The first time I heard of the name Chrono Trigger was like 6 years ago by one of my friends during class. Now I do not know how did the conversation get to that point, but I distinctly remember he mentioned that one of a character is a frog, a efin frog out of all the animals. Then he mentioned that the mangaka behind the Dragonball series was the one responsible fo the charcter design....I will not get into how much I think Akira Toriyama's style is really ugly for anything here. Back to the topic, that conversation pretty got drown off to other things, and just sit on the base of my memory bank for a long time.
One day I was browsing through the NDS catalogue at the usual place, wondering if there's any good game that came out that is worth my time to play. At that time I pretty much finished Castlevania Order of Ecclesia, had a few fun with KORG DS-10 Synthesizer and still waiting for Moon to come out. That's when I saw Chrono Trigger sitting there.
On the first impression, I remember telling myself how great the pacing was. It just grabs you in with the mysterious disappearance of a teammate, and the typical standard JRPG medieval scenario with the twist of a time portal. The beginning of the plot really sucks you in. And then at one point in the story you come face to face with the ultimate boss, and the consequence of its act of destruction. Establish the final hurdle, witness the catastrophy, and train up your characters to change the future. It maintains the quirky humour that is common in the general JRPG, minus the emo part since it's lead by a silent hero. You will get a time traveller/machine later on in the story, so it makes more sense as to why the boss is waiting for you there. Also, it allows you to challenge it whenever you like, it's just that you will be screwed before the main quests/side quests are complete due to your pathetic low levels and sucky weapons.
The characters each have great personalities. First is you the silent hero, who I named dick by the way. Then it's the heroin that i mentioned before who mysteriously vanished, the childhood female friend who loves science, a robot, a prehistorical female who speaks in simple languages, and lastly, the frog swordsman. I also add the fact that you can name every characters in your team, which is great coz i had a lot of fun putting in random names for them. One thing I had to say is how ugly the cutscene looks due to the fact that it's his works. The 8bit/16 bit on general play looks alright though.
The battle system is a bit uncomfortable to being with, as it involves an invisible timebar which dictates who goes first and somewhat, and you can still get attacked if you idle for too long. Each character can weild magic with their own attribute, except for the savage girl, but she got the best attacks anyway. There's also a double tech and triple tech, which can be used if all party involved are ready (ie. time ball finish loading), they pretty much are my killer blows in every boss battle. One main problem being that if I choose to heal a teammate who is in critical situation, and after the command is selected he/she is dead by a blow, the healer pretty much wasted her/his chance and does not gain a free move because the last move is invalid. That was a bit annoying when you are in a pinch and had to wait for the bar to load up again, and pray that the boss will not give out another majoy group damage. It sometimes can get quite hectic due to the past pacing of the battle system, but it is possible to pause mid battle by pressing Start.
As to the dungeon itself, it draws the map as you explore. Since I am playing the DS version it's all done in the bottom screen. You see the monsters on the map, and usually at fixed places. You trigger into battle mode when you touch them, which pretty much stays the same scene but all the monsters shown at that time will get involved in the battle. Most of them moves about on the map, and sometimes you cannot avoid some monsters for some reason, which can be a bit annoying this way when you are doing some serious backtracking and do not want to fight on the way. Having said that, the design of it also allows you to skip past fights in most of the map without having to worry about FOE. One other thing that annoys me is that there's not a single item that allow you to jump out of the dungeon instantly, so you had to walk a long way to find the next savepoint if you are deep in the dungeon. However, you can save whenever you like if you are in the world map, which is a major relief..
music.......I love the one in the world map in the medieval time, since I'd heard a lot of interpretation of it before. Not sure if it's the main or the most famous tune, but it's the one I am most familiar about, so I was a bit stoked when I first heard it. The music for the other time periods also describes that era perfectly, you can immediately associate to the world view and the characters just by listening to the music. I grind/backtracking a bit too much during the middle stage of the game, so I kind of got sick with the combat music. And I just realise that there are no victory music in this game, which is kind of sad.
Like the last game I'd reviewed, this game also provides the option of NewGame+, which allows you to keep all your items and levels when you start over, minus some plot-essential items. I'd said before that you can challenge the final boss anytime right? Turns out that if you defeat it at diffent stage of the game there will be different ending unlocked. By keeping the items and the levels you can challenge it anytime in the story, though like any other RPG, the story tend to get a bit old after you finish with it. Which is why this mechanism is one major positive in term of gameplay as it give out more challenges to the player.
I finished the game in like 35 hours in the first play through, with all the side quests done (thanks to some peekings at the walkthough). All my characters are in early level 60, so i think it would not pose a major problem if i decided to finish the game mid way through the main quest, even though I was having some troubles beating the final boss before.
Overall, it's a great game. Good story, good combat, good gameplay, good music, pity the art style is shitty. It was a good 35 hour during the holiday and I cherish that experience. I enjoyed the gameplay, and it had to be one of the best RPG I'd played so far. I highly recommend it to any NDS owner who is a JRPG fan, even just a RPG fan. You will not be dissappointed.
9.5/10
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