Lavos is a multi-phased multi-phase boss. It's a
long battle. Fortunately the game is kind enough to give you some brief respites between portions. When you appear before the big pillbug, you can move around on the screen before challenging him, meaning you can easily use items to recover HP/MP or swap out party members.
The world-ending alien's first phase is actually a fun little boss rush of sorts, where Lavos mimics all of the game's significant boss battles starting with the Dragon Tank and ending with Giga Gaia. Lavos calls in little extra bits and pods to serve as the additional targets if needed. The returning bosses seem to all have the same stats as their original appearances, meaning a party that's done everything in the game up to this point should have a pretty easy time dealing with each one. Still, you get to swap out party members between each phase, so you can optimize for bosses that have particular weaknesses or strengths. It's a nice little memory game, too, since you have to recall how you beat each of these bosses.
Once that's done, Lavos straight up attacks you. His stats are lower than the time where you're supposed to lose against him, but his "rain fire from the heavens" attack is still pretty strong. Once he's down, his little graboid mouth disappears and you enter the inside of his carapace.
In here is a time gate and a save point, meaning you can exit the battle now and keep doing other side quests or dance at the Millennial Fair or whatever strikes your fancy. It struck my fancy to keep fighting Lavos, so that's what I did.
Once inside Lavos' core, you have to fight
Cell this crazy torso thing.
It's easy to believe that this is the true final boss, because it gets its own rousing battle theme:
This is one of my favorite battle themes in any video game.
Lavos can blast you with lasers from his hands and do other scary stuff. You can destroy his arms before you destroy his central unit. I used a party of Lucca, Marle, and Robo, relying mainly on Lucca/Marle's Antipode 3 and Robo's Machine Gun punch (with Crisis Arm used correctly, he can hit for thousands of damage every turn).
But this isn't even Lavos' final form.
The core breaks down, revealing a strange humanoid figure within. This is the Lavos Core, a being that Lucca describes as having observed humanity for centuries in order to absorb our strongest strengths, becoming the ultimate life form. And the core comes with yet another new boss theme:
Gosh it's hard for me to pick a favorite among these. I love this music so much. Gets my blood pumping!
As is appropriate to Chrono Trigger, the Lavos Core serves as the game's ultimate puzzle battle. Like many prior battles, the Lavos Core is made up of three targets: a central humanoid figure and two floating "bits." The left bit will sometimes attack, but often it will drain MP or restore HP to the other targets. The right bit usually does nothing at all. The humanoid will attack the party with devastating moves that vary depending on the current background location: every so often, the humanoid will trigger a "time warp" that changes the background graphic to one of the game's major locations.
The puzzle here is that only
one of these three targets is the true Lavos core, and it's
not the one that seems obvious. To win this battle, you have to destroy the right-side bit. But it's only really vulnerable when the other bits are destroyed, as it will relax its defense then to revitalize the two destroyed parts.
It's easy to assume one strategy or other in this battle and waste a lot of HP and MP on it, so I think it's a clever way to ramp up tension, especially since most players will have Level 45+ characters here with a huge amount of damage and recovery options available to them.
Once Lavos is successfully destroyed, the game proceeds to an ending scene. The game's endings vary depending on a number of factors: whether you destroyed the Epoch; whether you recruited Magus; whether you revived Crono; and where and when you destroyed Lavos itself. In the new game+ mode, you gain a variety of new situations in which you can fight Lavos, and each of these will result in a different ending.
The "standard" ending involves a humorous reprise of Crono waking up in his bed, only to be summoned to the castle, where he learns his stay of execution has been revoked. We then go to a night-time festival at Leene Square, revisit a few important NPCs, and see off all of the game's characters one final time. It's hard not to tear up a little bit for a few of these farewells, particularly that of Lucca and Robo's, since she knows that the destruction of Lavos means that Robo's future might not exist at all anymore.
And just as the gate is about to close, Crono's mom chases a kitten into it, triggering a whole new time adventure.
What more can I say about Chrono Trigger? This is one of my generation's most beloved games, and many words have already been spilled about it. After watching the credits roll I did start up a new game+, but I don't feel especially driven to pursue the alternate endings, so I think I will put this playthrough to rest right here.
I love rediscovering games like this after many years, as I tend to find new things to love about them each time. In this playthrough I think I gained a new appreciation for Marle and Lucca, who in past plays I had often benched in favor of characters I connected to more strongly like Frog. But as I grow older I find elements in characters that I connect to now that I didn't before.
So who are your favorite CT characters? How did it feel when you first beat the game? Have you gotten all the endings? Let's hear about it.