ILG Player's Club plays Chrono Trigger

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

Do characters waiting at The End of Time level when your main team levels?

i dont think so - u need to level a pair or a trio together to unlock their techs anyway but im not sure tbh

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

yah - SPOILER - depending on how u behaved @ the fair u can be found innocent. u cant eat the oldster's food and theres some other stuff - i think u have to find a lost cat? basically if u act like a real bro then the court will find u innocent but if u were a jerk then ~heads roll~ its basically the same u still end up in jail and have to break out but i think u get some extra items if u were innocent

- MORE SPOILERS -

oh also fwiw the courtroom scene and the jail break were total revelations to me as a little kid ~ i rented this game one wknd and played through to the future but never got to rent it again. i finally bought it and remembered the trial so i changed my pattern & also waited to be let out ~ tht it was so rad that the game had these divergent paths

I was found innocent (yeah, I saved the cat) but still ended up in jail and sentenced to death by the cockface chancellor. So I figure the chancellor has a key role to play in the main story, usurper of power or something like that.

Well, the medieval baddie was disguised as their chancellor, wasn't he? So I'm guessing this is still the same monster in disguise, or something.

That's right! It could be a coincidence, but with so little to go on right now, that's a reasonable posit.

im playing this in "new game +" mode with lvl 50+ characters & all the items from the previous walkthrough. i managed to get all jury members to side with me during the trial for the first time, which didnt change a thing, gameplay-wise.

also the outdoor tune in the zeal kingdom, which is where im at now, is v pretty, possibly my favourite square games tune ever.

I've played this a bit further. I've found the blade and hilt of the broken Masamune, and after a trip back to 100000000 BC or whatever, found the dreamstone evidently needed to refuse the sword. The parts with Ayla were pretty confusing---she seems to have the hots for Chrono, but does she also have the hots for Marle? The dialogue was confusing, as were the flashings of eyes at the wild dance party. One thing I don't like about old school RPGs is they don't all keep track of past dialogues for you, so if you missed a detail about what to do next, you can be totally adrift. Hopefully the guy at the End of Time can help you get back on track if you lose it? I've avoided walkthroughs so far and hope to continue to do so, but not if I end up spending an hour wandering trying to figure out how to trigger the next plot event. That's especially important in a game like this that does such a great job of making grinding unnecessary.

the music in this owns

^absolutely, one of the best soundtracks

btw that reminds me, for the guy who was like "Still don't get the fanatical devotion this thing inspires" earlier, i think u can pretty much sum it up w/"production values" - there's nothing mind-blowing about the game, i could tell it was treading well worn territory even when i was 10 years old, but it's just incredibly well executed on every level; art direction, design, music, writing, presentation, basically everything is polished to a sheen. plus it's got an abundance of ~*~*hEaRt & sOuL*~*~

cankles is right about "production values" - this is maybe kinda sorta the first 32-bit RPG, apart from, you know, not being 32-bit

i have not been able to download this because my broadband stopped working. hrmph

Yes on production values; and while I'm happy to play more RPGs like this after I finish it, I wonder when the next big leap in RPG construction will be. Oblivion sure wasn't it, with a basically linear quest that revolved around your character. I'd like to play an RPG where my character is just another character in a vast drama, where my decisions won't ultimately determine much about the fate of the kingdom/nation/planet/galaxy/whatever. I want there to be big events that happen independently of my character, and that I can take part in to a limited, human-scale extent, without being a leader or whatever. Like let me be a foot soldier in a massive army campaign, but make it an RPG: you could even work in character progression/leveling somehow if you were wedded to that. If I could get some venture capital I'd put together a team and try to build one of these, though my friends in the industry say the money's really only in MMORPGs nowadays.

holy shit he cut a mountain in half

I dunno, this isn't really capturing my imagination yet? I have barely started but it feels real static. I will soldier on.

i beat kotor yesterday, so today i dusted off my snes (had to whip out the compressed air actually~ ::adjusts glasses::) so i could join u guys and found that i no longer have an ac adapter for that shit. and nintendo stopped selling replacement shit for the nes/snes like literally last year ;____;

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