I recently got the opportunity to play Chrono Trigger DS for an hour.
For those of you who don’t know, Chrono Trigger is one of the games that people say is “the best game ever.” Why? It’s Final Fantasy meets DragonBall Z.
It’s really obvious that the DragonBall Z guy was involved in this game. It has all sorts of DBZ characters, like the guy with ridiculously large hair, the girl who overreacts to everything, and the female scientist who loves showing off how smart she is. The game also has a DragonBall Z plotline: time travel gone wild, in order to prevent the apocalyptic future.
Like I said, I only played the game for an hour, but what I saw of the plot was pretty interesting. One of the plot twists was pretty obvious, but other than that, it was well done.
From what I saw, this is a better-than-average RPG, but I haven’t seen anything special enough to make me call it “the best RPG ever.” Maybe if I get more free time in the future, I’ll come back to it and play some more. Everything was great, and I really only have two complaints about the game:
1. The battle system is a real-time combat system, and I prefer turn-based battles, because enemies don’t attack you when you’re trying to remember which combo is which.
EDIT: People have suggested that I set the game on “wait” mode, so enemies don’t attack when you’re on the combo/item screen. That’s good, but it only applies to the combo/item screen. Enemies still attack when you’re on the attack screen, which is bogus, because I have to take time to determine which of the four enemies I want to attack.
2. I played for an hour, and I didn’t get to see any of the fancy movies that were drawn by the DBZ studio. You’d think the game would want to show off at least one of the animations that were drawn by the DragonBall Z studio, instead of saving them for later on in the game.
[Article reprinted from Michael Gray’s blog. He figured it’d be timely to rerun this article now, seeing as Square Enix is currently making Chrono Trigger 2: Because Chrono Cross Doesn’t Count as a Real Sequel.]
I’ve started Chrono Trigger so many times, but never got further than unlocking Robo. I have given the game so many chances, but for me it doesn’t match up the the insane level of incredibility that the fans of the game claims it possesses. That’s not to say the game isn’t amazing, more that I personally just couldn’t get into it.
Having played Chrono Trigger to the end (with an intent to do it again someday), I found it to be more entertaining than many of its time (although it’s starting to lose its edge JUUUUUUST a little bit when it’s spewed out over and over again on different consoles). I think the pull comes more from the game’s character and charm than its gameplay, though that is also nice.
You consider Chrono Trigger battle system to be real time? So what do you consider an RPG like Elder Scrolls or Secret of Mana?
I thought Chrono Trigger was either Wait or ATB (Active Time Battle). Isn’t that the one where you wait for a bar to fill up?