Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part II

The second session of my Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge playthrough for 2024 was played on December 7th, 2024.

Watch on YouTube

We started in the Denadoro Mountains. Like last year, we had access to fire magic because Lucca is with us, and that makes this area easy.


I thought Masa & Mune would be easier than last year since we have Crono, but I didn't realize that the tornado energy counter was specific to the use of Crono's Slash/Wind Slash technique and instead thought it was just done with lightning-elemental attacks. Consequently I still took one of their worst attacks... and the lack of healing in this party made it tougher.

Volt Bite and Flame Kick seemed to be my strongest moves. Flame Kick was doing damage in the 500s.
 

I messed up the order of the quest slightly after this, but then I went back in time and met Ayla properly. I love the way Ayla talks; I discussed how it reminds me of my dog.
 

We spent a bit of time at the Hunting Range, too, just enough to get the few equipment upgrades that Crono and LuccaFrog would benefit from. It only took one trip as I happened to run into the elusive rainy-weather Nus twice!
 
We got a Third Eye - an accessory that double evasion - and I put it on Ayla since she's already the most evasive character by far. I put her strength-boosting accessory on Crono, and LuccaFrog was using a Silver Stud to reduce her MP costs (since she's kind of the most tech-dependent).

We attended a party (where Crono spun for a long time) and after the party we did our trades. Ayla already started with all of the nice, new prehistoric equipment so we really didn't need much. This was actually our first opportunity to look at Ayla's stats.
 

In the Forest Maze, I noted that although Crono and Ayla are nice and strong many of these enemies are considerably more prone to magic. Consequently a lot of simple fights took a bit longer.
 

The lair was simple and I didn't stall around checking for weevil holes or whatever. Fighting Nizbel was nice compared to last year, where it was absolutely the worst part of the entire run! It wasn't entirely smooth - with our poor healing I find myself fairly regularly using Revive items in boss fights - but at least it was quick.

Volt Bite was our best damage, dealing 758 damage.
  

We got the Masamune fixed, recruited Frog the frog, and (naturally) skipped returning to the End of Time. I found myself missed some of the screen-wiping attacks in Magus' Castle, such as Robo's Laser Spin that I had last year, or Frog and Marle using the Ice Water combo. However, I was grateful for my recently-accessible Falcon Hit combo!


We fought Slash after this. I fast-forwarded the first phase of the fight, but the second part was tougher and slower. Magic isn't very effective against Slash, and since we were dependent on Ayla's Kiss for healing, we had a limited offense. When I was able to pull of a Drill Kick, though, it was fairly effective.
   

Flea was a lot easier. Kiss was actually adequate healing with the additional effect of removing some of the status ailments.


I tried to avoid a lot of encounters but probably did a worse job of it than I usually do. We really lacked means to hit more than one enemy in most fights, which made the Falcon Hit setups feel pretty special.
 

The rest of the place was normal, although we were certainly starting to get a bit low on Mid Tonics by the end. Magus' statement about stupid Frog was pretty ambiguous with both Frog and Frog  with an extra space present.


Doing the Magus fight with Ayla was a bit tough. Magus has high physical defense and the only way to work around this normally is with the Masamune, which we don't have. This affords Ayla little opportunity to shine, so she was mostly focused on Kissing Crono and LuccaFrog. Ayla did use Rock Throw on Magus once, which was fun to watch but only did 136 damage.
 
We also lacked water and ice magic... so naturally Magus chose that as his weak point several times. He also chose Shadow more than once. Luck wasn't on our side, but with careful use of Mid Tonics we pulled through to the Dark Matter phase. Once Magus' defense were down, LuccaFrog and Ayla could do ~600 damage with Flame Kick...

...and Crono and Ayla could do 720 damage with Volt Bite, although this meant Ayla wasn't free for using Kiss.
 
With other characters joining in the healing, I think we finished with fewer than 5 Mid Tonics left. But we finished!


In prehistoria, we stocked like 70 Mid Tonics, and proceeded fairly quickly through the Dactyl Nest and Tyrano Lair. Partway through, Crono learned Lightning 2. I realized that my tech learning feels a bit strange; Lucca still has a while to learn Fire 2, but Ayla has already learned Charm. Since Lightning 2 is very useful against dinosaurs and magic-vulnerable enemies and it's our first potential screen-clearing move, I popped the SilverStud on Crono, gave Ayla her PowerScarf back, and Lucca now has a MagicScarf.

The Meso Mail didn't stay on Crono especially long: I knew I'd want fire resistance for the bosses here.

Nizbel II was pretty easy. The damage from the electrical discharge was over 200 to each character and that was pretty bad, but my damage was high enough that it didn't really matter. Ayla and Crono were doing over 1400 damage with Volt Bite.
 
Thus... we won.


Nizbel II is actually just a very short distance before Azala, so we were quickly at the BlackTyrano fight. Ayla charmed a Magic Tab from Azala and a Power Tab from the BlackTyrano - normally I'd never be able to do this so early. I was excited to use Falcon Hit but it really wasn't that useful.
 
Once we beat Azala and the BlackTyrano's defenses were down, we were able to just sort of... kick butt. We had fire-resistant equipment on everyone, and even with that I think we only got hit with the big fire breath once.
 
I used a mixture of Volt Bite and Flame Kick here depending on whose turn was up.
 
Easy fight! We won!


We went through the gate that appeared after the fight and saved in the unfamiliar, snowy wilderness.

< Previous | Index | Next >

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part III

I played my third session of this year's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge on the afternoon of December 8th, 2024.

Watch on YouTube

It began, perhaps suitably, in the snow-covered wilderness. I didn't note in the video or anything but it's also been that kind of weather around my real life home for the last week or so, so this is all very natural. Hurray.

For now, my assigned party of Crono, Lucca (named Frog ) and Ayla is actually completely normal and not even a bad choice for vanilla play. Consequently, this session is basically just normal gameplay where it happens that we're ignoring half of the characters.

This is my favourite part of the game and also the part where I'd hate to spoil it for anyone, so go ahead and stop reading if you're not already familiar with the plotline of the game.

We got to Enhasa.

We did some shopping and found some tabs. We also went to the secret room. I actually lost to the Nu squad here! This is one of those scenarios where having zero access to group healing is terrible. It's not a game over though, and we won on our second attempt.
  


I really wanted a Lode Shield. :(

For the Golem, I kept my Ruby Vests and Taban Vest on to resist fire attacks and then only used fire attacks myself. This allowed me to win this optional fight pretty easily.
 

After this, with our charged pendant, it was time to raid the various sealed chests and doors that we couldn't access. I went into 600 AD first and powered up the Blue Vest, Black Vest and White Vest, and then I went into 1000 AD to get more goodies. It doesn't take long and it gives us some interesting options.

First, there was the sealed thingie near Medina. One chest gives you the Safe Helm and one gives you the Swallow. I wasn't paying attention and didn't remember which was which, so I said, "I'll just pick one and be okay with it no matter what it is."

I would've preferred the Safe Helm, actually, but whatever, this is nice. There were a few other prizes, too.
 

Eventually we went to the Sewer Access...
 
...and proceeded to the Keeper's Dome. I tried to name the Epoch "Frog" because of my son, but the game actually doesn't allow the player to use the same name as a character! Luckily there was a natural alternative.
 

Next up, the cave under Algetty. I used Ayla's Charm to get R'bow Helms from the Beasts, a MermaidCap from the Blue Beast, and a Speed Tab from the Mud Imp. The fight at the end took a while; beating the Blue Beast with my fire-elemental combos was quick but I had no real edge on the Red Beast so it took a long time.
 

With these elemental resistance helmets and our elemental mails, we have a lot of great options for enemies that depend on elemental attacks including the next boss, Giga Gaia. Ayla, for example, resists water/ice and absorbs damage from lightning.

I wanted to learn lots of techs from Rubbles, so for Mt. Woe I gave Ayla the Berserker and Crono the Hit Ring. I literally defeated every Rubble I ran into.
 
Normally I find this area exciting because of all of the great things you can Charm from enemies, but in this case, with Crono already having the Swallow, there was just literally nothing of value.

We've learned nearly all of our techniques with really just the final ones outstanding for each character by the time we got to Giga Gaia. For that fight, I had the Black Mail on Crono, the Black Vest on Ayla, and something fire-resistant on Lucca. Really though I'm just especially glad I remembered to take the Berserker off of Ayla.
 

With our mindful preparations and Crono and Ayla using Falcon Hit, Giga Gaia was an exceptionally easy fight.

Fire Sword 2 didn't do appreciably more damage than Volt Bite and costs quite a bit more TP, so I mostly used Volt Bite with Crono and Ayla and Mega Bomb with Lucca.
  

Dalton was also easy.


In the Ocean Palace, we got Lucca a new Shockwave. It inflicted chaos status on enemies fairly often and I stopped to watch them a little bit. It was kind of fun.


Nothing else was noteworthy here really. On one of the mixed scouter groups I thought I'd just use Lightning 2 and endure the counters since we mostly resist that. It wasn't too bad but it doesn't really save any time or effort. Also on the elevator, LuccaFrog learned Flare.
 

When we approached GolemTwins, I decided since we all either absorb or resist lightning we would emphasize that. The plan was for LuccaFrog and Ayla to attack and then Crono use Lightning 2. It worked great.

I already knew that Lucca had two different combo attacks named Fire Whirl but it's strange realizing that those will always be in the menu for this playthrough.
 


Then, I guess Crono got blowed up. Lucca's not happy about it.
 
Well, maybe next time we play will be interesting. We'll do the Blackbird and then maybe revive Crono using Crono.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >