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Chrono Trigger's lategame
Or more specifically, its combat system.
Early-game combat was fun. It eschewed Attack Attack Attack tactics: if you did that, you were gonna die a lot. It forced players to think. The stages were more than places to have random encounters: they were puzzles (The Tyrano Lair is a perfect example of this) Also, the bosses themselves were puzzles most of the time (I remember getting stuck on MasaMune because I didn't know that you had to slash him with your Slash tech)
Late-game said fuck this.
Late-game did the reverse: Attack Attack Attack tactics were encouraged. It didn't matter if you had to hit a specific part of the boss to beat it: you could just spam Confusion and Dark Matter until it died. And if it countered with a tech? Who cares? Your Magic Defense is higher than a college student on April 20! The final boss somewhat remedied this: Lavos was too powerful to be Attack-spammed and all your magic attacks were absorbed by the left bit. If you didn't destroy it, Lavos would kick your ass. This kind of redeemed the combat system, but I thought it came a little too late.
Comments
At the risk of a slight thread hijack, this is one reason why I'd like to see more realistic, detailed sword/close combat weapon combat systems in gaming. In a real sword duel, period of self defense or on the battlefield, there is no dichotomy between tactics and Attack Attack Attack given the diversity of techniques at a skilled practitioner's disposal. At least from the perspective of European sword styles, which are notable for their effectiveness at combining offense and defense within singular techniques.
A lot of games do get like this, though. You gain access to all the high-tier stuff and then you can pretty much blow stuff away.
^ That last part's what disappoints me. Chrono Trigger innovated. It didn't follow the rules of other games at that time. It could've done better. Instead, it ended up falling into the same traps as other games.
^^It would be interesting to see RPG combat in general be more sophisticated, kind of like Soul Calibur. Well, maybe not as complicated as that, but the multiple considerations during battle (low attacks beat regular guard, high attacks beat low guard, sidestep evades vertical attacks, but watch out for horizontal, Guard Impacts) lend themselves well as inspiration for an RPG. Of course, the game is hardly "realistic".
^^ Little has been learned. This kind of thing is still endemic of gaming as a whole, even in games that start with a strong basis in strategy and tactics.
One of the issues I have with The Witcher 2 (and The Witcher, come to think of it) is that the game begins with tension and challenge and, as you progress, things only get easier because the dominant advantages afforded to you by the game system.
Contrast Monster Hunter Tri which, while presenting you with better gear throughout, continues to up the ante in challenge and thoughtfulness by keeping the rules essentially the same throughout. The real use of gear upgrades in that game is to keep your competitive with new monsters and allowing you to more easily defeat older ones -- it's about altering the margin of error provided to you rather than giving you nuke buttons.
^ More sophistication is something I'd condone by default as long as it was well taught by the game. Realistic combat (or combat with strong elements of realism, at least in some places) is an ideal, but as unlikely as it is likely to really be a thing.
A good example is Jedi Outcast. There's only one lightsaber type, but the simplicity and flexibility of the combat system combined to create something very civilised elegant. It's a fantasy setting with a fantasy weapon, but the elements that were realistic ensured that the system would be easily understood as they're grounded in simple observation and logic.
Obviously, there always has to be compromise, but I feel that the compromise is currently far out of balance.
Isn't it because by the time devs get to the end game, they're usually rushing to meet the deadline?
This is the exact same problem I have with CT. Minus the tension.
^ It at least made you think.
I don't think I've ever played an RPG that didn't significantly decrease in difficulty and... amount of thought required in the later parts of the game.
Shin Megami Tensei games tend to get harder as they go on.
^Ditto. The fact that it managed to be somewhat short for an RPG yet still undoubtedly epic in scale is part of what made it so great.
Yeah, usually via mooks that are immune to quick ways of of killing them and eat up time, hp and mp, or insta death spamming mooks which require a specific party configuration to bypass. Or bosses that are just flatout bullshit unless you do a very certain thing.
I really liked Strange Journey for the fact that you can actually negotiate with random encounters instead of fighting them.
That's an aspect of all the main-line games.
^^I disliked how wonky the interactions were, then again I suppose you'd expect demons to be fickle.
Yeah Chrono Trigger might've been one of the easiest, most forgiving RPG's I've ever played. It's almost as easy as Golden Sun Dark Dawn. Most of the thought that went into battling was limited to either "boss is immune to X", or "X triggers Y, so don't do it until you have a heal lined up right after".
A lot of the late-game balance issues come from the fact that even though there's a ton of levels/gear there, it wants to let you do it in whatever order you want -- including just blitzing Lavos right there -- so by default it all has to be easy enough to start with. And then of course the absorb plates might actually be one of the most overpowered things I've ever seen in an RPG (save for the Lazy Shell).
I would've liked to see some kind of ramping difficulty based on how many of the endgame sidequests you complete. Like, maybe the other sidequests get a small stat boost to stay competitive, and Zeal/Lavos get a slowly expanding set of moves and counters.
Necroing because I have something to say.
Despite everything that's been said, there were some points in the lategame that I genuinely enjoyed. I really really really liked both Queen Zeal fights, for instance.
I also noticed that I was measuring the amount of "fun" I had by the level of challenge I perceived. I do believe that I was mistaking tedium for challenge.
Take both incarnations of the Ocean Palace, for instance. They both have a wealth of unavoidable encounters with annoying enemies that you couldn't escape from. The Black Omen, however, seemed less tedious because I had better gear (like the absorb plates, which I think are total bullshit) and at least one all-targeting wipeout tech per party member.
That isn't to say that I thought the Black Omen was more fun than the Ocean Palace. It's the opposite. The Ocean Palace was on the whole more enjoyable because of the amount of tedium heaped on me.
A perfect example of one of the points in the lategame I absolutely detested is Ozzie's Fort. Ozzie's Fort is extremely easy, having a total of three completely laughable encounters. Contrast with the Sun Stone subplot, which involved a complex sequence of events to be carried out and a difficult (well, if you didn't use the absorb plates) boss battle at the end.
Son of Sun is a decently challenging puzzle boss.
Great Ozzie / Super Slash / Flea Plus is also somewhat challenging.
The mutants in the Black Omen were definitely on the more challenging side, especially the third one. Zeal was less challenging once you figured out her pattern but it was still reasonably challenging, and it was a great climax battle. (My only qualm about it is that you have to choose between Magus facing Zeal and the epic Legendary Enemies battle music.)
You can't really design challenge that well when you give the player a million different things to do. Either the player will have to have some off-limits because of too low level, or some will become easy. Still, though, they did design the Black Omen to be the most challenging dungeon, and it worked well as such.
wut
Their most powerful tech barely put a dent in my party.
I also disliked the Ozzie's Fort subplot because it seemed an unsatisfactory way to end Magus' character arc.
Oh yes, the mutants were definitely challenging.
So basically open world means lower difficulty?
> Ozzie's Fort
> end of Magus's character arc
You can't be serious about this, can you?
That said, GO/SS/FP was challenging only in their techs, as I recall. Their individual appearances were still easy as heck, and they also went down quickly, which made them a lot easier than they otherwise would be.
And open world means lower difficulty or hidden sequence. If you want players to be able to do anything, immediately, then yeah, lower difficulty.
Or higher difficulty and make people actually step up to the plate.
Well to be more specific it was the end of Magus' involvement with the Mystics. It seemed like a lazy way to patch up that particular subplot.
Why consider it part of Magus' arc? After all, he'd left the Middle Ages behind long earlier in the game.
The other sidequests seemed geared to specific party member's arcs. Like the Rainbow Shell one, and the one where Lucca travels in time to her mother's crippling incident, or the one where Cyrus' ghost is laid to rest.
So I guess it seemed logical to classify it as part of his arc.
I think it's something like this:
Crono - Crono Revival
Lucca - Fiona's Forest
Marle - Rainbow Shell (?) or I'm forgetting another one
Frog - Northern Ruins
Ayla - Rainbow Shell or I'm forgetting another one
Robo - Geno Dome
Magus - Ozzie's Fort, Black Omen
The Rainbow Shell subplot was definitely Marle's. It involved making up with her father and getting rid of Yakra XIII, after all.
Ayla had another one then.
Oh, right! I count the Sun Stone quest as Ayla's.
Wouldn't Sun Stone being Lucca's make more sense, considering it gets you the Wondershot?
But Lucca already has one, and Ayla wouldn't have one.
Rainbow Shell is also guarded by Rust Tyranno, you know, an enemy that came from Ayla's time?