PSN was having a big sale on Square-Enix games about a week ago, which I took as a sign from the gods that I should get
Chrono Cross freaking over with already. I discovered that I was out of space on my PSP memory card, so I ordered up a reasonably-priced 32 GB card online. It arrived promptly, but when I opened the envelope, I discovered a note explaining that the card I had ordered was out of stock and that my order had therefore been upgraded...to a whopping *1* GB. I brought up the listing, thinking I had been scammed, but no: I really did mistake the "M" in the listing for a "G," because I had never thought to consider that Sony might be making 32 MB flash cards in The Year of Our Lord 2014 (or even The Year of Our Lord Whenever the PSP Came out). So I have effectively paid eight bucks for 1 GB of memory, but I decided to keep the card on the idea that it makes for a better story if
Chrono Cross is a
complete inconvenience from beginning to end.
In case it's not obvious, I'm approaching
Chrono Cross as a fiasco. Nothing I have heard about it tells me it would be a good sequel to
Chrono Trigger - my impression is that it follows up a title that was sleek and elegant with needlessly, overly complex mechanics; that it substitutes
Trigger's tight-knit, universally-likable cast with a host of nobodies differentiated primarily by their accents; and that its treatment of its
Chrono Trigger plot elements is childishly grimdark. I understand, however, that it was made by the some of the same folks who made
Baten Kaitos, and I've heard that some elements of its battle system herald
Baten's, albeit in an extremely clunky form. We'll see if those impressions change, or if any interesting discoveries regarding
Baten's heritage are made.
So far, a couple hours in, I don't have my hopes up. The primary vibe I'm getting from
Chrono Cross is "desperate." It's
desperate to establish itself as a Real Genuine Follow-up to
Chrono Trigger, No, Honest, as it opens (after an initial dream sequence) with the exact same dialogue and steals several of its most prominent music cues and compositions from
Trigger. It's
desperate, in that early 32-bit era way, to establish itself as Edgy and Mature and Not for Kids, with awkwardly shoehorned-in cursing and tit jokes in the first fifteen minutes. The game's first big in-game cinematic is a vision of the hero standing over the heroine's dead body,
smiling with a
knife dripping blood (cue close-up of a fat, greasy drop plopping off the blade). It's kind of ridiculous.
The battle system is a turn-off as well. It's not explained well (and the instruction manual, hilariously, gives you absolutely
no information on how anything in battle works), but from what I can grasp: when characters attack, they can choose from one of three types of attacks (weak, middle, and strong), each with a different likelihood to hit. Landing one hit will allow you go for another hit; missing will...well, sometimes end your combo, but sometimes not - who knows why. Landing enough hits gives you the ability to cast a spell on your next turn. If enough people have cast enough spells of the same element, you can cast even more powerful spells in that element; otherwise, you're limited to Level 1 stuff. The problem is that there are really only two patterns of attack (go for the basic weak-mid-strong arrangement, or go for strong all the way through), so there's very little variation when it comes to attacking, and I
think (though I'm not sure yet) that any character can use any spell, so there's not really any inherent difference in characters besides attack strength.
Baten differentiated its characters in interesting ways and gave you a vast array of character-specific and generalized cards, from which you could build a unique deck for each character. On top of it,
Baten's cards just looked nice, whereas here, you're just highlighting a few dinky lines of text. Also,
Baten Kaitos is fun and rewarding to play, whereas this...just isn't, at least so far.
Meanwhile, speed when it comes to game mechanics isn't as big a thing with me as it is with other players, but I can appreciate the efficiency with which
Trigger opens a battle right on the map screen, cuts right through it, announces its results with just a few lines of text, and returns you right to exploring.
Cross takes you to a separate battle screen with this huge, slow pan across the field, then walks you post-battle through several slow and clunky screens announcing changes in character status and asking if you want to heal up and informing you of the worthless trinkets you've won. It's a graceless and patience-trying production.
(Aside: What is it with 32-bit Square and its obsession with worthless trinkets?
Legend of Mana had it, too. I can't say it's satisfying to be "rewarded" for winning a fight or finding a treasure chest with just a scrap of leather or shard of bone that you might, if you gather 50 or so other said scraps or shards, be able eventually to trade for a weapon that's half as effective as the one you currently have.)
The story is not grabbing me, and while that wouldn't normally be a surprise, the off-putting plotline links to CT really haven't started in earnest yet. We're still establishing the backstory of the hero, who's suddenly pulled by unknown means to an alternate dimension where he passed away in an accident ten years ago. I actually thought that this part of the story could have promise; it'd be difficult to return to the time-travel gimmick after
Trigger's history-spanning plot, but exploring alternate realities is an intriguing way of following up on and yet side-stepping a time-travel tale. The hook just isn't
grabbing me in this case, though, and I think it's in great part due to the characters. Marle and Lucca were both likable firecrackers, but
Cross sticks you with Leena, the hero's tiffy and kind of demanding girlfriend, and Kid, a loudmouthed thief who -
spoilers - is the reincarnation or otherworldly projection or something or other of Schala, even though Kid is distinguished chiefly by a) her cheap Australian accent straight out of an Outback Steakhouse commercial and b) liberally sprinkling her dialogue with "piss" and "arse" and other PG-13 obscenities, traits which really don't apply to Schala. Both Leena and Kid are absent much of the time, though, and the hero's mute, which means that most of the story is relayed through your only other companion, this pink Poochie dog who speaks with a lisp.
Plus, there's a lot more happening in
Trigger's first act - you're catapulted to 600 A.D., meet Frog, are thrown in prison and escape, and then dash off to 2300 A.D. and the real meat of the plot in short order. Two hours into
Cross, and I'm still just wandering around the starting island, listening to all the characters in both dimensions wax melancholy about how everything changes and nothing lasts forever and the world sucks.
I had also forgotten that the tiny little hamlet of Porre from CT was the huge invading threat in this world. It's ridiculous, as if all of Lunar were under attack from Meryod or something.
One place where the game
does resemble
Baten Kaitos is in the brightly-colored and richly-realized settings. The hero lives in this seaside bamboo village festooned with colorful kite-like structures, while the sandy temple from the opening dream resembles something out of
Myst. The whole game has so far looked like it takes place inside a coral reef, and it's easily the game's strongest point.
I also discovered the Littlest Gibari.
Not that you can pick him out there considering the size of the screenshot. (He's referring to the fish he caught, by the way.)
.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
