Chrono Trigger

At one point, I was a somewhat misguided critic of rpgs- The combat is slow and repetitive; the characters are all cookie-cutter and overly dramatic; random battles that are forced upon you is a terrible idea. Or so I thought. About a year ago, I was with a DS but without any games for a few days, so I picked up some random Sonic game I had never heard of: Sonic Chronicles. It turned out to be an rpg. Was the plot as terrible as you'd expect it to be? Yes, and then some. But I couldn't deny, the core mechanics of the game were actually pretty fun, and I ended up enjoying the game. Recently I stepped it up a bit and played another rpg-for-dummies, but this time one with a little credibility- Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. This one was a lot more difficult, but was certainly a better game than Sonic. Speaking of the Mario rpgs, I'm going to have to play the second one, Partners in Time, as well as Bowser's Inside Story, which just came out.

So that's two rpgs that were fun enough, but nothing mind-blowing. They dealt with characters I was familiar with, they didn't take themselves very seriously, and the only character with spiky hair was a hedgehog, who by all rights deserves those spikes. About a month ago I was at Gamestop and decided the time was nigh to jump into one of the most critically acclaimed rpgs of all time: Chrono Trigger. Not only have I seen this game show up on top-10 lists in websites and magazines, but at least three of my own friends have beaten it before and have told me how great it is. Even Big J, a guy who hates video games, encouraged me to play Chrono Trigger. How could the game possibly live up to the hype?

Well, it did. Even with the spiky-haired silent protagonist, the overdramatic save-the-future plot, and anime cut-scenes, it was a damn fun game and I can see why everyone loves it. The plot is epic, but rarely drags. Time travelling through seven eras provides a lot of space to explore, but there's enough variety to keep you wanting to explore just a little further each time. Boss fights were challenging but never unfair. The pace was perfect, and on two separate occasions the story went in a way I wasn't expecting at all (or at least I would have, but Stan warned me when an important moment was coming). My only complaint is that towards the end of the game, I lost where my ship was, and therefor couldn't go back for some side quests. Sheridan told me that the same thing happened to him, the game just moves it to a new location without really telling you, but at that point I was ready to beat the final boss and be done with it. That's hardly a knock on the game, I just wasn't paying attention during an important piece of dialog. Perhaps with Chrono Trigger out of the way, I'll start trying some of the Final Fantasy games, but in a little while... in a little while.