Support NeoGAF

[jennetics]

I didn't like the last phase of Lavos either. Lavos is built up as this amazingly awful beast that just demolishes everything and your final encounter with it turns into this weird "...is this it?" fight.

Granted, the fight itself was difficult and took me a while to figure out I was attacking the wrong part of the body but even then, I was expecting something more menacing or gross. Or maybe even more human/child-like. What I saw was a weird in-between of the two.

 

[royox]

Ahem, refer to this handy guide i drew 10 years ago:

Shit I fucked up. After 20 years my memory is not the same.

 

[woopWOOP]

I always thought he looked like a little spaceman, wearing a dopey astronaut helmet

with some alien crap sticking out, kinda like an Infested Terran

 

[Anoregon]

Some people remembering the right bit and others remembering the left bit as the main Lavos is definitely some Berenstain alternate universe shit at work.

 

[Defective14]

Lol. There. You got the quote you wanted so bad.

Not that I was asking or expecting anyone to quote that, but thank you nonetheless.

 

[PSqueak]

Some people remembering the right bit and others remembering the left bit as the main Lavos is definitely some Berenstain alternate universe shit at work.

Not gonna lie, i had to fish up for that crappy drawing i made because i remembered i drew it immediatedly after compleating a replay of the game, so in my mind i just knew two things:

-one of the bits is Lavos
-i made a crappy picture marking which one it was.

 

[Kaisos]

I'm mostly joking about VI, but I think it's really interesting that a lot of (most?) Square RPGs only have three playable/significant female characters, often conforming to this sexy older woman/princess/little girl balance. XIII only broke from this by swapping Fang's gender late in development, for instance.

Isn't the Mimic character heavily implied to be Setzer's girlfriend?

No, he's a FFV reference.

 

[themagicalkitsune]

Looks more like an alien astronaut to me...which is apt.

 

[Fourth Storm]

I liked that the final form was a feeble-looking creature. Something just cool about that.

Meanwhile, why are we so certain that "Lavos" is just the one bit? It's an alien morphology, so just because the one bit had the ability to survive and heal the others does not mean that it contains a brain or is the central entity.

 

[The Emperor]

I may have infamously found FF6 boring, but I can't cosign this because FF4 is legitimately one of the worst games I have ever played. And there's no hyperbole there.

I can't even comprehend these statements. Can I ask why? Always found FF4 to be the most inoffensive FF title.

 

[PSqueak]

I liked that the final form was a feeble-looking creature. Something just cool about that.

Meanwhile, why are we so certain that "Lavos" is just the one bit? It's an alien morphology, so just because the one bit had the ability to survive and heal the others does not mean that it contains a brain or is the central entity.

That's the assumption, but it's like "well, since that is the main unit and it can re-grow the others, then you can dub that one Lavos".

 

[Anoregon]

Looks more like an alien astronaut to me...which is apt.

Lavos built the pyramids

 

[hydragonwarrior]

Lavos definitely had a thing for ducks.

 

[NeonZ]

With Chrono Cross, I felt like the main plot of that game took everything I loved about Chrono Trigger and said:
"None of it mattered, you will take our dark and edgy story about what happened and like it."

And I have a hard time forgiving that. =/

What annoys me about Cross is that it has clearly two different standards going on. The original cast from Trigger is brutally crushed by the narrative suddenly pushing the idea that consequences matter and they got in over their heads... but Cross' main narrative ends up pushing a similar group of wide eyed young people saving the world. I wouldn't have a problem with the cynical treatment of Trigger's cast if Cross did the same with its own characters, but that just doesn't happen. Yeah, they face hardships, but they get over them.

 

[Ishida]

Considering it killed the franchise and all. Not really sure what metacritic validates.

Chrono Cross didn't kill the franchise.

 

[Madame M]

Chrono Cross didn't kill the franchise.

Seconding this, it sold just fine, Square Enix just lost the plot on their JRPG production and have for over a decade at least now

 

[Defective14]

Seconding this, it sold just fine, Square Enix just lost the plot on their JRPG production and have for over a decade at least now

This and I hear that there were contract disputes and politics involved which is why there wasn't more Trigger references in Cross.

 

[Lindsay]

Whaaat? Theres lotsa things wrong with CT faaaar more then the look of its final boss! Like how battling just sucks. Gimmicks, gimmicks everywhere!

I do feel like FFVI is pretty overrated. It's not my favorite FF, nor even my fourth favorite. It's quality, though. It just hasn't truly clicked for me since I was like 11 for whatever reason.

FF6 has been meme'd Mega Man 2 style. The internets repeated for so long that its the best thing ever an especially the best of its series that people overwhelmingly just accept it as true.

 

[Shifty1897]

Ha ha ha ha.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/chrono-cross

Chrono Cross was the original Final Fantasy XIII. Hype train off the charts before release, reviewers completely missed the mark, inevitable disappointment of consumers killed the franchise.

 

[Professor Beef]

I can't even comprehend these statements. Can I ask why? Always found FF4 to be the most inoffensive FF title.

You can look through my thread history to find out my reasoning about FF6. As for FF4, it's just garbage all the way through. Everyone Dies: The Game, as well as a dumb story and a constant revolving door of party members.

Lavos built the pyramids

I mean, Magus does kinda imply something similar if you bring him into the final Lavos fight.

 

[Ishida]

Chrono Cross was the original Final Fantasy XIII. Hype train off the charts before release, reviewers completely missed the mark, inevitable disappointment of consumers killed the franchise.

Nice revisionist history you got there.

 

[Defective14]

Chrono Cross was the original Final Fantasy XIII. Hype train off the charts before release, reviewers completely missed the mark, inevitable disappointment of consumers killed the franchise.

...how do reviewers, whose job it is to give their opinion, miss the mark on giving their opinion on a game that clearly isn't as bad as people love to claim it to be?

 

[Madame M]

Chrono Cross as bad as FF13? Well now I've heard everything

 

[Trojita]

It is kind of annoying to not have Toriyama's original drawings for Lavos and several other characters. Even less important NPC's have available artwork lol.

Oh btw in case anyone hadn't seen this before, here is Kato's original artwork which was passed off onto Toriyama to make the characters.

Left was a fairy princess which became Marle. Behind her is a robot which later became Robo, there's a monster man in front of the robot that is really hard to see (Frog?), next to them is the inventor girl that looks like she came from The Magic Knight Rayearth Universe which became Lucca of course. Next to her is the main character who became Crono. Notice he had shounen character goggles. Next to him is the demon king that became Magus. Next to the demon king is a prehistoric woman which becomes Ayla, and next to her is an old sage that likely became the basis for the gurus.

Sakaguchi came up with Gato of course.

 

[Shepard]

Im still mad at Chrono Cross. They basically ignored everything good about CT: great, well developed and likeable cast gone for a basically pokemon gotta catch'em all system; great battle system gone for that boring mess (one of the best things about CT was the duo, triple techs, and they botched it in the sequel). Also, best OST of all time, but the freaking worst song in the game is the one you have to keep listening again and again (battle theme). CC was a mistake, and it killed the Chrono franchise.

 

[Hazmat]

Chrono Cross was the original Final Fantasy XIII. Hype train off the charts before release, reviewers completely missed the mark, inevitable disappointment of consumers killed the franchise.

Chrono Cross didn't kill the franchise because there wasn't a franchise to kill. CC was a sequel to a very popular game during a time when Square and many other studios were releasing lots of JRPGs. I remember the consensus being that it was solid but not a titan of the genre like its big brother. There aren't any more Chrono games because there's nothing really to it but the name, and Square went from putting out like 3-4 console JRPGs a year to about 1.

 

[Random_Dude]

In canon, there's a peasant uprising and the royal family are forced to flee the country.

It's great.

....When did this happen?

Anyways, I found it nifty, felt like you were digging through the shell and inner defenses to get to the core. And it makes sense lore-wise too. I mean, iirc, the game mentions that Lavos is harvesting the DNA of all the living things in the planet, and taking into account that humans, and to a lesser degree, the mystics, are the "dominant" species of the planet, well it made sense to me.

Nifty little inversion too, rpg-trope wise speaking.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

It is kind of annoying to not have Toriyama's original drawings for Lavos and several other characters. Even less important NPC's have available artwork lol.

Oh btw in case anyone hadn't seen this before, here is Kato's original artwork which was passed off onto Toriyama to make the characters.

Left was a fairy princess which became Marle. Behind her is a robot which later became Robo, there's a monster man in front of the robot that is really hard to see (Frog?), next to them is the inventor girl that looks like she came from The Magic Knight Rayearth Universe which became Lucca of course. Next to her is the main character who became Crono. Notice he had shounen character goggles. Next to him is the demon king that became Magus. Next to the demon king is a prehistoric woman which becomes Ayla, and next to her is an old sage that likely became the basis for the gurus.

Sakaguchi came up with Gato of course.

Prefer Kato: Robo, Magus, Ayla

Prefer Toriyama: The rest

Seriously, that Kato-bot is DOPE

 

[Anoregon]

Prefer Kato: Robo, Magus, Ayla

Prefer Toriyama: The rest

Seriously, that Kato-bot is DOPE

He would totally look like he belonged in a GWAR show

 

[Professor Beef]

....When did this happen?

.

You can see it in the cutscenes in the PS1/DS versions.

 

[Madame M]

That bow on Lucca just looks silly, the scarf is much better

 

[Trojita]

....When did this happen?

Anyways, I found it nifty, felt like you were digging through the shell and inner defenses to get to the core. And it makes sense lore-wise too. I mean, iirc, the game mentions that Lavos is harvesting the DNA of all the living things in the planet, and taking into account that humans, and to a lesser degree, the mystics, are the "dominant" species of the planet, well it made sense to me.

Nifty little inversion too, rpg-trope wise speaking.

Kato lost his damn mind. He made shit up later. Dalton, the joke character from Chrono Trigger, arrives in the Porre, militarizes the nation somehow, and attacks Guardia Castle. The Masamune is lost. King Crono and Queen Marle disappear with Kato giving absolutely no fucking information about where they are just saying later they were in "a situation".

 

[NeonZ]

Chrono Cross didn't kill the franchise because there wasn't a franchise to kill. CC was a sequel to a very popular game during a time when Square and many other studios were releasing lots of JRPGs. I remember the consensus being that it was solid but not a titan of the genre like its big brother. There aren't any more Chrono games because there's nothing really to it but the name, and Square went from putting out like 3-4 console JRPGs a year to about 1.

It sold less than half Chrono Trigger's numbers in Japan, in spite of JRPGs generally doing better back during the PSOne over there.

Although it wasn't a bomb, it pretty much sold on the level of other minor or new franchises at the time, killing the point of attempting to continue the Chrono franchise. If it had still kept Trigger's 2.36 millions in Japan, I doubt Square would have just moved on from the franchise.

....When did this happen?

It wasn't a "peasant uprising" though. Dalton turned Porre into a military kingdom and invaded Guardia (although the only thing actually said in game is that Porre suddenly became a military nation using Elements and invaded Guardia). Crono and Marle disappear during the invasion.

 

[Random_Dude]

You can see it in the cutscenes in the PS1/DS versions.

Kato lost his damn mind. Dalton, the joke character from Chrono Trigger, arrives in the Porre, militarizes the nation somehow, and attacks Guardia Castle. The masamune is lost. King Crono and Queen Marle disappear with Kato giving absolutely no fucking information about where they are just saying later they were in "a situation".

Yeah, I knew about Dalton thing.
The thing is, how is this a peasant uprising? Sounds to me more like a country-to-country invasion. Porre is in the southern continent, and considered it's own thing, so how can it be an uprising, let alone a peasant-led one if they are militarized and it's leader is Dalton? Chrono cross considers porre a full on military power too, as I understand it.

 

[Madame M]

To be fair Chrono Cross also had to compete with a ton of other JRPGs on the Playstation, not to mention this was back when Final Fantasies were being released every year.

 

[Defective14]

Yeah, I knew about Dalton thing.
The thing is, how is this a peasant uprising? Sounds to me more like a country-to-country invasion. Porre is in the southern continent, and considered it's own thing, so how can it be an uprising, let alone a peasant-led one if they are militarized and it's leader is Dalton? Chrono cross considers porre a full on military power too, as I understand it.

I read it here a while ago - https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Fall_of_Guardia_(Details_of).html

but do remember years ago reading that it's canon that Crono and Marle fled the country.

 

[Hazmat]

It sold less than half Chrono Trigger's numbers in Japan, in spite of JRPGs generally doing better back during the PSOne over there.

Although it wasn't a bomb, it pretty much sold on the level of other minor or new franchises at the time, killing the point of attempting to continue the Chrono franchise. If it had still kept Trigger's 2.36 millions in Japan, I doubt Square would have just moved on from the franchise.

You don't know that, and neither does anyone else. There was only one game in the "franchise" if you don't count Radical Dreamers, which I don't. There wasn't a historic trend of the Chrono name and characteristics resulting in great sales that CC killed. Like, if the next Final Fantasy is so awful and sells so poorly that SquareEnix stops making then that is definitely a black mark on that game for breaking a 30 year chain. CC isn't that kind of a game, it's just an average-to-good JRPG from an era when we were drowning in them.

 

[Trojita]

Yeah, I knew about Dalton thing.
The thing is, how is this a peasant uprising? Sounds to me more like a country-to-country invasion. Porre is in the southern continent, and considered it's own thing, so how can it be an uprising, let alone a peasant-led one if they are militarized and it's leader is Dalton? Chrono cross considers porre a full on military power too, as I understand it.

The peasant thing was never mentioned. I hate the whole Porre thing since why does Dalton know about Porre. Porre was a very small nation and it shits on the whole idea that you made Porre a better place with the Sun Stone quest.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

To be fair Chrono Cross also had to compete with a ton of other JRPGs on the Playstation, not to mention this was back when Final Fantasies were being released every year.

If anything Chrono Trigger had even more competition; it's just that the vast majority of those games never left Japan.

 

[L Thammy]

Well when you consider there were only two countries in that continent with one town each, Porre probably has half the world's military power.

 

[specdot]

While we're at it, FFIV is a better Final Fantasy game than FFVI.

This man isn't wrong though.

 

[NeonZ]

You don't know that, and neither does anyone else. There was only one game in the "franchise" if you don't count Radical Dreamers, which I don't. There wasn't a historic trend of the Chrono name and characteristics resulting in great sales that CC killed. Like, if the next Final Fantasy is so awful and sells so poorly that SquareEnix stops making then that is definitely a black mark on that game for breaking a 30 year chain. CC isn't that kind of a game, it's just an average-to-good JRPG from an era when we were drowning in them.

That's the point though. Crono Trigger wasn't an established franchise, so the 2nd game doing much worse than the first, and on par with many other RPGs released at the time, basically killed any advantage Square would have in pushing ahead with the Chrono series. If it had kept sales around the level of the original, above most other RPGs at the time, there's no way it'd have been just ignored afterwards.

 

[Trojita]

Well when you consider there were only two countries in that continent with one town each, Porre probably has half the world's military power.

Truce, Porre, and Dorino were just villages.

 

[xevis]

The only shitty thing about Chrono Trigger is active time battle. If it was pure turns (ala Dragon Quest), it would be perfect.

While we're at it, FFIV is a better Final Fantasy game than FFVI.

I think you and this guy should be friends

 

[Madame M]

If anything Chrono Trigger had even more competition; it's just that the vast majority of those games never left Japan.

And the reason they never left Japan?

 

[Hazmat]

That's the point though. Crono Trigger wasn't an established franchise, so the 2nd game doing much worse than the first, and on par with many other RPGs released at the time, basically killed any advantage Square would have in pushing ahead with the Chrono series. If it had kept sales around the level of the original, above most other RPGs at the time, there's no way it'd have been just ignored afterwards.

But that's my point, there was no franchise to kill. Final Fantasy has endured entries on par (and way worse) than CC. Dragon Quest has endured entries on par (and worse) with CC. CC isn't exceptionally bad, and it merely not being on par with what is widely considered one of the greatest games of all time doesn't make it a franchise killer.

 

[A-V-B]

And the reason they never left Japan?

Albert Einstein.

 

[Madame M]

Albert Einstein.

That's the jerk I have to blame for resorting to emulation to play Live a Live et al? Well I for ome am shocked.

 

[LegendofDragoonLives]

I thought you were going to talk about its sequel

Why would he talk about the superior game of the series?

 

[NeonZ]

But that's my point, there was no franchise to kill. Final Fantasy has endured entries on par (and way worse) than CC. Dragon Quest has endured entries on par (and worse) with CC. CC isn't exceptionally bad, and it merely not being on par with what is widely considered one of the greatest games of all time doesn't make it a franchise killer.

I guess I see your point now, but that difference seems meaningless to me. Either way, we didn't get further Chrono games because CC merely performed around the same numbers of many other RPGs in the PSOne era, rather than matching Trigger's numbers (in an era where JRPGs in general were at their peak sales wise, at least in Japan).