Xbone? PS4? Trigger, Please!

I’m sure I’ve done a review for the game somewhere before. But this came up in discussion not long ago. In short, a few chums of mine and I were debating on the best console since some new ones just launched the other day. And after some careful thinking, I had an answer. The Xbone and the PS4 are both severely inferior to SEVERAL devices for one simple flaw.
They do not allow me to play Chrono Trigger which is single-handedly one of the best games ever made that isn’t Portal or Metroid Prime. Which consoles carry Chrono Trigger? The Super Nintendo, the DS (or 3DS), the Wii, the WiiU (sort of), and the PC if you’re pirating it. Meaning that the Xbone and PS4 were outclassed SEVERAL GENERATIONS AGO! But what makes Chrono Trigger so good that it literally makes consoles that don’t play it pathetic scraps of uselessness? Well I have a top ten reasons why Chrono Trigger is one of the greatest games made and why you should throw out that Xbone, PS4, and any Microsoft or Sony consoles on top of that. Because you won’t need them. They can’t play Chrono Trigger for you to experience all its greatness!

#10: Time Travelling at its best

 - There are a handful of games that have time-travelling in them to a small degree, but so few can pull it off well. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) had a whole plotline around time-travel and it was shit because it decided to pull the whole “it never really happened” bullshit at the end. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time  and it’s trilogy had chrono-manipulation as well, and it even turned it into a game mechanic. That said, PoP:SoT is a much smaller game delivering good characters, but a short experience with little to do outside the main game. And even Days of Defeat, a game where you travel to multiple time periods to shoot stuff, was bogged down by several limitations to the gameplay.
 - But Chrono Trigger? First, the time-travelling was central to the plot in that it brings the heroes together AND shows them who the enemy is and what their goals need to be. But it is also a fabulous mechanic, central to navigating the world and solving several puzzles to reach several bonus areas. That’s the beauty of it is that these areas are all optional and not needed to complete the game, but it is recommended you tackle them to help in the final battle. And the world is fairly large, allowing you to explore multiple areas in multiple periods of time including dinosaurs, medieval, post-apocalypse, and several more. If this game was made today with today’s graphics, I hesitate to say it would fail simply because it’d be too expensive to do properly, and Square Enix is absolute shit when it comes to spending their production money wisely.
In short, other games have the ability to go through time and space, but few have done it to the excellent degree of Chrono Trigger and that should be enough to prove my point. But I have nine more, so let’s move on.

#09: Prehistoric Times

 - While this sort of goes along with the previous point, it is worth mentioning again. You can go back in time to when dinosaurs LITERALLY ruled the Earth… as in they had a monarchy that ruled humans and considered out ancestors to be sub-breeds. You know me and my love of dinosaurs, so I have to put this as its own item on the list. But there’s a period for everyone on here. Do you hate humanity and want to see it brought down to ashes? The Post-Apocalyptic world run by mutants and machines is just for you. Do  you like flowery speak, magic, and opulence? Perhaps try the Medieval era. Do you like bizarre sky cities rules by a secret society that acts similar to a cult that appears friendly at first but turns on you because you disagree with how they run things? You could go play Bioshock Infinite, but Chrono Trigger did it first in another time period where you also meet one of the many antagonists in the game. So if you don’t think there’s something for you in this game, you clearly didn’t play it to completion because there’s something for EVERYONE in this game. Except blow jobs. I can’t promise you those at all.

#08: A Better RPG?

- Some might argue that Chrono Trigger is a tad easy. And they might be right. But since so many parts of the game aren’t necessarily spelled out for you, you do have to take your time to figure out where things are, how to find certain secrets, and learn how to defeat certain kinds of enemies. It’s a game that doesn’t necessarily hold your hand, but it doesn’t make things unfair either. From what I’ve read and seen, the game is capable of being beaten without the wasted hours of grinding levels like so many other RPG’s need for success. If you fight every enemy in the game ONCE while also getting all the secret items, then you can win the final fight with Lavos without too much trouble. Grinding will make it easier, but it isn’t needed. It also takes away from the adventure when you spend hours killing the same three or four goblins for shit experience.
 - So an RPG with no grinding that expects me to learn how to play the game rather than just be pulled through the experience like it’s a fucking ride along? Clearly Final Fantasy was the wrong choice of games to continue making Square. For shame.

#07: Womenz

 - One of the many things I don’t like about games like Call of Duty is that there aren’t any women in the game. You don’t get to fight them, fight with them, or even play as one like I often opt to do to make up for the lack of female protagonists in games. Plus most female designs in most games I’ve played have more variety and look much more interesting than their male counterparts. Thus, women are what I like to play. Put all that on top of the fact women are the superior gender of the two in a lot of ways. They look better, they can withstand more pain, they’re physically capable of more things that are also more impressive or important than anything males can do, and tits.
 - So when games don’t offer women as a playable character, it is disappointing. But not only does Chrono Trigger offer a female character to play as. You have THREE playable female characters, all of which are distinct from one another and are actual characters (for the most part). You have the tomboy princess that needs rescuing at first, but ends up fighting alongside you. You have the nerdy girl who saves your ass out of the fire numerous times. And you have the sexy cave girl who isn’t necessarily dumb, but primitive. That said, she has the most power of any character by default and is a great source of comedy.
 - There might be other games with women in them, but so few have THREE that are this distinct and important to the story of the game. Mario games only have Peach for the most part. Halo has Cortana only and she’s not even a real person. What about the PlayStation exclusives? Um… Yeah… none that I can really see. So no sausage fest here, boys. Get your dicks out of my house because we’re having the ladies over tonight.

#06: Music

 - Everyone knows my taste for music gravitate towards Sonic and Mega Man games more than anything else. But Chrono Trigger is right up there with Bastion and some Zelda games for having some of the most amazing music I’ve ever heard. The battle theme is one of the best ones in gaming. I’ll keep this point short because you should just go listen to the entire soundtrack on YouTube right now! Or, better yet, throw out your iPod or other devices for music because you can just go play the game and listen to the music as you play! Ingenious!

#05: Characterization

 - As I mentioned earlier, the female characters were well-characterized. But that’s because EVERY character is well-characterized. If not through their dialogue and actions during the course of the main game, there are certain side missions in which you see a bit of their own personal lives and how they use Time Travel and their comrades to help fix some of their issues. Lucca goes back to save her mom from a crippling accident. Frog goes forward to stop the ghost of his close friend from haunting people. There’s just so much to do and so much to take from the experience that you can’t help but enjoy it.

#04: Boss Battles

 - In recent memory, I can’t think of any game that has had stand-out boss fights. Arkham City was really good, but that was after the reception the first game got for having lackluster boss fights. And while I haven’t played the newest game, I’ve heard Arkham Origins lacks the same creativity in the boss encounters that City had. Most Sonic games fail to deliver on good bosses, though Sonic Generations did step it up with some old boss redesigns that I wish they’d incorporate into future games. Even most FPS games just boil down to you shooting a thing. It’s all really depressing that so few games really challenge your knowledge of the skills you’ve gained throughout the game.
- Chrono Trigger is excellent when it comes to boss fights. While certain mechanics aren’t clear at first, you learn throughout the fight what the best method or strategy is to kill a beast. Is it weak to magic or physical attacks? Does it attack who is or isn’t attacking it? Is this weak point what I should be attacking or this one? How many rounds until this attacking appendage returns and when should I prepare a counter for it? Every fight is unique in the sense that most if not all play different from one another and you quickly learn just how to defeat them.
 - And the best part is there are (usually) hints in the game to tell you how to beat them. The thing is you have to find them. You have to explore the dungeon/world and find clues to help you. Just like they did in Metroid Prime where boss information could be scanned or found as you explore the Space Pirate base.

#03: BEAUTIFUL

 - So few games make use of their HD capabilities properly. Nintendo games at least have it right. They can play at 1080p and they make the most vibrant and colorful games on the market to show off that HD capability to the limits. Xbone can’t even 1080p, so they can’t measure up. And while PS4 can measure up, from the line-up out thus far, there aren’t a lot of colorful, vibrant games to fit the criteria for what I’m looking for. There’s no Viva Pinata here. No New Super Mario Bros. And certainly no Chrono Trigger.
- I know what you’re thinking. Aaron, Chrono Trigger is all sprites and it’s visuals can’t compare to anything nowadays. But you’re wrong. Chrono Trigger is a bright, colorful, and vibrant game. Everything you need to see in the game stands out so you know if it can be interacted with. So you know that there’s an item on the table you can mess with. The visuals do what is needed while still looking perfectly fine for something that was made over a decade ago. Looking back at PS1 and N64 games, they look terrible. They didn’t age well. And neither will the dark, gritty, “realistic,” and grey-brown games in a decade either. Their looks will not age nearly as gracefully. But Chrono Trigger? It’ll look just as good in ten years as it does now.
 - Granted, it doesn’t look nearly as good as Dust: An Elysian Tail, but I feel a remake would instantly fix that up. But why remake such a glorious game anyway? You shouldn’t. It’s already better than most games out there anyway and it isn’t worth doing.

#02: Third-Party Success on the Nintendos

 - People say that a third-party game cannot sell on a Nintendo console. People say that you have to be a Nintendo game only or you’ll be wasting your time to develop on a Nintendo console. While Golden Eye alone is an example of how wrong that logic is, Chrono Trigger is also just as valid an example as well. One of the most revered RPGs from the Super Nintendo era AND it was made by Squaresoft before they got retarded and became Square Enix. All that aside, great reception, excellent sales across MULTIPLE PLATFORMS, AND actually being a good game on top of all that proves you don’t have to be a Mario or a Zelda to succeed on a Nintendo console.
- This also disproves another common thought amongst the gaming community. You have to be an established series or name before you can be a success. Chrono Trigger was an original IP and new concept at the time and it is still popular and continues to be loved by many fans who want to see a sequel to this game. A third-party original IP on a Nintendo console being successful and loved? THIS CAN’T BE REAL! But it is.
So for third-party devs who bitch about how you can’t develop for Nintendo because it won’t be profitable, you don’t know. You haven’t even given it a chance! If you made a game good enough, it could move consoles. It could increase sales and establish a larger fanbase than you ever expected. That’s why I at least give props to Platinum for releasing Bayonetta 2 on the WiiU. They’re one of the few developers with any real BALLS to do what Squaresoft did years ago. To the rest of you, fuck off and play Chrono Trigger.

#01: [Spoiler] Dies. Don’t read this point if you don’t want spoilers.
 - Yes. The central character of the game, Chrono (or whatever you opt to call him) dies in the middle of the game. Not even at the end. Nope. Right in the middle of the game the first time you encounter Lavos. He sacrifices himself to save the entire team. And then the team can opt to find a way to use time travel to save Chrono or to fight Lavos themselves. But the best part is while Chrono is dead, you can play as whoever you want. Seriously, you have full flexibility over who is in your party and who isn’t. Even when Chrono returns, you still can leave him out if you like. I can’t think of many RPGs that let me leave the main character off the team like that. It’s certainly nice when I want to level up other characters.
 - But on another level, this is something you don’t see often. The protagonists and main characters are there to be mascots. To sell merchandise. You’ll never see Microsoft kill off Master Chief, no matter how much he should probably die. You’ll never see Mario, Sonic, or Zelda die. Okay, I guess Sonic died that one time, but it was a shit game anyway. The point is that all of these mascot characters across multiple platforms from MANY developers refuse to be killed off. They become too big for their world that even the writer is forced to leave them in the game despite how many times they probably should have died. Despite a series needing to be revamped, they’ll still be around.
 - And that’s what’s really sad. You never see Mario in a moment of weakness. He’s always strong, brave, and has a trick up his sleeve. But we can’t learn anything about his character unless we see him in a moment where he doesn’t have an answer and can’t fight his way out like he always does. Same applies to many characters from Master Chief to Kratos (post GoW1). Characters can’t grow or change if you just let them be immortal and get away with everything. Then they cease to be characters and are just caricatures like Mickey Mouse.
 - But, Aaron. You said Chrono comes back. So that undermines this point right? Well… not entirely. You can opt to not save Chrono and just fight the final boss if you’re prepared for it. But that means you get…

#BONUS: Multiple Endings

 - Yes, Chrono Trigger was one of the earlier games that actually had more than one ending to the game. Some of which are actually hilarious to trigger. Like you can fight the final Lavos at the beginning of the game with just Chrono and Merle if you want. But the best way to do that is on…

#BONUS: NEW GAME PLUS

 - Another feature of more modern games that is much older than you might think. You can go back and replay the game as stronger characters, level beyond what you thought possible and fight Lavos all over again and again. Sure, New Game Plus doesn’t add difficulty, but it’s more for the story than anything. Want to try a new ending? Go out and play it then.

And that’s why consoles that cannot play Chrono Trigger are lesser consoles. There are many things the PS4 and the XBone are missing out on by NOT allowing me to play Chrono Trigger on their console. And, no, this isn’t nostalgia talking. My first playthrough of this game was only within the past year. And it was one of the most fun games I had played on top of that. So, in all seriousness, go play Chrono Trigger. I promise you won’t experience any other game like it.