Submit Your Thoughts On Chrono Trigger For The Deepest Dive Part Two!

Loving the game so far! the pace is kind of intense for a SNES JRPG. I feel like I’m spending 10-20 minutes between boss fights. Am I not seeing the side content or is there just not as much as I’m expecting? Love the show keep up the great work!

I have really been enjoying Chrono Trigger so far. I think my favorite moment is when Ayla throws the party for Crono, and Lucca eggs Crono on in slurred speach to drink it all on one go. I was also surprised by how easy all the boss fights have been so far. Magus castle was my favorite place in this section. Love how all the monsters are disguised as people the main characters care about are wondering around the castle. Gives a creepy vibe to the place. Also funny the references to musicians Ozzy, Slash, and Flea. Looking forward to the rest of Chrono Trigger.

The staging and building of tension in Magus's Castle is masterful. It represents a culmination of everything that's happened so far in the narrative - you've heard Magus hyped as the root of all evil since the start, you've spent the game touring the results of his alleged actions in summoning Lavos, and it takes an act of heroism just to unlock his place. You get the slow, ominous pan up the fortress before you enter to underline the enormousness of the challenge and the stakes; as soon as you cross the gate, you're told that you'll have to defeat 100 enemies just to get to Magus. You slog through a massive gauntlet, confront a couple of bosses, then defeat Magus's right-hand man. You walk down the passage to his inner sanctum amidst demonic chanting, the only light some spooky will-o'-wisps that flare to life as you walk past...then rush ahead to illuminate Magus in mid-demon summon. He turns to address you for a few quiet, tense moments...and as you prepare to clash, *that* boss battle music slowly kicks in with a few menacing notes... then swoops to that charging drop as both sides draw their weapons. It's just awesome. Not to bring out the Chrono Cross bone of contention, but calling back the pan up Magus's Castle at Viper Manor so early without that build-up of tension really underlines that game's lack of understanding of what made Chrono Trigger special.

R. Ballien

During Chrono Trigger's original SNES release, I remember being pleasantly surprised at finding it advertised (in all its $79.99 glory) front & center with an almost full-page photo in that week's Target circular. I'd loved RPGs since the NES, but until the release of Final Fantasy III (VI), they were viewed in the U.S. as weird niche games with bad graphics and no action. It was a neat sign of changing times that an RPG release could be considered a major draw.

R. Ballien

Ayla is bae

Haven't been keeping up with the comments but this is more-or-less on topic. Hanson, I know you're a huge music fan and this is bar-none one of my favorite soundtracks ever. There's a great compilation of remixes called "Chrono Trigger: Music for Twenty-Five Games" by artists like Hyperduck Soundworks (Dust, an Elysian Tale) and Ryan Ike (West of Loathing). Standouts are Yearnings of the Wind, La Rana Caballero (Frog's Theme), Corridors of Time, and To Far Away TImes. Check it out!

Ooh, there is a side-story that touches on this idea that I can't wait to discuss in Part 3!

Drew Waranis

So, Ayla named Lavos using "Iokian" words "La" and "Vos" which means she and the rest of the Ioka speak a different language... so how did they learn to communicate with the party?

Knobby Buckles (Dave)

It's a PSOne Classic so probably via PSP, PS3, Vita, or PlayStationTV. Or if the rumors about the PS5 are true and it plays PSOne Classic games, maybe that.

What's the best way to play Chrono Cross now? I've never played it, and I think this might be the time to try now that I'm really diving into Chrono Trigger again after all these years.

Knobby Buckles (Dave)

I wanted to comment on the observation that Crono and his friends are causing paradoxes that theoretically should not have enabled them to go on the journey in the first place; specifically, that defeating Lavos should have erased a recording of Lavos ending the world from playing, thus they never would have learned about and defeated Lavos. Actually, this is something that is barely touched upon at the End of Time and then expanded on in Chrono Cross. It's kind of a long explanation, but the idea is that Crono and his friends aren't traveling along a timeline, they themselves became the timeline. So all the mucking around time they do creates direct effects within the time period and causes echoes backwards and forwards. Everything they do, from watching the Lavos tape to defeating Lavos to fighting Magus exists outside the flow of time because they're guiding it rather than existing within it. Chrono Cross takes this a lot further by showing that all this time manipulation, accidental or otherwise, ended up causing reverberations that resulted in unforeseen consequences, but I suppose that's a different Deepest Dive.

Those two imps are remarkably chill about having a worm hole in their closet. Feels like the sorta thing you might notice.

BeatenDownBrian

It's pretty funny to me that the monster village won't sell you anything and if you fight them and force them to, they just price gouge you. I guess I won't be buying that demon blade.

Some of the boss battles during this section are among my favorite of the game. Fighting Ozzie after two tough boss battles is always a funny surprise. I remember the first time I fought him and broke out into laughter on how easy it was. It was such a wacky battle. Other the hand omg the end of the Reptites was always tragic to me. I mean I know they were bad guys but man that is brutal how they came to an end.

MickManga

During the trail chapter I rescued a guy that was about to be executed. Now that I'm back in 1000 AD I visited him in his father's shop where he told me why he was imprisoned and gave me some items. It was a really nice little cut scene that gave some depth to these minor characters.