Chrono Trigger (Zero Punctuation)
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- Опубліковано 1 сер 2023
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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews Chrono Trigger.
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:1 kinda late, it's almost the end of summer! 😆
I would love to see more zp of retro games.
No thanks.
A joke about 9/11 conspiracy theories a NK gulag AND old people dying off so we can elext better officials?! Now THAT'S how you advertise your Patreon to ZP fans, good shit! :D
@@alexroy5854 It's pretty funny how non Americans obsess over 9/11 lmao
"That's just fire with a PhD"
My new favorite Yahtzee quip
This now lives in my head rent-free.
Yep, I'm definitely stealing it the first chance I get.
One of his best in a minute
Pulling double duty as both a hilarious quip and as a scathing review of Oppenheimer
Pure gold.
Seeing Crono be depicted with an upside down crab as a standin for his hair made me laugh harder than I'm willing to admit
That and Lavos as a red hedgehog were both gold.
I'd be terrified to see how he would depict Yugioh...
I had not understood the joke until you spelled it out for me. Thanks! That got a chuckle out of me.
Kinda like Sora from Kingdom Hearts having his hairdo depicted with an upside down echidna on his head. 😂
Cosplaying just got easier! Thanks Yatzhee!
To be fair, Japan does have a somewhat solid claim on using "Nuclear" as it's own distinct category/class
Underrated comment.
Oh no
Oh yes
List of countries that have experienced a nuclear attack:
- Imperial Japan
End of list.
*Please do not alter this list.*
Let use nuclear for energy not war
Something I love about the “god destroys the world plot” is you see the destroyed world first. The whole beginning of the game is just fantasy land and then you run away from the castle, into a portal into a desolate place where everything is dead except for the last remaining humans who are constantly starving to death. It’s quite a shock, and you literally play through that part of the game. It’s way more impactful than if there was a prophecy that said “do the thing, or bad thing happen”
Yup, you SEE the impact that Lavos had, before you see it happen on video... And even then, there's no NEED for our heroes to stop him. They could just live their lives, perfectly normally, and it wouldn't affect them...
But they CHOOSE to use time travel to fix the situation, even if it's not a problem they would ever have to deal with. I really like that.
Plus Lavos isn't even really a VILLAIN. its a MONSTER that's just gonna blow up the earth as a side effect of its lifecycle.
FF6 did a great job with it, too. God destroys the world at the midway point, and THEN you go kick his ass in revenge for destroying the world. And to stop him from re-destroying it every time some piece of it gets un-destroyed.
@@AegixDrakan This gives me that "If it doesn't affect me, it doesn't matter to me. I'll let future generations fix it" feel to it. So it's nice that they making a difference for their future!
Final Fantasy 6 was like that too. Damn Squaresoft was so good on SNES.
"20 somethings using the power of middle management to kill the pope"
That's just FF14's Heavensward
MAIM the pope.
Ah, I knew that plot sounded familiar!
with a 'side tangent' of dragons.
Holy shit it is. That’s hilarious.
You know, that's not entirely wrong. XD
Using the power of friendship to kill God is probably the Japanese equivalent of "and then they lived happily ever after". The audience probably won't know how to feel if it's not in there
That's why FFIX shadowdropped Necron as the final boss, because Kuja apparently wasn't god-tier enough.
Nice side effect of having an animist religion is that you've got lots of gods so you can smack one or two of 'em around if they get out of line
Also buddhism, of "if you see the Buddha in the street, kill him" fame
Young heroes killing God in JRPGs thematically feel like video game version of moving out of your controlling parent's house. Doesn't it feel like after saying "fuck you 'god', I'm not doing your chores and paying you rent anymore. I will do chores and pay rent but I'll build our own world with our own rules" at the end of a JRPG? That's why they are satisfying to me at least.
I've read somewhere a theory that JRPG protagonists are always teenagers because that's the last time in a japanese life that (s)he can decide something before becoming a cog in the machine. And more recently I've watched an essay about the gods slayed in JRPG representing the overbearing system...
I think that checks out with the lives-for-the-job, suicide-ridden, low fertility (among other depressing statistics) 21st century Japan
@@armelior4610 You'd think so, but no; japanese teens are spending their lives prepping for upper high school/university entrance tests, sleeping like four hours a night
It's actually university where things are chill
AFAIK it's different now simply because there just aren't so many young people anymore so the competition isn't as bad
Don't forget it launched Yasunori Mitsuda into forever stardom thanks to the FUCKING SOUNDTRACK OF THE GODS he dropped on it as his first composer gig for games.
Uematsu making cameo appearances certainly didn't hurt.
Part of why I'm so excited for Sea of Stars!
I'm pretty sure Schala's Theme will be what saves humanity when the robots are deciding our fate
The Rick roll of robo's theme😂
@@TheSchaef47 It's the other way around, though : Uematsu was to be the main composer and invited Mitsuda to participate, then let him do the most of it because he liked his stuff.
The plot seemed to flow decently to me (as decent as most time travel plots do, anyway). After the prison break, you're fleeing the guards who understandably want to put you back, and in the course of fleeing find a Gate that lets you escape. The Gate then plonks you in a post-apocalyptic future, the characters learn what caused the apocalypse and want to stop it, and so quest to do so, but because they never have the full picture of _everything_ that led to the apocalypse, curveballs keep emerging to move the goalposts. As such plots go, I think it's actually pretty smartly written, and it gets there while still allowing for character interplay.
Yeah I really think Yahtzee dropped the ball on this one. The story is actually quite well written...if you pay attention.
@@kevadu While the story totally worked for me, I would argue that Yahtzee is right about the fact that after the Lavos reveal, the story is much less personal for the characters. It goes from "I screwed up the past and now I'm trying to save my new friend's life and get back to my own time" to "I'm an outsider from another time trying to prevent the end of the world."
That totally worked for me, both as a kid and adult replaying it, but it is a big shift in how the story is treated and relates to the characters.
Where the plot falls down a bit is towards the end when the group seemingly decides to stop looking for a clever way to stop the Day of Lavos and to just beat him up.
@@bjhaleI guess I can understand that argument, but to be fair, they couldn't stop Lavos from landing; couldn't stop him from tunnelling underground; couldn't stop Queen Zeal from summoning him in the Ocean Palace; and couldn't stop Magus from summoning him in the Middle Ages. What other option is there past a certain stage besides attacking the problem head-on? Particularly since any attempt to get close to Lavos results in a fight anyway? At least by the end you have a group to fight with and are all toughened up and kitted out to endure a fight.
@@CaptainBooshi That's fair. I actually think the bit just after saving Queen Leene is a brilliant bit of storytelling. "We did weird hijinks, we saved the Queen, now what?" Funnily enough, we actually see Marle doing some planning of her own here, since when Marle is dragging Crono along, and Lucca leaves, Marle makes a nod like "uh-huh, I won, now I'm going to take this boi home"
I kind of agree that there IS a lull in the story there, and I can sort of see it being a minus in some peoples' eyes. To me it's an absolute plus; we get to explore the world/time and pretty shortly we find that Magus was responsible for summoning Lavos, and off we go! Also, they're trying to find their way back home, which is IMO a reasonable middle point motivation?
"Sorry, weebs, the previous generation of weebs beat you to the punch."
Yahtzee has such a glorious way with words.
As someone who has only played through the game pretty recently (and can't have nostalgia for it, since I wasn't born yet when it came out) I can say that Chrono Trigger is absolutely not a case where people remember its early moments the most. It's not just that I personally thought some of the strongest moments of the game came much later, but the fan-favorite parts or simply those brought up the most often are things like the sidequests or the amount of endings that are available; generally stuff that requires getting through a lot of the game.
Edit: In an Extra Punctuation released after this review Yahtzee openly admits he did not finish this game. So, it’s possible he didn’t even get to witness many of the fan-favorite moments.
Yeah, like my favourite moment is absolutely the final dungeon itself, Undersea Palace. And I remember fighting Magus, looking for Melchior or one of the other sages or whatever which is a rather open moment, and I just love how good of a villain Lavos is.
He's kind of just a better JENOVA before JENOVA was even done.
Lavos is more a sci-fi threat then fantasy. The thing is a lovecraftian space parasite that uses its influence to guide the organisms on the planet to make itself stronger.
lots of ppl just liked the opening bits, or never finished the whole thing. So im with Yahtz on this one. Also nostalgia stronk.
(Spoilers ahead you've been warned)
The fact that at one point you can just... Lose the main character and complete the rest of the game without them was always somethings nuts to me and just one of the many reasons I FULLY replay this masterpiece every time I get a nostalgia kick in the rear about it.
@@Overloaded45 I’m sure those people exist, but I sincerely doubt they are the majority
I'll say it: anyone who doesnt bring Marle in their party when they resurrect Chrono is a goddamn heartless monster.
I usually brought magus just cause of his snes line end of time
"You got whacked cause ya weak"
The real question is: did Yahtzee kill Magus?
@@josephengland6404the real question: did Yahtzee get the sun sword
... There's something to be said for a weapon that requires 65 million years of sitting in sunlight to become super extra
@@WillDissolver The thing that really annoyed me about the sun stone is I went to 600 A.D. to get it and it was like "noooo, it's only been 65,000,600 years, I'm literally powerless unless if I've been soaking any less than 65,002,300 years"
Marle for plot reasons, Ayla because she can kick everyone's ass on the Blackbird barehanded.
I love the second half WAY more than the first half. Crono dying, Zeal, the Black Omen, finding out Lavos is actually a ship with an alien pilot inside. All good shit.
No, it's all one life form, the polyp in the colon is just where the important braincells are.
Agree; Zeal (and especially the climactic Ocean Palace) is still one of my favorite sections in any game.
But the Black Omen was always a slog to get through, though, let's be fair.
The first visit to 12000 BC and seeing how different everything is is still one of the biggest Whoa Shit moments in gaming to this day. Also, "Corridors of Time" might actually be the best world map music ever written.
But that requires paying attention to the anime story, and we all know how this reviewer feels about anime stories.
If the plot doesn't grip you in for mashing that skip button on the dialogues fast as possible, then it sucks.
Yeah it's sorta weird that he had nothing to say about it which does kinda loudly imply that he (once again) played half the game, bodged together a Greatest Hits of old riffs, and called it a day
"Twenty-somethings using the power of middle-management to maim the Pope" actually isn't that far off from how Xenosaga Episode 2 ends.
And Xenoblade 2.
God, Xenosaga Ep2 had to be the biggest disappointment I've had as a newcomer of the Xeno series after Ep1.
I've never seen another Xenosaga enjoyer out in the wild.
Ep 2 was really... something. I kinda loved the systems of EP1 so a lot of it being heavily changed was an odd choice. Plus the plot...
Or XCOM 2
@@fieryrebirth I wish they'd just fucking remake Xenogears.. But do it properly.
I've had the idea for a while now of actually making the joke games that Yahtzee suggests in his reviews, and "Twentysomethings using the power of middle management to maim the pope" just shot to the top of the list.
Yes. Do it.
I think I have a TTRPG character that would do that.
Promise me that will be the name because I'd buy that on principle.
Please make it! 🙏
I mean, the mid-game of most Yakuza games are pretty much just this
Robo and Ayla are so absurdly good in this game. They hit like damn trucks and are pretty tanky. Good choices on your party.
Ayla in particular has a dual tech (Falcon hit, I think it was called) with Chrono that trivializes tons of monsters and a few bosses, including the giant 'robot' mentioned in the video. It does multiple target physical damage and doesn't seem much affected by armor.
Sadly, although Marle/Lucca are important from a story perspective, they are pretty solidly the worst and second worst characters in combat.
But there is also the triple tech with marle chrono and lucca, which is the best raw damage option I think
@@aravindpallippara1577Triple techs are usually impractical because at least one character needs to be healing most turns. Besides, damage is usually pretty easily handled by giving Chrono the gold stud and having him spam Luminaire every turn.
@@mitrovarr No amount of logic could dissuade teenage me from my cute girl teams in RPGs.
@@mitrovarrI do find it funny that even fof as little as he tends to play JRPGs, much less like them, Yahtzee *still* gravitated towards the "top tier" characters. Poor Marle.
"Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee"
BUT...
THE FUTURE REFUSED
TO CHANGE
man talk about one of the best game over screens in ANY game ever...
@@marcosdheleno I love the art-deco font (for some reason) that isn't used anywhere else in the game.
I love Chrono Trigger because the final act suddenly turning into a sandbox always overwhelms me.
Still one of my all-time favorite games, I play it again every few years and it holds up way better than it should. And great on Yahtzee for representing Lavos as an angry hedgehog and Chrono as a dude with a crab on his head.
I’ve been meaning to play it for ages. Golden sun is one of my fav games so I think I’d like this a lot
Him describing the animed cutscenes as "DragonBall Z Episodes" is surprisingly accurate given who was the art director for Chrono Trigger...
They were even animated by his studio.
Yeah, as much as I love me some good DBZ, Toriyama sadly only has like 5 faces/hair styles across all media he's worked on....
@@trevorweisberg8470 Explains why a lot of early antagonists are bald.
@@trevorweisberg8470 still better than most mangaka.
The majority only has 1 for each gender.
I think he's always been better at monster design than anything else
It's true that the game after the first arc, when the time travel shenanigans really begin, does come down to "the group bumbles into a new scenario and is there while the actually relevant character has to deal with some situation," but I like that. It gives a proper sense of the starting trio not being the only main characters with the world revolving around them, *the whole party* are main characters in their own stories. We get to see them in their relevant context, the problems and dangers they face. Then we kidnap them on a joyride in a flying time machine so we can go kill a world-eating parasite before it kills everything
I absolutely agree with this. Most other rpg have it that the main cast are the only people who exist. I like the idea that the world will go on with or without their intervention. Until they're god-slayers, they're just teens finding their place.
I think it only makes sense for the world not to revolve around the party because of how the time travel plot is introduced. They volunteered to save the future despite having no stake in it nor any involvement in its destruction. And of course any events they inadvertently change in the past can have unforeseen consequences.
You know, given the theories they have about the portals, that they're the aspect of some entity, some greater thing with perspective on the world, be it their experience of the world flashing before their eyes in their final moments, or some other sort of retrospective thing, it makes a kind of sense in the narrative that you keep stumbling into places that have major plots currently happening. The suggested premise of the time portals suggests they *should* all be to moments when big stuff would've happened even if the party didn't show up, with maybe the future being the only oddball point in the timeline by that interpretation, unless it's about the robot army trying to finish off humanity at that point, maybe?
I REALLY dont know what to say about this review, to say the story drops of after the first part is just insane to me, CT has one of the best pacing in ANY rpg. the progression is flawless, and you understand every step that happens.
you go to the past to save marle,
you come back and is arrested,
you escape through the only route which sents you to the future.
in the future you discover the world will be destroyed by a gargantuan monster.
you go back, to the present, but end up in a village of monsters, where you learn that monster was created in the same era in the past you were in,
you go back and fight the dude who created that monster... only to discover he didnt, he was trying to summon said monster.
you end up in the prehistoric age fight off dinossaurs(who you first met in a prior adventure that seems inconsequential but was done for setup).
and the story keep going. before opening up. there's so much side content and side quests as well, that are not required but are there for character development(and sweet loot).
CT isnt just a nostagia, it is the best time travel game there is. and the standard many players compare time travel stories to.
As for story it really is nostalgia, it's not that you can't justify the elements, it's that you have to justify them. Playing it without nostolgia goggles you can cler see the "f*ck it they do this..." moments. For example "Ok we need to get them to the future uh... fuck it they get chased to a dead end and time travel there to get away, NEXT" and then those events are just plopped out uncermoniously with no further refinment into them.
Once it gets back into it's grove it gets good again, but I am sorry, they had the first chunk and the last chunk squared well away, and hobbled some shit together to connect them. It's not glaring plotholes no, but it is downright sloppy without kid brain. My guess is they oringinally planned for twice the length and had to drop a bunch of it for time.
@@baileyface54 " Playing it without nostolgia goggles you can cler see the "f*ck it they do this..." " problem is, that argument can be said about EVERYTHING.
character went to grab a cup of coffee, and meets another? its a "fck it they have to meet", character points a gun to someone and miss the shot? "its a fck it moment".
character literaly goes to work and nothing happens "its a fck it, lets show how normal their lives are".
I don't think Yahtzee's saying the story dropping off meaning the story goes bad. He's saying the story is very character-focused at first, but then the characters are less the focus and now it's Lavos.
@@elhazthorn918 but that makes no sense, the very first thing you do after going back to the present is meet melchior(i belive that's the one there), and then you go into the past to find the red stone,
you meet and learn about ayla. her conflicts and the kid she is interested in. you can even see how she puts alot of importance in his survival, as she sees him as the next leader if she is to die(which she prepared for).
then we go into the past and see a character focus on frog, his past, him questioning himself, then we do it for magus, back to ayla, a bit of robo, and then you basically open the end game.
CT is extremely short, but its so well made, and flows so well, people dont realize. also game has massive character driven side quests.
I believe it to be the best implementation of time travel full stop, in any medium actually.
This is one of those few times where I think Yahtzee forgot one of the important bits about game difficulty from his childhood. All the boss battles in Chronotrigger are based around magic counters and timing - if you just mash and heal it takes forever because you'll constantly be triggering retaliation damage and with the later bosses retaliation heals. Its like a bullet hell, once you know the pattern the bosses are easy. Somehow I figured that out as a kid in an era before GameFAQs
Yes indeed, he glossed over the tactical elements very much.
It sounds like he played it a bit too auto-pilot.
ALL the bosses have counters and patterns to take advantage of.
I guess that also explains his difficulty with that implied boss?
This is part of the reason I really like active JRPG battle systems, but not quite ARPGs - active combat makes the game more of a puzzle game with a focus on making the right choices with the right timing, instead of merely selecting the attacks and spamming like you would a typical spreadsheet JRPG.
Having beaten the steam version of Chrono Trigger myself, I've gotta say that most of the battles were about 3 or 4 minutes, especially with the speed up button. I also played through all of the sidequests (except the one dinosaur civilization one), so I had Crono geared out with a 70% crit chance and an auto-counter whenever he got hit that made him shred anything he touched.
Same. In the sense that I played it very late, not that recent but late enough and I was old enough that it can't count as nostalgia. And I was fully expecting to be disappointed but I loved it. I love turn based rpg's and it's one of the best in that genre.
It deserves all the hype and reverence it has. It's not my favourite, that's Vagrant Story but it's almost a perfect jrpg in my eyes
Yeah fights never lasted more than a few seconds, and you could combat the battle speed up with the option to pause the timer when a character had an attack ready to give you time to think
The best port of Chrono Trigger is the DS port.
@@barrybend7189 The Square DS ports had so much love put into them. Even had extra content.
to me, chrono trigger has to be beaten with the fastest speed and they active instead of wait mode.
This game is one of my favorites along with _Persona 5._ They rarely make JRPGs with this much personality or care anymore. Also, "Get out of here with that Nuclear s***. That's just fire with a PhD."
I think Japan would disagree.
When you think about it nuclear fire is just fire that's a little upset
Yeah, they would.
Did Pppenheimer even have a PHD?
Nuclear power plants just heat up water to turn it into steam and then power turbines with it, so it's really just really advanced steam engines (that can blow up more spectacularly), I think that's what he refers to with "fire with a PhD". The reason everyone's been trying to make fusion reactors for the last 50 years is because that finally lets you do the cool stuff that's happening inside the stars and use ALL the power directly instead of doing this victorian era cosplay of nuclear power.
Oh no.
Feels weird to call Lavos a god. Its sort of like a lovecraftian god, but its just an alien sucking out the life from the planet.
Maybe I just love the reveal of Lavos destroying the world in 1999
Ya it’s a lovecraftian parasite that uses its influence on the planet to guide evolution so it absorbs more resources out of the planet
He certainly is just an alien sucking the planet, but he is worshipped by peoples throughout the game. I don't think it would be wrong to call it a god, though I agree not my first description.
if FFXIV has taught me anything it's that "sucking out the life from the planet" is a perfectly valid, almost expected, quality in a JRPG god.
What is a god? What isn't? Given how long it lived, the power it had, and the followers of doomsday it garnered, it could qualify.
I kinda take umbrage at the notion that everything drops at end of act 1. Act 1 set up the concept of time travel, changing something in the past to alter the future, and right when they resolve the princess issue, they're simply trying to get home and stumble on the knowledge of the future destruction, so they decide to apply what they learned and used in righting the princess problem, to fix the future.
It seemed pretty organic storytelling to me anyway.
Once you literally get something called the Mammon Machine involved, it at least becomes God-adjacent. Plus, it's basically the precursor to Jenova, which definitely is all in on the god imagery.
Danganronpa being considered retro is the most terrifying revelation of the week
Far as I'm concerned, Danganronpa doesn't count as retro for 3 more years.
20 bucks says yhatzee hates danganronpa
@@hailmuffins6934 I feel like the absolute minimum for 'Retro' is PS2/Gamecube era.
@@Rork310 Sadly, the PS3/360 generation started in 2007 and was discontinued in 2017, meaning a big chunk of games from those days are already retro.
@@paolosworld99 He does. I think in the Phoenix Wright video's credits bit he put a quip about telling people to quit recommending him to play that because he hated it.
I read the title and was like "WHAT?" This has got to be one of the most fascinating surprises in a long time.
One of the coolest features was letting the player fight the final boss whenever they wanted and giving them different ending based on when you beat it in the game. The game just got all the little details right and it really elevated the experience.
Always fun to New Game+ it and jump right to Lavos from the fair.
Every time I hear the words "Chrono Trigger," "Corridors of Time" pops into my head and I have a little nostalgic breakdown.
For me it's "Frog's Theme" and I just feel happy.
Brb, gotta go listen to that track for the next 4 hours now.
For me it’s the Epoch theme
Some of the covers of Corridors of Time are absolutely magical. Schala's Theme too.
For some reason I feel like fan covers of Magus' Theme don't really do it justice.
But my god there are some beautiful Corridors of Time covers. One of my favorite tracks ever.
Maybe the transition from "save the princess" to "prevent the future apocalypse" isn't quite so graceful as it could've been, but it's not remotely that bad, and it's smart in regards to how the heroes actively try to explore any option that doesn't involve directly fighting the source of said apocalypse, but they're running on assumptions and incomplete information which leads them to go after Magus first, and the trail leads them to eventually deciding that fighting it directly is the only viable option available to them. Probably the neatest thing is, you can literally fight Lavos at any point once you get to the End of Time, highlighting how trying to fight the apocalyptic alien is not a good idea until all other options are exhausted.
Sure, the opening questline is memorable, but I don't think I've seen anyone consider it better than the rest of the game.
IT could scarcely be any more brilliant. They had realistic consqences to your actions above the grade of JRPGs and most games in general, and then you are forced to escape into a mysterious hellscape, only to find out that this is your future. Brilliant writing, Yahtzee was just searching for reasons to complain.
I don’t necessarily think he is searching for reasons to complain, but the intricacies of JRPGs are hidden if you must review every week and it doesn’t help that he has a bias against JRPGs as well. At this point, I think he is trying to give it a chance, but there is a flattening when you must review every week. That being said, he really overlooked everything about Chrono Trigger. This is a story about people who succeed in killing the alien, but they at least try to not do that first, and through preventing that everyone somehow gets their character development. It’s very smooth
"20 somethings using the power of middle management to maim the pope" you are describing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
SE hiding in the bushes looking at DMC just slayed me. 🤣
4:50 I dunno why, there's something simultaneously hilarious and terrifying about Yahtzee in a family guy death pose
Still my favorite JRPG, even decades later. They don't make 'em like this anymore.
For me at this point it is probably FF7 (the original). I didn't really grow up with jrpgs and I had Crono Trigger for the DS and I got to the Time Egg and just couldn't figure out what to do
FF7 for me though has the most consistent narrative effort to keep me engaged, even though it still isn't perfect. It just has moments of beginning, middle, and end that keep me engaged. It has moments that kinda feel like padding, but I can say that the narrative beats are spread through evenly, and the ending is very good.
which seems to be a feat by jrpg standards. At this point I think it is more common to have a jrpg with an incredibly strong start but then they forget how to write the game 3/4 or half way through.
I'm looking at you FF9. I loved you so much for that first half of the story, I can't believe you would disappoint me so much by the end >.>
@@MCCanaryVideos FF7 is often made fun of for how popular it was, like it was the mass appeal version of a JRPG, truth is it was so popular because it was great, the story the characters the systems, all super engaging and fun.
Chained Echoes is pretty decent.
It's up there for me, just behind FF6 in the classic SNES category.
Hoping Sea of Stars is good
KInda disagree with the idea of the plot getting aimless after the jail break.
Cuz you go straight from the end of the jail-break, with your party only just finding their second time portal to escape in a pinch, and then after that they're trapped in the future, the exploration of which leads to the discovery of Lavos and the main plot.
From there it maybe goes a couple of places, cuz you spend a lot of time following up the red-herring about "Magus summoned Lavos", which also involves the first stone-age visit to get a rock, ect, but I'd say the initial adventure segues smoothly into the main plot at least.
Yeah, I feel like getting sent to the ruined future is where things really start to take off…like, don’t get me wrong, the first jaunt back in time and the return for the trial is good and tightly constructed, but ending up in an apocalyptic Earth is the first huge mystery the game introduces, and where the stakes are established beyond the simple starting hook of “save my love interest from being retconned out of existence.”
Hell, the high points of the game (especially visiting Zeal) are very much yet to come.
I don’t get his weird assertion that people only fondly remember the early hours of the game, or that it somehow becomes aimless. There’s a big stretch of the game in the mid/late portions that can be very sidequest-heavy and loose if you decide to go down rabbit holes, but that’s the only part that comes to mind.
Edit: also, I kinda think the plot taking a slight breather after arriving in 2300 AD kinda works in its favor. You take in the horrible future for a bit, have to figure out how you’re gonna get back, etc…up until that point the beginning game might feel more tightly paced because you’re reacting to one crisis after another, and you just escaped your own execution.
I think the impact of finding out about Lavos and deciding to *change* history instead of just trying to *protect* the timeline (as in the first plot arc) is the first huge active decision the party makes. Still really love the scene that reveals the events of 1999, and everyone’s reaction to it.
@@danielludwig647 Yup. The whole game is fantastic. The only thing that feels like a drag to me is the bosses in Zeal, which are *unreasonably* tanky and powerful by comparison to everything else.
Everything else is gravy.
The beginning is tight as hell. The hunt for Magus and redeeming Frog is also fantastic (with the singular exception that you need to make a hell of a detour to give Frog Magic instead of forging onwards). Seeing Lavos's actual origin with Ayla is great. Zeal's entire story arc is excellent. And then the mass of side quests that are super core to each character's personal arc is some of the best sidequesting in an RPG I've seen, especially for the era.
To me, what I found impressive was how the world changed in response to the events that happened. For example: Suddenly when you return to modern day there is an ominous dark fortress floating in the sky. Why isn't anyone else concerned about that? Well to us it is brand new, but to the inhabitants of the world, that fortress has been there for hundred of years just floating and not much else, so of course they aren't worried about it.
Edit: also the Game Over screen is one of my favorites of all time.
This sudden insertion of democracy means there’s a non-zero chance that Yatzhee will one day review HuniePop
“A group of 20 something’s used the power of middle management to maim the pope”
So, does this mean he’s going to give Final Fantasy XIII another shot?
That’s exactly what I was thinking!
Of course not. It's too Japanese and kitschy.
This is gonna sound weird, but I’ve always wanted Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky to be reviewed, only because it’s the only Pokémon game with an actual heart warming story
We need this 😄
Hot take: it's also the only Pokémon game that offers a challenge for experienced players
If you're expecting Yahtzee to be nice to that game, you're going to be crying for weeks. Because everyone says "Play Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for the story". But what they don't tell you is that the gameplay is GODDAMN AWFUL. The randomly generated dungeons are incredibly sterile and repetitive, with a combat system that feels like it could break at any moment. And they are incredibly boring to get through.
@@affsteak3530I wouldn't personally go that far - the Explorers games arent that difficult. Depending on how you play Stadium though, that game has some real fake difficulty
@@TheTrailburner Agreed. The primary gameplay loop of moving my 4-unit pokemon snake/line throughout endless chokepoints was depressing. Such a bad experience, GIVE MY BRAIN AN INTERESTING PUZZLE TO CHEW ON FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.
3:48 You know Marle is the *only* character that learns Haste right? Man, that's a huge thing to give up.
2:41 New Isekai anime title just dropped
"Maim the pope" huh.
Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward: [awkwardly coughs in the silence. ]
3:29 The choice of pictures makes me think of the finale to Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated.
(I'm not entirely complaining though, I loved that show.)
Also the final part of the credits made me smile in a very geeky way.
Okay, when I saw the guy with the crab on his head being representative of Chrono, I have to admit I kind of lost it.
"Twenty-somethings using the power of middle-management to maim the pope" would certainly make for interesting conversation.
Chrono Trigger gets top marks from me for the god tier soundtrack alone, but I found the story really engrossing! And loved the multiple endings
Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time. I have a tattoo of Chrono. I say this for context to show how much I love this game. This is one of the best reviews I have seen of the game. It is not negative but eloquently points out how much the game was a product of it's time. Cheers Yahtzee!
Aw I liked the story that came after. Seeing the future be screwed to hell after escaping jail. Learning the destruction was caused by Lavos in 1999. Being told Magus brought it around only to later find Lavos has been here for millennia. Running across Zeal which their leaders are a bunch of crazies trying to summon Lavos. Fighting Lavos and losing Crono in the fight. Later deciding Magus's fate as well as Crono's since resurrecting him is optional. After that you pretty much at the endgame and can tackle a bunch of side quests that change the future or you could just go after Lavos in pretty much whichever time period you want.
Chrono Trigger hints to EXTREMELY deep stuff with Crono's death and the discussion around the campfire. I think the game does a wonderful job of pulling a young person into the story then forcing them to consider fate, self, and the nature of reality.
I knew Yahtzee would pick out "someone does the 'kiss my ass!' gesture as a special attack" deep down, but I wasn't prepared for it...
Regarding Manna vs Mana:
Single-N is actually correct. It's a word in the Hawai'ian language roughly meaning spiritual power.
The Manna in the Bible was just divinely provided physical nutrition.
I find it odd that you didn't find the plot, or rather the story, memorable, as I remember so many moments from it all throughout. That is to say, friendship kill god aoui, but all the serialized sequences in time had their own unique twists and rich character moments, and when you DID eventually get to the final confrontation, it really felt like you had been through quite a lot with these characters.
I haven't played it in FOR E VER and I remember so much.
If you know the Chrono Trigger - Secret of Mana connection, then this scene is extra funny.
What is it, pray tell?
@@zshadows According to Google, there was one original project that ending up spawning both games.
I somewhat disagree with the point about the later enemies only escalating through more health. I suppose I agree when it comes to normal enemies (I cant really think of any counter examples in that regard anyways), but I thought the bosses used the game's enemy placement and dual tech mechanics in some pretty interesting ways. Figuring out the different strategies to beat a boss's counter attacks and defenses was a lot of fun.
On the other hand: I'm unsure how much of that experience is strategizing to defeat the boss, and how much is optimizing the defeat. That is to say, I'm not sure to what degree you can brute force the bosses since I usually approach them from a standpoint of wanting to take advantage of their weaknesses and behaviors.
I came across this video that dissected the trope of killing god in JRPGs and looked at their history. Essentially, it's a symbolic expression of facing off against a foe claiming power in an unjust fashion - especially American power, which is why the god is almost always foreign, often from outer space. It's also frequently about the way corporations were basically allowed to take over Japan in the 70s. Very layered. The fact that it keeps cropping up tells you it's a rather sore spot for them.
I really liked how Chrono Trigger incentivized switching up the party, so you could learn new combo techs.
"You had me at, "maim the Pope."" -Sinead O'Connor
I've replayed Chrono Trigger many times throughout the years, from start to finish each time.
I can honestly say that Chrono Trigger is my favorite old school jrpg of all time. Heck, I came to a major life realization about my childhood, while replaying it in my 30's.
"Twenty-somethings using the power of middle management to maim the Pope" IS nearly the plot of Tales of Berseria. If you replace middle management with "screaming rage at personal betrayal." And accept that God may also show up for the final punch up.
Lavos as an angry red hedgehog is perfect. Thank you, I didn't know I needed that.
Aayla was also great because you didn't need to buy her new weapons because she just punched shit and subsequently the part where you get thrown in a prison and need to break out with no weapons gets a lot easier because she isn't affected by that in any way.
For all the jrpgs I played growing up o somehow didn't get around to Chrono Trigger until I got my Steam Deck last year. Now I just want more retro RPGs to run on it.
Good news! Virtually every retro rpg runs on your Deck if you look hard enough.
the crab legs for crono's hair was so fucking good lmao
Damnit, you heard the whetstone.
- Lavos isn't god, more like a eldritch global parasite
- You don't gad about time for a bit, you escape to the future, realize its wrecked and decide to fix it (or Chrono's friends do and he's along for the ride) and your series of adventurers are you trying to track down where Lavos came from (thinking it was summoned at one point), then finding a way to kill it.
- Leaving the princess behind is justifiable on the basis even in-game on the basis of how you *get* to the place you leave her at, and why, in the first place (Save that she is also your best healing, so maybe that's part of some of your problems at times)
- And most of the difficulty of the bosses *isn't* more health, its learning their attack patterns, attack responses, and weaknesses. Either to avoid getting counter attacked for all your health or to use their weakness to turn off some of their defenses/healing/attacks and/or kill them so fast that they don't get to do you in.
- The "sortof real time except when you're in the menus, unless you set it to also count-down while in the menus" system is sortof clunky, and I hate how much farther they've taken it, but for when set to low I at lest found Chrono Trigger's system to be something I could acclimate to. It helped that I'd played Baldur's Gate and its system felt similar.
Also you can replay through the entire game easily via New Game+ for the power fantasy because its a lot faster when your high-level characters have largely trivialized most of the early combat. It also makes you feel hilariously badass, although some of the forced disablement events feel a little worse for it.
This is a legendary crossover of worlds, ZP with Chrono Trigger!
Almost as legendary as crossing over Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy... which is literally what Chrono Trigger is.
1:25 it was from the Final Fantasy Chronicles PS1 version and frankly save the DS port that was probably the best version save the original SNES.
4:21 Bosses *frequently* have multiple parts and specific weaknesses you need to figure out to beat them. Just "attacking and healing" can easily get you killed. And the head isn't always the best part to attack.
Oneof the things I've always appreciated about Chrono Trigger is the Variable Ending system, where the ending changes based on when and how you finally step forth to kill Lavos. If you want to jump in and attempt to kill him after the first time you reach the End of Time, then go right ahead, bit you will almost assuredly die quickly.
Also, it's the only JRPG I can think of that actually has a REASON why you can't bring your entire team of superhuman badasses to fight to save the ENTIRE WORLD. It's not a GREAT explanation, but it IS still an explanation.
2:16 That crab hair is amazing
I was genuinely curious about how Yatzhee was going to piss all over a game like Chrono Trigger, and it turns out he just redirected the stream to modern games saying "stop your peacocking and faffing about, be like your uncle Chrono Trigger. Everyone loves him, you know why? Because he actually knows what's important and gives it his all in those areas. Now clean your room and do your homework!"
I was a little disappointed that he missed several elements like the dual and triple techs, and being the first iteration of a New Game+ system where you get to keep all your gear ostensibly for replaying the game in de facto God Mode, but they also threw in several points where you can just skip to the final boss, and depending on what point of the story you left off on the ending will be appropriate. One time I even started a New Game+ and took on Lavos with only Chrono (this was when I was young and had time to waste an hour on a pointless personal challenge that nobody cares about, now every game has to be played at peak efficiency or my Steam backlog will grow so large GabeN will start pouring Drano on the servers just to help keep things moving).
The game even helps with the different endings by organizing the game into chapters that are listed on your save file, so you can check each one to see if killing the big space hedgehog will yield something different (or I guess just look up a list and follow that; efficacy and all).
One minor quibble with ports of the game (which I'm super surprised he didn't bring up) is that there are a couple of puzzles that require you to enter a password, but there isn't a key pad that pops up you need to do it from the buttons on the controller. Now the SNES had A,B,X,Y,L,R to choose from and all the passwords were some combination of these. However the game doesn't see the letter on the controller just button "n" is mapped to an action, and those combination of action inputs are what determines the correct sequence. So if you're using a controller that doesn't have the same identifying buttons mapped in the same way as the SNES did or (ironically) a keyboard, then you're likely going to run into a gameplay wall.
I just want you to know I loved that line about your steam backlog. Have a good day!
Honestly Yahtzee is so firmly anti-JRPG that this review is kinder than I expected.
As someone who is quite fond of the genre I was prepared for a lashing that didn't come.
I think his summary of the plot is a little too surface level. For starters the time travel element is excellently done even if some of it seems to be just faffing about, but it's hard to judge Crono Trigger's story without examining it or the multiple endings you can achieve based off your choices.
It's not the most complicated time travel game but it is very well done, and of course the deeper you dig the more your reward; see Magus and Schala and the Dream Devourer.
But I think this is about as close as we'll see praise for a JRPG from Yahtz, God bless him.
I know exactly what boss he was talking about. That bugger is the biggest difficulty spike in the game. Luckily they spawn the metal slime equivalent there.
Was it dark Gaia?
Eh, as long as you don't try to avoid all battles you possibly can avoid and try to do at least a bit of grinding, Dark Gaia really isn't that difficult. But going by Yahtzee's description, it might've actually been Guardian and he didn't kill the satellites before aiming for the main body.
@@PhilipWester Its one of the issues I took with his description of how the game increases difficulty. He said they just tack on more health/damage and that is *not* how the game increases difficulty. More and more it introduces magical weaknesses, weak spots on the enemies, areas that induce counter attacks from foes, necessary orders to attack parts of enemies in to avoid them healing or doing big attacks, and similar new changes to the combat. The life and damage do raise but a lot of those increases can be circumvented by experience and/or paying attention.
@@ryanjones_rheios Exactly. I suspect he used the auto-battle function too often and got wrecked because that function often (always?) just targets the center enemy in a battle where the boss has satellites.
@@illusion9423 Yeah, I'm thinking Dark Gaia. Technically, there are 2 "floating head and hands" bosses, but Gaia is mid point and other is end.
2:57 sounds like a standard light novel title tbh.
3:15 "The characters basically go, 'ah, bollocks to this, we're out,' and randomly gallivant about time for a bit"
For real, the plot of Chrono Trigger is basically a dude who's like, "Ah, I see you've invented time travel. Now that you're here I need you to save the future from doom. Good thing you invented time travel before that happened, because I've just been waiting here in the halls of time for someone to come along and save your planet."
Well see now I want to see Yahtzee judge the Live A Live remake because that game was Chrono Trigger's Predecessor and *also* did a lot of new stuff for the JRPG Genre.
Man, that Live A Live remake was SO freaking good. Yeah, there are a few stumbling points here and there, and a few Guide-Dang-It moments that slow things down, and the final chapter is seriously chonky...
But goddamn I had a phenomenal time with it.
Fingers crossed that they give us Bahamut Lagoon with the same treatment!
Oh god, I hate that I'm about to say this, but...
No, you don't spell mana with two Ns, because then it would be manna, which is the space-food that God sent to feed the Israelites in the Book of Exodus. And Secret of Mana would be a bit weird if the spiritual force of nature referenced throughout the game was, like, flour.
Magus's theme is my absolutely favorite song from a game, ever.
Surprised to hear ZP's comments about the story going downhill after the first act. Granted I've got nostalgia-tinted glasses here, but the reveal of Lavos destroying the world in the far future was probably my favourite moment in the whole game. This right here is where shit got very real!
One of the few games I've purchased more than once.
Snes, ps1, Gameboy DS.
Followed by Lunar silver star story. For ps2 and psp
I've also full cleared chronotrigger on each of those multiple times.
So yeah kinda like this game
Good timing, I just played this for the first time a month ago. Fantastic game, best RPG experience I've had since Mass Effect 1 and 2.
Lavos being represented as a giant hedgehog is one of the funniest things I've seen all week.
5:18 I mean FFXIV HW had you maiming a pope in a nation called the _Holy See_ of Ishgard.
The Holy See is the micronation Vatican City is in. It is the only micronation in the world that doesn't get charged property tax...
Oh lord, Yahtzee describing Lavos as an evil god that teenagers have to come and beat up with the power of friendship really has my panties in a twist, which I am pretty sure was the main goal, and I am glad to report it succeeded tremendously.
I wouldn’t call Lavos god so much as a giant space flea from nowhere.
sounds like a god to me
I loved the secret you slipped in at the end there!
"20 somethings using the power of middle management to maim the pope." That beginning and end sounded like FF13 to me.
Chrono Trigger is still my favourite game of all time, and I've replayed it annually for the last 20ish years. There's a part of me that wants to see it remade (a remake somewhere between FFVII and Trials Of Mana), but I'm scared they'll cock it up and Nomura it into oblivion.
Speaking of, I wish they'd do a full 3D remake of FF6 like they did with 3 and 4.
Please don't give Nomura ideas.
Me being petty, but did he just say the third boss (the Guardian Bit in 2300 AD) was halfway through the game?
"That's just Fire with a PhD" wil be commented into every Half-Life History video from this day forth.
As someone who just played it last year, it still holds up. And then you learn about all the other things that copied/stole from it later. Chrono Trigger had newgame+ for pete's sake, in 95', and it's good!
You know, having seen Josh's review of Chrono Trigger and how well it covers the story, it just brings the "haha bad story funneh" of Yahtzee down
the only midpoint boss I can think of that would fit Yahtzee's description would be Giga Gaia and in all honesty, it's not that hard to beat especially if you go around and pick up the various absorbing armors
I always found that was one of the coolest parts about the game that I wish more games would mimic, bosses aren't just damage sponges, they're basically elemental puzzles. (which parts to hit when, do you take out the parts first, focus the core, is using AOE wise, what elements to use to lower defense, etc). One of the few jrpg's where there's really no grind, just play off the boss weaknesses.
It's the Arris Dome Guardian that folded him like laundry when he tried to plow through it with brainless brute force. He never even got close to Giga Gaia.
@@Amigo21189 you sure?
that's barely an hour in and he mentioned having Ayla in the party
@@Bamboo_bazooka The "casts a spell three times rapid fire" thing is a dead giveaway.
0:40 is my new favorite ZP joke
@1:36
> "back to 16-bit characters with only 2 expressions: neutral and surprised... and slapping their bum"
Me: "Wait, *_wot?_*
...Oh my god, they *_did_* make the characters slap their own bum; that's hilarious!" 🤣
Don't play the original Seiken Densetsu 3. Sprites back then were pretty unhinged, even in Live-A-Live.
Lavos isn't a god
It's a space alien parasite
Lavos is pretty explicitly not God, though
Dude's a big ole space tick
Like that's part of my favorite thing about the game.
Thank you very much for hopping into the way back machine, and covering this old gem! Chrono Trigger isn't quite as old as some games I loved, but I really did enjoy it,way back when, and while I suspect most younger people would struggle to be as absorbed by a game this "simple", I liked it, and giving me my little doses of "back in my day" nostalgia works really well!
Chrono Trigger still holds up incredibly well compared to most turn based RPGs of the early-mid 1990s. Some of the stuff we played back then is darn near unplayable without a guide today.
to eb fair Lavos isn't ACTUALLY a god. he's literally worshipped as one for a few centuries and has a lot of power that affects the world, but he's a giant space bug not an actual god. His threat is that his natural lifecycle is gonna destory the world once he's fully formed. it's kinda supposed to be this big twist on the standrd JRPG story (which is essentially what's going on in the staritng bit and continued in the rest of the medieval chapter) by having the protags stumble on a lite cosmic horror story where the big bad isn't a cackling manical wiard or demon but some evil giant space baby who's using the planet as a giant egg to hatch from.
I'unno. I feel like ragging on Chrono Trigger for doing the, "# of silly dressed teenagers kill god" thing in the age where that was being established feels like a retroactive judgement.
And even then, it's not really all that true - the main antagonist is a space alien who wiped out the dinosaurs and lizard people, not a divinity. Other JRPGs of the era were entirely explicit on that front - Breath of Fire 2 has you fight an Evil Jesus who turns into a Cthulu-Xenomorph mashup.
"Twenty-somethings using the power of middle management to maim the pope"
Yakuza Like A Dragon gets in the ball-park with the business-management minigame. Maybe the next one will take it all the way.
"Twenty-somethings using the power of middle management to maim the pope" is actually a perfext descriptor of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
Small discrepancy, Lavos isn't a god, just an alien predator who's life cycle is a bit cosmic horror adjacent.