Dracula's Dungeon of Classic JRPGs and Other Nonsense

I can't remember what part(s) of it is the worst about this but DQ4 does engage in the grand JRPG tradition where the game has you get from point A to point B by going backwards through the alphabet.

Sarge said:

Cristo's trying Beat/Defeat was always frustrating when against bosses.

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Talk about Beating your head against a wall!

Torzelbaum said:

Talk about Beating you head against a wall!

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Ba dum tsss.

I actually just realized I was reading that in the voice of Rodney Dangerfield. Cristo can't get no respect!

Rosary's Fate

Following Despisaro's lead, we head back to Rosary Hill to find things much the same. Inside Rosary's tower, however, I do notice that there is a nun holding some sort of mass for a bunch of animals. This might have been happening before and I missed it because I only came in at night - but when I talk to the animals, they all talk back to me! Also, they all seem to be devout followers of Despisaro. The nun tells me this place is only for talking animals and the followers of Despisaro, so I should leave. So I do.

We play the flute again and go upstairs to find Rosary missing. Her helpslime is still there, though, and it informs us that Rosary was taken away by some humans and carried off in the direction of Imar.

At Imar, we find nothing in particular - so I wonder if we need to try to communicate with the missing elf in the dream world again. Sure enough, during our slumber, we're treated to a new vision. And this one is pretty grim. Three people are kicking a prone Rosary trying to get her to cry out a ruby. A furious Despisaro happens upon the scene. Rosary, with her dying breath, begs him to abandon his crusade. But Despisaro isn't hearing it - he kills the three men and declares humanity unforgiveable.

I think we're in trouble, folks.

Going back to things I've said already about the nature of the antagonists in this game, this is definitely the first time we've gotten an ounce of humanity out of a DQ baddie. The final bosses of DQs I~III are simple otherworldly evil, never presented as anything more than an archetypical monster for us to destroy in order to regain peace. Despisaro has a motivation - however thin it may be - and this tiny glimpse of pathos does more to turn him into a memorable character than any previous DQ villain so far.

And I feel really bad for Rosary. :C

It's a Gas

Anyway, the cutscene doesn't give us any clue as to where to go next. It turns out the right answer is to take the gas bag from Estark's temple to Riverside, where the guy manning the transit shop uses it to build us an airship!!!!

Oh sorry, it's not an airship. It's a hot-air balloon.


The balloon gives us the ability to fly anywhere on the world map. It behaves a bit like Pac-Man, flying ahead by itself until we change direction. It can land on most walkable terrain (grass, forest, desert, etc.).

With this, we can cross off several of the areas on our list. The first one I check out is the big "X" on our treasure map, which turns out to be a forest tile in the middle of a vast desert. Walking onto this tile takes us to a village of elves built up around this game's version of Yggdrasil, the world tree. There are a couple of shops and homes on the ground, where we (unsurprisingly) learn the tree has become overrun with monsters. Also, someone has apparently been calling for help from up in the tree.

After this I get back in the balloon to see what else we can find. In the middle of the central ocean is an island we couldn't sail to, so I check that out next. Landing on it actually transfers us to a secondary overworld map, and no matter where we land, we always end up on the west side of this island. The enemies on this island have names like "Hell's Gatekeeper," "Emperor of the Night," and "Tearing Limb From Limb Animal," so I decide to take off for now and deal with them later.

Walk into the Waterfall

The last notable location I find is a cave due east of Rosary Hill. This spot is one I believe I could have found earlier, but missed. In the cave is yet another unique dungeon! The tileset is beautiful - all of the walls of the place are waterfalls, each cascading in layers down to the cavern floor, and they're all animated. At the end of the first chamber is a suspicious shadow in the wall. Remembering some of the clues from our visit to the nameless village, I get out the "thirst stone" we found there and try using it on the wall. Sure enough, the stone absorbs some of the water and gives us passage into a single chamber with a treasure chest. Inside is "the sands of time," another key item - also references in the nameless village - that we don't know what to do with yet.

But beyond the treasure room is a locked door that requires the jail key, which we also have. Heading through, there's another two floors of the dungeon, all leading up to a final treasure chest containing the Rogue Metal Sword, which is so far the most powerful weapon we've found for Drac.

Tree of Life

With that cave completed I felt like we had a choice between either revisiting Yggdrasil or the mountainous island. I decide on the former.

The Yggdrasil dungeon is yet another unique tileset, but is honestly kind of annoying to traverse. You have to walk around on the tree's narrow branches and patches of leaves, and if you accidentally walk off, you fall back down to the overworld. This happens to me several times. Additionally, when you reach the top, you discover that the calls for help were coming from one of the sky-world people! This poor woman - named Lucia - arrived here in search of help for her land, but the monsters ripped off her wings.

When we offer to help her, she says we have too many people in our party. >:C

So I have to jump off the tree, kick Minnea out, and re-climb back to the top so Lucia can join. Now, I could have possibly prevented this backtracking if I'd correctly translated one of the NPCs on the ground, who was apparently telling me that the voice was asking for help in groups of three. But I wasn't sure if the elf was saying that three people had already gone up (I thought maybe the people from the dream).

Anyway, it was kind of annoying, but we eventually rescue Lucia, and she tells us that she's heard rumors that the Sky Sword might be in the tree somewhere. As it turns out, the Sky Sword is in a chest literally a few feet behind where Lucia was standing. Nice observational skills, lady!

But, this is good news, as it means we now have all four pieces of the Sky Equipment, and it's time to go meet the big dragon in the sky.

• Shrine South of Endor
• Sky Armor
• Sky Shield
• Sky Helm
• Sky Sword
• Shrine North of Soretta (warp gates)
• Gardenburg
• Riverside (sealed "vehicles")
• Mini-Medals
• Magma Staff
• Jail Key
• Monster Castle Near Riverside
• Gold Ring (Frenor)
• Mountainous island at the center of the world map
• Treasure area on map
• Strange flute
• Thirst stone
• Bag from Riverside
• Rosary Hill
• Transform Staff
• Hell Emperor Estark
• Gas bag
• Sands of Time
• Figure out how to get to the sky kingdom

I just finished a replay of DQ3, and it really is impressive how much they re-used but enhanced when they made DQ4. The flying dragon controls the same way as the balloon Drac just found. Items like the thirsty pitcher/stone and the sword of gaia/magma staff are used in the same way, but the Staff of Change is switched from a tradable plot coupon with a bonus use into a real plot point. DQ2 and DQ3 had a "Yggdrasil" on the world map you could pluck a leaf from, but DQ4 turns it into a whole dungeon. (And the massive upgrade in plot, direction and characterization of NPCs in a single installment is amazing.)

FWIW the NES version included lavish posters that had maps and lists of many/all of the items, abilities, and monsters in the game. I assume the JP version had something similar.

q 3 said:

FWIW the NES version included lavish posters that had maps and lists of many/all of the items, abilities, and monsters in the game. I assume the JP version had something similar.

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Nope! In fact these sort of lavish pack-ins were pretty much exclusive to western releases at the time. None of Final Fantasys I~VI or Dragon Quests I~IV came with anything other than a manual. The DQIV manual has a (tiny) world map spread and a few pages of illustrations for some of the early-game equipment and consumables, as well as a few tips for each chapter, but otherwise materials as expansive as full maps for dungeons were not included. Same thing for games like The Legend of Zelda, Earthbound, or Phantasy Star II. The American releases of these came with either maps or guides covering some or all of the game, but the Japanese ones didn't.

My guess is these were all marketing components intended to push Americans further toward buying into the JRPG market by sweeting the pot a little bit. Japanese buyers were already gonna get these games regardless of pack-in content, so they didn't really need it.

I realize they were mainly a means to assist and appeal to non-Japanese audiences so they could help build more of an audience for these games, but I seriously miss when jRPGs would come with a map and I'm so disappointed that most physical releases outside of pricey special editions are now little more than a card/disc/code in a box.

I'm not asking for maps of all the locations or even a map with the locations marked on it, it was just cool that you would get this (usually) artistic representation of what the game world looks like in the box.

Yeah, it's one reason why I love to collect CIB games from the Famicom era. Even though most of the RPGs don't come with maps, lots of other games do come with cool pack-in stuff, and even the most bare-bones release usually have lots of cool original artwork in the manuals. The DQIV manual has lots of cute illustrations throughout demonstrating the battle system, AI system, spells, etc.

Stairway to Heaven

We have a lot to cover today, so I'm gonna be a bit brief on some of these last areas.

I stumbled around for a while before realizing that the way to get to the Sky Kingdom was simply to explore the one area in the game I hadn't explored yet - that island in the middle of the ocean. There are several things to take note of there, beyond the buff and furious enemy set:

• A cave surrounded by mountains
• A tower
• A village
• A shrine

The village turns out to be a place called Gottside, which describes itself as the "lowest domain of the sky kingdom." It has a cool layout with some stone bridges. There's rumblings of trouble going on up in the sky kingdom, which can be reached via the tower, evidently. East of Gottside is the shrine, which bears a chest containing the "Baron's Hunting Horn," and item which, I'm gonna go ahead and admit, I never figured out what to do with, and reading the description of what it does now, I surely could have used it.

The cave isn't accessible yet, so we head into the tower. It's yet another dungeon with a unique tileset, featuring brick floors and columns. The layout is not terribly confusing, but it does take me a couple of tries to get up to the top. The encounters are starting to get really spicy.



At the very top is this altar, which warps us to the game's final town area: the Sky Kingdom.

In the Sky Kingdom, we drop off Lucia and meet the other winged people of the clouds. It didn't occur to me until after the credits rolled, but it's clear the cloud-wreathed castle in the title screen is intended to be this area. Here, we learn some very important information:

A dark cloud is gathering in the underworld, which is accessible via the cave on the island.
The "secret of evolution," which Pisaro has been seeking, can be used for good or for ill, and if ill-used, it could mean the un-making of all people.
Long ago, the Dark Lord Estark fought a war against the Dragon God, which ended with Estark sealed underground.
There was once a person from the sky kingdom who fell to Earth and was adopted by a woodcutter. I am not sure if I fully understood this text, but I think it was implying that that person may have been Drac.

Beyond this, Lucia rewards us for returning her to her home by giving us a new party member: an NPC named Dran. Dran is a baby dragon! In battle, he has high attack and can use the same damaging fire breath and sleep gas as other dragons.

We also meet the king of the Sky Kingdom, MASTER DRAGON:



Master Dragon tells us the full rundown of where Despisaro is at and what we gotta do to stop him (go punch him in the face). He gives Drac a ton of EXP and powers up her Sky Sword, then tells us to go ahead and do what we gotta do, because no one else is about to do it!

Continued...

Ready the Preparations

It's clear we're about to dive into the game's final dungeon, so before doing that I went ahead and optimized everyone's equipment as best I could. I gave Drac all of the sky stuff; I bought some more Rogue Metal Armor; I decided to give up on saving for a Rogue Metal Helmet and got Happy Hats for a couple more party members as well as one more Miracle Sword, which I give to Clifto. Here's a basic rundown of how I felt about the party members at the end of the game:

Drac: Naturally as the hero, Drac has high utility, with good access to a variety of spells, including the heavy-hitting Gigadeen and the party-healing spell Behomazun. She also gets a spell which transforms her into another party member, which is interesting and may have some cool tricks associated with it that I never figured out. I also have the Staff of Blessing in her inventory, which I usually use to cast healing instead of draining her magic.

Aleena: I almost always have her in the party. With Killer Earrings, she can strike one enemy twice per round, and has a very high chance of crits. She's usually dealing the most amount of damage per round. I absolutely need her in the final dungeon gauntlet. The only times she's not valuable is when she gets low on HP and prioritizes defending herself instead of throwing punches.

Lyan: He's almost as important as Aleena, and I rarely rotate him out of the party. He's got higher attack than Drac and the most amount of HP in the group, and with the Miracle Sword he can also heal himself nearly every time he lands a hit.

Clifto: As has been discussed, Clifto is triggerhappy with the instant death spells. This has pluses and minuses - some of the late-game enemies can actually be taken out pretty quickly with a well-timed Zaki. He has higher defense than Minnea, but he also can't equip a Happy Hat, so in the long-term I often have to rotate him out in order to conserve MP.

Brye: Brye's got more HP than Mannea and a slightly different set of spells. Since I'm not using guides to go through the dungeons, he's vital for his use of Inpass, the spell that identifies whether chests are trapped. He can also cast the super important Bikillt, which doubles the attack of the recipient. I use him quite a lot. He can also equip a Happy Hat.

Mannea: Though more fragile than Brye, Mannea seems to have a more effective spell set, at least in terms of dealing raw damage. Her late-game spells will almost always hit for 100+ damage. She can also wear a Happy Hat, so it's possible to recover MP over time.

Minnea: Minnea is a more dependable healer than Clifto, but with only about 130 HP at the end of the game, she's always about one unlucky turn away from death. She's very fond of casting sleep spells, which are great in random encounters but not great against bosses.

Torneko: As you might expect, I didn't use Torneko much in the endgame. I did go ahead and give him whatever was the best equipment I had around, but since he's effectively a less-deadly Lyan with a chance of doing something random on his turn, he ends up in the wagon for most of the final dungeons.

Dran: The NPC dragon, like I mentioned before, is a pretty solid fighter-type that I end up using on and off through the final dungeons, just because I could. I liked having him around!

At the endgame, I had pretty much every unique piece of equipment that wasn't either (1) a rare enemy drop or (2) available only in the casino. I didn't fuck with the casino.

Now let's talk about them final dungeons!

Continued...

Dungeon Number One: The Final cave

A convenient hole in the clouds lets us fall directly to that one cave on the island we couldn't access before. Inside is the first of four (4) distinct areas we have to traverse before we come face-to-face with Despisaro!

The cave is probably the most stressful of these four dungeons, with a ton of confusing side passages, slide tile areas, pits, and at least one poison swamp:



From Software should sue.

There's a gaggle of burly enemies to face here, mostly even worse palette swaps of all the worst enemies we've already faced.



One of the more interesting are the Manemanes, which I'd probably localize to "Copycat." They use the aforementioned transformation spell to convert themselves into a random party member and use their attacks against us. They aren't too hard to defeat, but they are interesting to encounter.

There's lots of treasure chests in the cave, most of which are either equipment that's worse than what we've already got or more mini-medals. The nice thing about the cave is you get to take your wagon with you, so you can switch out party members at will. After about an hour of grueling spelunk, we found the exit, bringing us to...

Dungeon Number Two: The Dark World

We exit into a new overworld area full of evil trees, evil mountains, and seas of boiling lava. Bowser would feel right at home here. Straight ahead of us is an Evil Castle, but it is blocked from us by way of some sort of evil force field.

Now after I finished the game, I looked at a guide and discovered that there is a shrine next the entrance to the Dark World that I completely missed. Inside this shrine is a Skyworlder who can restore HP/MP and save the game. Since I never found this, I did the whole final gauntlet on one tank! Effectively I was making the best use possible of the Happy Hats while trying to conserve MP on the other characters, like Drac, who otherwise couldn't really recover MP.

In order to enter the Evil Castle, we have to walk its perimeter and visit four shrines and defeat the boss guardians within each. Ready for a boss rush!?



第一目保護者アンドレアル
First Guardian: Andreal

The first of the four shrines we encounter has this trio of dragons at the end. These guys are very, very annoying, as they can apparently endlessly revive each other after they're KO'd. But, we actually get super lucky in this battle with Clifto's instant-death spells. In fact, we may very well not have won if he weren't with us! Thanks, Clifto. I hope this realizes your dreams.

As a side note, the interior of each shrine mercifully has no encounters, so we can use them to walk around with our happy hats and recover MP.



第ニ目保護者エビルプリーストとスモールグール
Second Guardian: Evil Priest & Small Ghouls

This was a battle where I was really worried the AI was gonna fuck me over. In battles with multiple enemies, the AI tends to target the weaker enemies first. That's all well and good, because normally in battles like this you want to get rid of the small fries first to reduce the number of attacks against you in the round. But the Small Ghouls have a chance to dodge a hit, and when that happens, they also have a chance to multiply. meaning everyone could be attacking the Small Ghouls forever while the Priest keeps pouring on deadly spells. Minnea went down in this battle and I ended up prioritizing damage output over trying to resurrect her, and fortunately that worked out for us. I also had to use at least one Behomazun, which was a pretty steep MP loss for Drac.

Incidentally, Evil Priest is the only of the four shrine guardians with a new graphic. The others are all palette-swaps.



第三目保護者ヘルバトラー
Third Guardian: Hell Battler

These demonic wrestlers have been everywhere in the last several dungeons, and they can really pack a punch, but fortunately this was a pretty straightforward battle. Next!



第四目保護者ギガデモン
Fourth Guardian: Gigademon

The shrine leading to Gigademon's lair is the most interesting of the four - it starts outside with a cemetery and a swamp (which I foolishly trudged through). Inside, there is a set of six statues whose movement mirrors yours. In order to get to the other side of the room, you have to manipulate the statues such that you don't make contact with one as you walk past them. If you touch one, they sent you back outside.

Gigademon himself is not notable, except that before the battle he tries to make you look behind yourself, and when you turn around he attacks. It's a funny moment.

So with the four guardians down, we can at last enter the CASTLE OF DESPISARO!

Continued...

Dungeon Number Three: Despisaro's Castle

The third area in this gauntlet is a confusing maze of a castle full of elevators and pit traps. Mercifully, the encounter rate in the castle is very low, making it the least stressful area so far to navigate. Unmercifully, the enemies we do encounter in here are a grade worse than the ones in the overworld.

Notable areas in the castle include a pit swamp with a treasure chest at the very south end (I don't remember what was in it, so it must not have been worthwhile), a semi-secret area where we obtain the traditional DQ item the Sage's Stone, and several areas where there are dead NPCs lying on the ground. The latter is an eerie detail that I can't quite explain. Were these minions of Pisaro's? People who once inhabited the castle? The answer is not forthcoming.

The sage's stone is the most important thing to find in the castle other than the exit - it's a key item that, when used, heals the whole party for 40-60 HP. This thing is basically the only reason we make it to the end of the game without a refill!

There's thankfully no boss at the end of the castle. We end up on the other side, still in the overworld, standing before a volcano. At this point, we not only cannot change our party members, we also can't use the rest of the party's spells or items, so we're locked into whoever we have with us. Now is when I should point out that you can apparently use the Baron's Hunting Horn here to summon the wagon and switch out party members. If I knew that, I would have totally swapped in Mannea instead of Minnea. More on that later, though.

Dungeon Number Four: The Volcano

The Volcano is the shortest area of the four. It's just a twisty passage through the depths of the earth ending at Despisaro's throne. There is a possibility of encountering enemies here, so it's not a great place to recover MP, but the encounter rate is still pretty low.



Despisaro, transfigured into a form resembling the late Estark, sits upon a throne festooned with skulls. When we chat with him, his words are slurred and confused. It seems the secret of evolution has removed whatever shred of humanity he had left in him. With a roar, the battle begins!


Despisaro begins the battle as, much to my surprise, a palette-swap! It's just Estark again! What gives? Well, stick around. This battle has some tricks up its sleeve. For this part of the battle, the music is also the same as Estark's. As you can (possibly) see, my final party ended up being Drac, Lyan, Aleena, and Minnea. Drac's paltry 41 MP meant that I really only had one use of Behomazun.

The battle starts out pretty easy. Despisaro doesn't hit too hard, and he doesn't seem to have much in his repertoire other than strong physical attacks. But after a while, we cut off his arm. Then we cut off another arm. Each time, Despisaro's attack pattern changes a little bit. And then his head comes off. And THEN...



A face grows out of his abdomen! And this, by the way, is fully animated. We see the eyes pop open and the jaw hang slack. Since animation is so rare in early DQ games like this, it feels really special. But we're not done yet, oh no.

As the battle proceeds, Despisaro continues to change. The secret of evolution mutates him, adapting him to our powers and increasing his threat level. He grows two arms, different legs, and finally, a gruesome head!



When he reaches his ultimate form, the music dramatically changes.


Additionally, there's now a new effect each time we strike him. He flashes white and the sound effect is the same as when we walk over a damaging barrier tile, and you better believe I'm conditioned to feel pain every time I hear that sound effect now.

Final Despisaro is incrementally more powerful than his previous forms, but most importantly he will now often spend one or more actions removing all of our spell buffs. Since we don't have spell buffs, these are effectively free turns.

I'm sweating at this point, too. Minnea has been nearly worthless through this battle. If I choose "go all out," she's more likely to try to put Despisaro to sleep than use her highly damaging Bagicross spell. If I stop her from using spells, she hits for a maximum of 2 damage. Since Drac is running damage control, I'm worried Lyan and Aleena's combined damage output won't be enough to outrun Despisaro's HP recovery (which I'm guessing, but not certain, that he has).

But I needn't have worried. Ultimately, we prevailed. Despisaro turns white and fades away. "My body is hot...I'm crumbling!" he says, before turning to dust. As the volcano itself begins to collapse, the Master Dragon flies in out of nowhere and carries us to safety. The Dragon's animation, also, is unique and cool and surprising.

We reconvene with the Master Dragon at his throne.

Continued...

Back in skylanders world, the Master Dragon congratulates us for restoring peace to the world. Since he knows my home was destroyed, he offers to let me stay in Sky Sanctuary Zone. But I refuse! Drac would rather stay with her new friends.

(Of course this is all related indirectly, since Drac doesn't talk. "What?" The Master Dragon says. "You want to stay with your friends? Very well, then!")

After this we are treated to a brief but sweet ending sequence in which we fly the balloon back to each of the characters' hometown, dropping them off. Lyan returns to the court at Batrand. Aleena and her retainers return to Santheim, where the population has returned (and, amusingly, someone seems to be fixing the hole in Aleena's bedroom). Torneko reunites with his family in Endor (there is a touching moment here where he tosses his son in the air, complete with some unique animation). Minnea and Munnea revisit their father's grave, then are embraced by the people of Monbarbara.

Finally, Drac returns alone to her devastated village, which still sits vacant. She takes a step into the desecrated garden at the center of town. In a flash, her childhood friend reappears, they embrace, and the swamp turns to flowers. Finally, the game's other playable characters all enter to reunite with Drac.




And that is all for Dragon Quest IV!

All I can say is...wow. This game really got its hooks in me in a way that few of these other early Famicom RPGs have. Sure, I've loved each and every one of them, but many times it took some degree of D E T E R M I N A T I O N to finish them. Not so with DQIV. Once I was past a certain point, it was just a fun ride and exactly the right level of challenge.

I'm glad I played I~III before this one. It helped me see the features the team built incrementally into each one, and made the new parts feel ever more special. I also totally didn't mind the AI system, though there were some areas where it hindered me more than it helped. I'm glad future games give you the option to turn it on and off.

And even though he didn't get to participate in the endgame, Torneko best character. Fact.

I almost feel like I should move straight to DQV, but I think I need a break from the series for a little bit. I'm thinking we're gonna do Chrono Trigger next. Have y'all heard of that one?

Dracula said:

But after a while, we cut off his arm. Then we cut off another arm.

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Is there any in-game text for when this happens? In the US version the parts just "disappear".

Dracula said:

And even though he didn't get to participate in the endgame, Torneko best character. Fact.

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No other character* has gotten their own spinoff so that checks out.

*Except for slimes

It's also worth noting this is the DQ game that Dai no Daibouken (or Dai's Great Adventure) lifted large chunks of material and inspiration from; it's one of the great prototypical shounen mangas running alongside Dragonball and Yu Yu Hakusho.

Torzelbaum said:

No other character* has gotten their own spinoff so that checks out.

*Except for slimes

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Terry and Kiefer (as kids) headlined Dragon Quest Monsters 1 and Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart* respectively. And a younger Yangus starred in a Mystery Dungeon game. And Erik from Dragon Quest XI is getting his own game.

Will say though, Torneko's the only one to star in multiple games. We only ever got the second Torneko Mystery Dungeon (i.e. Torneko: The Last Hope) but he had three of the games.

* Speaking of Caravan Heart, it's a shame that Dragon Quest never went back to the "You are part of a traveling caravan" well again.

That battle with Necrosaro at the end was the stuff of legends for me growing up. One of the most epic things I'd ever seen in an RPG to that point.

And yeah, Dragon Quest IV is a game that one doesn't have to qualify with "great for an 8-bit RPG", it's just great. I still think the same of Dragon Quest III as well (lots and lots of nostalgia in that one), but DQIV may be the most polished.

Torzelbaum said:

Is there any in-game text for when this happens? In the US version the parts just "disappear".

Click to expand...

Nope! No text. I'm led to believe the localization for DQIV was fairly faithful.

Well, as a little reward to myself for completing all of the Famicom Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, I'm gonna reward myself by playing THE GREAT ROLE PLAYING GAME!



That's right, let's go Aqutallion!

Nah, I'm just kidding. I won't @JBear like that. Except oops I already did.



We're playin' this game.

Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger was originally released in 1995 for the Super Famicom. In Japan, it was the second-highest selling home video game of that year, surpassed only by Dragon Quest VI. The game hits a temporal sweet spot for JRPG development, uniting two of the top RPG developers of the era, Final Fantasy's Hironobu Sakaguchi and Dragon Quest's Yuji Horii, both of them coming off of a slew of mega successful 8-bit and 16-bit RPGs. Akira Toriyama as head graphic artist also linked the game even more strongly to Dragon Quest.

Many have tried to recapture that bolt of lightning, but few have succeeded. In the opinion of some, video games ended at Chrono Trigger. There's never been a better one.

We in America didn't really notice, though. Not yet. Chrono Trigger didn't even crack the top 20 best-selling games of 1995 over here, nor did any RPG. Our sales were topped with the likes of Mortal Kombat III, Killer Instinct, and Primal Rage. Sure, a few cool cats in the know discovered the game via places like Nintendo Power or just old-fashioned word of mouth, but the game otherwise wasn't a known quantity for us 90s kids.

The game hit the US market on my tenth birthday in 1995. The first time I ever saw it was either 1995 or 1996 in the home of a couple of friends who lived down the street. They booted up the game and showed me some scenes of the Epoch traveling through time, and also introduced me to Secret of Mana. I was transported. I'd never seen games like this. I'd put down RPGs after failing to get through the likes of Mystic Quest. I had no idea what was in store for me.

But I still didn't play it then. They let me borrow their copy of Mana, which I played at home with my dad. But I still didn't play Chrono Trigger until years later when I was in high school.

Fast forward to ca. AD 2001...

At a Wal-Mart demo kiosk, I saw this.


The earliest I could have seen this would have been the summer following my traumatic freshman year of high school. By this time I'd played Final Fantasy VII and probably some of VIII, as well as a couple of Pokemon titles and some older RPGs on emulators. I was in the grip of the JRPG and anime fever that had its hold on many young American nerds of the time. It was the perfect time to play Chrono Trigger!

And play it I did. Later I'd hear that the PS1 version was "bad" for its load times. I even heard that the anime cutscenes were bad for somehow sullying the purity of the 16-bit graphics. Didn't matter to me. I loved every moment of this game. I downloaded the game's chiptunes and listened to them on constant repeat.

I never played NG+, but I probably did replay my PS1 copy at least once. After that, the next time I played Chrono Trigger was when the DS rerelease came out in 2008. I got it in 2009 and played it that summer. I'd just gotten married in May, so my memories of playing it are intertwined with the stressors of trying to find a career path on the edge of the worst recession since the 1930s.

Since I finished that version of the game, I haven't replayed Chrono Trigger. So it's been more than a decade!

Continued...

Dracula said:

Later I'd hear that the PS1 version was "bad" for its load times.

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I'm glad that people could experience the game on PSone, but you must understand that screen and fight transitions that took a split second on the SNES took around 4-5 seconds on the PlayStation.

It's not the worst thing, but in a game where the exploration field and battle field are one and the same the pause before fights is definitely noticeable.

This playthrough of Chrono Trigger represents two firsts: my first time playing it on an original console, and my first time playing it in Japanese. Since I've played it multiple times, and it's likely everyone else in the thread also has played it multiple times, I'm not going to do a strict play-by-play like I have with some other games. I'm just going to mention stuff that stands out to me as I play. Mechanical and plot spoilers are fine, since I remember all of the major plot elements of the game, though I've forgotten how a lot of it connects.

A.D. 1000 and the Millennial Fair



I'm gonna name everyone after characters and NPCs from Final Fantasy I~VI or Dragon Quest I~IV. Crono gets to be Dracula, of course. Also note how the character element is represented by a single kanji - in Drac's case, it's ten, which stands for sky, heaven, or god. In English this came out to... "lightning," which, okay.

Other stuff:

• I love how when you talk to the cat in your house, it mews and then follows you around. I also like how you can use this later to reunite the girl at the fair with her kitten.
• It's nice to be able to walk around an overworld without random encounters.
• The talk of an ancient war against a dark lord (魔王) feels Dragon Quest as hell, and this isn't something I would have picked up as a teen.
• I've always loved Marle.

• But in our game, she's Funko.
• I also love Lucca, who I've decided to name Rubiss.
• In the Japanese version, Gato the singing robot is named "Gonzalez."
• I remembered the millennial fair section taking a lot longer than it did for me this time. Possibly I just meandered around it more than I needed to. This is the first time I've played the game with my "no grinding" philosophy.
• I forgot how the sealed chests work, so I'm making notes on where they are.
• I still have traumatic memories of the king accusing me of stealing that old guy's lunch, which I already felt bad about even before he brings it up in court, so I definitely make sure not to touch it this time.

A.D. 600 and the Missing Princess

Starting the game off with having to rescue a princess from a servant of the Dark Lord also feels Dragon Quest as hell, and even feels a bit like the first chapter of DQIV, which itself was a microcosm of Dragon Quest I. By this time the subversion is almost passé, but it's just another way this game feels like it's uniting the design philosophies of two RPG empires. The menus and interfaces, including the Active Time Battle, feel like they have been imported from Final Fantasy, but getting to see all of the enemies animated on the map feels more like a Dragon Quest evolution, and it's indeed how the enemy encounters work in modern DQ games.

Other observations:

• It's very refreshing to see save points again. Oh how I have missed them.
• I never feel disrupted or annoyed by the random battles in Chrono Trigger. That is also a refreshing departure from older JRPGs.
• I name Frog "Cid."
• In the U.S. version, Lucca calls Marle "Nadia." I'm not sure how this was rendered in Japanese, because in my version, she just affixes "dia" to the end of whatever name I gave her. So she keeps calling her "Funkodia."
• The tech moves are so intuitive and fun to use. I love them.
• Yakura's lair under the monastery has some great moments, especially the bit where you walk into a room full of drunken monsters.
• I like that you can evade many of the monster encounters if you're quick. I generally just go ahead and fight them, though.

"Yaaakuraaa! DERODERON!!"

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Yakura's transformation from minister to monster is very tokusatsu. He even shouts "CHANGE!" before he converts, like he's Kamen Rider. The name, too, is an archetypical kaiju name (kaiju name formula: three syllables that end in "ra"). His needle missile attack has a very long name that fills up the whole text bar, and whenever he does his rushing attack, he says "DERODERODERODERO!"

A lot of this flavor kinda falls through the cracks in the English translation, for obvious reasons - our language doesn't intersect sound with meaning quite as well as Japanese, so those drawn out vowels and onomatopoeic words usually sound a bit silly when directly translated.

Anyway, I ended my last play session with Drac, Funko, and Rubiss outside of Guardia castle trying to figure out how to get back to their own time, so that's what we'll do next.

When Dracula told me he was doing Chrono Trigger next I asked if he minding if I played alongside with him and he said go for it. Then I asked if he minded if I posted in his thread and he said go for it. Then I told him it would be annoying and bad though and he still said go for it! This is kinda like a reverse-vampire situation where he keeps inviting you into his house.

Anyway, CT. I played this game a billion times on the SNES and so was pretty burned out for the PSX and DS versions. It's been a hot minute since I touched the game and this seems like a good opportunity to take a look with fresh eyes. Sorry for stinking up your thread, Drac. Please feel free to drain all my vital juices in repayment.

“The Millennial Fair”

Despite being FF and DQ's literal baby, one thing that struck me right away was how much Chrono Trigger seeks to differentiate itself from either of those traditions. You can you can see this in a lot of little choices like how basic items are given an unique nomenclature (tonics instead of potions or herbs for example) or how radically different the menus are.



There ain't another JRPG with menus like this what with its pages you tab through and the way that the status and equip menus are rolled together (and surely what is the fanciest options screen of 1995). And what's with these stat names? Does any other JRPG use "Stamina" to mean "Defense?"

What I take from all of this is that, despite their pedigree, the CT team didn't want this game to rest on its laurels. Sure, it incorporates some design trends from both FF and DQ, but it takes pains to be its own unique experience, divorced from the strictures of its parents. Yes, CT is the cool teen of 90s JRPGs.

Alongside this goal of creating a Square-Enix game that wasn't like previous Square or Enix games, you can also see the CT team had a clear goal of pushing forward the JRPG form. Its like knowing they were working on a project that didn't have to conform to FF or DQ expectations they could push against some of the givens of the form. They're still constrained by the fixed top-down camera angle, but they stretch the way a JRPG can convey itself in all sorts of other innovative and surprising ways. I know saying Chrono Trigger is in a class all by itself is hardly news, but it really is remarkable how much the team was challenging accepted models. It really does feel like they set out to make THE GREAT ROLE PLAYING GAME. And miraculously, they succeeded.



One obvious way you can see this being expressed is the level of visual detail. Sure, a push to higher graphical fidelity is a constant trend in game development, one that FFVI, DQVI, and later SNES RPGs were very much engaged in, but with CT you can really see the attempt to make a showstopper.

Look at Crono's house here. So much bric-a-brac detail to construct the scene. I especially like the appliances that tell us this is the modern time period. Love that big bowl of salad too.

Details aside, the visual hallmark of the game is the way the artists have built a sense of soft lighting into every scene. Sure, the big sunset on Zenan bridge gets the oohs and aahs, but look at how the light from the window is blown out here, or the way light has been painted on the wall to give the impression of illumination from a lamp, or the way the the lamp and the door create a space of shadow around the steps down from the landing. The interest in light and shadow gives the game a visual identity that you don't see replicated until late SNES games like Phantasia or Star Ocean or the PSX sprite based RPGs that follow.

Now I'm not trying to claim that Square painting with an eye to light and shadow is some great innovation. As technology advanced and more memory became available graphical style inevitably trended towards realism, not just in RPGs or video games, but in all digital media. That's the nature of the beast. I will say this though: RPGs are a highly iconographical form, the "reality" they depict is represented by icons: sprites, map tiles, item menus (menus themselves!), battle systems, dialog boxes, etc etc etc. Nearly everything we actually see on the screen of a RPG (especially ones of this era) we understand to be a stand-in for the thing and not thing itself. I think it's a fair argument to say that in pursuit of their goal to produce THE GREAT ROLE PLAYING GAME the CT team strove to make the game less representational and more actual. Hence the interest in rendering the world more realistically with light and shadow. But you see this sense of design in large and small ways all throughout the game, which brings me to what I think is one of the game's real big innovations: decoupling sprites from the background grid.

As we know, RPGs of this era were constructed using tiles laid on a grid and character sprites that moved in space coordinating along that grid. Moving one step equaled moving one tile and you were locked into this rigid frame of mobility. Chrono Trigger decouples its sprites from the background grid (or at least puts them on a finer grid that gives a far greater degree of positioning). What this does is allows the sprites to inhabit the setting with a higher sense of realism, and it allowed the devs to do all sorts of crazy tricks such as: letting the sprites move at diagonals, letting sprites move independently from text boxes, allowing sprites to move independently from others, allowing sprites to move towards the player character, allowing sprites to occupy the same space, allowing sprites to slide around the map quickly (this, for example, lets characters actually leap and attack each other in battle scenes rather than representational techniques such as a character swinging a sword on one end of the screen and the enemy taking damage on the other), and all sorts of other kooky interactions.

Consider how the the Millennial Fair is basically a showcase for this. Nearly all the mini-games and interactions are either centered on sprite/background-decoupling or the game's other big storytelling technique: large expressive sprites.

Decoupling:
The footrace
Ringing the bell
Rescuing the Cat
Bumping into Marle
Pulling Marle away from the candy tent
Bekkler's guessing game
Bekkler's monster game
and arguably Gato, but only because the battle system uses sprite/background-decoupling to create an element of positioning during battles that Gato demonstrates through his punch-belly counterattack.

Expressive Sprites:
Caveman Dance
Bekkler's copycat game
Arguably Marle's reactions to Crono's antics.

Really, only eating the old man's lunch and the soda drinking game are the outliers, and even then Marle does respond to them.

The large expressive sprites and beautiful graphics are wonderful and essential, but it's crazy how much the sprite/background decoupling underpins the game. This one simple innovation informs so much from storytelling to exploration interactions to the battle system. It's remarkable just how much this one design choice props up and how much it gives the experience its unique flavor.

This is going on way too long, so I'm going to return to the lighting design to go out on, mostly because I want to post this gif of sunlight sparkling on the water.



Damn.

Damn.

I kept inviting Loki into my house because I knew he'd deliver insightful writing like this, being a learn-ed man who knows far more about how the JRPG beast is cooked than I.

I guess I should note that "tonic" comes from the localization. They're just called potions in Japanese, and the magic replenishment item is called an ether, both of which originate in FF. But the status-heal item has a unique name that I haven't translated, and the early game equipment doesn't follow the traditional naming conventions of either FF or DQ.

To the idea of grid decoupling, I'll also add that in many situations in this game, conversation with NPCs doesn't pause the action. Unless it's an important conversation, you can often run away from an NPC and around a room while their dialogue box hangs in midair.

Finally that beautiful sparkling water effect is one of many that seriously benefits from the smoothing effect of a CRT television. In its raw pixel form, you can see all the dots, but on an old TV, it's practically photorealistic.

Well now I'm all curious what Aqutalion's all about.

Anyway, yeah, I was already in college in the mid-90s and played the living hell out of CT when it launched. NG+, every ending, every secret, maxed out characters, the works. And then I did it again on PSX despite the load times, and a lot of it again on DS. It's just such a dang joy to play.

And god, the artistry, as Loki aptly described. Everything is just gorgeous, especially the town and forest scenes.

Mogri said:

I've got good news and bad news...

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......... oh.

I retract the question.

Dracula said:

I guess I should note that "tonic" comes from the localization. They're just called potions in Japanese, and the magic replenishment item is called an ether, both of which originate in FF. But the status-heal item has a unique name that I haven't translated, and the early game equipment doesn't follow the traditional naming conventions of either FF or DQ.

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Oh interesting. After you confirmed that the stat names were the same I assumed items and such would follow suit. I guess Woolsey has another crime to answer for. What does the Japanese version call the back from life item? In NA its the non-descriptive "Revive."

Surprisingly, the answer is quite descriptive. It's アテナの水, or "Water of Athena." The status-cure item is 万能薬 ("bannouyaku") which could be translated as "universal medicine," "cure-all," or "panacea."

Love it, love all of this.

Pierre, Ace Attorney

Maybe this isn't news, but...

Lucca: "Oh ho ho ho.....!"

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Lucca does the ojou-sama laugh. I can't remember how they translate this into English.

Anyway the next chapter of the game is the return to present day. This is one of the more memorable parts of the game. When you get back to the castle with Marle, instead of thanking you for bringing her back, the minister accuses you of kidnapping (and of being filthy, which, rude) and arrests you. You're then thrust into a sudden courtroom scene with its own specific music (always in my head still) where the minister lists your apparent sins and a defense attorney named Pierre tries to defend you.

You can be convicted either guilty or innocent, and the decision depends on things you did or didn't do at the Millennial Fair. Like, if you rescued the girl's kitten, that's a point in your favor. If you took the old guy's lunch, that's a point against you. The first time I played this game, this segment caught me totally off guard. I'd been pretty thorough at the fair, and the more things you interact with, the more likely you are to be convicted guilty in court. I felt so bad! I didn't mean to take that dude's lunch, honest!

But regardless of the verdict, the outcome of the chapter is the same. The judge sentences us to three days in a cell...but when the minister escorts us to the dungeon, he tells the soldiers there that instead of being released after three days, we're to be executed. Jeez! What crawled up this old guy's ass? I honestly don't remember if he ends up being a monster too, or if he just hates us for no particular reason.

Naturally like all good JRPG dungeons, we're locked inside with all of our equipment and items. What follows is the game's second dungeon, wherein Crono sneaks out by killing lots and lots of guards. At the end is the game's second boss and the first one that feels like a real Chrono Trigger boss.

Minister: "Go, Dragon Tank! Give these lowly terrorists a beating!"

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Does the English translation use "terrorists?" I don't remember.

The Dragon Tank, unlike Yakura, requires more than just brute force to defeat. If you're smart and you check around the floor in the office just prior to the battle, you'll find the tank's design specs, which key you into how the thing works and how to defeat it. Its most powerful move is to drive forward and run over Crono and Lucca. It can't do this attack without its wheels. But as long as the head is functioning, it will usually use its turn to heal the body and the wheels.

So we have to target the head first (which resists magic), then the other parts of the tank. It takes keen use of potions to keep us healed between run-over attacks, but it's otherwise not too difficult of a boss as long as you were paying attention.

When we finally get to the castle entrance, there's a brief reprise of the scene from 600 AD where Crono is nearly arrested by the guards. Marle comes down the stairs, using the same dialogue on the guards as she did in the past. But it doesn't work. So instead, she throws off her gown and joins us in escaping. We're forced into the Guardia woods, where we quickly find another time gate.

But we have no idea where this one will take us...

(You guys all know where it leads, but I'll pretend this is suspenseful anyway)

So hey, when you first played CT, were you judged guilty, or innocent?