Phil the Nuka-Cola Dude said:
Great story, combat, and massive variety in who you can bring along in your party, multiple endings and new game +... with limited character development. Wooh. It's one flaw, and a very minor one when you're dealing with that many characters. Square games typically have very little character development outside of the main character/love interest(s), but that doesn't make them any less awesome.
I liked the main plot but the other character's plots were all over the place in quallity. That said, many were detatched from the main plot and none really went anywhere. As for Square normally ignoring all but the two protagonists, I disagree. They usually have at least a couple points per character where their background comes to the forefront in quests and more in dialogue. Chrono Cross merely offers a single quest, which is really a character earning quest, and then does nothing with the character. Sure they talk in plot portions of the game but they are built up to no more than a shell of a personallity.
The combat was pretty good (nothing spectacular), though not as good as Chrono Trigger (among others) and the amount of overlap between characters defeated any reason to have so many. They could have had a quarter of the characters and had each be far more interesting and unique to play with. The combination large number of characters and leveling system made the amount of grinding too great to be enjoyable for me as I had to actually grind up a character if I ever wanted to use them. Had the game had a different leveling system it would been much better, for infact, had each time you gained a star your characters gained the levels to be at the right power level instead of lost them, it would have had a quite good system. Also the encounters were better than in some games but still didn't feel as handcrafted and hand placed as Chrono Trigger.
All in all, less characters with more depth and individuality (gameplay-wise)is better than many characters with little depth and individuality. The only games which effectively skirt this are TRPGs, which tend to have a fair number of characters who are well characterized through the plot and a number of grunts with no plot, and Valkyrie Profile 2, which did essentially the same thing.
.Pixote. said:
I much prefer to play console games on a PC through an emulator…not only do they look better, but I can save the game at any stage I want, etc. I will admit some games are easier to play with the proper controller compared to the keyboard, but I can live with the keyboard orgy. The sad facts are many of these games are not easily available anymore, nor the original consoles. But I never played on a console before the PS1, and the reality is that many of the greatest games came out before 1995.
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Actually console games tend to look better on TVs, though they tend to look better on CRTs than LCDs. The NES certainly looks better on my computer than it does on my LCD TV but my Genesis and beyond are the otherway around and I prefer using the proper gamepad.
I'm with Phil though, buy a controller or fight stick for your PC, keyboard is no way to play. I'm thinking of buying a Dualshock 3 to replace my logitech controller but since the d-pad is the main thing I hate, I'd really like to find a controller with a good, oldschool d-pad.
.Pixote. said:
I think Vagrant Story was one of the best RPG ever for the PS1…it is certainly one of the most challenging and beautiful. I could never complete it…
Yeah I love that game, what I've played of it at least. Certainly one of my favorite ARPGs.
