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chuckroGood morning, Crono!
It’s been 15 years since I did a proper play-through of what is probably one of the best jrpgs of all time and certainly one of the best on the SNES. I decided to mix it up a little by playing the Schala Edition hack, which promised to be fairly close to the original but with some fun additions.
Like the FF4 “Golbez Edition” or FF6 “Leo Edition”, this clearly started with a goal in mind (add a sidequest where you can rescue Schala) and then became a series of minor changes of everything the hacker always wanted in the game. In this case, everyone in the Middle Ages speaks like Frog, there are a number of new map locations and NPCs, several Techs are changed and rearranged, the best accessories provide both bonuses and Triple Techs, and a bunch of other minor fixes and rearrangements. And then the major change is that after the Ocean Palace and Blackbird sequence, Magus always joins, and then you stay in Antiquity through a series of new dungeons and boss battles to defeat Dalton for good and rescue Schala. (And as I was one of the many fans who thought rescuing Schala was the game’s big missing mystery, this very much appealed to me.)
I hit a snag (not quite a glitch) that I’ve never seen before but was apparently in the original game: If you go to Bekkler’s tent at the Fair after the Ocean Palace events, but don’t have enough money to buy the Crono Doll if you fail the minigame, he won’t offer it to you. You can play the minigame normally for 40 silver points to get clones of your party members and cat food, but you can’t get the Crono Doll unless you’ve got something like 40,000 gold on hand. I never ran into this problem before! I had to go do a bunch of the sidequests and come back later.
I also had a weird moment going through the Black Omen when I wasn’t sure if they had added to it or not (the answer was no—it was always that goddamn long). To be fair, the Black Omen is technically optional, it gives you a halfway point where you can escape, and it’s intended to get you the final round of grinding and upgrades to get you ready to beat Lavos. And if you really want, you can do it three times and have Ayla steal great items each time (I didn’t bother).
Chrono Trigger itself remains a masterclass in jrpg design. You basically never have to grind; fighting everything in your path (though most battles on second and subsequent passes through areas are avoidable) gets you plenty of XP and money to carry you through. Backtracking rarely feels like backtracking because it’s either very plot-relevant or wholly optional. Bosses often require strategy, but those strategies are generally intuitive as you fight them (or spelled out for you by in-game hints). The plot is a rollercoaster that gives you enough information to motivate you but holding back plenty for twists that make logical sense in terms of what the characters would know and believe. You eventually get to use the game’s time-travel conceit in very clever ways for the sidequests, but the sidequests are entirely optional and the ending changes in response to them…and then there’s the wonderful New Game+ postgame content in terms of the multiple endings that give you a nice bonus for only replaying a little but reward you for replaying a lot.
I debated about playing a New Game+ here, but ultimately decided I’d rather move on to something else in the series—there’s a fan-made hack sequel, there’s the fan-translated Japan-only text adventure sequel, and there’s the actual PS1 sequel.
Overall: As noted, this game really holds up. The hack adds some fun bits that are unnecessary but switches it up a little and satisfies a decades-old urge for me.
It’s been 15 years since I did a proper play-through of what is probably one of the best jrpgs of all time and certainly one of the best on the SNES. I decided to mix it up a little by playing the Schala Edition hack, which promised to be fairly close to the original but with some fun additions.
Like the FF4 “Golbez Edition” or FF6 “Leo Edition”, this clearly started with a goal in mind (add a sidequest where you can rescue Schala) and then became a series of minor changes of everything the hacker always wanted in the game. In this case, everyone in the Middle Ages speaks like Frog, there are a number of new map locations and NPCs, several Techs are changed and rearranged, the best accessories provide both bonuses and Triple Techs, and a bunch of other minor fixes and rearrangements. And then the major change is that after the Ocean Palace and Blackbird sequence, Magus always joins, and then you stay in Antiquity through a series of new dungeons and boss battles to defeat Dalton for good and rescue Schala. (And as I was one of the many fans who thought rescuing Schala was the game’s big missing mystery, this very much appealed to me.)
I hit a snag (not quite a glitch) that I’ve never seen before but was apparently in the original game: If you go to Bekkler’s tent at the Fair after the Ocean Palace events, but don’t have enough money to buy the Crono Doll if you fail the minigame, he won’t offer it to you. You can play the minigame normally for 40 silver points to get clones of your party members and cat food, but you can’t get the Crono Doll unless you’ve got something like 40,000 gold on hand. I never ran into this problem before! I had to go do a bunch of the sidequests and come back later.
I also had a weird moment going through the Black Omen when I wasn’t sure if they had added to it or not (the answer was no—it was always that goddamn long). To be fair, the Black Omen is technically optional, it gives you a halfway point where you can escape, and it’s intended to get you the final round of grinding and upgrades to get you ready to beat Lavos. And if you really want, you can do it three times and have Ayla steal great items each time (I didn’t bother).
Chrono Trigger itself remains a masterclass in jrpg design. You basically never have to grind; fighting everything in your path (though most battles on second and subsequent passes through areas are avoidable) gets you plenty of XP and money to carry you through. Backtracking rarely feels like backtracking because it’s either very plot-relevant or wholly optional. Bosses often require strategy, but those strategies are generally intuitive as you fight them (or spelled out for you by in-game hints). The plot is a rollercoaster that gives you enough information to motivate you but holding back plenty for twists that make logical sense in terms of what the characters would know and believe. You eventually get to use the game’s time-travel conceit in very clever ways for the sidequests, but the sidequests are entirely optional and the ending changes in response to them…and then there’s the wonderful New Game+ postgame content in terms of the multiple endings that give you a nice bonus for only replaying a little but reward you for replaying a lot.
I debated about playing a New Game+ here, but ultimately decided I’d rather move on to something else in the series—there’s a fan-made hack sequel, there’s the fan-translated Japan-only text adventure sequel, and there’s the actual PS1 sequel.
Overall: As noted, this game really holds up. The hack adds some fun bits that are unnecessary but switches it up a little and satisfies a decades-old urge for me.
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Date: 2023-07-10 01:17 am (UTC)