Chrono Trigger

paulc98

Hi, I was just wandering if Chrono Trigger is any good for the ds. I'm not a big fan of turn-based rpgs but I like the Pokemon series, would I like Chrono Trigger.

Mr. K

I really enjoyed Chrono Trigger on DS. The narrative is much more involved than the Pokémon games and the battle system is fun. I'd recommend it, it's a classic.

Retr0gamer

Chrono Trigger is quite possibly the best JRPG ever made. Definitely pick it up.

Supermensch

Can't speak for the DS version (I don't know if the controls, etc, are different), but the game itself is daecent.

paulc98

Is it similar to FF or Phantasy Star because I didn't really like them, maybe just didn't give them enough time to grow on me.

Retr0gamer

Well it was a colaboration between the FF and Dragon Quest teams so if you didn't like them then you probably won't get on with it.

snausages

It's faster paced than either of those two games.

RedXIV

brilliant game, well worth a try. piece of history right there.

Sephiroth_dude

I got this for ps1 I must play it

snausages

If you can, I'd recommend skipping that version and playing it on something else. Load times in CT on PS1 can be about 3 or 4 seconds long, but they happen every time you open a menu or go into a battle. CT is so fast paced that it becomes really annoying quickly.

Retr0gamer

Yeah the PS1 port is appalling. The load times completely kill the fast pace of the game and the music sounds terrible as well. DS version is way better.

Sephiroth_dude

ah crap

Aurongroove

I played the DS Chrono Trigger only. (missed the boat on the original)

It's up there all right, The touch screen selections (they've added for the DS, I assume, lol) are really fast and the game transcends it's genre by a quite a good push. the story deals creatively and competently with time travel and there are several branches to the main story and various endings.

Even if you especially don't like early FF's or turn based or ATB games, there's still a large chance you'll enjoy Chrono trigger.
It's up there in the elusive bunch of titles that are both brilliant for their time and are still brilliant today and that's considering I played it around the same time I played Pokemon White, Radiant Historia and Zelda Spirit Tracks.

snausages

There really isn't any other game like Chrono Trigger. I think that's why it holds up so well. Like most people here I didn't get a chance to play it until a few years ago as it never got an EU release until the DS port, and it was as fresh as any other JRPG out there.

Retr0gamer

It's still also one of the most beautiful games ever made.

Alactric

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Yeah the PS1 port is appalling. The load times completely kill the fast pace of the game and the music sounds terrible as well. DS version is way better.

Not to necro this thread...but I was wondering if you can tell my why that is? Are they not just booting ROMs from a cd? I'm interested in getting a proper physical copy of this game, but the only portable I have is a GBA.

Any advice?

Retr0gamer

Well as previously mentioned the music is really terrible in the PS1 port. They really ruined it compared to the original SNES music. Most of all though it's the load times that kill the game. Every time you get into a fight or change screens the game has to pause for about 5-10 seconds to load and it really slows the game down and kills it.

You are much better off getting the DS version. Square worked very hard to get the music to sound as close to the SNES as possible and there's no load times. Outside of a US copy of the original game it's the best way to play it.

megaten

I could never get into Chrono Trigger for some reason. Not a fan of the elongated sprites either.

Aurongroove

Sometimes people just build bad ports.

I played streets of rage 2 on PSN and it was the worst experience of my life.
I know every pixel of that game, the precise inputs of each attack and how each character feels down to the level one would expect from a 2d fighter specialist knowing his/her favourite characters.
on the PSN version the controls were laggy, completely hopeless and destroyed the game entirely.
it's amazing how dodgy controls or a bad port can destroy the fun of a game. It makes you wonder how many game you've played which might've been amazing games but for the "roll of a dice" of it winding up having dodgy slow loading times.

I remember hating FF9's loading times, it would take an eon for the game to handle you getting on or of a Chocobo. It would take about 9-12 seconds from the "screen wash" to inputting your first command in the battle and because of the slow animations, moves would stack up and you'd be operating about 4 or 5 commands behind what the screen was showing. so if the three other characters have moves in queue and two enemies, but you need to heal, you select heal, and you need to wait for 6 other commands to play out.

I believe XII had a problem with that two didnt it? the magic would queue up, meanwhile all the attackers could go nuts, in the later stages the attackers in the battle could get 6 or 7 turns in while the magicians were waiting patiently for the previous persons Curaga or Ultima to finish it's animation.

I can see how a laggy port would ruin Chrono trigger. I shall endeavour to warn people against the PS port and instead go for the DS.

Retr0gamer

FFXII had loading time problems but they weren't a game killer. I actually only noticed it in the final fight because when you used Ultima magic it wasn't preloaded into the RAM so it would queue up and come out about 10 seconds later once it had been loaded in from the DVD drive and come out. You were therefore better off using flare which was preloaded into the RAM and came out instantaneously. You could fire off about 3 flares in the time it took Ultima to come out.

But yeah Chrono Trigger is pretty awful on the PS1 and considering the price of the DS game you'd be mad not to buy it.

snausages

The magic problem in XII is mitigated somewhat by the job system version. You can't just have everyone spamming Flare because only one or two classes can learn it. It's a much better game in near enough every respect barring story obviously.

In the vanilla version I guess the thing to do is not have everyone casting spells like Holy and Ardour. Tbh, there's only a small selection of spells in XII that really clog the battle queue down, so it's not a huge problem.

(There was no Ultima spell btw)

Retr0gamer

snausages wrote: »

(There was no Ultima spell btw)

Well it was whatever was a step up from Flare.

Alactric

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well as previously mentioned the music is really terrible in the PS1 port. They really ruined it compared to the original SNES music. Most of all though it's the load times that kill the game. Every time you get into a fight or change screens the game has to pause for about 5-10 seconds to load and it really slows the game down and kills it.

I actually looked into this a bit more, and I think I managed to find a proper explanation as to why CT and the Final Fantasy Anthology are so busted on PS1 / PSN

The load times come from the crazy way they injected the text when porting the Japanese version on the PlayStation. Every time you moved from one screen to the next, it would have to access the text file on the disc, find the script pieces for that screen, and inject it (using a bootstrap method) into the Japanese code, because Square Japan couldn't be bothered to provide the source used for the Japanese PlayStation version. I guess the delay comes more from it injecting the text, rather than the access times.

And obviously, Square did nothing to rectify this in between releases, so that's the version everyone else received. So, while it's still a bad port...Tose basically may as well have been handed a piece of paper that had "FFIV/V/VI source code lolz" written on it.

So in short, there are fully functioning versions of the Final Fantasy Anthology and Chrono Trigger that could run on modern hardware, they're just to ****ing lazy to do it. So they release gimped versions.

snausages

And that's the version they charge a tenner for on PSN. The bastards, even their ****ty ports have a premium attached to them.

caspa307

buy it on the ds right now

Retr0gamer

Alactric wrote: »

I actually looked into this a bit more, and I think I managed to find a proper explanation as to why CT and the Final Fantasy Anthology are so busted on PS1 / PSN

The load times come from the crazy way they injected the text when porting the Japanese version on the PlayStation. Every time you moved from one screen to the next, it would have to access the text file on the disc, find the script pieces for that screen, and inject it (using a bootstrap method) into the Japanese code, because Square Japan couldn't be bothered to provide the source used for the Japanese PlayStation version. I guess the delay comes more from it injecting the text, rather than the access times.

And obviously, Square did nothing to rectify this in between releases, so that's the version everyone else received. So, while it's still a bad port...Tose basically may as well have been handed a piece of paper that had "FFIV/V/VI source code lolz" written on it.

So in short, there are fully functioning versions of the Final Fantasy Anthology and Chrono Trigger that could run on modern hardware, they're just to ****ing lazy to do it. So they release gimped versions.

That's pretty much what I heard as well, think it was mentioned on retronauts, the Japanese version has no load times I've been told. The game does still access the disc though. Basically every time you enter a battle or change screen the game patches the japanese version of the game with the english translation which it reads off the disc. Ridiculous when you consider there's a perfectly good translation already. Typical Tose bull**** conversion, it's no wonder they never put their name on anything they make.

paulc98

I decided to emulate it first just to see if it was any good, it's beyond good it's amazing, I'm definitely going to get it for D.S. Thanks for the help .

Birneybau

Still stuck trying to catch the rat!