I just played Chrono Trigger for over an hour.

Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia/Terranigma is prob the darkest & creepiest SNES RPG trilogy

ya, illusion of gaia was genuinely chilling & desolate - pretty unique game imo - i remember it having a weird, isolated atmosphere that made u feel like ur character was a ghost trapped amongst the living. most of the gameplay was puzzle solving and hitting blobby things with a flute, and for the ending they basically just kill you and your girlfriend (iirc)

secret of mana was v sad. listing to the soundtrack now makes me tear up: http://secretofmana.planets.gamespy.com/soundtrack.html

yeah som bummed me the fuck out too - towards the end when you find out the blonde chick's boyfriend is dead or possessed or whatever, and then you fukkin KILL HIM. dang, that was heavy as hell for a 7 year old.

was his name dylock? i cant believe i remember that, i havent played this game in like 15 years

yeah cankles otm re: IoG. not being able to go back into earlier levels was kind of a bitch but also a reminder "you're not ever seeing home again"

http://secretofmana.planets.gamespy.com/images/screenshots/screen112.jpg

crank dat mode 7!!

Phanna, Thanatos, etc.

All those villagers who just said "..."

Oh man IoG. That's the only one of the trilogy I've played but Jesus it was possibly the most I ever "felt" for a video game. Main character with my name != help. That game was the loneliest feeling game EVER.

did anyone play phantasy star II?? i think that was the only turn-based RPG i was really obsessed with

That game was the loneliest feeling game EVER.

definitely do not dip your toe in Terranigma, then. there's a bit in the desert with a girl which is pretty much the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a game. And the castle with the evil queen is also mad creepy.

lol I sound like I have a problem with women.

Ku ku ku...

opening post of this is still some sort of masterpiece

everybody otm re illusion of gaia (illusion of time over here). i think the isolation cankles touches on stems from the fact that enemies didn't (or very rarely) re-spawned, so you'd end up killing everything and going through all these empty dungeons looking for missed items

it had a perfect difficulty curve as well, and some pretty tough bosses (the huge king and queen boss immediately springs to mind as a boss that took more than one go to defeat). i think the fact that you couldn't cheat with faeries made it more of a challenge than something like zelda, there's plenty of one-energy-bar-left-edge-of-seat victories and overall i think it was pretty stingy with life replenishment (though of course the fact that zelda and secret of mana were free roaming work in their favour). it felt a lot more arcadey than your usual non-turn based snes rpg.

and who can forget that cute little piggy.

i should really get 'round to terranigma, the premise sounds great.

any secret of evermore heads up in this?

the one that roasts itself on an open flame to save you xpost

xpost I have said many times on ILX that Secret of Evermore >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Secret of Mana

****SPOILERZ****

here's the boss i was on about (turns out they're vampires!)

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/djm5ypqWJKM&hl=fr&fs=1";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/djm5ypqWJKM&hl=fr&fs=1"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

oh

http://www.youtube.com/v/djm5ypqWJKM&hl=fr&fs=1

oh tht didn't work either

i mean fuck that boss battle was like something out of super probotector or something, except harder because you don't have a gun

the fact that all the dungeons were real, recognizable places like angkor wat and the great wall of china added to the eeriness too, bcz the world that yr character lived in was like some kind of seperate bubble world that had no discernable relation to reality, and it's really jarring for the game to superimpose that onto actual history & geography - it was like in old movies when they were shooting ppl in a car and the background was a shitty lookin projection

and then at the end when they're plunked down into modern times (i think?), that is some fourth wall breakin ass shit imo

the section in the subway car in secret of mana

I played an hour of Chrono Trigger last night, jsut like GZeus did, only I haven't played my copy for like >10 years. Getting back into it was fucked up, because I've never really "memorized" a game like that, apparently. "SPINAL FUNCTION" indeed. I remembered where every treasure chest was, etc.

If you ask me, the things that made that game the best of its genre are:

- Battles are fast. The sheer lack of a "battle screen" (instead, the charactes just pull their weapons out and get to it) saves about 6 seconds per battle vs., say, FF3. It also stops the flow from being interrupted.

- You can avoid battles when you want to. You can't avoid them ALL, but you can avoid enough of them that it's awesome.

- This one's vital: the game feels split into "episodes," BUT doesn't sacifice flow to do so. Like, I played for 58 minutes last night. At the end of 30 mins, fake-Leene-Marle had disappeared-- in the first 30 minutes, you wake up, clsoe your curtains, meet your cat and mom, get an allowance, go to a fair, meet marle, meet lucca, lose marle, find marle and lose marle again. 30 minutes!!! if that doesn't get your attention get one (1) ritalin. in the next 30 mins, i met frog, saved real-leene, and got back to the castle.

in between that speedy pacing re: battles and perfectly metered episodic feel, you've got a game that is fun to play at all times. There's always something to do and there's always at least a mild sense of urgency and there's always new environments to explore (this game gets away with the "vastly different environments" thing really nicely) and the characters are better than other SNES jRPGs and and and and and am I GZeus now?

THAT'S INSANE.

The artful gamer guy seems to think that Pier Solar is potentially Chrono Trigger good... anybody wanna play the ROM and let me know?
http://www.piersolar.com/

Are they actually releasing a ROM of it?

There's a pre-release free rom on that site.

u guys ever walked through the Chrono Trigger beta ROM w/Game Genie hax? v. interesting stuff, missing levels and whatnot.

http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png
http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png
http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png

http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png

oh shit, chrono trigger ds comes out this week?

Next week (supposedly Nov. 25th). I'm looking forward to it, as I've never played Chrono Trigger before.

oh awesome

Just got this for DS. Starting to play for the first time on the plane ride home for Thanksgiving tomorrow. At this point the expectations are pretty damn high.

im playing this now.

pretty good!

i mean... im kinda struggling with my feelings on the whole snes-era rpg genre... besides phantasy star 2 i never really played these...

heh... sounds like it might be too... DEEP for u...

It's one of my all-time favorites! Try not to let the nostalgia/hype faze you - either you'll enjoy it or you won't, in the end.

You're starting with probably the most distilled essence of the SNES DQ/FF formulas at the end of an era, so if you're not already into that genre, it may turn out not to be your thing, especially over a decade later. (I'm not sure I'd put Phantasy Star near the Square/Enix/SNES style of RPGs) In some ways it was great because of the lessons it picked up from Secret of Mana, FF 4-6, the DQs, etc.

not so much deep as just... what is the gameplay here really? i mean... i dunno what i mean

i've tried playing some of those FF remakes, they are kinda fun but i always lose interest cuz they all seem exactly the same

this one though seems to be pretty thoughtfully made and careful to avoid the kind of things that always annoy me, like poor item management that lets you accidentally sell all your shit etc

what is the gameplay here really? i mean... i dunno what i mean

what do you mean? like, that there's not enough to actually...do?

well it's like... walk around. open chest. encounter enemy. press "attack" or "magic"... i dunno...

I'm about 6 1/2 hours in on my first play-thru ever too. It definitely gets a bit more strategic and a bit more challenging as you move through the game, at least on the boss battles, you can't just hit "a" or you will die. Keep going - I'm enjoying it more and more.

ya, the boss battles seem like the most interesting/challenging/game-like bits.

im definitely into it, just wondering what it is i'm into.

ive never played this game but the OP is prob. in my top five ILX OP's of all time

i can't defend it since i haven't played it for years, but in my memory there was (avoidable!) action-y combat and choices about where to go next that made it more fun than your average rpg of the time