/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5875875]

Name a single game with worse writing and overall plot structure

[Anonymous No.5875879]

>>5875875
t. asspained chrono trigger fanboy

[Anonymous No.5875956]

>>5875875
It's not that bad.
It has alot of problems, but I would say that the plot is pretty good. It's just badly told.

[Anonymous No.5875987]

>>5875956
so it has horrible writing and structure

[Anonymous No.5875992]

>>5875875
Pac-Man

[Anonymous No.5875997]

Lunar Eteral Blue

[Anonymous No.5876026]

>>5875997
shut up weeb

[Anonymous No.5876041]

>>5875879
game sucks
seethe and cope

[Anonymous No.5876047]

>>5876041
dilate

[Anonymous No.5876049]

The writing was pretty bad. Kato didn't seem to understand video games are a visual medium. The Dead Sea area froze in time was really cool, but he never did anything with it. It was a great visual but had no real meaning other than to "look cool".

[Anonymous No.5876054]

Gradius

[Anonymous No.5876064]

>>5875875
I think it was fairly good. The biggest mistake they made was having like 45 playable characters instead of like 6. It meant that few characters had an arc and the ones that did weren't very satisfying.

[Anonymous No.5876070]

>>5876064
It's like Pokemon, the over all story is what it's about. You don't need in depth stories for Norris and Beedrill

[Anonymous No.5876072]

>>5876064
I like the huge roster. makes the game more replayable.

[Anonymous No.5876080]

Suikoden has more characters but I don't know which one has more worthless characters

[Anonymous No.5876084]

>>5875875
Someone hasn't played that many video games.

[Anonymous No.5876090]

Wouldn't be so bad if 90% of the game wasn't cutscenes.

[Anonymous No.5876145]

>>5875875
Xenogears

[Anonymous No.5876149]

>>5875997
But did he have sexual relations with that woman? and children

[Anonymous No.5876154]

>>5875875
The plot is actually pretty good, it's the characters who are complete non-entities with zero development.

[Anonymous No.5876160]

>>5875875
How can people have problems with this game? Did your patents neglect you or some shit?

[Anonymous No.5876163]

>>5875875
>>5875875
Dude!
Deadly Premonition!
like... shit in gold
... I want to die...

[Anonymous No.5876174]

>>5876090

But... There is only 40% of the "game!" there

[Anonymous No.5876178]

>>5876149
Grindelwald and Dumbledore had a VERY intense relationship perhaps even sexual

[Anonymous No.5876183]

>>5875875
your pathetic life

[Anonymous No.5876197]

>>5875875
Luffia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

Just before the first big boss fight in the game, you come across a town that was recently destroyed by him, and all of the surviving villages are talking about rebuilding the town, and where you can find that guy, and rooting for you to defeat him.

After you kill him, the party disbands, the main character breaks up with his initial girlfriend, marries another girl in your party, and then goes through a parade of cutscenes about their wedding and the first two years of their marriage.
Personally, I think this was a problem, and they should have had a moment during the wedding where you can talk to NPCs, or at least had a few dialogue yes/no moments during all these cutscenes to give you some allusion to still controlling the main character during all of this, but that's easily forgivable. That's not he problem here.

The problem is after that two year timeskip, and plenty of story events and scenarios to hammer in the fact that two years have passed, like you have a baby now, You venture back out into the world, and you can revisit old towns
...and they're exactly the same. Including the destroyed town.

The Destroyed town from two years ago is still destroyed, the people are still asking you to stop the badguy you killed two years ago, and they're still saying their going to rebuild.

So rarely has lazy programming decimated a story to such extremes. How many people playing this game immediately went to that village to see if they made a difference and were instead slapped in the face with a reminder that this was just a software program. How hard would it have been to have disabled the path to that village instead of leaving this glaring error exposed.

[Anonymous No.5876206]

>>5875997
Wow that's a reference that really didn't age well.

[Anonymous No.5876217]

>>5875875
Planescape:Torment

[Anonymous No.5876745]

>>5875875
Chrono Cross is no where near as bad as many butthurt Chrono Trigger ninny fanboys claim it to be. That's not to say that all fans of Chrono Trigger are that dumb, I happen to like Chrono Trigger a bit more than Cross but I still really enjoyed Cross. But leave it to retard Trigger fanboy to never shut up how this game ruined their childhood.

[Anonymous No.5876807]

The first disc is fine and opens extremely well; you’re thrown into an unfamiliar world where a lot of different plotlines are playing out and there’s some cool divergence based on your actions. Disc 2 is a crime against humanity that relies on pandering and asspulls and even xenogears at its edgiest doesn’t even come close to the depths cc hits.

[Anonymous No.5876809]

>>5876807
Have you noticed how all jrpgs have really weak first and third acts. But solid seconds.

[Anonymous No.5876870]

Metal gear whatever

[Anonymous No.5876980]

>>5876745
The best part is that the fanatical Chrono Trigger fanboys do some serious mental gymnastics to claim that the DS remake is worse than the original release only because it has some completely optional additional content that helps solidify its ties to Chrono Cross.

Literally the same game, but with extra stuff that is completely optional, and they claim it's somehow worse.

For me, I played both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross at their releases, and I love both games. I like Chrono Cross a bit better, though.

[Anonymous No.5877216]

>>5876064
Akshully, I liked the huge roster because it made it feel like despite being surrounded by people, Serge was always alone. The game really feels like it's about loneliness than anything else. You can't even switch him out (yes, I know about the relief charm and no, it doesn't count).
In Another World, Serge is dead, so he's obviously alone. In Home World, he sees his own friends' and neighbours' racism, and they reject him, so he's alone again. On top of this, he was manipulated by nearly every (or perhaps absolutely every) plot relevant character in the game. Balthasar, most obviously, but also Fate, Lynx, Harle, the Dragons and even fucking Robo from CT itself. Kid, too, was not exempt from manipulating him, all of which leads to a very lonesome experience, I think. And let's not forget that best girl and Kid both leave him for extended periods of time.

>>5876090
>>5876145
>>5876807
Xenogears and Chrono Cross were written by the same guy, weren't they?

>>5876154
Except Serge, which fits in with my perspective mentioned above.

>>5876197
Yeah, fuck that. I had the same experience.
I stopped playing at that point.

>>5876745
I once got into an argument with a guy about Glenn. He was insisting he was Frog because that was Frog's real name in CT. Never mind that Frog died like 350 years or so before Glenn was even born. No. He some how lived to 1020AD somehow had different parents and upbringing in a new, unrelated town, somehow had a brother who was never mentioned in CT and somehow was a child in 1010ish AD during the Karsh/Dario/Riddel flashback sequence. All this, of course, "ruined the game" for him. We're talking about a guy who couldn't understand how Barret from FF7 "had a white daughter" because he has fucking tard-tier reading comprehension skills.

>>5875875
The biggest let down is how bleak and melancholy the whole story is.

[Anonymous No.5877262]

>>5877216
>The biggest let down is how bleak and melancholy the whole story is.

That's my favorite thing about it.

[Anonymous No.5877280]

Chrono Cross is almost impossible to grasp by simply playing the game. We all know most people who discuss deeper elements of it also got the vast majority of their opinions from the internet, and didn't sit down, play the game, and come to conclusions. The events are not seemingly tied together at all, the plot and story starts then stops several times (you have a girlfriend at the very beginning then she either leaves the party forever and becomes another NPC or stays in the party with no further development), then you meet Kidd, she gets sick, gets better no matter what then nothing ever changes, you go to all these locations and fight dragons and shit, then go through some random 'time-related' areas, turn into the cat man, then catman is a regular guy in the party and nothing changes, then you go fight final boss, then game ends and Kidd walks down traintracks
Xenogears, FF7, FFX had really 'out-there' elements to them but they make sense if you actually think about it. Chrono Cross just has too much of a gap between the creators mind and the players experience. To be honest it probably is just a case of going over budget and or over deadline and they had to cut huge chunks of the game. If the characters actually had story it would be so much better, and make so much more sense. You can't honestly sit there and think the thought-process was 'okay, Serge is going on a date at the beach, but then a wave hits and he transports and the girl never really talks to him again and we just drop that whole angle'. I think they planned a huge epic game, all these areas and characters and then Square just said 'no more time or money, release it now'. Same story as Xenogears, Ivalice games, Versus, KH3, etc..

[Anonymous No.5877319]

>>5877280
>Chrono Cross is almost impossible to grasp by simply playing the game.

It's like playing a dream. Experimental but wonderful.

[Anonymous No.5877332]

>>5877280
It's pretty clear Chrono Cross got 50% through development as a different game and then had Chrono slapped on it.

The plot is explained in the game and the ending of the DS Chrono Trigger remake. But it does feel pretty cobbled together.

To me it is like they had a proof of concept of a game with two dimensions and did a bunch of character art designs and Square said "hey that could be a Chrono Trigger sequel!" And then all development shifted to making the elements that tied into Trigger instead of developing the characters they had originally made.

[Anonymous No.5877526]

>>5877332
>It's pretty clear Chrono Cross got 50% through development as a different game and then had Chrono slapped on it.
This is almost indisputable at this point. I bought the game when it was a new release, and it seemed like just another square rpg. It could have done without any of the chrono elements, and would have received a much better treatment.

[Anonymous No.5877537]

>>5877216
>enogears and Chrono Cross were written by the same guy, weren't they?
Masato Kato was scenario writer but the plot was Soraya saga and whatever the director's name was

[Anonymous No.5877548]

>>5877526
That's how all Square games are made. FF7 was four different games before they decided, Parasite Eve was another game put together with the book, Xenogears was another game, Tactics was another game, FFX, 12, 13, Versus became 15, etc... The only major game that was actually envisioned then made as is was probably Kingdom Hearts.

[Anonymous No.5877568]

>>5875875
Literally any fighting game, both old and modern. They're either some stupid excuse to fight or some insane clusterfuck compendium.

[Anonymous No.5877594]

>>5877548
Yeah but none of those morphed into a sequel for an existing game with a very distinctive art style. Final Fantasy mainline entries aren't sequels to each other. Also the point in development where course is changed matters a lot. You don't strike me as someone who actually knows real details about Square's development practices during the 90s. I doubt you could make that kind of qualitative assessment about the progress of development when the project goals were changed.

[Anonymous No.5877626]

>>5875875
Chrono Cross is just a Chrono Trigger "crossed" with Xenogears/Final Fantasy 7 and Pokemon R/G/B influences

[Anonymous No.5877675]

>>5877319
This is the best analogy i have seen about the game. I like you, anon.

[Anonymous No.5877716]

>>5877332
>>5877526
Not how it went. Chrono Cross was always meant to be a rework of Radical Dreamers, a spin-off of Chrono Trigger for the snes add-on Satellaview. This has always been the will of its author, Masato Kato, that was already one of the writers of CT (zeal arc) and the director of Radical Dreamers, and a small group of old staff members that worked on the first CT. Kato - which wasn't so fonded on the dream team because He didn't like CT being so little authorial and there were many directors when He wanted more decisional power in it - tried ask Sakaguchi and Horii about the dream team, but denied partecipating in it saying they weren't interested in doing a sequel. Since Horii didn't take part, Toriyama wasn't called neither.
So, it's not like it wasn't intended to be chrono related, it's like they didn't want to make a game so directly related to CT to begin with. And you think about it, and I am talking as someone who likes CC, it's more of a spin-off than a sequel. Afterall RD was a spin off to begin with.

[Anonymous No.5877813]

>>5877716
I get that most of the Kidd plot was in Radical Dreamers.

I still maintain that they took the skeleton of some other game that had you switching dimensions where you died in the alt universe and grafted the Radical Dreamers plot onto it.

To me that explains why all the non Chrono/Radical Dreamers characters have no development.

It explains why when you switch bodies with Lynx it ends up not really mattering.

Like others have said this sort of thing happened all the time at SE, it's just they rarely did direct sequels.

All I'm arguing is that Cross isn't some magnum opus of Masato Kato. I also like Radical Dreamers and the main Kidd plot of Chrono Cross becauase it does give some closer to loose ends in Trigger.

[Anonymous No.5878038]

>>5877716
>it's like they didn't want to make a game so directly related to CT to begin with.
This is most accurate, and though I stick to my guns that it was just another Square RPG, it was only based on 3rd party characters from a game not really seen in the western world. I do agree that it would have been a better spin off for the story side of things.....but the scenes that tie it into CT just seem shoehorned. It just seemed forced. I think it would have been more accepted with less of the CT tie ins.

[Anonymous No.5878064]

Chrono Cross has so many stupid one off bullshit characters that time is wasted on instead of giving other characters more development and they do nothing afterwards besides hang off your asshole like dingleberries because they have jack fuck all to do with anything. Half the cast could just be obliterated with no loss whatsoever. Stupid radish person, retarded alien thing, beyond forgettable baby dragon, etc.

[Anonymous No.5878230]

>>5875875
In Another World this was a good thread :(

[Anonymous No.5878236]

>>5876154
The plot is horrible nonsense and isn't even properly told in the game itself. The game is segmented horribly, random shit just happens and no one cares about it past it happening, nothing is connected to anything else. The overarching plot requires insane levels of ass pulling but you don't even notice in game because it's so badly told so you go online afterwards to see what the fuck was actually supposed to be going on and realize it's basis is just "lavos isn't dead lol" but the writers decided to jerk themselves off so hard with a bunch of bullshit that even they don't understand or know how to relay that it ends up in a complete mess.

[Anonymous No.5878239]

>>5878236
What's a jrpg with a plot you will support?

[Anonymous No.5878245]

>>5877319
I think that was at least partially intentional because it did start as Radical Dreamers.

Didn't the Earth dream in Trigger? My memory is awful.

[Anonymous No.5878259]

>>5878064
>alien thing can be obliterated with no loss whatsoever
Oh, I see you haven't actually played the game. That's fun.

>tfw starky's a fairly important character to the late game plot : )

>>5878038
The only thing that seemed shoehorned to me is the WALLOFTEXT near the end of the game explaining shit. What CT tie-ins were shoehorned? The plot-integral Dead Sea? The completely optional computer scene where Norris finds the Lavos data? The never-mentioned room with the Epoch in it? Or do you mean the whole Kid = Schala thing? Cuz that felt like a bit of a reach, I must admit. I can accept that Kid is Lucca's adopted daughter but not that she's also Schala.. Yes, yes. Project Kid.. I know. They explained it in the game. I just woulda liked it better if that case was never made and Kid, adopted daughter of Lucca and Schala, princess of Zeal were treated as two wholly separate characters. Or maybe, if you must do a similar story thread, make Schala = Harle official; Square already implied that possibility in-game, anyway. Doing away with Kid = Schala and going with Schala = Harle would seem like less of an asspull to me.

[Anonymous No.5878273]

>>5878245
I don't remember if the Earth dreams in Trigger or not, but a demi-human in Marbule says "the sea is dreaming a deep blue dream" or something like that.

Lemme bitch about a translation for a minute. Fuck Woolsey. Because he called the Granleon "Masamune" in CT and mistransliterated Masa and Mune's sister, Doreen's, name, the whole thing with her fusing with them to form the Mastermune made a bit less sense than in the original Nipponaise. The Grandleon becomes the Grandream, cuz her name was meant to be "Dream," not "Doreen."
Fuck you very much, Ted. You spoony son of a submarining whore.

[Anonymous No.5878391]

>>5875875
If the game hadn't gut the plot of Magus=Guile out of the story and explained why Lynx had the scythe instead of Guile, the game would probably be a lot more interesting.

Its evident that after Serge transforms that another major plot was supposed to transpire since it feels weirdly padded with filler until you arrive in Chronopolis.

[Anonymous No.5878430]

>not a single person has actually explained why the story is good, they just say it is with no explanation or rant randomly about Chrono Trigger

[Anonymous No.5878434]

>>5878273
God I hate localizations that butcher shit like that but I'm actually playing CC for the first time, currently only at Termina, and the dream theme seems everywhere even now. Although its more people's goals in life, but the overworld theme refers to dreams too. I don't think I'll mind when things get crazy like this thread described because I love shit that feels dream like more than plot.


Also that dumb pink dog and skeleton clown head ferl like they're straight out of a dream.


I really should have replayed Trigger I haven't played it since I was a kid though, not sure if I even beat it. I'm going to be so lost.

[Anonymous No.5878452]

>>5878391
Guile is Alfador. Same color hair and Guile's name is Alf in the Japanese version. There's literally an entire part of the game where the party is turned into cats and back, so it's already a thing in the setting.

[Anonymous No.5878481]

>>5878452
The cat part is more of an easter egg than anything though. The crew even mentioned that the whole Guile = Magus arc was supposed to take place but it had to be cut because they were running out of time and the game was already too filled in with shit.
[spoilers] I thought Radical Dreamers did it better [/spoilers]

Also, lets not forget that Sakaguchi himself stated in an interview not too long ago that his team were actually interested in a Chrono Trigger 2 but mentioned that internal politics stopped it from happening.
Makes me wonder if that is the spark that started the companies downfall...?

[Anonymous No.5878742]

>>5877332
Oddly, Chrono Trigger itself started out this way. It went 50% through development as Seiken Densetsu 2: SNESCD, then when the attachment was abandoned cuz of Nintendo being a whiny little bitch with Sony, they cut the story in half and made two separate games, one which is mostly incoherent (Secret of Mana) and another which is full of plotholes and bland characterisations that people either don't notice or refuse to acknowledge (Chrono Trigger).

[Anonymous No.5878745]

>>5877548
Tactics wasn't meant to ever be Final Fantasy. It started as a Quest game and to fit in with the Ogre series, but they were running out of $$$ quick so Square stepped in, FFicised it and sold it at you as their own.
This is why FFTs plot and story is by far way better than any other Square game: cuz Quest made good fucking stories.

[Anonymous No.5878761]

>>5877332
I was reading interviews after I read this thread.

They wanted it to be different then Trigger because they knew they could never live up to the expectations of a Chrono Trigger 2. It seems to have nothing to do with Trigger because they wanted new fans to be able to play it

But they got fucked over hard by a time deadline.

[Anonymous No.5878767]

>>5877548
>The only major game that was actually envisioned then made as is was probably Kingdom Hearts.

There was a lot of back and forth between Nomura and Disney for what Kingdom Hearts should be. Donald was almost the protagonist at one point. It doesnr sound as bad as any other square game though.

[Anonymous No.5878791]

>>5877594
>distinctive art style
Nigger, there are dozens of other things that use Exploding Landscape Hour's sameface character designs and "distinctive art style."
There's Exploding Landscape Hour itself, then it's prequel where the protagonist of ELH is a kid, then the sequel where the protagonist is a kid again for some reason because fuck you that's why, then the sequel/remake/prequel/whatever that aired a few years ago and the one currently airing, not to mention all the other non-ELH shit the designer has made. There's no shortage of things that look similar. There's nothing "distinctive" about the designs when that many things look exactly like it.

[Anonymous No.5878862]

>>5877537
Her husband, Takahashi...who STILL can't get his "Xeno" story straight.

[Anonymous No.5879015]

>>5877594
The fuck are you on about? Why are you randomly looking to throw some negative shit at me, I said many Square games changed in such ways during development, am I wrong? No? Did I claim anything beyond that? No? Then STFU.

[Anonymous No.5879514]

>>5876745
That's nothing compared to the insanely vast amounts of butthurt from FF6 fanboys over FF7 stealing its thunder 20 years later.

[Anonymous No.5879518]

>>5879514
If I were a fanboy I'd rather not have my characters get raped by infinite pointless sequels, spinoffs and remakes.

[Anonymous No.5879520]

>>5879518
That's besides the point, but I will agree that the compilation was totally unnecessary and retroactively ruined the original game.

[Anonymous No.5879554]

Hi, my dad is a cat.
That cat also transformed into my spitting image.
They told me that a long time after I slain the fucker, heh.
Can't really think about that now, I have to play Simon says with colors, otherwise timespace is fucked.

[Anonymous No.5879591]

Maybe Chrono Cross isn't the best game. Maybe it's not as good as it could have been. But there's one thing it is: the 100% canon conclusion of Chrono Trigger.

[Anonymous No.5879603]

>>5875875
Pacman

[Anonymous No.5879616]

>>5876980
Cope and seeth, DS remake is garbage.

L O A D T I M E S
O
A
D

T
I
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S

[Anonymous No.5879638]

>>5878742
>full of plotholes
That's standard for time travel stories. Very few actually make sense (e.g. Terminator 1 but not the sequels, main series Harry Potter, 12 Monkeys, Primer) but that doesn't stop some of the nonsensical examples (e.g. Back to the Future, Terminator 2, Groundhog Day) from being great.

[Anonymous No.5879642]

>>5878259
>What CT tie-ins were shoehorned?
"Heckran meat"
"Denadoro ore"
"Say hi to Magus for me"
(Lucca's theme as the battle fanfare)
"This tiny farming village that has loyally supported the Guardia Kingdom for aeons has taken over and destroyed the entire continent by military force (despite having no combat capable citizens) in less than 10 years and also effortlessly killed the most powerful people in the entirety of history who defeated a planet-annihilating alien and were equipped with magical artifacts so powerful they couldn't exist normally but were created by travelling back and forth through time teehee"

>>5879591
Canon can be wrong - developers don't analyze the plot details and intricacies to even a fraction of the degree that passionate fans do. Canon has often had inconsistencies or impossible scenarios that break the rules a prior entry had established. Because of this Cross has officially been removed from the canon and placed into fan fiction.

[Anonymous No.5879742]

>>5879638
Terminator 1 doesnt make sense if you start asking things like, 'why didnt they just send the Terminator back to punch Sarah Conner's pregnant mom?'

Or just the fact we cant create new matter but when you time travel you essentially create new matter. (You and other time era you. You just doubled the mass that you comprised of.)

[Anonymous No.5879756]

>>5879742
You aren't creating mass necessarily. Depends on what the time travel method is. Jumping through a hole? New matter sort of, but really adding matter temporarily. I always thought Terminator was pulling existing matter together to form an exact replica while destroying the original, Star Trek style. But it's irrelevant to analyze based on current physics because time travel isn't real. If it ever is we'll have to rewrite physics laws anyway.

[Anonymous No.5881030]

>>5879642
>Canon can be wrong
>Fans understand better than the creators do
I'm looking forward to reading your fanfic where your Mary Sue self-insert cucks Crono and fucks Marle, Lucca, Ayla—and what the hell Frog, too cuz even male amphibians have sweet pussies—with your magically-enhanced Zealian cock. Ya dingus.

[Anonymous No.5881062]

>>5876090
>Xeno
>ctr+f xenogears

Beat me to it. Chrono Cross is still one of my favorites along with FF8. Music, locations, story, it's all a great experience. If the plots are open for interpretation, maybe rpgs aren't for you.

[Anonymous No.5881075]

>>5877280
>Chrono Cross is almost impossible to grasp by simply playing the game
Sure it is, you just play up until the final boss and an NPC will literally stand there and tells you the entire plot of the game.

[Anonymous No.5881096]

>>5877280
Not gonna read this. Maybe think before you type.

[Anonymous No.5881101]

>>5881075
And that's beautiful. Truly a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.5881113]

I like Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.

[Anonymous No.5881156]

>>5875875
The entire point of the game was to undo the fuckups of Crono and the others, while also eliminating Lavos from all time and space while ALSO possibly saving Schala. CT-niggers hate it because they're all manbabies who'll never grow up and accept the fact that retard kids hopping to and fro through time retardedly DOING WHATEVER causes more harm than Lavos itself ever did before the kids and their meddling.

[Anonymous No.5881161]

>>5877280
>t. brainlet

[Anonymous No.5881181]

I'm replaying FF8 and it really falls apart around Esthar, the Lunatic Pandora and monsters from the moon. Ragnarok coming out of nowhere. I mean if you're going to pull something out of your ass, why not at least make it not retarded. I loved the game as a kid, too, but it's pretty clear to me now that most JRPGs just have bad writing. We grew up and they're still mostly made for children

[Anonymous No.5881206]

>>5881156
CT was just a cute, charming story for kids. CC tried to be complex, edgy and deep and fell flat on its face in all 3 counts while simultaneously not managing to be anything that the original was

No one takes the time travel logic in CT seriously, the first thing they do is basically go back in time and kill one of the main character's grand parents for fuck's sake. It's not meant to be hard sci-fi.

[Anonymous No.5881251]

>>5878236

Not to mention that the game outright lies about or frustratingly retcons all kinds of shit from the first game.

The situation with the Masamune is pretty odious enough, but fucking *Dalton* being able to amass an army in Porre after inexplicably bailing from the time period he was stuck in and not only getting to the present but taking out Crono and Marle is goddamn bullshit. This thread talks about CT's plot holes but that is a far bigger fucking stretch of any suspension of disbelief and quite the logic gap.

And for a plot that hinges on resolving the whole dangling plot thread of what happened to Schala, the producers sure didn't give a smelly shit about including MAGUS in any of this.

[Anonymous No.5881345]

>>5875875
Dragon Quest (1).

[Anonymous No.5881405]

So why were so many NPCs made into party members? It just feels so wrong in Cross unlike either SaGa or Suikoden.

[Anonymous No.5881429]

>>5876049
tl;dr the image?

[Anonymous No.5881456]

>>5881429
TL;DR multiple timelines make no sense but apparently serge drowned 10 years ago in most timelines and this is the outlier
Also the plot is stupid

[Anonymous No.5881632]

>>5881456
How does 'multiple timelines' make no sense?

[Anonymous No.5881636]

>>5881632
Because it isn't actually fleshed out or meaningful, just like the fact that he drowned doesn't really fucking matter if you think about it, then you start thinking about most things in the game and realize they don't matter and can be removed.

[Anonymous No.5881664]

Whats up latley with all the anons hating on the old games? Is this a raid?

[Anonymous No.5881802]

>>5881636
How could it be better fleshed out so as to make it meaningful? What is fleshed out and meaningful in other RPGs so that I have an example of what you mean? What did you have for lunch Tuesday?

[Anonymous No.5881867]

>>5881802
Well, for one thing, by the time Serge visits his own tombstone and another Leena joins the party, most of the impact is spent. Any anxiety is swept up into a larger, higher stakes situation that reveals Serge is simply a pawn in a grander scheme that overshadows his identity apart from having it stolen and then reclaimed. This should have a much bigger impact but Serge is a silent protagonist. There's not enough of an established character--especially for someone who's absence is supposed to alter Another World's course of history significantly-- for it to work. Hell, the loss of Homeworld's Viper Clan was a bigger damn deal because that literally impacted an invasion from the north being successful.

You never find Another Marge/mom or really push the narrative of people wondering who Serge is or any further feeling of loss and being misplaced on his part because *immediately* after reading the inscription, Kidd shows up and railroads you into an escalating plot involving trying to steal a treasure from Viper Manor on very flimsy ground. Even now I find it hard to tie in Serge's dilemma with that course of action.

You can't refuse that. You can't say "fuck you, Aussie, I don't want to break into the stronghold of the army who put a price on my head" you just get options of how to break in (and this does not matter apart from what party members you then get.) and you can't bail to try to figure this mystery out on your own. You don't get a moment like later on where you can chose to save Kidd's stupid ass or throw your hands up in the air and admit you don't know what to do (and even that is... problematic. Kidd gets saved either way and apart from rescuing a single fairy, the impact of that is even less.)

[Anonymous No.5881927]

>>5881664
resetera

[Anonymous No.5881928]

>>5881867
>Well, for one thing, by the time Serge visits his own tombstone and another Leena joins the party, most of the impact is spent. Any anxiety is swept up into a larger, higher stakes situation that reveals Serge is simply a pawn in a grander scheme that overshadows his identity

I thought that was the point.

> This should have a much bigger impact but Serge is a silent protagonist.

And again that's the point of a silent protagonist. It has the impact that the player feels about it.

[Anonymous No.5881973]

>>5881867
You forgot what you had for on Tuesday, didn't you?

[Anonymous No.5881982]

>>5881867
>You never find Another Marge/mom
She's dead. They said she died five years after Another Serge.
>Kidd shows up and railroads you into an escalating plot involving trying to steal a treasure from Viper Manor on very flimsy ground.
That's her plot. She wants the treasure. She tells Serge 'Hey, that guy who's trying to capture you is a dragoon who lives at the manor. I'm gonna go there to steal something. Wanna come?'

>Even now I find it hard to tie in Serge's dilemma with that course of action.
See above.

>You can't refuse that. You can't say "fuck you, Aussie, I don't want to break into the stronghold of the army who put a price on my head" you just get options of how to break in (and this does not matter apart from what party members you then get.) and you can't bail to try to figure this mystery out on your own. You don't get a moment like later on where you can chose to save Kidd's stupid ass or throw your hands up in the air and admit you don't know what to do (and even that is... problematic. Kidd gets saved either way and apart from rescuing a single fairy, the impact of that is even less.)
Are you really complaining about But Thou Must! in a Jarpig? Do you like Jarpigs? Cuz they all have BTM, you know. And if you can't deal with BTM, you're gonna have a very bad time of it when playing RPGs of Nipponic origin.

[Anonymous No.5882039]

>>5881982
Bro, you and the other guy kind of just say 'no, it's supposed to be like that' whenever people point out how the game doesn't really tie together and is a long chain of almost unrelated events. Chrono Cross stands out as possibly the biggest example of a game where the narrative just isn't picked up by the player. With other games, there are complex or ambiguous or downright unknown events, for example FFX, most people don't actually understand how Jecht, Sin, Fayth etc... really work, most people who play FF7 don't fully get how Sephiroth and Jenova really work in detail, etc... But people still understand the basic point and progression of events in the game. In Chrono Cross the vast majority of people who played it just didn't get what the fk was going on or why. It's still got lots of great things in it, but both the story and plot didn't translate to the player.

[Anonymous No.5882046]

>>5882039
I agree with the guy who said it feels like playing a dream. It's unusual and rambly but still intetesting in the way things weave together. Personally I prefer it over say FFVIII where the plot is more straightforward but terrible. Also I have never played an RPG I thought had a truly great story though and don't expect them from the genre. So CC being kind of dreamy and disconnected was never an issue.

[Anonymous No.5882068]

>>5882046
I'm not saying it's should be an issue, I'm just saying it's kind of pointless arguing about it since that's the way most people feel, they just don't get it. Also I would say FFVIII also dives off a cliff around when you find out about aliens running the school, all the sorcerer's, time travel, Moomba's etc... Most people don't get that shit either but the rest is kind of understandable. But we know Sakaguchi literally told people to make the games complex and hard to understand, which Nomura also did. I would say for their big titles, CT, FF7, FFX did it best maintaining a good level of understanding that didn't put off players. FFT was somewhat straightforward then comes the fighting God, which seems like a completely different story to Ramses and Delita. FFXII fell off a cliff. FFXIII made little sense but maybe just because it failed to keep interest in telling its story. Also, to compare to movies, you can look to 2001 by Kubrick, largely panned for being incomprehensible upon release but as it became popular for its artistic merit critics changed their tune retrospectively. Also Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Evangelion weren't understood by many viewers, but movies have an advantage over games in terms of lifespan, length, higher number of viewers, and higher esteem as games are still seen as 'just games'. There hasn't really been many games people initially panned and then came back to and saw in a different light, besides maybe Godhand.

[Anonymous No.5882097]

>>5882068
I think the difference between the movies and the games is that even though they were challenging to understand, particularly that was part of the point and the narrative is ultimately what it's all about. Unpacking and understanding what the movie was trying to say.

With rpgs even the ones with better story the narrative is mostly just to move the player along more than to try and make an interesting point. Ultimately a good narrative matters much less because even when it's done well it's still not great. I actually wish FFVIII was a little more like CC if anything.

[Anonymous No.5882181]

>>5881206
>the first thing they do is basically go back in time and kill one of the main character's grand parents for fuck's sake.

Do they?

[Anonymous No.5882223]

>>5882097
I think it can be done, there are many games I find great, the biggest problem is there is absolutely no cohesive theory of making good game story or plot, and those who were working on it were stamped out of their companies or don't get a budget and have to struggle to try and make some low budget game. After the retro-era they were killed off in favor of movie games, worldwide pablum and online shit for the most part.

[Anonymous No.5882756]

>>5882039
>ffx
Idk anything about that. I don't play much non-/vr/. Please use a /vr/ example, thanks.