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 - Chrono Trigger reviewedI grew up playing Chrono Trigger and actually have written a review of Yasunori's part of the OST. Over time I've developed higher standards in video game plot and more specifically in character developement. If you're looking for character developement here, you'll have to use your imagination because our hero is a "silent protagonist". I guess my main difficulty with both titles in the collection is load times. It might be worth it to spend that $60 or $80 on Chrono Trigger for SNES and then play it with an emulator. Rating:  - I only wish I could playI bought this mainly for the Chrono Trigger game, as it's impossible to get it anywhere else. Sadly both shipments had a non-functioning ChronoTrigger disk. Amazon was unable to replace it. Rating:  - 2 classic games, one packageGames that were released in the Super NES' heyday have been often named some of the best games ever released. Despite dated graphics, not-as-deep storylines or interaction-heavy gameplay, people still hold these games in huge regard and not just for nostalgia value. While personally I would've put Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger in one package, we still get Final Fantasy IV instead so it doesn't really matter. I'll do each game separately. Chrono Trigger Story: Crono is attending the Millennium Fair in Leene Square. He encounters a young girl named Marle who has a strange pendant and she tags along. While trying out Crono's scientist friend Lucca's new invention, Marle gets sent to the year 600 A.D. Crono goes after her and soon uncovers a future that is destructive to say the least. Graphics: Probably the best looking of the games on this package. Sprites are well-detailed, graphics are colorful and there's a certain charm among many of the different time periods. But the overworld graphics look genuinely ugly. Sound/Music: No VA but the music by Yasonuri Mitsuda is outstanding as always. The music tends to range from eerie atmospheric music to upbeat ones and even rock. My one complaint is that at times there's sections where a piece of music would be perfect for an event but then you get in a battle and that upbeat theme kills the mood. Gameplay: CT introduced many types of ideas including the New Game+ where you can replay the game and get a different ending depending on when in the game you beat it. Also characters get special skills in battle which you can combine with other members to create more powerful spells. Frog and Crono can combine to create a swordsman skill but combine Crono and Lucca and he can use Fire-based sword attacks and so on. Final Fantasy IV Story: You are Cecil of the Red Knights and are ordered to do some rather morally questionable things which gets him kicked out. He finds out that Golbez is plotting to steal the world's crystals and throw the world into chaos so it's up to you and a diverse group to save the world. Graphics: Let's face it, these graphics now look iffy. While a lot of people can manage playing a game with visuals like these, you still look at it and notice how far along things have gotten. Sound/Music: No VA but Final Fantasy IV is often regarded as Nobuo Uematsu's first genuine sonic masterpiece. Me? I think he started hitting his stride with VI. Don't get me wrong, IV has a lovely soundtrack but I find myself listening to VI and up's soundtracks more. Gameplay: Like games such as IX or VI, IV has distinct job classes, offering party members with specific skills. You have Cecil with his dark attacks, Kain with dragoon jumps, summoners, monks and bards. Other than that it's fairly straightforward and familiar from levelling up to item hunting and whatnot so there's nothing new but then again IV made a lot of things new so go figure. My one complaint out of the entire package is that CT has some annoying slowdown where there's a fair amount of delay going into battle and your menus but then again it has some nifty anime cutscenes as well as IV's FMV's so all in all, it's a good package for RPG fans. Rating: - Chrono Trigger remake not quite everything I had hoped for.I have to admit that I mostly bought this collection for Chrono Trigger, and as such I'll have to remain silent about Final Fantasy IV. As far as the latter is concerned, I've only played through about five minutes, and while I liked what I saw, I don't feel confident that I can review it well at this time. My score for this product is limited to CT. The game itself is almost legendary among gamers, and so I will have to assume that you are already familiar with its good points (found in many, many other reviews on this site) and delve straight into the reasons why I was disappointed with this release. Bear in mind that the game itself is NOT one of my main criticisms, and the two-star rating is not indicative of my dissatisfaction with the storyline, graphics, characterizations, and so forth. Rather, my griping deals with its delivery on the PSX. The loading times are terrible. I've heard a lot of explanations for WHY these loading times exist, such as cartridges (e.g. the original SNES cartridge for CT) don't take as long to load as CDs, and that this PSX version actually runs an emulator that converts the original SNES data into something the PSX can load, hence creating delays that weren't present in the original. I don't entirely understand these explanations since I'm not familiar with the technical or hardware end of things: what I do know is that this game runs ridiculously, embarrassingly slow. Every time you engage in a battle, everything freezes and you're stuck there waiting for the battle to begin. Since I bought a PS2 these load times have gone down substantially and so now they're maybe only ten seconds or so, but I remember on my original PSX the load time before a battle would oftentimes be as long as two or three minutes. And I'm not just talking about boss battles, I'm talking about run-of-the-mill ordinary battles that you run into ALL THE TIME. Even on a PS2, those ten-second delays would add up very quickly. I also dreaded every time I had to open the menu because then I'd have to wait a long time for it to pop up. This is especially annoying when you're doing battle on a "moving" area, like an elevator or conveyor belt, because the otherwise beautiful flowing backgrounds become halting and jerky. The most embarrassing example of this is the final battle against Lavos. During the battle, he'll frequently shift the time period of the battle, and this involves changing the floating background image. On the original SNES this was a really cool, if not totally useless design feature. On the PSX, this makes an already long battle even longer because the game hangs up for a little while before each scene change. And at the end, when you finally kill him for good, his death sequence involves rapidly flashing through different time periods. On the SNES this was awesome; on the PSX this is totally lame, because each scene change is preceded by a delay. Unlike the SNES game, it didn't leave you feeling satisfied that you had just beaten the hardest boss in the game, it leaves you feeling frustrated that the designers for the PSX port couldn't fix this. I'm a big fan of Akira Toriyama's work, and thus I was very pleased with the inclusion of anime cut scenes. However, I have a VERY large gripe: the US release does not translate the Japanese subtitles. Normally it's not a problem because most of the cut scenes don't have any dialogue at all, but I can think of two off the top of my head that do. (SPOILER WARNING FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH) When Chrono is killed, there is a brief flashback to Janus (as a kid) telling the party that one of them will die soon. That one's not too bad, since you can kind of figure out for yourself what's going on in this scene (especially since it's a flashback of something that happened in-game). However, the second scene, which you can see when you beat any of the game's endings, involves the downfall of Guardia and the rise of Porre. This is a pretty crucial bit of information that should've been translated since 1) you can't figure that stuff out just by playing the game itself, 2) it sets up the story for Chrono Cross, and 3) the scene itself is just impossible to understand unless you can read the Japanese subtitles. I can't imagine why they didn't bother to translate this stuff, especially since they translated the PSX team credits (which appear to also be in FMV format). Speaking of translation, I'm a little disappointed that this game did not receive a retranslation, as FF4 did. Don't get me wrong, I think Ted Woolsey did a decent job with CT. However, it's undeniable that a lot of changes had to be made when they brought it over to the West, whether it was in shortening text to fit into the SNES's format, localizing dialogue to be more "accessible" to young American children, or in censoring references to religion, alcohol, sexuality, and so forth. Furthermore, Woolsey's translation sometimes hiccuped, leaving behind either plot holes that didn't previously exist or ambiguous lines that were actually intended to be much stronger in the original Japanese. I realize that it would've been a lot of trouble for Square to give a retranslation for something that they thought already had a solid translation, so this aspect was not factored too heavily into my scoring of the game; it just would've been really nice, especially since, as I said, FF4 received a retranslation. I hesitate to recommend this version of the game to first-time players. I think CT is a game that all RPG fans should at least be familiar with, but I'm not sure this PSX version is the one they should cut their teeth on. If you're like me and you've already played this game dozens of times on the SNES, skip this one. (Unless of course you're buying it for FF4.) Stick with the original SNES cartridge, and hope for a GBA/DS/Wii VC conversion at some point in the future. The load times are simply unbearable, especially if you're used to the quick pace of the original. Rating: - niceThis game is good although not my favorite final fantasy but i would definetely buy it if i was you. Plus crono trigger makes it worth the buy right there!
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