ILG Player's Club plays Chrono Trigger

oh man, if i had time i would do this...as it is i have approx 2 hours/week for video games and i'm trying to play far cry 2 and point lookout. it would be a good excuse to get that DS reissue.

i played CT for the first time right after i graduated college, in the couple weeks before i got a job, on my roommate's SNES. i don't remember doing anything with my days but going for runs and playing CT. fond memories.

kotor >>>>> baldur's gate in pretty much every aspect imo

plus, just.... runnin around doin thangs is more fun than point and click shit

lol subtle suggestion that ilg should replay secret of mana instead?

if we could actually get some kind of emu netplay going that would be AMAZING

probably won't happen, though

also lamp, you are totally otm about KOTOR vs. Baldur's Gate. It is also true about pretty much any other Black Isle-related RPG that came out during that era

lmao honestly i would be a lot more interested in replaying SoM! mostly because it's been a loooot longer since i've played it

"i don't remember doing anything with my days but going for runs and playing CT."
This is my goal for August!

started this tonight and I've def. got the bug already; leveled a bunch just playing normally, w/o grinding; beat Yakra, so that's where I'm at. Nice story too, with the Back to the Future-like time travel, "oh no she's being erased" thing. I screwed around in the fair a bit, beat the bell a bunch but then failed at the horror house game; whatever. I stupidly saved $ at the fair when I could have used better armor later on; now I've got like 3000 gold but since I finished the "find the queen" thing I should be able to find a store next. But yeah, I have to work tomorrow and then it's right back to this one. Fabulous.

canks you have beaten ct "17-20 times"?? is that that many playthroughs or 13 endings plus like four other playthroughs? either way i think you have qualified to moderate this discussion by picking the first set of stopping points for discussion ¬_¬

i am still playing dragon quest viii* and i am not sure i can cope with two lots of characters with horrible toriyama fetal alcohol syndrome-head thing going on, i might have to catch up later. for those of u who have played the game previously and wish to follow along there is a worryingly thorough let's play; that's, sadly, the least packed with terrible humour. (haha someone compared ILG to the somethingawful forums on ILE the other day, what in the hell)

*cough and er fallout 3 and odin sphere. lol funemployment

all the endings plus a few extra playthroughs, yeah - all of this was by, like, age 13 mind u

lol u read LP now?

it is a clever resource to stop me actually going back and playing any of the games in question

first stopping point is probably after everyone beats the cathedral in 600 AD?

looool thomp what do u think of odin sphere? im a HUGE stan for that game.

yeah it's definitely the best SW game i've played - what's funny is i can see all the parallels to baldur's gate, but the qualities i found annoying in that game i have no problem with in this one. i think i have to face facts that the sword and sorcery trappings really just drag a game down for me

― born s1ocki (cankles), Monday, July 20, 2009 4:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Ohhh man better than TIE Fighter? I will have to pick it up

lamp i thought after the cathedral was where euler just got to? my memory of the game may be wonky.

odin sphere haha ER i can't decide if i hate it or not:

on some other thread someone said of it 'anime ruins everything' — totally get that — otoh, having just finished the first book, the demands on player/reader empathy have gone so far past the reasonable as to be almost interestingly alienating. i doubt that was what they were shooting for, though. aaaaaaaaand i would probably be less annoyed when the gameplay slips up (which it does) if i didn't have to watch these little wideyed idiots talk for hours alla time

the combat, every so often, seems to turn into "stay BEHIND the enemy. BEHIND" a lot. which is annoying. i wish it didn't pause when you looked at items - that stops it from ascending into proper action game zen "don't think, feel" business. and there's some annoying cheapnesses or just stuff that hasn't been playtested enough to quite be right - there was one boss that doing a combo on from the left hand side you'd pass through, but from the right hand side you wouldn't - which w/ the 'stay BEHIND' thing became really quite annoying for obv reasons

never played TIE fighter - i guess the best previous SW game i've played is jedi outcast, which isnt saying much

Tie Fighter is great; KOTOR is about two steps ahead.

Aw man you guys have me looking at prices for KOTOR. Any idea if the Mac version is good or should I just play it safe and go for the PC one?

never got past the first planet in kotor, didn't like the combat and dialogue trees gave me option paralysis.

i am basically never playing anything with a name like 'knights of the old republic'

unless it is eg. a counterfactual about oliver cromwell

odin sphere.

shh.

lamp i thought after the cathedral was where euler just got to? my memory of the game may be wonky.

yah sounds like it - but its the 1st major milestone i think? QUEST #1 COMPLETED and all that

item mgmt and use was probably the worst thing in odin sphere but i didnt really care about the tactical breakdown stuff i guess - i mean i see what your saying but theres enuff variety/challenge in the boss fights that it never bothered me is the boss fite your talking about velvet because i dont remember that tbh...

lol @ caring about the story in odin sphere tho who cares it looks pretty

lolz my ?!r@+3D copy of this hit a snag at the very first teleport and now I'm having to start over again at the FUCKING FAIR

lol

if only i could find a youtube link to a certain Big Star song, but i can't

Ha forks, exactly the same thing has happened to me, went into a teleport and the game hung. And I must've sat watching the screen swirl around for about 4 minutes before I realised it was broke.

I hadn't spent long in the fair though, just bought some armours then ploughed on through. Will try it again on the train to work this morning.

I beat the cathedral; not sure it said anything like quest #1 completed, though. Toad (well, I called him Turd) walked out of the castle in shame for failing to protect the queen, and I guess I'll be going to get him back next since he was a badass in combat.

The balance between melee and magic is nice even at this early stage. Lucca isn't great with the airgun but her magic is booming. Often in RPGs I end up sitting on magic on much later in the game, when it becomes pretty much the only thing I use in combat.

I just played Chrono Trigger for over an hour

Okay, the problem with the .nds file is an acknowledged bit of copy protection and fixing it is gonna take some google-fu, time and experimentation. Anybody old hand enough at this to explain how you work patches?

you could just emulate the snes version, you know

Yep, I've just been looking into this too.

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?download=3786

Haven't tried it yet, but I guess you unzip this, plonk your Chrono rom file in the same directory, run the batch then grab and rename the resulting "p4tc3ed.nds" file. I'll have a go in a bit and report back.

And yeah, if it doesn't work I'll switch to snesemu.

lol @ caring about the story in odin sphere tho who cares it looks pretty

haha yeah the cover copy is great/awful in how it recognises these priorities:

"Welcome to the lavishly illustrated world of Odin Sphere©!

Lands of snow, emerald forests, and chasms of fire beckon you. Follow the threads of an intricately woven story (blah blah) ... the kind of visual experience that every gamer dreams possible, but seldom plays."

xp

Oh, wait, that's a jp patch. US patch here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nz5hyxmzxmm

(Although I think my copy is euro, grr).

i will be fucking with that shortly but BEE CAAAAAREFUL
Before trying any p@tch3s or hacked r0mzz, i recommend backing up your entire card, by browsing to your cards drive, Ctrl + A or select all, and copying to a temp folder, if all is clear and everything works, then delete the folder.

Yeah, I actually do that pretty much every time I plug it into my pc anyway, just so I know my save games are safe.

This game is fabulous. I don't know if we're, on this thread, supposed to pace things so that we can talk along, but I'm into this now and playing hard (for the 1.5 hrs a day I can get right now). And since this is my first time, I'm sure I can have wild-eyed talk if I do end up ahead.

I spent some time confused at first tonight, after I'd rescued the queen, as to what to do next. Toad/Turd had jumped across the bridge. But then I went to the right places eventually in my wanders and triggered the next events. I ended up back in the present, where I was framed for some bullshit. I busted out of jail, caught up with my babes again, and then as we were cornered by the chancellor and his guards, jumped into another gate. Now I'm way in the future, in a Fallout-like world of mutants and starvation. I helped the starving people find a seed, got some kickass armor and weapons, and located my next gate on the supercomputer. I'll up there again tomorrow.

I am loving the linearity of this, after playing non-linear RPGs for years (eh, mostly Oblivion, which took me a year lol). And I am leveling fast and getting new techs. This is really, really great.

Anybody happen to make the patch work?

No, but I found a pre-patched file. Email me.

Pretty sure you can search for a patched version on any major torrent site. That's how I got GTA: CW to work.

Emailed! Would love to start playing tonight, nudge nudge.

i swear I have played through the fair about six times in the past few days.

Ha forks, exactly the same thing has happened to me, went into a teleport and the game hung.

u guys should try going into the other teleporter imo

I did! It's on now.

http://www.offworld.com/assets_c/2009/07/stephtrigger-thumb-620x620-23775.jpg

I have trolled thru that fair a bunch of fucking times, got a bit further than that into it. Maybe got to a future bit once if it's this game I'm thinking of. Still don't get the fanatical devotion this thing inspires. Anyway I'm obtaining a patched nds and maybe I'll join in with this for a bit.

I made it through the future last night, got the robot guy and then ended up at the End of Time, where I learned magic, in addition to techs. I like the dual tiered spell system conceptually, though in terms of game play I guess it doesn't matter much since both draw off the same pool of "magic points".

I gotta admit that the future part dragged a little, b/c the colors were so drab in the domes and in the factory. It was hard to tell where I was going. The enemies weren't very compelling, robots and acid slimes and bugs. There was one difficult battle, the one with five or six of the most powerful robots.

But on the whole I'm still really enjoying this. I think the future part maybe obscured the main plot of the game...actually, I'm not sure I know what the main plot of the game is, yet...something about playing around with time. So I guess it's still early to evaluate the game's story.

That courtroom scene was fantastic, I loved the way they kept using flashbacks from my actual game to disprove the claims I was making. Proper "DOH!" moments.

I'm a bit stuck in the future now, one dungeon appears to be a dead end and the other has a kind of future car in it which doesn't do anything except trigger baddies. I was playing while very tired last night though, and kept dozing off, so I probably missed something obvious.

Not sure I like my core team that much, Chrono is becoming a bit of a tank while the two girls just seem to be fairly ineffective range fighters with weak magics. Liked the frog, hope he comes back.

What do people think of the battle system? I don't really feel like I've got a grip on it yet, tend to find I'm missing stuff happening on the top screen while I'm choosing options on the bottom screen. Also, I've got it set to "wait" mode but it still mostly carries on with or without my input. It's a weird mixture of turn based and real time, and I'm generally finding it a bit confusing.

Totally agree on the "wait" thing: I'd set it up that way, but if I wait, the enemy seems to attack anyway. I'm getting better at aligning combos which are great when you're taking on five or six enemies, or need a mass heal (as I did repeatedly in the harder battles).

Courtroom scene was boss: is it possible to avoid eating the old man's lunch initially?

The girls get a lot better as they level and pick up eq, which I guess is obvious. But really it's the eq; with some decent armor and better weapons, which are just around the corner for you Jim, they're really nice. I now have four people to choose from, but the new character seems like just another tank so I kept the girls instead; Marle is a healer, and despite the profusion of healing potions, my RPG tendency is to hoard healers and avoid potions as much as I can (b/c you don't know when you'll need a potion but have run out, whereas with a healer you usually can go a lot longer). I suspect not everyone plays this way, and I can't really rationally defend it better than I just did.

oh yeah, I kept Lucca b/c she's a very nice blaster already, and I figure will get better yet. The robot (I called him Squack) is more a blaster tank, which I like as my main character but not as a second character; I tend to prefer to keep my characters pure, division of labor and all that.

lol @ me remembering this but for marle and lucca their dmg output is calculated so that it grows exponentially - theyre pretty crap @ the beginning but they own in the l8 game. the others growth rates are more balanced. also i think the two girls use a different, non-STR stat for the calculation which also starts low

the robot is probably the best non-chrono character iirc - dope all around fighter w/some healing some array and a decent elemental spread. and his techs are pretty cheap and his double/triple techs are all pretty good - so he works well with any party

in new game + i went to the right telepod after marle joined @ the fair, beat lavos, and this is where im at right now:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/fez_/ct.jpg

??
:B

lol this thread is so insanely spoilery

mods delete that post plz

tempting

lol I started another game last night b/c I can't quit Marle...and b/c I read some walkthroughs and apparently Magus has a bunch of spells that I never got! He only has 3 spells, Lightning 2, Ice 2, Fire 2 (I think), but apparently he can get a bunch more. And Ayla evidently has some great spells but I didn't use her enough to get them (I won with Chrono, Marle and Lucca just blasting the fuck out of Lavos). And I think Robo has more too. So I'm going to focus on Magus, Ayla, and Robo. It's funny replaying it because obviously I'm walking through all the battles that were tough at first, but it's still taking time to do it because of loading time etc.

What's the earliest point I can fight Lavos at? I guess I have to get to the End of Time at least?

hahaha nope.

let me put it this way, don't even consider it until you've finished New Game + at least once

(trying to get to/beat Lavos before End of Time)

yeah I'm just level 50 now so that's prob. right

magus has HIDDEN TRIPLE TECHS that u need special items to use... it owns prettty hard

Yeah I think I have the special items now (bunch of gemstones) but I don't even have Dark Matter! Which according to walkthroughs is a pretty fine spell.

hell yes

you have to equip it on one of the party members who can perform the triple tech, and then have all the ppl in ur party i think

yeah but I also have to have the right max spells for each party member to allow triple techs, and that's what I don't have at present.

aaahhh right-o

Superfluity, Thy Name is Lost Sanctum

Parish criticizing the new sidequests added to the DS version, then goes into a general anti-padding rant. Sounds like they're not worth the trouble, and it's not like the game really needed more content, but it doesn't seem like they usually succeed in these remake additions.

Huh. I think I skipped the Lost Sanctum on my first playthrough. Maybe I'll try it this time (I'm playing on DS). S/he's right that the game is short enough to make a second playthrough worthwhile. I took about 25 hours on my first playthrough. The Black Omen was a pretty badly designed dungeon I thought, way too much walking through vast boring empty spaces. I guess it showed how cavernous the ship is, but for little payoff. And the combat was dumb by that point too, because I could kill everything in it without magic or healing.

S/he makes a nice point regarding the lengths of contemporary RPGs also. I got burned out on Oblivion, because I have completist tendencies, but after 120+ hours I'd had enough of fetch quest and weak plot (by then I'd long dispensed with the final quest). It was a pity because the assassination quests were actually interesting (relatively speaking) but I just didn't want to be in that universe anymore by then. Plus my 360 started locking up on one of those quests, both the first time and on further reloads from save. So CT's brevity was a virtue I appreciated.

JEREMY parish is a dude btw

Okay, I'm officially quitting this as I'm just not enjoying it. Glad I gave it a college try but it's just not quite doing it for me.

did you ever finish this forks

lol, i did not enjoy it! my secret shame. just lost interest and never got back into it.

this is such a great thread. i should be unemployed and play videogames again

its a good racket if you can get your foot in the door

for shame!!!

hacked my SNES mini. Wasn't sure I'd be able to play another top-down RPG after Earthbound but here I am. I'm really gutted I didn't go in the Tent of Terror before zapping myself back 1000 years :-(

I can't stop listening to this too: https://open.spotify.com/track/713XSUuab0bJX0AGFWUsxd <- one of the best bits of music in a 16 bit game I can think of. Wish there were more decent orchestrated versions of SNES game soundtracks on Spotify

sometimes I wanna tell people about the feels I get off this game and then I realise I'm being a weirdo so I'm saying it here

it's incredible