, for Kato at least the motivation was derived primarily from Schala, whose story
he felt was left unresolved.
Radical Dreamers—a text-based visual novel released in 1996 on the satellaview add-on
for the super famicom—was the result, and in Kato's mind was initially more like an
indie film project where a small, tight-knit group came together to create something fun.
Over the course of its three month development though, it sort of evolved into something
larger than it was ever intended to be, and the final product left Kato feeling embarrassed,
claiming that development halted when it was only half-finished.
He felt so strongly about this in fact, that when Square wanted to include Radical Dreamers
in the Playstation release of Chrono Trigger, Kato simply refused.
Instead, after production wrapped on Xenogears, Kato decided to take the ideas introduced
in Radical Dreamers and turn them into a full-fledged game in their own right, claiming that he
heard Kid's voice echoing from within him, calling him to finish her story.
And so began the development of Chrono Cross in mid 1998.
Right from the beginning though, Kato was firmly against taking the ideas and design
philosophies of Trigger and simply building upon them in Cross.
He wanted in as many ways as possible to start from scratch and try to create something that
had never been seen in the genre before.
This meant he axed any discussion on bringing time travel back, deciding instead to explore
the idea of parallel worlds that the player would travel between.
It also meant starting fresh with the art direction, meaning that Akira Toriyama's
style—which served as the basis for the look and feel of the first game—was replaced
by Nobuteru Yuki's designs, with Yasuyuki Honne providing overall art direction.
The difference between each game's art style is stark to say the least, but in addition
to this, the battle system from Trigger was completely scrapped, effectively abandoning
the ATB system that Final Fantasy had made popular, and replacing it with what is probably
the most unique battle system I've ever seen in an rpg.
The result is a game that feels very different from its predecessor in almost every respect,
and while this was the intention of the game's director from the beginning, it was clear
that the dev team, alongside Squaresoft as a whole, felt concerned about living up to
the lofty achievements of the "dream project", and had some fears about how Cross would be received.
This is seen clearly in interviews with the game's producer, Hiromichi Tanaka, who claimed
over and over again that Chrono Cross is not a sequel to Chrono Trigger.
Like seriously... he really, really wanted to make that clear; which is odd to me when
considering how important the events of Trigger are to Cross's story.
The two stories are very much entwined and Cross especially feels interdependent, so
to me this seems a lot more like a PR move.
However, it proved to be a justified one, considering the harsh feedback the game received
from many of the die-hard Trigger fans.
Despite the disgruntlement of some fans over directorial shifts though, Chrono Cross is
an incredibly unique and polished experience.
It's often difficult when dealing with a revered classic to separate the successor
from it and judge a sequel purely on its own merits, but I felt for myself that it was
important to really make a strong attempt to do so—especially since that's exactly
what the developers wanted the audience to do anyway.
Having played the game with that mindset, I can say that while it might not be one of
my absolute favorite games from Squaresoft, I can understand why it is regarded as a classic by so many.
The island theme—which was inspired by Masato Kato's scuba diving excursions in Southeast
Asia—alongside a beautiful implementation of the artstyle, a refreshing battle system,
and a gorgeous soundtrack, are probably its greatest achievements; creating this really
chill and relaxing vibe as you play.
The story itself, while putting the kind of heavy late game exposition dumps that the
genre has become infamous for on full display, still plays with some interesting ideas, and
I think it flows quite naturally into some of the unanswered questions Chrono Trigger
was unable to resolve.
For me, it was these connections to Trigger that provided the game's most interesting
content, but they aren't really the focus of the story necessarily.
For Kato at least, the game is more of an "ole boy-meets-girl story", and also carries
some wonderfully poignant depictions of the search for identity.
In order to elaborate on this, I'll have to delve into some spoiler territory, so if
you'd like to avoid that please skip ahead to the timecode shown on the screen now.
It's obvious that jrpgs are heavily inspired by anime, and considering that kids and teenagers
were the target demographic for games in those days—at least generally speaking—it makes
a lot of sense that self-discovery and coming-of-age tales (the kind that are commonly seen in
shonen anime) crossed over into video games as well.
The usual template for JRPGs pits young people, who are struggling to find their place in
life, against the world's greatest threats, and that template has become a pretty big
cliche at this point.
That being said, I think the journey of Chrono Cross's main character, Serge (as well as
a number of others in the cast), are easily some of the more subtle and nuanced examples
you'll find in the genre.
Serge in particular, through early events, finds himself thrown into a parallel world
in which he had died as a child, and where none of his village friends or acquaintances recognize him.
Through his efforts to return to his own world he gets swept up in a larger plot, eventually
swapping bodies with his nemesis, only to return to his own world and be rejected by
his loved ones due to their prejudice against demi-humans.
For some players I've spoken with, this sense of not belonging in your own skin was
very personally relevant.
In the end, having embraced what makes him different, Serge finds the strength to reclaim
his identity and embrace his unique gifts, and with the help of his friends faces the
dangers that are his destiny to defeat.
Messages like these, I think, are what really lingered with young players who were also
struggling to find their place in the world, and who perhaps felt different or out of place
in their social circles.
For these players, Chrono Cross offered courage to face their own fears while embracing who
they are, and I have to agree that when it comes to themes of self-discovery, this game
can be deeply resonant.
For others though, it was all about the journey across such a beautifully realized world,
discovering memorable locales and endearing characters to recruit.
This game has a total of 45 playable characters to enlist to your cause, many of which can
only be unlocked over multiple playthroughs; and while trying to implement and execute
on such a large cast inevitably leads to majority feeling shallow or underdeveloped, for those
who enjoy collecting it can be quite satisfying to find and round them all up.
Personally, I don't enjoy that kind of collecting, and would have rather seen the cast reduced
in order to bring a stronger focus to the characters who play major roles in the story,
but even if the character development isn't quite as deep as I would have liked, there
are still some absolutely brilliant moments for a select few, and those moments certainly
deliver on an emotional level.
One thing that bothered me a bit though was that there are certain choices that can be
made in the game that more or less create a branch in the game's story and change
which character's you'll be able to recruit and so forth.
For one such choice, you are forced to make what I would see as the obvious bad or wrong
choice in order to have access to one of the most beloved characters in the entire game.
This may be considered a small thing for some people, but the way choice and consequence
are handled in the game didn't really work for me.
I also think the game struggles to find a central message or theme used to guide the
directorial choices and overall pacing, and because of it I think the story tends to feel
a bit messy.
This is something Kato has inadvertently admitted to in interviews.
"I don't normally think particularly about a theme or message at the launch of a project.
The important question is whether the player will enjoy playing the game...
What's important is not the message or theme, but how it is portrayed as a game."
For me, this lack of attention to the importance of theming hurts the delivery of the story
in some spots, but in particular in how the game resolves.
Without spoiling anything major, Kato really tries with the closing text to beat you over
the head with this message about how humanity needs to overcome its violent impulses and
learn to coexist peacefully with nature, and while there was one or two small instances
where this idea was played with in the story, it certainly was never a main focus of the
game, and so this heavy-handed pontificating in the game's closing minutes felt terribly
out of place to me.
For this reason, alongside the giant exposition dumps in the closing act, the game's resolution
did not feel particularly satisfying for me, and therefore hurt my overall sense of cohesion
with the narrative.
In other words, while I think there are some exceptional ideas in play here, I ultimately
did not like how they were executed, and I think a big part of the reason why it feels
so messy is because of Kato's flippant dismissal of the importance of theming, especially for
a story as large and ambitious as this one.
In my opinion, it would have made a great deal more sense to bring the idea of self-discovery
into the closing monologue, or perhaps even a focus on the resolution of Schala's story
that served as the genesis for this project in the first place.
While the ending credits sequence does that to some extent, it does so in only a nebulous
and obscure way, which kind of defeats the purpose of creating an entire game to help
resolve a subplot that felt ambiguous in Trigger to begin with.
I will say though, that this game has one of the better localizations among Japanese
games from that era, and that is largely because of Richard Honeywood's influence within the company.
After his horrifying experience translating Xenogears, he went on to contribute several
major changes to how the company approached localization.
"Xenogears was pure hell, but it revealed what really needed to be done for proper localization.
From that project on, I contributed to change Square's approach to localization.
Basically most of the factors that make Square Enix's localization different from other
companies' methods came out of the experience of this project."
Honeywood's approach to localization is one that I strongly agree with, and I find
his perspective valuable when it comes to understanding the process.
I'll leave a link to this interview where he describes his approach in the description
and I definitely suggest you read it, but in short I think he knows exactly when changes
from the original script are both necessary and more effective for English speaking audiences.
That being said, another addition Honeywood and his team made to the game was a script
they wrote into the game's code that generated accents, which was put in place to help individualize
the 45 playable characters without the need to go in and manually tweak each and every dialogue box.
So basically they could place in a more direct translation for a character, and then the
script they wrote would apply an accent to it on its own.
Any time you're dealing with an automated system like this you're going to get some
level of awkwardness, and there were a few times when I had to really stare at a sentence
for a second to try and make sense of it.
With games that rely on written text only, I prefer they either go light or stay away
from accents entirely, but overall I think the accent generator did it's job in this
case, and I definitely understand the need here to try to make all of these characters
stand out and be memorable in their own right.
Again, personally I'd rather they had just reduced the cast and focused on hand-crafted
dialogue, but that's just me.
Anyway, while not perfect by any means, the story still has some absolutely amazing moments,
and I'm certainly glad to have played through it myself.
My problems with its execution are firmly rooted, but they would never keep me from
recommending the game to other players, even if only for some of the character scenarios
and subplots which is where the storytelling truly shines.
On the gameplay side of things, however, I have a lot of praise.
Not only did the team try to create something refreshing and different from the established
formula, they succeeded in making it really interesting, fun, and fluid.
I'll start with the combat, and the best place to begin there I think is with the element system.
Magic spells, or elements as they're called in this game, are actually items that can
be found or purchased in the world, and you can hold several of each in your element inventory.
In order to use elements they have to be equipped to your characters before battle.
In some ways this is actually similar to how Final Fantasy VIII's junction system worked,
but with one key difference.
In FFVIII, when you used a spell it disappeared from your inventory and you'd either have
to draw another spell to replace it or refine one.
When you use a spell in Chrono Cross it isn't used up like that.
Here you can only use any particular spell once per battle.
After the battle ends you'll be able to use it again in the next one, but you're
only allowed to use any given spell once in a single battle.
This means you'll have to equip several elements to use if you want to cast more than
one spell in a fight, and additionally you'll have to equip duplicates of the same element
if you'd like to cast a spell, say fireball, more than once.
At the beginning of the game you'll have very few slots available to insert your elements,
but as you level up you'll find yourself with dozens down the line.
The layout of the slots in the grid is also important to note.
Each column represents the next level of magic, so elements in column one are level one spells,
elements in column two are level two, and so on.
However, you aren't locked into placing level one magic into the first column.
You could also put a level one element into the seventh column if you wanted to, and doing
so would increase the spell's power (which is indicated by the plus sign next to the number).
You can also do the reverse and put a high level spell into a low level column, but its
power would be decreased.
Once you have your elements set up and get yourself into a fight, you can't just use
them right off the bat.
You have to build up to them first by performing physical attacks.
So, if I land a successful attack once, I gain access to the level one elements, if
I land a second attack, I gain access to level two, and so on.
Physical attacks also function a little differently here than in most other jrpgs.
In this game you don't just select the attack command and watch your character jump across
the screen and swipe at the enemy.
Rather you have three options: a level one attack which is weak but has a high chance
of success, a level two attack which is stronger but is less likely to succeed, and a level
three attack which is the strongest but also has the lowest chance of success.
If you succeed though you'll gain three levels on your element grid.
This is somewhat similar to how physical attacks were handled in Xenogears with triangle, square,
and x… or cross if you prefer that "sorry".
However, each time you successfully land an attack, your chance of success across all
three attack levels will increase as well.
This is why the game suggests attacking with a level one strike first, which will increase
your chance of success, then a level two strike, which will increase it even further, and then
a level three strike, by which time your chance of landing the more powerful attack will be a lot higher.
Of course, you aren't unlimited in how many times you can attack like this, but have to
pool from the character's stamina.
At the beginning of every fight your characters start with seven stamina, and consequently
a level one attack will require one stamina, a level two attack two stamina, and a level
three attack three stamina. Simple enough, right?
The goal is to use your stamina to gain access to your higher level spells, then use them
to inflict big damage by exploiting enemy weaknesses.
Red deals extra damage to blue, green to yellow, white to black, and visa versa.
However, using the spell at the end of the turn also takes stamina, which means you'll
dip into the negative, and might not gain a full seven stamina back for your next turn.
On top of this you have the field effect gauge in the top left corner of the screen.
Basically this tracks which elements were used for the previous three turns, and both
the player's party and the enemies' effect this.
The goal here is to get all three circles to be the same color, let's say white, so
that when you cast your white elements they'll be greatly strengthened.
On the inverse, if the enemy were to cast a black element while the element field is
entirely white, it would weaken the spell.
In addition to this, you can only cast summons in this game when the element field is filled
entirely with the element that summon is associated with.
To me, it was kind of a hassle to make this happen so I didn't really mess around with
summons too much, but when you can make it work they are really powerful for sure.
So there's a lot to manage in these fights: element selection and equipping before the
battle, stamina, physical attack chance of success, building toward the element level
you want to use, enemy weaknesses, and the element field.
Overall it might seem like a lot at first (I certainly felt that way as I was trying
to figure it out in the early game) but when all is said and done I think it has just the
right amount of layers and depth to keep it feeling exciting as you play through the game.
Even if that isn't the case for you, enemies can be avoided in this game if
you'd rather just move on; so there's no dealing with random encounters.
You can also run successfully from any fight in the game, and yes that applies to bosses as well.
This is a super great feature in my opinion, considering that sometimes in these older
jrpgs you wouldn't know exactly what to expect when you reached a boss and perhaps
hadn't prepared the right way.
Being able to run from battle, requip yourself, and come back was something I really liked
and I wish more jrpgs did this as well.
The only real criticism I have when it comes to combat is that similarly to the way materia
makes character selection a bit meaningless in Final Fantasy VII, the element system sort
of does the same thing here in Chrono Cross.
For the most part combat is about using physical attacks to build up to the element you want
to use, and so the strategy is universal for just about every character.
The characters don't really feel unique in how you use them in combat, so again I
never felt all that motivated to experiment.
Their innate element color, which effects their elemental strength and weakness, was
more important than the actual character in that sense.
There are a couple of exceptions to this, like Sprigg who can use the dopplegang ability
to transform into monsters she's killed and use their abilities.
This makes her unique from any other character, and plays a part in learning the necessary
abilities to win in a monster battling arena later in the game, but outside of that there's
kind of a select few characters who have the best stats and special weapons, and you'll
typically want to go with them since most characters play the same way anyway.
Also, with the combat being as layered as it is, sometimes it did feel like battles
progressed a little slowly—more so than other games anyway—but there's always
the option to instantly escape or avoid fights altogether if you're finding battling tedious.
There's often not much incentive to fight a lot of battles anyway because of how level
progression works in this game, which was something I also really liked and wish was
more common in the genre.
Basically you don't earn experience points from battles at all.
You only level up after defeating bosses.
That might sound strange at first, but I actually really like it because it totally eliminates
the need for grinding and makes sure that the party is at the appropriate level to fight
the next boss, which helps the devs with balancing the game.
"I there any purpose in fighting regular enemies then?" you might ask.
Yes, there is.
After you've defeated a boss and leveled up, the game resets this sort of hidden system
for the next several battles against regular enemies, which will result in small stat upgrades
to things like strength, agility, HP, and so on.
After fighting a certain number of battles these stat increases will start to become
less and less frequent.
There's kind of a lot that goes in to how the game determines this that I have neither
the time nor desire to explain, but I'll put one of the better guides I've read on
this in the description if you're interested in looking at it.
The basic idea is this: when you fight a boss you level up, and after that each battle you
fight for the next little while will give you small increases to your stats, but the
more battles you fight the less often you'll see stat upgrades, and eventually you'll
get to the point where you'll get nothing for fighting battles.
Then, in order to start seeing the small stat upgrades again you'll have to fight the
next boss and level up to reset this.
Overall I like the idea because the player is never under or overleveled this way.
I also loved the new game plus feature, which functions identically to how it did in Chrono
Trigger, where you can go fight the final boss at varying times throughout the story
and unlock multiple endings.
Many of your items and equipment carry over, and they also included a fast forward and
slow down feature, making it possible to get through the game much quicker the second time,
as well as get a really good look at some of those awesome battle animations.
As far as new game plus goes, both Trigger and Cross get it exactly right.
It's great stuff.
Yasunori Mitsuda is a guy I relate to a lot, at least from what I've read about him.
He's an extremely passionate guy and a total perfectionist when it comes to his own work.
His willingness to work himself to death to make up for perceived shortcomings is something
I relate to in a big way, and I think it's primarily why his music is so full of emotion.
Chrono Cross's music is no different.
It is considered by the vast majority to be an all time classic video game soundtrack,
and for good reason.
After having gone through the rollercoaster ride of bad health that he experienced on
Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, Mitsuda finally decided it was time to take better care of
himself, so he departed Squaresoft and began working as a freelance composer.
Luckily Kato convinced the company to bring Mitsuda back, despite their unwillingness
since he had just quit, knowing that he wouldn't be able to get that "Chrono sound" from
anyone else, and Mitsuda was able to write without destroying himself for the first time
since he started composing for games.
The result was a soundtrack that captures all of the uniqueness that Kato sought to
bring to Cross while also placing a number subtle call backs to Trigger in the form of
leitmotif, essentially bridging the gap between the two and making Cross feel like it exists
in the same world while also cementing its own identity.
There are some tracks here that are just… incredible… especially the slower-moving,
emotional pieces which is where I think Mitsuda really shines.
Tracks like Chronomatic, The Girl Who Stole The Stars, Fragments of a Dream, Arni Village,
Forest of Illusion, and the ending credits music, Unstolen Jewel, just put me at a loss for words.
There's nothing I could say to do them justice.
However, where I think Mitsuda on the whole struggles a bit is with battle music, and
I think Cross more so than Trigger and Xenogears suffers in this area.
I think the most criticized track in the whole game is easily Gale, which was aptly described
by a fellow youtube commenter as "the song you hear when you get molested by clowns in hell."
Now, I think the reason it gives that impression has more to do with instrument choice and
mixing than it does with the melody or musical phrases.
Gale's melody is carried by this fiddle-esque string playing, which is usually associated
with a more festive piece rather than a dangerous one, and the bouncing, bubbly bass adds to
that wacky or silly nature that obviously conjured up the image of clowns for this person.
However, listening to the version of this track that appeared in Radical Dreamers gives
a very different impression.
It still has the same melody, the same crazy 9/8 time signature, but definitely feels more
threatening in my opinion.
It's amazing how much a simple change of instrument and a closer mix can alter the
entire feel of a piece.
To be completely honest though, I didn't love any of the battle themes in this game,
and yes that includes Dragon God and Fate - The God of Destiny.
It's not that these special boss themes are bad or anything—they're good compositions—they
just never made me feel the same sense of peril that Mitusda was able to capture in
other games with tracks like Awakening and Knight of Fire from Xenogears for example;
both of which I find to be excellent.
The only reason I bring this up is because a jrpg's main battle theme is the music
the player will hear more than any other track in the entire game, and so for me it's very
important that this piece be super engaging so as not to become fatiguing to the ear as you play.
Unfortunately in this case, Gale was fatiguing to my ear after about five seconds.
Aside from battle music though, Mitsuda's work here is absolutely brilliant.
Chrono Cross is very much a product of its time, both as a PS1 jrpg and as a Squaresoft
project of the late 90s.
In that sense, the development team endeavored to create something new.
They wanted to innovate their formula and take advantage of the hardware they were working with.
They sought to escape the boundaries of what fans might expect from a followup or sequel
to Chrono Trigger, and were willing to take risks in the pursuit of constructing something wholly unique.
When played with that in mind, I think Chrono Cross proves to be an enjoyable experience
with an incredible sense of style and compelling ideas.
The storytelling can be a bit uneven, with a vast majority of its complex plot being
dumped in huge paragraphs of text near the end of the game, and it struggles to embrace
a clear theme, but there are some really excellent character moments and the world is both gorgeous
and satisfying to explore; especially with such a masterful soundtrack to accompany you.
If you go in expecting an iteration of what you loved in Chrono Trigger—a game that
looks, feels, and plays in much the same way—then you'll certainly be setting yourself up
for some level of disappointment.
It's clear that the developers didn't want Cross to be thought of as a direct sequel,
so if you're a huge fan of Trigger, and can separate the two in your mind, you'll
likely find it easier to swallow.
Looking at the game on its own though, without using Trigger as a benchmark, I can easily
see how it could be considered a classic from an age where JRPGs were truly in their prime,
and would not hesitate for a second to recommend it.
There really isn't anything else like it I've ever played.
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