FreshFeeling Gaming

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part V

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:53:30 GMT

I played the end of my playthrough for this year's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge on December 15th.

I had saved before trying the Sunken Desert which I failed at in the previous session, and I was prepared to go to the Black Omen... but I thought I'd give Sunken Desert another try. And this time, decided to tweak the party order to get Ayla closer to Retinite.
So far, I've been really particular about having Crono, Lucca, and Ayla in that order in every battle. However, I had noticed that when you view the list of Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge runs, it always shows the characters in order of Crono -> Marle -> Lucca -> Frog -> Robo -> Ayla -> Magus. This is both the order characters are first recruited as well as in line with their internal IDs.

The party order isn't considered in RevenantKioku's site, so I figured adjusting the party order is probably considered legal. With that - and acknowledging my PartyOn script isn't necessary anymore - I changed my party to Crono, Ayla and Lucca and encountered Retinite again.

So, the question is, can Retinite be damaged effectively with Tail Spin? First, we see if he can get into the perfect position...

And then we see if this attack bypasses his abundant defenses.

Well... we're in business. And really, Ayla using Tail Spin was the only thing that even happened in this fight besides a tiny bit of healing with items.

Me too, Ayla. Me too.

Although we did do the GreenDream / 990 AD scenes, the real prize here was getting access to easy Vigil Hats, handy for their good defense and status resistance.

We also re-stocked Full Tonics. We fought the Mega Mutant and immediately felt a little dumb for worrying so much about Vigil Hats when we charmed one during the fight. Another Vigil Hat was in a chest roughly halfway through the Black Omen, rendering that whole thing somewhat pointless.

The enemies here were tough at times, but not too bad. Things were probably worse than they needed to be in some cases when I kept trying to steal items using Ayla's Charm. Over the course of the Black Omen, we probably managed to swipe over 20 MegaElixirs from Ruminators.

We also got a whole lot of Speed Tabs. Before we got to the Giga Mutant, I had already maxed the speed stat for all of Crono and Ayla, and Lucca almost immediately afterward. Giga Mutant was easy.

TerraMutant is encountered quite shortly after the Giga Mutant, actually. It was also very easy.

And just a room or two later, we encountered another Lavos Spawn. We managed to steal a Safe Helm and a Haste Helm off of it. Its counter spikes from Charming the shell were powerful, doing over 400 damage to a single character, but we beat it very quickly afterwards (using Gatling Kick on its head) and it never seemed like we were in any real danger.

This brings us to part 1 of our showdown with Queen Zeal. She used Hallation on me kind of a lot; this would honestly be a pretty big issue if he hadn't stolen so many MegaElixirs. It certainly wasn't a long fight, given the kinds of damage we were outputting.

I thought I might be able to beat the Mammon Machine in a damage race by avoiding the use of physical attacks. This was almost true but not quite; we ended up getting hit with its stored energy attack once.

I didn't get a lot of screenshots of the other Queen Zeal battle, but I did manage to steal from both hands and the face. The hands have nasty counters that both require some immediate remediation, but with all of our accumulated consumables this was no big deal. This means we got a second PrismDress and a PrismHelm.

Next we did the Lavos shell. This involves it entering attack modes based on most of the game's mandatory bosses. At first, I was using Falcon Hit, which is quite fun for Dragon Tank and Guardian...

...so I kinda said "let it ride" just kept using Falcon Hit against everything. This was good for a while, and beat Zombor nice and fast, but it stopped making sense by the Nizbel phase.

Really though of these were easy - but sort of fun. I went back to Falcon Hit for the Azala fight and the Giga Gaia fight but we had lots of useful attacks for these, like Luminaire and Flare. I saw little reason to drag out the battle.

When we got to the actual Lavos shell battle, the big sign of your success is whether he one-shots somebody with "destruction rains from the heavens". That definitely did not end up being the case. We won quickly.

It's nice having Ayla because she can steal tabs, so I exited Lavos and thought I'd do the Black Omen again. However, I may have overestimated the value of doing the Black Omen more than once. We blew through it with some fastforwarding, but each trip really only got us two Power Tabs, a Prism Helm, and a few levels.

Run 2:


Run 3:

Now, oddly, the Queen Zeal space battle was way, way harder on the third runthrough. I had no real issues on the first two trips, but she had me on the ropes twice in this fight. It's funny, because I had just said with a cautious save before the Zeal fight, "Any battle where Hallation's in play can go wrong". I'm glad I did save... although we pulled out the win regardless.


Well... we're not getting any more prepared for the end of the game now. I used up all of my tabs, only to find that Ayla had maxed out her power stat! The rest went to Crono.

We went toward the Lavos Core. Like with destruction raining from the heavens, the laser doors of doom attack is a nice way to gauge the team's preparedness. Ayla took high damage but we were in fine condition. Shadow Doom Blaze, later in the fight, had a similar effect.

I remember Falcon Hit being great in this fight, so I used it a fair bit. It wasn't long at all before the arms were destroyed. And from there, it wasn't too long before we beat the thing.


When we got to Lavos Core, I once again tried using Falcon Hit. I tried other moves too, but the left piece absorbs elements like Flare, so eventually I just stuck with Falcon Hit since the left bit dies pretty quickly. This got the right bit to lower its defenses quickly and easily.

Keeping the left elements down was easy, which also greatly reduces Lavos' capacity to damage me. Speaking of damage, I had Lucca use Protect on Crono and I felt really smart about it when the center part walloped Crono with a physical hit.

I said, "Y'know, that only has to happen once for the Protect spell to feel worthwhile."

This fight never felt the least bit challenging, really. Keeping the right bit's defenses down, we were able to do over 5000 damage with Gatling Kick. With that... it didn't last long.

For some reason we had kind of a strange silhouette appear as the battle faded out. I swear this thing's actually dead.

Victory!

This was fun. It seemed a lot faster and easier than last year, and probably more fun, too. The lack of available healing did make things a bit shaky in the middle 1/3 of the game. The end part, with our abundant Full Tonics and MegaElixirs, suddenly became really easy. I like having Ayla.

I'm not sure what else there is to say about this. It's not really hard, but it's fun.
I guess if I wanted something harder it would be easy to use the PartyOn script to effectively play any solo. Hm.

<< First | < Previous | Index

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part IV

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:19:06 GMT

I played the fourth session of my playthrough for this year's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge on the morning of December 11th.

We were starting at the Blackbird, and I knew this was going to be really easy compared to last year since Ayla happened to be on my team! I had happened to set my party to Frog (the actual frog), Frog (the scientist), and Ayla, but because of my script Frog would be replaced by Crono in combat.

Well, interesting fact that might seem obvious to some folks: only the current field party loses their stuff. Consequently my Frog-coloured Crono was able to join in with Ayla in the fights here, and we blew through it in record time.

I thought aloud that it be interesting to abandon Frog's (the frog's) equipment here and lose the Masamune forever. I was disheartened when I got the chest with Frog 's equipment, but that turned out to be Frog the scientist with the space in her name! So we actually, seriously dumped the Masamune and left with our money, our items, Ayla's stuff, and LuccaFrog's stuff.

The technique points are really high here and by the time we fought our very first Turret on the wing we had learned both Luminaire and Triple Kick, unlocking every technique we would ever have.

We fought GolemBoss, and then Dalton Plus. I chose not to hold back and tried out Luminaire here; it was a quick fight.

Ayla delivers another line that sounds just like my dog talking:

With our new-found, late-game freedom, we beat Spekkio for only the second time, which was fairly easy, especially since we were still wearing various elemental defenses.

I also went to Laruba Village to investigate the renaming situation. I did a web search, and it turns out that in the SNES release of Chrono Trigger, when you name a character with blank space at the end of their name, it is saved as an actual space character... but when you insert actual space characters, those are truncated! I renamed Frog the frog to "Glenn" and then finally fixed Lucca's name to... "Frog". With no space.

I thought the next reasonable step to take would be to try and revive Crono - even though he appears in our battles regardless. I semi-accidentally used the computer in Keeper's Dome to rename the Toad , formerly the Epoch, to "Toad" with no space.
Next, we needed a clone, and for that we needed silver points. Doing several fights with Gato seemed like a good opportunity to try out Crono with all of the other characters' palettes.

I did the copycat game perfectly and didn't have to pay for my clone. Next, we went to Death Peak. Some of the enemies here were hard, and I never actually managed to Charm a Lavos Spawn shell here.

After the Blackbird we had quite a bit of money, actually, and I had bought a very large stack of Full Tonic that alleviated a lot of my healing concerns.
We got Crono back! Even though, in a way, he had never left.

I went to Guardia Castle briefly to get a Red Mail in 1000 AD and a Red Vest in 600 AD, and then I went to face Son of Sun. It was a fight where nearly everything he does heals us, so yeah, it went well. We also Charmed a Black Mail. We did the Sun Stone quest and thus earned WonderShot.

Next, we went to Ozzie's Fort. Flea and Slash were easy. I stole the Slasher 2 and the OzziePants but I don't think either really matters. This dungeon doesn't do much for us. Crono was sporting Magus' palette for the occasion.

Next up, we did the North Ruins / Hero's Grave while also opening up Giant's Claw. We got some armors that may be useful for Crono but there was nothing else much here to comment on. You may recall that we intentionally left the Masamune on the Blackbird, but it turns out the game doesn't care.

I didn't give Frog/Glenn that equipment; it's just whatever he had. At some point the game must've forced that back onto him, which I would bet is right after the Blackbird crashes. I mean, that makes sense: Chrono Trigger is known to behave rather strangely when characters have no armor equipped.

May as well do Giant's Claw while we're here! This is one of the areas where I find the enemies a bit beefy and counter-happy that makes normal fights a bit tough. Well... they aren't so tough when you just spam Luminaire in nearly after battle.

Rust Tyrano was easy although we did have to endure its countdown attack once... which healed two characters. We tried a few different means to deal damage. Ayla's Triple Kick on its own did 2969 damage. I was surprised that this guy didn't seem to particularly resist fire. We managed to Charm a Red Mail.

Next we did Geno Dome. This is fairly pointless for us, but we'd get a few consumables and levels. Again... I used a whole lot of Luminaire to accelerate things. I figured the fun part would be the Atropos fight, which is designed for Robo to fight solo. We won in two Gatling Kicks.

MotherBrain was very easy, in part thanks to Falcon Hit.

And, almost finally, there was Yakra XIII. I thought we could Charm a White Mail from this guy but all we got was a lousy MegaElixir.

We used strong attacks, including Gatling Kick, and it was fairly easy although some heals were required from his nasty spikes.

We are going to enjoy our Rainbow Shell goodies!

In terms of endgame sidequests before going to either Lavos or the Black Omen, all that's left is the Sunken Desert. I have never legitimately attempted this without a character who would use water magic. While the random enemies on the first level were no problem, I don't think we're going to be able to beat Retinite.

The usual way to defeat this guy is by using water magic, and then physical attacks. Besides the core, he takes 0 damage from fire, lightning and even water. Our physical attacks tend to miss or do 0 damage. When we do stronger techs, they do some damage, but its defense actually goes up in response... resulting in things like Crono's very strong Confuse tech dealing a total of 12 damage.
I tried to think of ways to damage this guy that didn't involve physical attacks or elemental attacks... and I may have one: Ayla's Tail Spin. Unfortunately, Retinite happened to spawn in a spot where he couldn't approach Ayla. I tried the next most likely option, I thought, which was Ayla using Dino Tail while at critically low HP.

Unfortunately, even a near-optimized Dino Tail only does double-digit damage. Doing this means keeping Ayla's HP low, which means she keeps dying. As well, Retinite's parts both have health-draining moves so really it's possibly healing faster than I can hurt it. I might come back to this but I'm not sure it's possible. Maybe with Tail Spin?

For now though, I was ready to stop. I think we'll just do Black Omen next.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part III

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:15:17 GMT

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

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 >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part II

Sun, 08 Dec 2024 18:31:05 GMT

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

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 >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2024 Part I

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 03:51:51 GMT

I played RevenantKioku's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge for my first time in 2023 and had a great time. I also played using a Lua script called PartyOn that forced my battle party to match my required characters at all time while leaving the "field party" intact, allowing me to do what I consider to be a very purist form of the run. The script was a little buggy at the start of my 2023 playthrough, and the characters in 2023 (Marle, Lucca and Robo) were a little mundane... so, despite the limited differences, I decided to opt in for 2024.

I found myself with time to play on the first day of the challenge as prescribed: December 1st.

My characters for this year are Crono, Lucca, and Ayla. This will feel a little on the dry side for the middle 1/3rd of the game, especially since Crono and Ayla are almost always in my party when I play vanilla. It will be nice, however, to have such powerful characters, and the only real drawback is that I have none of the game's three best healers: Frog, Marle and Robo.

Also fun is that, due to the PartyOn script at work, Ayla who is normally recruited a good 20% of the way into the game will be available early and sort of carry the team a bit. She starts with her normal level and with her normal equipment. Her equipment can't be changed until she joins for realsies.

For now, Ayla looks like this:

or sometimes like this:

There are some funny palette behaviours because the game's in-battle character palettes are inherited from the field party's character palettes and (apparently) stored separately from the in-battle character instance and stats. Thus, during parts where Crono is supposed to be alone, the additional characters appear in very unusual colours.

You may also notice that Lucca's name is "Frog " with a space at the end. This unfortunate choice was requested by my oldest child who has some experience with the game and, disappointed that Frog wasn't one of my characters specifically asked that Lucca be named "Frog". I don't know why the space is there. Whatever, I'll cope. It's awkward but I enjoy silliness anyway so whatever.

As predicted, Ayla makes the early game pretty easy with her advanced level.

That said, she starts with no techs. It took a while for her just to learn Kiss - which would be basically my only healing tech in the entire game.

Once Frog (the one that's actually a frog) is recruited, Ayla's colour palette normalizes, uh, somewhat.

Her She-Hulk-ish-ness is maybe actually pretty suitable. I got the Naga-ette bromide here.

I mentioned Kiss being our only healing tech. It's also odd having a character in battle who we won't be able to access out of battle for such a long time. We are unable to cure Ayla out of battle (by most means), meaning if she needs a heal that has to be done during battle, including if she were to require an MP refill.

Yakra was really easy, although some healing was actually required.

After wrapping up what we needed to do in 600AD, we re-recruited Marle to head back home. This allowed me to see what Ayla looked like with Marle's palette, and it was actually awesome.

I realized there's a funny sort of presentation/story unification scenario here where Crono's inability to speak contributed to his sentence after his trial. A lot of trouble could've been avoided if he just talked.

Like in 2023, I greatly enjoyed the prison escape sequence because using my three-person party in a chunk of the game that's intended for Crono on his own gets really funky.

I also snapped a screenshot of the enemy called Yodu De because people weren't aware of it on the Chrono Trigger Riddle Topic on GameFAQs a while ago.

Dragon Tank was really easy. With Ayla's brawn I didn't even really consider the order of attacking its components.

We escaped into an unknown time and navigated Lab 16. Crono hadn't actually learned Slash yet, so I tried using my OP friend Ayla's attacks against the Shadows but this is just as useless as usual, so the battles were slow at times.

Ayla's presence paid off once again against the Guardian, though. We managed to one-cycle it.

We crossed Lab 32 without touching the Sewer Access, and went into the factory. Our palettes were pretty screwed up again: my field team was now Crono, Robo, Lucca and my battle team is Crono, Lucca, Ayla, and the order matters somewhat. Consequently, Lucca has changed colour.

This area was quick and easy, really, though perhaps not as quick as when we have Robo and Laser Spin. The AoE attacks we have available just aren't that strong so some of the fights were a bit on the slow side.

The R-series, however, were very quick to beat. Crono and Lucca used Fire Whirl on one group of them while Ayla one-shotted the others with Rollo Kick.

The final robot actually had some nasty counters - I'm not really sure what provokes this - resulting in LuccaFrog ending the fight with 1 HP. 1 is enough!

We met and fought Spekkio and given we were right at the threshold of him advancing between frog form and kiwala form, it was a tough fight! Kiss helped a lot. I managed to get quite an odd screenshot in the wake of that fight.

We then proceeded through Medina and the Heckran Cave. I tried out Ayla with Robo's palette and it actually also looks really neat.

Heckran was a tough fight. I think in my early-game config I set the speeds to really high and consequently timing attacks against his counter phases and breaks was tough. Heckran did counter my attack once. We required quite a bit of healing to get through, but we won.

We got the Taban Vest and blew through to 600AD to investigate Magus and Lavos. We quickly ended up facing Zombor. It was a bit of a clumsy fight where I wasn't mindful of some of his stronger AoE attacks and counters. There were good aspects, though: Fire Kick was quite strong against his lower body.

We won, but I did have to revive Lucca partway through. Ayla got MP Buster'd at the end, which is a bit of a hassle. As noted earlier, it's pretty hard to recover her MP right now.

We explored Porre and the area, and then I saved outside of the Denadoro Mountains.
Huh. It took three gameplay sessions to get this far last year.

Index | Next >

comments

The Top 10 Masamunes

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 22:17:22 GMT

[It was decided in roughly November of 2023 that GameFAQs once-loved Top 10 Lists feature was being phased out. I had written a few lists between 2009 and 2012 and generally engaged with that community a fair bit, so I figured I would cross-post my lists on this site over ten years later, backdated. You may still be able to view the original version here.]

Weapons called Masamune appear in a huge number of games. It's pretty easy to see it as a Japanese equivalent to the Excalibur. Personally, as someone in the western hemisphere, I can't remember not knowing what Excalibur was, but I sure remember not knowing what the Masamune was in reference to. I'm pretty sure I pronounced it incorrectly for a decade, too.

Masamune was a famous Japanese bladesmith, active in the 13th and 14th centuries. There are a number of variations of this story, but according to legend, Masamune could place one of his swords in a river with the blade facing against the current and the fallen leaves would be sliced in half by drifting down the river into the katana.

Like Excalibur, a number of games have adapted this name to make a weapon stand out from others, and also like the Excalibur, some games' Masamunes are more noteworthy than others. This list aims to educate you about some of the finer ones.

#10: Thousand Arms (PS)

Thousand Arms is the story of Meis, a spirit blacksmith who forges powerful weapons using the power of... dating. Although it would be a pretty crappy RPG if it weren't for the dating, and a pretty crappy dating sim if it weren't for the RPG, the combination works and it's a pretty darn entertaining game. Similar to some other games like Final Fantasy VIII and Shining Tears, the characters mostly wield the same weapons throughout the game but can upgrade them as they progress.

One of Meis' eventual allies, Soushi, the very feminine womanizing swordsman, usually wields the Masamune, but when you meet him in this game it has been broken and he has been wielding the Dark Sword. You will have to face him a few times before you return his original Masamune to him and he returns to his senses. In this game's very unusual one-on-one combat system, Soushi can use his Masamune to perform a few stylish attacks, including this game's only instant death attack, Fudo Rasanjin.

It's mostly unremarkable, but it's a stylish spirit weapon. I feel that it ranks #10. Decent game, fair Masamune.

#9: Secret of Mana (SNES)

Secret of Mana is the story of a boy who draws the legendary Sword of Mana from a stone, setting in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy but ultimately saves the world. When you acquire the Sword of Mana, however, it has lost all of its power, and it begins as a dull, rusty blade that needs to be filled with power and re-forged into new weapons over the course of the game. The Sword of Mana goes from Rusty Sword to Broad Sword to Herald Sword to Claymore to Excalibur to Masamune... and on from there.

Unlike a lot of other weapons on this list, this Masamune is not even close to being the game's best weapon. However, it does have a very useful feature in that it increases the user's critical hit rate. Since so many of this game's weapons' special effects were not programmed properly and don't work, this is quite useful; the only serious competition the Masamune has in terms of power and usefulness when it is acquired is the Oceanid Spear, which puts enemies to sleep.

For being a fairly good sword, certainly far above the Excalibur it replaces, this makes #9 on the list. Great game, decent Masamune.

#8: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS)

There is no shortage of great weapons in Symphony of the Night. Personally, I remember spending hours seeking out the Crissaegrim and earning five Fists of Tulkas in the process. Many of these very rare and powerful weapons have cool special attacks and properties, and can only be earned as a rare drop from enemies. Once you've earned a great weapon though, there are lots of fun things to swing it at.

The legendary Masamune katana is fairly good in this game. It has a large area of attack, it is fairly quick and it has high attack power, especially when used with the special teleport attack it grants. On the downside, it has a penalty to defense and, of course, it's a rare enemy drop from elusive black panthers. Another thing working against this Masamune is that the Yatsutsuna katana, which is better in just about every way, can be dropped by enemies not far from where you might find the Masamune.

Again, being quite good but not standing above the rest, I give this Masamune position #8. Great game, good Masamune.

#7: Final Fantasy Tactics (PS)

Final Fantasy Tactics features a job system where characters have access to different jobs with different statistics and different abilities. The samurai job is the only regular class that can wield katanas and also has special abilities based on the various kinds of katana, and with each of these abilities having a chance to break the katana used. This is troublesome at endgame, as the best katanas were not only unique, but in this case, very difficult to acquire.

The Masamune in Final Fantasy Tactics can only be stolen from Marquis Elmdor. It's the second most powerful katana and it has a very useful effect with a samurai's "Draw Out" command, giving Regen and Haste status to all allies within a close area of the user. Unfortunately, stealing the Masamune (and the other very valuable equipment) from Marquis Elmdor is one of the hardest tasks to accomplish in Final Fantasy Tactics. In the remakes and the original Japanese version it's not even possible, as Elmdor is equipped with the Safeguard (Maintenance) ability.

It's powerful and useful and it leaves me wanting more... but it's not really the best. This Masamune earns position #7. Great game, good Masamune.

#6: Final Fantasy Legend II (GB)

In this game, SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu in Japan, your ultimate job is to collect all the Magi, which each a fragment of a statue of the goddess Isis. Most of the Magi are earned by defeating Gods from various mythologies (like Ashura and Venus) and they give their holders some kind of benefit, and the late-game Masmune magi, which can act as a powerful weapon, is no exception.

When the Masmune Magi is used as a weapon by one of your characters, it will do about 500 damage, which is fairly high for this game, and it can be used as many times as you need (which is quite rare in this game; things tend to wear out after a certain number of uses). Unfortunately, the player only gets to use the Masmune for a couple of minutes before all of the party's Magi are stolen by Apollo. Later, Apollo will be using it against you! But if you can survive your encounter with Apollo, someone should still be able to wield the Masmune...

It's a great weapon with some (unfortunately) fairly limited use. I'd still rank it #6. Good game, good Masmune.

#5: Golden Sun: The Lost Age (GBA)

There are many strong weapons with varied effects in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, and Masamune is one of them. It can be tricky to get, since you need the Force Orb from the original Golden Sun to access it. If you haven't played Golden Sun or didn't try to transfer any of your data, you will never get the Masamune! It's nothing to cry about though, as there are a fair number of stronger weapons in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

That said, there are reasons that you might use this weapon at endgame if you have the option. It's fairly strong, and has a useful water-elemental "unleash" effect that also has a chance to double the damage done. It's actually the strongest available weapon with a water effect, making this weapon well-suited to Piers the water adept. It might not be his best choice, but since there are eight characters for you to outfit there's a good chance you will want to use this Masamune.

As a nice, wet weapon with a cool effect, I believe this one earned the #5 spot. Great game, good Masamune.

#4: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA)

When Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was new I recall hearing a lot of griping from people who wanted a sequel to Final Fantasy Tactics and didn't get one. This game's story about a child's imagination and the power of friendship is different from Final Fantasy Tactics' story of political manipulation and corrupt religious establishment... and their respective Masamunes are quite distinct as well. Like these two games, both Masamunes are fairly good when judged on their own merits.

While much easier to obtain than the one in Final Fantasy Tactics, the Masamune is this game's second strongest katana, wielded by the top-tier Ninja and Assassin classes. It also teaches the potentially crippling ability Oblivion, which causes the target to temporarily forget all of their abilities (including reactions). The only katana stronger is the Masamune 100, which is even more powerful and provides a magic bonus! Introduced in this game, the Masamune 100 is much less common, only earned by completing a postgame quest.

We're into the good stuff now. This Masamune is a great weapon, and the Masamune 100 only moreso. Good game, great Masamune.

#3: Final Fantasy X (PS2)

Final Fantasy X allowed remarkable customization of weapons, but most of the time, the simplest way to get a very strong weapon is to find a special celestial weapon and use a special crest and a special sigil to power it up. The celestial weapons all have unique graphics, powerful abilities, and some kind of special damage effect. The Masamune in Final Fantasy X is Auron's celestial weapon. Although Auron is this game's katana user, this weapon doesn't look like a katana at all.

Like the other celestial weapons in Final Fantasy X, when you find it it has no useful abilities until it is fully powered up with the appropriate crest and sigil. The fully-powered Masamune allows the user to exceed the 9999 damage limit, always act first in combat, gain additional overdrive, and counterattack. It also does greatly increased damage when the user is at low health, a bonus damage effect which is much more pronounced than other characters' celestial weapons. The Masamune, Mars Crest and Mars Sigil are all fairly straightforward to acquire compared to the others in this game (i.e. no minigames!), so players are likely to be able to use this at the end of the game without following a guide. Take advantage of it!

It's accessible and very useful in general; I'll forgive its wacky appearance and rank it #3. Great game, great Masamune.

#2: Chrono Trigger (SNES)

Unlike many of the Masamunes on this list, this one is absolutely essential to the plot of the game. Frog's Masamune is also different from most of this list in that it's a broadsword rather than a katana. The reason for this is that this weapon wasn't originally a Masamune at all; in Japan, it was known as the Grandleon, but it was localized to the (oddly) more familiar name of Masamune for North America. In Chrono Trigger, Crono and his friends find the Masamune in pieces and have to travel through time to repair the ancient weapon, eventually using it to convince Frog to join the battle against Magus in 600 A.D.

I suppose it's debatable whether this sword is a Masamune at all, but it's not debatable that it's awesome. The first big battle with Magus is maybe one third through the game, but the Masamune remains a fairly powerful weapon for Frog for a while after it is acquired, and without spoiling too much, I'll say it stays relevant to the plot of the game throughout (and on into Chrono Cross). In an optional sidequest near endgame it can be "powered up" and become Frog's strongest weapon. It must also be equipped to perform a very strong triple tech, Grand Dream.

It's a wonderful weapon and also fills that classic "legendary sword" role quite nicely, earning the #2 spot. Awesometastic game, great Grandleon... I mean, uh, great Masamune.

#1: Final Fantasy (NES)

The Masmune in Final Fantasy was the first "ultimate weapon" I ever encountered in gaming. It was listed on the big fold-out map and equipment list that came with the game, but being 9 years old (and not Japanese) I didn't know what it was. My friends and I figured it must be a typo for "mace" or something. Why, then was it so powerful? Given that it's probably the last thing any player acquires in the entire game it was a while before we learned that it was actually a very special sword.

The Masmune was not only quite a bit stronger than the Xcalbur, but added a much larger bonus to hit which often allows the wielder an extra hit with it compared to contemporary weapons. Perhaps most significantly, any class can equip it. It allows you to turn a non-combatant into a strong warrior, or a strong warrior into an even stronger warrior. Heck, the Masmune is what makes a many well-known challenge games possible. The drawback? Nothing really, except that it's found on the second last floor of the final dungeon. At least in the many remakes of this game you get a bit more practical use out of this great Masmune, given the super bosses in the new option dungeons.

For being the first Masmune in video games and a distant first place in Final Fantasy, I'd say this Masmune is the best. Good game, best Masmune.

There are more Masamunes than Excaliburs in mainstream gaming, but as it did with the Excalibur, the Final Fantasy series makes regular use of this name to describe it best weapons. Unlike with the Excalibur, there are lots of games that use the name Masamune to describe mediocre weapons, including Tales of Symphonia (GC), Suikoden (PS), Soul Calibur IV (360) and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS). These so-so Masamunes didn't make the list, and neither did the historical figure Date Masamune who appears in a number of games; I decided to stick to weapons.

There are some great Masamunes that didn't make this list in Final Fantasy IV (SNES) and Final Fantasy V (SNES), but again I wanted to limit the amount of Final Fantasy on the list. That's a completely separate reason than why I didn't include Final Fantasy VII (PS) - it always really bothered me that I couldn't use Sephiroth's Masamune. It didn't do me very much good at all! Quite the contrary, really....

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part IX

Sun, 17 Dec 2023 16:40:14 GMT

This final session in my first attempt at the Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge (2023!) was played on December 16, 2023.

As we planned, we started with Ozzie's Fort. It was... awfully quick. We literally beat Flea with a single attack.

Super Slash wasn't really harder.

Even the trio was pretty quick and easy. I didn't quite manage to take them all out in a single attack, but I enjoyed using Antipode 3 on them so much that I did it a second time for the screenshot.

Robo may as well have been talking to me; we didn't gain anything from doing this quest, really. Maybe a few consumables and a single Magic Tab. Oh well. It was fun.

We entered the Black Omen for the first time in 1000 A.D., which is the latest point you can enter it.

The thought here was just in case we wanted to do it repeatedly for levelling purposes or to gain whatever we could from it, would could move successively backward through time. However... you can only collect the treasures once, and even many of the encounters aren't repeatable. As well, we don't have nearly as much capacity to gain useful things like stat boosting tabs or Megaelixirs without Ayla in our party.
The mutant bosses were their usual, gimmicky selves, but frankly it was the random encounters that were scarier.

It took me a while to find a rhythm with Goons, for example, and the chaos status was an issue for me in a few fights. Luckily, save points are abundant and Lucca with Prism Specs can deal some pretty scary damage.

The Giga Mutant wasn't really any harder than the Mega Mutant.

We got access to a Haste Helm and I picked a setup for Robo with a Haste Helm (since he's the best all-around) and Nova Armor (to prevent status effects). It's quite a bit lower defense than using Moon Armor or a better helmet, but since most battles hinge on Robo I thought it made sense.

Our first battle with Ruminators was practically a demonstration of how can it can go, with two of our characters being eaten alive at different points. In later battles with Ruminators, I remembered that you can just sort of... stand around and let them eat each other, and then release one strong attack to finish the fight.

Unfortunately, we have a lot less to gain from this encounter than we would with Ayla around, since these are the dudes you can charm Megaelixirs from.

The TerraMutant might've been the hardest of the boss mutants. It didn't take me long to learn/remember that the top half is generally vulnerable and the bottom half has crazy defenses but the top will absorb health from it. If you destroy the top, the bottom is scripted to die shortly after. Not shortly enough, though! We ended this battle after the bottom countered Lucca and Robo both to 1 HP.

Against the Lavos Spawn that appears in the Black Omen, we just targetted its head. Throughout the Black Omen, I've been struggling to keep Robo's HP in a stable state with a nice, high last digit for the use of the Crisis Arm... and thus sometimes it made sense to have him heal or use a tackle rather than Uzzi Punch. The deal with this is that Robo Tackle's damage is unaffected by the equipped weapon, so it's fine if, say, Robo's hit points end with a 0. Uzzi Punch requires a higher final digit to do its best.

I said a few times that I should use the Terra Arm instead... but I kept forgetting and/or choosing not to do that.

Next up was Queen Zeal herself. Besides healing after Hallation, it was a pretty straightforward fight.

Unfortunately, she used Hallation immediately before we won, which leaves the party in quite a state for the next battle. Maybe the MegaElixir she dropped will help. In fact, maybe that's the point.

The Mammon Machine is a dumb fight. Do damage for a bit, survive retaliatory damage once, hit it a couple more times, win.
Queen Zeal in space was pretty good though. No shenanigans here, just single-target violence. Marle used Haste on Lucca to facilitate this, and in addition to contributions to combos Lucca occasionally used her Wondershot.

Next up... the Lavos Shell. Unlike approaching Lavos using some of the game's other methods, there's not even a way to leave when you come from the Black Omen. So here we go! I was really looking forward to revisiting some of the bosses who were meant to be dealt with using lightning attacks. First among those, I suppose was Masa & Mune.

Something that happened a lot more than my screenshots might suggest is Robo punching for 0 damage. Frankly, I don't usually use the Crisis Arm when I play, so I'm not super used to watching Robo's HP carefully before attacking. Besides Robo dealing 0 damage with punches, this was trivially easy. It usually is.

That said, I was also quite excited for revenge on Nizbel the first.

It did not take 38 minutes.

After beating the Lavos Shell, including its final phase with destruction raining from the heavens, etc. I thought... I could probably just finish the game. But I didn't want to yet. So I left! I decided to fight Masa & Mune Spekkio again... and it was so, so much easier than it was the last time I tried, immediately after doing Death Peak.

For that we got some tabs! In fact, altogether today the team earned at least 5 Speed Tabs, which is an enormous difference.

We did the Black Omen a 2nd time in 600 A.D. This probably wasn't worth it; the treasures are gone, we can't charm anything, and some of the battles like the many battles with Boss Orb + Sidekicks are really boring. I liberally used fast-forward for the most boring parts.

This time we can skip the shell... so we proceeded to the inner Lavos battles. No, we are not doing the antiquity Black Omen.
We weathered the doors of doom and our damage seemed more than adequate here.

The battle was generally stable. We didn't have status protection on everyone anymore, so there was some Heal item slinging for maybe the 2nd time in the entire game, but we kept up. I was wearing my "But... the future refused to change" t-shirt and I said, "I don't think I'm wearing the right shirt for the occasion, because we're going to change it!". It was all dramatic, you should've been there.

Strong attacks like Shadow Doom Blaze were scary and awesome-looking but the team was fine. Then we won.

This brought us to the Lavos Core proper. We started with applying Haste to everyone.

I planned to attack the centre, humanoid component to lower the defense of the right bit, which I knew was the "true" Lavos Core. This was pretty easy, and taking out the middle also allowed us to avoid most of the scariest attacks. I really leaned into offense once the right bit dropped its defense.

The Core's Active Life activated and the humanoid core was revived. The defense isn't restored immediately though, so we continued to press with offense. And before the right bit could restore its defense, we destroyed it.

I was honestly quite surprised that this was so quick and easy! I mean, I was reasonably well-prepared but I don't remember this going this well before. I'd rather use just about any other character than Marle, and honestly Lucca might be my 2nd last choice... but they sure showed me that they can deliver, given the chance.

This part of the ending actually felt a bit special; because of the script I used throughout the run, I literally used Marle, Lucca and Robo - in that order - in every single battle I did throughout the entire game. We've got Marle and Lucca here having their tearful goodbye with Robo while the total rando with the spiky red hair watches in the background.

This "Holiday Challenge" is one of the least challenging things named "challenge" I've ever heard of... but it sure was fun. We got to goof around with characters in the party that the game was never designed for, which pushes limits of how it's balanced and generally supposed to work. It's most interesting in the parts of the game that aren't based around 3-person parties, although it did tend to make those parts even easier.

As I said, on the whole I was impressed with my team's capabilities, particularly given Marle's generally-poor output. Combos like Ice Tackle, Fire Tackle, and Antipode 2 were so key through the 2nd half of the game. Despite the maybe-weak party composition, this still generally felt easier than my first few vanilla playthroughs. I guess I would attribute this to the three characters being used having higher levels, earlier access to good techs, and good equipment. The only truly challenging part, of course, was Nizbel the first.

I would be pleased to do this again sometime in the future.

<< First | < Previous | Index

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part VIII

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 20:57:11 GMT

Session 8 was on December 15. I thought I might beat the game this day, but I didn't.

Pretty much the first thing we did was track down some Jerky to finish the Sun Stone quest. With this, we earned Wondershot and Sun Shades.

Since it was close, we did Sunken Desert next. I was trying to get screenshots of Wondershot getting pleasantly boosted damage but I don't think I pulled it off. I am thankful that I got at least one of the three characters with access to water-based abilities for this part of the game, since you kind of need it for both the normal battles and the boss here.

At the bottom of the Sunken Desert, we fought the rogue sand pelvis!

I've had some bad fights with Retinite in the past, but this was very manageable. We got the core part out pretty much right away.

Neither Marle nor Lucca were particularly effective on the offense here, so it was pretty much Marle using Ice II to drop Retinite's defense and Robo using Uzzi Punch to deal damage. Lucca mostly threw items, occasionally shooting Wondershot. It seemed worthwhile to use Haste on Robo, and that worked out well, I think.

Next, we talked to Fiona and met Robo at Fiona's Shrine. We got our GreenDream and also purchased a Vigil Hat for Robo to wear. It ain't often I do this without Crono.

Reminded that I miss Crono, I decided we would do Death Peak next. This required getting a Clone from Norstein Bekkler, which I had totally forgotten about. I did okay at the mimicry minigame.

Death Peak was on the easy side all around. The Lavos Spawn battles were very quick using strong single-target attacks on the head parts, such as Fire Tackle. In the first Lavos Spawn I was a bit strategic, using Haste on Robo for example, but it was much faster to just go on the offensive.

The main reason I even wanted to do Death Peak now was it had a sort of logical progression to it, since Robo's Giga Arm is here and I knew that would be obsolete after Geno Dome... so I figured I should do this first. That probably didn't matter.

But, we reached the summit no problem and saved Crono. That's always nice.

After saving Crono, the party is at the End of Time! I decided to check on Spekkio and try to beat him since he gives a bunch of tabs if he's in his Masa & Mune form. Although he is currently in his Masa & Mune form, he kicked my butt. I am not sure whether this is going to happen in this playthrough.

The next area we chose to do is Geno Dome, which besides providing Robo with excellent weapons also gives him a permanent stat boost. The conveyor was nice; I used Shock for my first few times and got to see Robo utterly wrecking the machines here.

Now, in this area, Robo needs to be at the front of the party. Although you otherwise have free choice of party, my official party is Marle, Lucca, Robo and I wanted to keep them in that order, so I applied the script I was using at the beginning again. This made the palettes a little wonky in battle, and also made the battles feel a little bit fresher by keeping Robo out of party position #1.

Of course, the real impact this had was most noticeable in the Atropos fight, for a few reasons.

Naturally, in these circumstances, Atropos was even easier than usual. In normal play, this fight is practically scripted, but this time it was over much more quickly and we didn't get to see her using all of Robo's moves against us.

With that, we got the little stat boost I mentioned. 3 speed ain't nothin' to sneeze at.

When I got to MotherBrain, I thought about the battle really strategically for a bit. I know that the monitors heal her constantly and that her script gets considerably more aggressive without the monitors, so probably the smartest move is to keep one monitor alive and then use single-target attacks. Well, I didn't do that. Instead, I used Antipode 3 and Shock and won the battle in three attacks. Whoops.

The next place I thought we should do is Giant's Claw.

We had a couple of tougher battles here, just because Fossil Apes and Leapers have pretty high damage capacity. I found occasion to use Life 2 at least once. As well, the stream died and reconnected partway through.

Before Rust Tyrano, I had the foresight to put the Red Mail on Marle, and Lucca already had her Taban Suit on, so we'd resist the fire attacks. Well... we one-cycled this silly dino and didn't even suffer any real attacks. I was completely surprised that we won so quickly.

I think I have no idea where this team is on the game's intended power curve, if there is one. Arbitrary battles in Giant's Claw still carried risk, and we barely withstood two attacks from Spekkio, but we can beat bosses like MotherBrain and Rust Tyrano with so little effort. It is strange.

Since we located the Rainbow Shell, it made sense to go back to Guardia Castle in 1000 A.D. and let Marle have her time in the limelight.

This isn't a real dungeon though, seeing as the enemies are from the cathedral, and give like 8 experience points. That said, Yakra XIII can reasonably be considered a real boss. For this battle, we hasted Robo and then Lucca and let them pile on the damage with elemental tackles, Antipodes, Uzzi Punch and Mega Bomb.

It was one of Robo's Uzzi Punches that ended the fight.

We celebrated our resolving of all issues of the Kingdom of Guardia across two ages with a tasty Crono Special.

The only sidequest left, really, is Ozzie's Fort, so next time we'll do that and then the Black Omen. I think we'll probably do the Black Omen a couple of times to be plenty strong for the real endgame.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part VII

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 13:57:26 GMT

I played part seven on December 12. At the end of the previous session, I finished the Ocean Palace, and consequently I was no longer depending on the party replacement script I had been using... mostly.

The team triggered the cutscene where Dalton and goons grabbed us and took us to the Blackbird. I've never seen Marle be the one to pull the epic dodge against Dalton's attack.

Awkwardly, I didn't really remember the details of how to do the Blackbird because I pretty much always choose Ayla for this part of the game. I did the "act sick" thing but totally squandered the opportunity. It probably took me about ten minutes to find the room with the sleeping guard and claim Marle's equipment. Battling with just Marle sure felt strange.

Once I managed to get Marle's equipment, I just went berserk. I was thinking/saying, "now I can go full commando" but seeing as commandos are typically associated with tact and stealth that didn't seem right. Anyway, we beat up a bunch of guys and got all of our things back. Robo learned Shock in the process.

We fought some Turrets, which I said was "for fun" but no fun was had. We didn't actually beat any of them... nor did we really need to since we've learned all of our techs.

My trio fought GolemBoss, who I mostly just felt bad for, and Dalton Plus who maybe I should've felt bad for because he's quite lame.

With that, we earned our winged time machine! We met Magus and I ruminated about what choice to make here. I decided in terms of pure profit (or is it prophet? Hah!) it made sense to just recruit him.

I've never noticed that Marle directly blames both Dalton and Magus for Crono's death/disappearance, when really neither of them had much of anything to do with it. She just sounds like she's making things up.

We met with Gaspar, and got the C. Trigger. While I was at the End of Time, I decided to fight Spekkio who I last fought as a frog! While I was in the Ocean Palace I realized I hadn't checked in with him for a while; I think I skipped at least two of his forms, which is unfortunate. Now, he was an Omnicrone (sp?). This was no problem and we got a couple of prizes.

Next, I decided I really wanted to do the Sun Stone quest to get Lucca's Wondershot weapon. The first thing I would need to do is beat Son of Sun in the future, but I decided I should collect appropriate equipment for the occasion. I finally had means to get the Red Vest, Red Mail and Taban Suit, so I did that.

We fought Son of Sun with very, very low risk.

I placed the Moon Stone to charge it, and then realized I had forgotten where to get the Jerky I required to inspire generations of generosity. As a matter of course, since I wandered over to Choras anyway, I started the Northern Ruins/Hero's Grave quest. I did the cutscene with Cyrus' spirit and got some excellent equipment like the Nova Armor, Moon Armor, and Marle's best weapon, the Valkerye.

I also poured soda pop on Toma's grave to begin the Giant's Claw / Rainbow Shell quest, and I stopped around this point, still somewhat frustrated that I forgot where to buy Jerky. Normally, I do the Sunken Desert quest first! This is all pretty unusual.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part VI

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 18:52:41 GMT

I played this session on December 11th.

We started by entering the Sewer Access. This area can be completed during your first trip to 2300 A.D., but there's very little payoff so I didn't do it at the time. At this point it's stupidly easy, although it's kind of fun because of interesting gameplay like the part where you can't make a sound.

Sir Krawlie is here but he went down to a single attack.

Then we got access to the Epoch. I never noticed the spelling of "heros" here.

After getting the Epoch, we first went to 600 A.D. to get some elemental vests; I had an idea that I might want to use these during the Giga Gaia fight and possibly others.

After getting the Blue Vest, Black Vest and White Vest, we went to Algetty and proceeded to Mount Woe. We had to fight the beasts and the Mud Imp. I've actually had trouble with this fight when I was young and new to this game, but with single-targetting the elemental beasts with an elemental tackle, it was pretty simple.

Normally, I'd also be balancing my time in battles like this using Charm with Ayla, but this time I don't have access to that. For that matter, using Ayla bars you from accessing some elemental attacks. Having Marle and Lucca in the team was a big advantage this time.

I like Mount Woe. The treasures are pretty good, the battles have a certain balance to them, and there are Rubbles. We put a Hit Ring on Robo to try dealing with Rubbles more effectively, and that probably paid off. Probably the most interesting - or maybe chaotic? - battle here was a group of Man Eaters who charmed the entire party at once. What a bunch of sillies.

Given the high tech point yield in general, but especially from the Rubbles, we learned a lot of techs here! We all just need our final techs.

Here's the part where the screen darkens as you approach Giga Gaia. I think this is the only part in the game with an effect like this. I made reference to it in a riddle once.

For Giga Gaia, I had Robo wearing a Black Mail and Marle in a Black Vest. This meant that we'd absorb health from about half of the powerful elemental attacks used by the hands. At first, we single-targetted the hands with strong moves like Fire Tackle and Ice Tackle. We took them out and then focused on the head for a bit.

It took two cycles of beating the hands to deal enough damage, and a little bit of healing was necessary as well. The second time, instead of using strong single-target combos, we used Laser Spin, Ice II and Fire II. Against the head, we continued using Ice Tackle with Marle and Robo and Mega Bomb with Lucca. It worked out well.

We went back to the throne room of Zeal and fought Dalton. He was very easy and then he burped.

In the Ocean Palace, there were lots of good treasures including great weapon upgrades for all of our characters. As well, Marle now had Life II and Lucca learned Flare early on!

The biggest obstacle in the battles here, for the mostpart, was Scouter enemies. The Scouts all counter every element other than their own, so Marle can use Ice against Blue Scouts and Lucca can use Fire against Red Scouts. The Scouters are only vulnerable to lightning... so we had to just beat them with traditional violence, which takes some time.

Some other battles took a little bit of thought and/or effort. The Thrashers and Lashers who have combo-based counter attacks were quite tough when I tried multi-targetting them. One battle was an iffy one where Lucca was knocked out and Marle was confused. Our HP was middlish; I felt lucky to have Life II on Marle to help get the team back on track. It's not often one actually has occasion to use that tech!

I was also nervous about one of these battles on the platforms between the big staircases, as I've seen them crash before at least once. It really seemed pretty buggy and hung up for a moment, and then the game suddenly kind of... corrected itself. It ended up being no problem.

At the bottom, we had to face the GolemTwins. Given how our last Golem battle went, I thought this would be easy if I kept using fire attacks. That's exactly what I did; after Lucca used Fire II to get them both fire-affiliated, I used nothing but Fire Tackle for offense. Marle used Haste on the others to speed things up. Piece of cake.

I happened to check my tech learning after this battle and I thought it was kind of funny that the only tech anyone had left to learn was Robo's Shock... and I only needed 5 more tech points to get it.

When we faced Lavos, I thought it was rather unusual that Marle's graphics bugged out a bit when the game tried to reconcile the difference between Crono's graphics and Marle's. I also saw the line "Science has finally failed me." and I thought that was pretty funny.

Then all heck broke loose.

We saved at the "Last Village" before leaving the tent.

And we finally get to select our party freely! I mean, not that it seems like something we should celebrate.
Despite this little bit of newfound freedom, I think I might still use the script at least a bit. I'd like to see what happens with it in Geno Dome, for example. And hey, if not for that, then the rest of this playthrough would feel just a bit too normal, right?

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part V

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 16:53:22 GMT

I played the fifth session of RevenantKioku's Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge with my party-forcing script on December 9th, 2023.

This was a very prehistoric session. We went to get our dactyls, and then we headed to Tyranno Lair. Besides some slightly poor wayfinding, the only issue was Terrasaurs. Normally, a Terrasaur is dealt with by using Crono's lightning attacks; lightning-elemental attacks are not only their weakness, but put them in a stunned and vulnerable state. If you know this, and you should, Terrasaurs are just big, useless HP sinks. Without any lightning, they're actually pretty threatening, using frequent, powerful fire attacks and a physical attack that brought my party members' HP to 1. This did result in two casualties during Tyranno Lair - our first two in the entire run!

Not too long into Tyranno Lair, everybody learned their sixth techs, meaning we unlocked the very powerful Antipode II and Fire Tackle combos.

This brought us to Nizbel II. After Masa & Mune, Nizbel (augh) and Magus, this was our last boss that was clearly designed to take advantage of Crono's lightning affinity - which, of course, we do not have access to. After our 38-minute marathon battle with Nizbel the first, I was expecting this to be completely awful.

When our very first action was Fire Tackle for 1261 damage, my concerns were largely alleviated.

It was still a little bit concerning when the message "Def pwr up when attacked." popped up, but it seemed to cap eventually. Lucca and Robo kept using Fire Tackle while Marle used Haste and healed them. The next Fire Tackle did 985, then 720, then 524, then 520, then 523, then 526. I said it's possible that this was going to make the battle easier than having Crono, since we don't have to deal with Nizbel II's powerful electric discharge attack.

It still took a lot of Fire Tackles, but it was fine! We won, and it was considerably faster and easier than the original Nizbel.

Before finishing up with Azala, I realized this battle doesn't feature very much in the way of physical attacks. I decided to put the Taban Vest on Lucca and a Ruby Vest on Marle so they'd both have fire resistance, with Robo keeping the Dark Mail on for its magic defense boost. Then I started the battle. The phase with Azala was quick and easy; we did a lot of elemental tackling.

After the Black Tyrano dropped its defense to charge its fire breath, I had all kinds of options. Antipode II did fairly good damage (and looks awesome).

Fire Tackle, once again, proved to be our strongest option, dealing 1176 damage while the Tyrano's defense was down.

I squandered a lot of MP on Fire Tackle and a few Ice Tackles; we didn't need a whole lot of healing, because the decision to emphasize fire resistance proved to be a solid choice. What I forgot is that the Black Tyrano's defense at least partly normalizes after its fire breath... until it drops its defense again. In that range of time I sort of squandered a few strong attacks in such a way that they were dealing considerably less effective damage, with Fire Tackle only doing 748. Oh well, we still won before its second fire breath.

With that, we got to my absolute favourite part of the game. We thoroughly explored the communities of Zeal, finding the hidden rooms and getting several tabs in the process. When we finally got to the throne room, we faced the Golem. I remember this being a plot battle that is winnable but that the game expects you to lose... but for some reason it was really easy. Like maybe the Golem's fire attacks are just super weak? In typical play I would never be using Lucca during this portion of the game. I'm glad I did, because Fire Tackle was crazy.

With damage like that and Marle designated for healing, we won! Easily, for that matter. That's 35 tech points we wouldn't normally have.

The game proceeded a bit and we now have an empowered pendant. I decided to take a bit of time to get the treasures from 600 A.D. and thus unlock the upgraded chests with the elemental mails. I went around getting those from Truce and Porre, though I don't have access to Guardia Castle's black chest quite yet.

This little wander around the world provided an opportunity to visit my favourite treasure chest in the game:

My theory about what the heck is going on here is someone's idea of a joke. Like, the fact that it's pointed out as unusual that more than one piece of jewelry would be in a large box must itself be a gag about single treasures as a trope. Right? I don't know. I find it quite funny though.

With most of the sealed chests retrieved (although I didn't go back for vests yet), I also visited the sealed doors through most of 2300 A.D. I raided Trann Dome, Bangor Dome and Arris Dome, where the best prizes were a few tabs and the Gold Stud. I saved outside of the Sewer Access; we'll do that next time.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part IV

Sat, 09 Dec 2023 14:50:36 GMT

This was played on December 8th. I started by saying, "We're going to be getting into the tricky part of the run."
I was right.

When I suggested this part would be tricky, I realized there was a long string of bosses - and some normal enemies - who were very dependent on Crono's lightning attacks. Robo can also use lightning, but only via his final tech, Shock.
Among these bosses is Masa & Mune, who Crono can normally cancel out of its strongest attack, Nizbel, whose defense is only lowered with lightning, Magus, who swaps elemental vulnerabilities, and Nizbel II, who is Nizbel but worse. If any part of the game was not designed for what I'm doing here, it's the next few hours.

We got to Masa & Mune. For the first fight, I happened to target whichever one is on the left, and that seemed to work out nicely. After they merged, I used an Ice Tackle, which dealt 719 damage; suddenly I found myself not that worried! He only ended up charging tornado energy once, and indeed that attack was pretty strong, but hardly the worst thing we've endured. I certainly didn't need to follow VeghEsther's advice!

I went and got the Hero Medal and the Masamune hilt from Frog's home, and then I thought I could circumvent some of the plot directives by jumping into 65M B.C. This turned out to be incorrect, so we fell of a cliff for no real reason. We went to see Melchior first and then fell of the cliff again to meet Ayla.

We did a prehistoric party and drank some soup, and then hunting before heading into the Forest Maze. I did two "rounds" of the Hunting Range and eventually battled a Nu, which I had wanted to do anyway. With the trade items I got, I was able to get Marle, Lucca and Robo each a new weapon and some up-to-date armor. The Ruby Vests will be useful for a while.

The Forest Maze did feel considerably slower than usual, but it wasn't especially hard or anything. I had to recall which enemies in this part of the game were more resistant to physical attacks or spells. Then we entered the Reptite Lair. I tried to wait for EvilWeevils to dig holes, but it didn't happen fast enough (and I didn't remember how this worked well enough) that I ended up skipping that part for a bit. Most enemies here are weak to spells - lightning in particular, of course! But we had little problem dealing with them, besides the rather beefy Winged Apes.

We got to the bottom with no problem, and started the Nizbel fight. I found that my attacks were usually doing roughly 10 damage. This including techs and spells of different elements. I couldn't find any reasonable means to damage him. I was either going to have to fight him like this, or grind until Robo learns Shock... and I chose to do the former. However, I figured if I was going to be hitting Nizbel with 10-damage attacks, I would benefit from all of Haste, Protect and Heal Beam so I reset the game, loaded my save, and did a short grind to gain these next techs for each character. I happened to find a great spot where four Reptites that go down to a single Laser Spin appear right next to a doorway and give 8 tech points. We needed fewer than 10 fights with them for everyone to learn their next techs.

It didn't take long, and I thought this would be the difference-maker, so we went back to Nizbel.

I have a feeling this fight is going to be one I remember as a major highlight - or lowlight, perhaps? - of this entire run. Really, there were three options:

Just use normal attacks constantly, monitor HP frequently to keep up with healing.
Apply Protect and Haste as buffs, monitor HP but less frequently since we get more actions and take less damage, also monitor TP since we're casting the buffs, and still use normal attacks.
Grind until Robo learns Shock.

I chose option 2. I am still not sure it's better than option 1, but I really didn't want to do option 3 - although there's a chance I'll have to do it anyway for Nizbel II. I didn't realize that Protect and Haste both have durations in this game, but they seem to work out to roughly 8 turns for Protect and roughly 15 turns for Haste ("turns" probably aren't the actual units used by the game). I had to keep re-casting those, and with that along with my healing I used probably roughly 10 Mid Ethers and a few other restorative items. There was nothing else interesting here.

This successful (?) fight with Nizbel took 38 minutes to beat... and that was with a fair bit of fast forwarding.

Could I have grinded for Shock in 38 minutes? Probably not.
Azala said, "But remember, WE Reptites will rule the world!" and I replied, "I dunno, it looks like the dinosaurs are gonna be around for a good long time at this rate!".

We went back to Melchior and got the Masamune fixed, and then we showed it to Frog. We saw some flashbacks, and we proceeded to Magus' Castle. Once again, I found myself having to get used to which enemies were more vulnerable to elemental attacks and such, which I suppose is normal.

At the junction where you need to fight Slash and Flea, I decided to go for Flea first to get rid of the bat that follows the party around. Flea uses a lot of status attacks, but they're generally not that threatening in this game. I did use a Heal to cure some confusion/chaos once, but mostly I won with a barrage of Ice Tackles. Robo got hit with MP buster but that wasn't a big deal, especially since he's in the party anyway and thus less annoying to fix out of battle.

Flea gives a Magic Tab as a prize. I've been giving the few Magic Tabs I found so far to Robo since he tends to have way higher multipliers on his non-physical techs, and I'd say it's been paying off.

Normally the prize from Slash - the Slasher - is a better prize, since it's a good-for-this-point weapon for Crono with a nice speed bonus. But without Crono on the team it's quite pointless. I decided to fight Slash's first, swordless battle with just normal attacks to conserve MP. That worked out fine. His damage really does shoot up once he gets a sword though, with several attacks hitting around the 100-damage mark. As well, Slash is immune to water, which means Ice Tackle isn't an option. It took more than Robo's entire MP stock worth of Robo Tackles to take him out, requiring some mid-battle ether usage.

We proceeded through the castle, usually avoiding battles where we could. There are a few fairly good items in chests that we could take advantage of, like the DoomFinger and some armor upgrades. I grabbed the second Mist Robe before Ozzie and then realized that against Ozzie and Magus, your defense stat really doesn't matter very much and we'd be much further ahead to prioritize elemental properties and stat boosts, so Lucca put her Taban Vest back on and Marle wore a Ruby Vest.

I thought the battle with Magus might be really tough when I used Ice Tackle and he absorbed it, but it was literally our first action and I'm not sure what state his elemental properties begin in. Then he became fire-weak and Fire Punch did about 80 damage. Next, he became lightning-weak, which is a tough spot for us. I randomly used Robo Tackle and it did terrible damage, but also prompted him to change his weakness; I don't think I knew this happened. I think anytime I've played this game from a new save normally I've carefully observed the elemental juggling intent of this fight without throwing out other arbitrary attacks, besides Frog using the Masamune.

So Magus then shuffled through shadow-weakness (which we can hit with Laser Spin and Antipode) and then, finally he was vulnerable to water. I happily announced, "Ice Tack-le!".

It did 668 damage. Not bad. At this point my concerns about this battle were alleviated. In fact, he was already into his second phase: charging for one turn to cast Dark Matter.

"You have no idea what it was like to fight a triceratops to get to you, sir!"

Dark Matter is pretty damaging, but even in vanilla play you'd still have to endure it at least once. It was bad but Heal Beam had us back on track. Being able to focus on offense meant we could do things like use Ice Tackle for... 922 damage!

Magus did not last long at this point.

We woke up in Ioka Village, we did a few more trades for some weapon upgrades, and then we saved. I'm still considering how to approach Nizbel II but in the very short term I can just consider that future Fresh's problem.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part III

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:55:24 GMT

This third session of the Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge was played on December 5th, 2023.

We began at the Factory. I had Lucca and Robo in PC slots 2 and 3, respectively, very purposefully so that the palettes would be less screwy in battle. Consequently, I couldn't equip Marle with her new Robin Bow when we got it, but that's probably okay. Probably the majority of battles here were against Acid and Alkaline where our attack power doesn't really matter, so things felt normal and balanced here. Robo learned Robo Tackle partway through.

I eventually got to the R-series robots, and as usual they kicked the crap out of Robo.

I hadn't really thought about how this battle was going to go; for a moment, I was truly worried about how to do this battle effectively with just Marle and Lucca, before realizing Robo was going to be in the party despite being thrown in the garbage. So, in fact, this battle was probably easier than usual, even without Crono's very effective Cyclone tech.

I am still figuring out how the third character is actually being treated in battles that don't have an assigned position for them. I didn't analyze the situation in any detail but I've got no idea why Robo appears where he is. Anyway, Flame Toss was able to hit 3 robots at a time and Laser Spin was fairly effective here, so this battle was easy.

After this, we were able to access the End of Time, and thus Spekkio! Finally, Marle and Lucca could learn their powerful magic spells. To ensure it would happen all at once, my field party was set to Crono, Lucca and Marle. I was surprised to find that Spekkio was a frog.

Lucca and Marle hit the froggy with spells while Robo used Laser Spin. I don't know whether I've ever naturally reached the Spekkio in frog form... but what's happening here, I realized, is that the level used to determine Spekkio's form must be factoring in Crono's level, and Crono has been gaining experience at a reduced rate as if he is an out-of-party character, so he's still below 10.

Not only does learning Marle and Lucca's spells offer them a much better offensive option and open up their future techniques, but it also grants us more combos. We've had very few of those so far!

We went to Medina. I had so many swords and other Crono-centric treasures that I sold a bunch of things to see if I could afford some of those terribly-priced goods in Medina, but it wasn't even close. We shopped a bit with Melchior and entered the Heckran Cave. This area was about the same difficulty as usual, or maybe a tiny bit easier since Laser Spin is actually fairly effective here (even though in normal play, I'd never bring Robo to this particular area).

Heckran was probably a bit slower than usual on account of not having Crono's Lightning spells - or his speed stat! But it was a pretty straightforward fight.

We got the Taban Vest and proceeded to 600 A.D. via the fair. We saved everyone with jerky power and faced Zombor. Once again, I didn't recall the specifics of this fight's mechanics and had to do a little trial and error at the start of the fight. His attacks are actually pretty damaging, but it wasn't especially hard.

I seem to recall this part of the game feels pretty directionless; I was kind of walking around talking to NPCs to see if anyone was going to urge me to talk to Frog or go to Denadoro Mountains, but they really don't. I rested the party and started the Denadoro Mountains anyway.

Fights here are fine; as long as you remember to use Flame Toss or Fire on the hammer-wielding Ogans the enemies all go down quickly. Laser Spin was useful in some battles, too. We picked up the fairly well-hidden MirageHand and SilverStud here and equipped both.

We saved at a save point most of the way through the mountain, before the fight with Masa and Mune. It's one that I've been thinking about; I don't have any means to cancel their stored tornado energy, so hopefully I'll be able to take the hits and heal up afterward effectively enough. We'll see about that next time.

<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part II

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 15:38:43 GMT

In the first session, I didn't get too far, mostly because I was depending on my script that forces specific characters into the party during all battles and the script had some significant issues. However, as I wrote at the end of the previous section, I fixed it, and for session 2 on December 3rd it was working reliably.

To start, I started from the save point before Yakra. In the interest of reducing the redundancy with the part I had played yesterday, a part of my testing of the fixes to my script was playing the rest of the Cathedral, so I started on this slightly later save. Then we went and fought Yakra. Like the previous day's play, it was a bit on the hard side. Because of the counters, I mostly avoided attacking with Marle and had Robo and Lucca use their first techs for offense. You can see our TP got a bit low, but otherwise it probably went a bit better overall.

I was nervous about certain scenes, like the previously identified hangups, so I was pleased when the game didn't freeze in the Guardia Castle throne room. In fact, these scenes played out completely normally.

In the Millennial Fair, I hadn't helped the little girl with the cat, hadn't eaten the man's lunch, and otherwise didn't make "errors". I was still surprised about getting the entire jury to vote "not guilty". I know this part of the game has some odd behaviours and I guess I don't understand the guts of it in full.

To my surprise, I guess the unanimous verdict has no observable effect on anything... but it's kind of cool.

So we went to prison! As an area where you would normally only have Crono, we got to observe lots of strange battle positioning. Instead of Robo appearing off-screen entirely, he and Lucca would often appear outside of walls and such.

This was especially funny for the battles on bridges.

There was nothing else particularly significant about this area; having three characters when you'd normally have one made the battles even easier than they would normally be, and I never found this area the least bit challenging even with just Crono. I also made use of Crono's field ability to knock out the soldiers with his sword.

Now, the Dragon Tank is one of a few things that made me nervous in this run. This isn't because I thought it would be a hard battle, but because I expected this to be one of those things most likely to interact poorly with my party-swapping script, given the special animation that takes place when you defeat it. Everything was normal beforehand, and besides Robo appearing to be flying below the bridge during the battle it generally worked as expected.

Not having Crono does present some challenge, but we managed this battle just fine. I thought Robo's Laser Spin would be an asset, but it's quite a bit weaker than the head part's healing, so that didn't end up being useful in the least. His best offense was Rocket Punch.

Then... the moment of truth.

It worked great! Very encouraging. Now the only thing I'm really scared of is... dinosaurs.

Thunder stun all dinosaur. You know?

2300 A.D. wasn't too bad. I only fought one pack of Shadows and Lucca's Flame Toss happened to work well on them, although it does make me miss Crono's Slash attack. Battles felt like they were taking longer than they would without my script, although they shouldn't given the only difference is having Robo instead of Crono (and Robo ought to be slightly higher-levelled than Crono would be).

Arris Dome was easy. It took two cycles to beat Guardian, but we did so without much issue. Again, the most effective attack we had was Robo's Rocket Punch.

After this, we wandered over to Proto Dome and met Robo for real! This doesn't do too much for us, although we can finally change his equipment if needed and check on his tech learning. He only needs 30 more TP to learn Robo Tackle, which is great. We saved up before entering the Factory.

In the next session we'll get to do that and then meet Spekkio, which is going to be awesome.

< Previous | Index | Next >

comments

Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge 2023 Part I

Sun, 03 Dec 2023 23:50:31 GMT

In Fall 2023, RevenantKioku (the same fella from the Four Job Fiesta and many other such events) came up with a series of charity events for a humanitarian cause in response to an ongoing-but-recently-escalating conflict that left a lot of children and other civilians as victims. The only one that time and access really allowed me to do was his Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge, active for the month of December 2023.

The Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge previously ran in 2017 but this is my first time trying it. The idea is that you're assigned three random characters from the seven playable characters in the game, and you need to use your assigned three characters at all points where you've got the option to use them. (I don't know the details of the randomization process but it seems like people disproportionately frequently draw Crono... and disproportionately rarely draw the final character.) Adhering to specific characters is a bit hard to do, or at least rather awkward, with the constraints of the game when it's unmodified.

I decided to... not do it unmodified. I mean, the game itself is unmodified, but I made a script to run on top of it. I conceptualized it in November, posted about it with some friends on a private board, and then put it together right before the holiday challenge began. It's posted here on my GitHub.
The jist of how this script works is that it looks at one byte that indicates whether you're in battle or not. If you're in battle, but you weren't in battle on the previous frame, then set the current party equal to the assigned party. If you are not in battle, but you were on the previous frame, then set the current party equal to whatever the party was before the battle. I did some limited testing and decided to jump right in!

As we'll see here... that may have been a mistake.

My party was assigned as Marle, Lucca and Robo. This is a fine group, and I'm glad it won't feel normal, although frankly any combination with Frog, Ayla or Magus would've been more interesting to me. One particular problem I foresee with this team is Nizbel II, for whom you normally depend on Crono's lightning attacks to battle. I hope I won't have to grind until Robo learns Shock before that point!

Although it took a bit of setup, I was actually quite confident in this script from my testing! And the game started out normally enough.

It went a bit wrong when I made a typo that mis-assigned one of the party members, and then I tried to correct it, but with some values already set my attempted fixes broke everything a bit worse.

I re-started and there were other problems. I didn't manage to identify the problems while I was playing, although I had some inklings and I was able to fix the script really quickly immediately after. By the time I settled into some legitimate game progress, I was just manually editing the game's memory when any important scene was happening outside of battle.

Because I was playing the start of the game repeatedly, I wasn't exploring every single thing or interacting with a ton of NPCs. I was pretty minimalist going through the Millenial Fair. After the fair, we got into real battles, which looked kind of like this:

It was pretty cool. The palettes were bad, and Robo was participating from the top-left corner, just off the edge of the screen, but it worked nicely and was quite novel.

The problem was, well, the script's problem... where I realized the party changes that were being forced by the game's normal behaviour were going to be ignored by my script. That resulted in scenes like this one:

"Oh my God, so that's why Marle disappeared from the timeline! ... She's standing right behind me, isn't she?"

As I played, I wasn't sure how easy it would be to fix my script so I decided to keep going and just manually changed values as things went awry. That said, it was funny observing which parts worked and which parts didn't. I was surprised I could proceed right through having Frog join the team while Marle was following me around. As I did this, I tried Laser Spin which looked really neat in a battle that has no third character position.

Then, inside the cathedral, I was surprised that the scene where the party slides down the booby-trapped stairs was a hardlock if you don't have three characters in your out-of-battle party. That seemed so ordinary, but it breaks the game! With these issues, I was considering being done but I thought I'd at least finish the cathedral.

Battles were interesting; with Robo never having been in the party and Marle and/or Lucca not officially in the out-of-battle party, we had pretty close to no ability to heal outside of battle. This meant I had to use Aura and/or Aura Beam a few times to keep the hitpoints up, especially with Marle and Lucca's low levels. Marle and Lucca also have poor offense, especially pre-Spekkio, which drew out the battles considerably. All three characters are pretty slow, too. By the time we got to the end, our TP was feeling a bit lean.

These same factors made the battle with Yakra the hardest I've ever had, even despite Robo's somewhat advanced level. The characters are slower, we were lacking offense compared to a normal party with Crono and Frog, and needing more individual strikes prompted a higher number of counter attacks. I've never had a Yakra battle like this.

Even though I had previously tested my script through this part in the game, it froze when Frog was leaving the party in the Guardia Castle throne room. I decided I'd fix the script before the next session and finish up the cathedral an additional time but hopefully with better results.

I did fix the script pretty much immediately after wrapping up. Again, it's only very lightly tested... but when has that stopped me?

Index | Next >

comments