Chrono Trigger

BEST GAME EVER MADE

Yes, it's a bold statement. This is the game that I compare all other games to. Sure, the graphics are outdated, but who cares! A game doesn't need lifelike graphics to be good. It needs a story and great gameplay, and this game achieves both with flying colors. It also has very high replay value. Something you don't really see in new games these days.

This game is about Chrono and his friend Lucca who end up travelling through time with a girl Marle whom they meet at the Millennium Fair, a fair celebrating the new millennium (the year is 1000 AD). During their travels through time, they meet several new friends and try to stop evil from taking over at several points in time.

With each friend you pick up, you can adjust your party of three to different configurations depending on what's required for your current objective. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses, and when combined with certain characters, they can combine attacks for more powerful attacks. For instance, if you combine Marle and Lucca, you have several magic attacks. Marle and Chrono have attacks where she will imbue his sword with magical power, same with Lucca and Chrono.

There are a few times where your actions in the past influence actions in the future. Each time you get something new for doing these, and they help the story along nicely. For example, one quest requires an item to be in direct sunlight for many years. To achieve this, you would drop this item in the past, then pick it up in the future.

Another nice feature of the game is that you get a different ending depending on when you beat the game. Even losing to the last boss gives you a different ending! I believe there are a total of 13 different endings, although I'm sure I've counted more. Either way, I've gotten every one of them.

To achieve these multiple endings, the game has a feature called New Game+. What it does is starts out a new game, with your levels, stats, and items from a previous save game. this feature is opened up the first time you beat the game. From here, you can start over and begin beating the game during different time periods.

This game does everything right, and nothing wrong. I mean, the only bad thing anyone can say about it is that you play as a silent protagonist. Anyone who looks at that as a bad thing, is an idiot. The game is more about the actions of everyone, how they interact with each other, not about the dialogue of the main character.

There is nothing bad I can say about this game. Like I've said previously, this is the game I base my opinion of other games on. If I had to use an arbitrary 1-10 rating for this game, I would take a hint from Spinal Tap, and this is an 11. Nintendo Power is full of shit to rate this as #5 in a top 20 list of SNES games. This is far ahead of Zelda.

If you can find a copy of this, PLAY IT. Whether it be the original SNES, the PSX version, or even the new DS version, play it. You will not regret it.

Secret of Mana

Ahh yes. A timeless classic by Squaresoft. This is a game about a boy who pulls the Mystical sword out of the clumpy stone. Now that I think about it, everytime I've played this game, I should have named the main character Arthur. I mean, pull a sword out of the stone, become the king of England, smite evil isn't a very far stretch from pull the sword out of the stone, become the hero of Mana, smite evil.

Any hero worth his while doesn't travel alone. In Secret of Mana, you're joined by a fiesty girl and a mischievous sprite, both of which you name. This is one of the rare times you will find an RPG that is multiplayer. With the multi-tap (which is packaged with Super Bomberman) you can play with up to two friends (assuming you have any!).

Each character has their own strengths. The boy is the strongest weapon user. The girl uses healing magic. The sprite uses damaging magic. You find the weapons from defeating bosses or finding them, you get your magic by rescuing spirits.

Game play for this game is your typical Zelda like overhead hack and slash with RPG elements (skill up weapons/magic, level up characters). The higher your weapon's level, the higher you can charge it. Charged attacks look fancy and do more damage. Same thing goes with magic. The higher your skill is in that particular magic, the more damage it will do.

For all of the things this game does well, great game play, great story, great music, it does have a few faults. For one, there's no real reason to level any more than one weapon per character. Sure, you sometimes have to break out the whip to travel across gaps, or break out the sword or axe to cut down some poles or something, but you can just equip them on the sprite and girl and switch to them when needed. Because if you're using anything other than the spear on the boy, you're an idiot. Personally, I used the spear on the boy, whip on the girl, and the javelin on the sprite. Switched to the axe or sword as needed.

Another thing while nice and convenient was very annoying is that you can kill most bosses before they can get one attack in. Once the sprite has his first spell, you can pretty much spell lock anything. If you're playing three player at a boss fight, whoever is the sprite should log out. The another person take control via the X menu. Cast your spell. As soon as the elemental disappears, hit X again. If you did it right, the sprite menu should come up in color. If it's greyed out, you didn't hit it fast enough. Select your next spell, and repeat. Pretty much, each spell will hit in succession and the damage will add up. Stop when you think you've killed it. If you haven't, repeat.

With this previous fault in mind, it leads the last one. If you can kill bosses in one hit, there's no real reason to level the girl's magic aside from the one that has the spells that heal you. There's no reason to level up her other magic, because quite frankly, you really only need to use it on bosses, and they're dead with one hit. On the same note, there's no real reason to charge up your weapons to anything past 100%. It takes time to do it, and you walk slow while you're charging and when it's charged. You'd pretty much also use this on boss fights. I do admit, there's a few times I would use it in the last area, but after I levelled up a bit, there was no reason to do so.

Do these faults break the game? Hell no! This is easily one of my five favorite games on the SNES, and top 10 overall. If you really think about it, the flaws really aren't flaws at all. You can actually play around them. My last play through, I worked around them with the exception of the one hit kills. I didn't feel like subjecting myself to long battles that can be easily finished in under a minute. Overall, get this game if you can. Highly recommended.