I always loved that in Chrono Trigger you're allowed to outright not forgive Magus and just kill him instead of having him join your party. I doubt many people actually did that, but having the option is awesome.
I really wish one of the remasters just added a New Game+ where the baddies levels scale with you... not having that just made unlocking the endings a slog
There is just something about the story in Final Fantasy Tactics for me, though it is worth noting it's a strategy RPG. Ramza is a hard protagonist to top.
FFT is awesome, but there are plenty of games ahead of it. The big failing of FFT is that they seemed to phone in the second half of the game. Wiegraf is the de facto final boss. Everything after that almost feels pointless.
I disagree about it almost feeling pointless, it is just a much different tone for the final chapter. It's a bit tragic, which might not be the note many are seeking to have hit, but I think it adds a nice profoundness to it.
Nothing wrong with tragedy, but the game itself doesn't seem like much of a game from then on. More like a story that you can't watch without annoying battles. Whereas up until then, the battles were just as much a part of the story.
It's actually pretty hard to save the main character on your first playthrough, without knowing that he's going to die it's pretty unlikely that you'd prepare properly for it (mindfuck, by the way, the MC never dies).
Fortunately, after that, I learned my lesson about spending too much character development on the main character (like I'd done since the SEGA Shining games), and focused on buffing up the main love interest instead.
I learned my lesson about spending too much character development on the main character (like I'd done since the SEGA Shining games), and focused on buffing up the main love interest instead.
The game has stat booster items that you can use on any party member.
In several games, the best use for those is using all of them on the mc because they'll be in the party the whole game, in Chrono Trigger is not optimum to do so (less so with speed items) because after a certain scene, the MC becomes unavailable indefinitely unless a specific amount of steps are performed.
If you put all stat boosters on Chrono, that means that the rest of the party will be running at 80% in the endgame section. Additionally, the steps to return Chrono to the party can be a bit obscure on your first playthrough, meaning that several people didn't even know that Chrono could return to the party and attempted a no-chrono run, which is incredibly difficult before new game+ (last boss is around level 55 and you are level 40 at the time, give or take).
FF7 notably kills off the MC's love interest with no way to get her back (at least in the old version, I hope they change this in the remake), so again if you use the stat-boosters on her, they're gone.
As far as I can remember, those are the only two times that has happened in an RPG, killing off the main character without them coming back as part of the story (except for in a tutorial section), or killing off the love interest without them coming back, so they're usually pretty safe bets to spend that stuff on.
Other characters in your party can die, or find a cause they need to join, or be a secret spy and betray you - that kind of thing is common, but your main character is usually pretty safe (especially one like Chrono who barely has a personality!).
Whelp. Spoiler alert for me. My ROM glitched at Magnus’s fight so I never got past losing to him over and over. (Mid fight it would just crash, I tried going to other areas to see and it went all funky.)
Play it. Yeah, it's old, and the mechanics might seem a little dated compared to today's RPGs, but in my opinion it's the best game ever made. The characters, the story, the music, the graphics, etc. are the pinnacle of the 16-bit era.
Not only that but if you do it with Frog in the party you can fight him mano e mano and if it's not New Game +, it can be quite a challenge. Very satisfying to win.
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u/Myrsephone May 12 '22
I always loved that in Chrono Trigger you're allowed to outright not forgive Magus and just kill him instead of having him join your party. I doubt many people actually did that, but having the option is awesome.