I'm back again! Because I'm crazy and only half-heartedly persistent!

Ok, I'm a realist, I know that my blogs don't necessarily get many reads or responses. That's not going to stop me from trying to bring some attention to a game that I feel is kind of cool and has some decent potential but hasn't really gotten much recognition thus far (possibly because it's still only in Open Beta, but, all the same.)

This time, I bring you...

I suppose the place to start is telling you what Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes is, because most of you probably don't know what it is.

What Is It?

Wrath of Heroes is a free to play PvP game created by EA Mythic and Bioware 's soemwhat newly merged Bioware Mythic that is currently in open beta. In it three teams of six players (that's 6v6v6, for the record) compete in short (15 minute time limited) PvP matches that resemble Battlegrounds (WoW), Warzones (TOR), Scenarioes (Warhammer Online), etc. Unlike an MMO's instanced PvP games, however, there are three teams (as previously mentioned), you don't have to worry about gearing up your character (not exactly, anyway), you only have 5 abilities, and you can change characters between deaths. As a result, it may be best described as the Call of Duty of MMO PvPing (thanks to @Sayishere for that one!)

The game has a growing array of heroes from the Warhammer universe (I'll get to the heroes later, but some examples are a Black Orc Greenskin, a High Elf White Lion, a Skaven Gutterrunner, and so on.) Three heroes are freely available for play each week (as I write this, the Ogre Irongut, Human Brightwizard, and Chaos Marauder are the current free to play heroes.) While these heroes are free to play, you don't get the full experience out of their free to play versions. Their skill trees are not accessible, you cannot assign Perks, Tactics, or Abilities to them, and you cannot change their skins. To unlock the full potential of a hero you must purchase them using either in game gold that is earned from logging in daily and for participating in matches or with real world money buying gems that can be used to purchase them.

Once a hero is unlocked you can assign points to a Mastery Tree that is unique to each hero. Mastery points are earned as you gain levels by earning experience from playing matches. Mastery Trees will allow you to unlock load out buffs for that specific hero (such as reducing the duration of negative effects on your hero, increasing the range or damage of certain attacks, and so on.) Each hero that is fully unlocked has three load out slots that you can fill with abilities, perks, and tactics that are unlocked either from the Mastery Tree or as rewards from wooden chests (that are either bought with gold or earned randomly at the end of a battle.) I won't get into too deep of specifics because I don't want to bore you and it's probably best if you just check it out for yourself as I'm sure I won't do it justice.

Game Modes

There are three different game modes in Wrath of Heroes. When I say game modes, however, I mean three different maps, each with a different objective. All modes share a few things. One, there is a fifteen minute time limit. Two, the objective is to reach 250 points before either of the other two teams. Three, there is a list of six bonus objectives you can complete during the match for bonus rewards (which I'll get to later.) When you start a game of Wrath of Heroes, one of the three maps is chosen at random for you to play on.

The current game modes are

Arena - an all out fight between three teams with no objective other than killing enemy opponents.

Mourkain Temple - a point capture style map with three flags and a relic. The more flags your team has control of, the more points you earn per kill. As long as you control one flag, you can take control of the relic in the middle of the map which gives you points over time.

Black Fire pass - a capture the flag style map where the goal is to collect and hold 3 runes within your teams base to quickly earn points over time.

In all three maps you gain points for killing enemies, but the game mode determines just how beneficial killing enemies is to reaching the 250 point objective.

Heroes

Right now, with the game in Open Beta, there is a limited number of heroes that slowly goes up every few weeks. At the time of this writing there are 10 heroes in the game. Heroes range from melee to range, physical to caster, offensive to defensive to support, and so on, offering an array of different play styles to choose from.

Each hero has 5 abilities available to them - one basic attack that has no cooldown associated with it, and then four others that range from offensive powers to utility powers to stuns and buffs and debuffs, growing in power the closer to number 5 you get. While there are only 5 abilities, it still takes a fair amount of skill to use those powers to their full potential and just hammering on every ability when it goes off cooldown will only get you so far.

Aessa, for example, gets more powerful when using her abilities on players that are attacking her allies rather than attacking her, so it takes good timing and a good eye to use her abilities to their best effect.

For a full write up of all of the heroes and their abilities, check out the Wiki entry for the game! (It's easy work for me to update it with each new hero, but it's easy points and hopefully will be informative to someone other than me some day.)

I feel like there's probably something more I could put here, but I'm not sure what it is, and I may cover it when I get down to my experience with the game thus far.

Rewards

Rewards! Everyone enjoys being rewarded for their time spent playing a game, and Wrath of Heroes rewards you with a slot machine.

As I mentioned earlier, each game mode has 6 challenges that you can do during the match to earn bonus rewards. This is best explained with a picture -

Some of these things are the same across game modes, and you always earn at least one slot just for playing in the game you completed. The challenges shared across modes are competing in the scenario, winning the scenario, placing in the top 3 scores, and queuing for the scenario in a warband (a premade group.) The other two challenges are unique to the scenario, such as getting a certain number of captures during the game, getting a certain number of kills in a single life, and so on.

The slot wheels reward gold most of the time, in varying quantities per slot, but the wheels can also reward wooden chests (which contain perks or tactics) and xp boosts.

The game also gives you the same slot machine type reward layout for logging in consecutive days, starting at 1 wheel and maxing out at 6 days logged (but as long as you keep logging in each day after that, you will continue to get all 6 wheels spinning.)

The gold that you are rewarded with can be used to buy heroes (which are, currently, between 30,000 and 60,000 gold - which periodically go on sale in the store), treasure chests, xp boosts, and hero skins.

In Closing

Ok, I'm probably forgetting something. Those that have played the game, please feel free to let me know what I happened to forget or what I should add to this. I'm going to do a follow up to this blog documenting my experiences with the game thus far (the game is in open beta and still has a long ways to go, there are some flaws that I feel really need to be addressed in the game in the near future, but, as it's in open beta and not actually completely live, I don't hold those things against the game that much as they're things that will get better over time - namely the hero selection.)

If you haven't checked the game out yet and you like MMO PvP but want to try something with less of a serious investment (leveling to max level, gathering pvp gear, learning talent specs, so on, so forth) I highly suggest you check this game out. If you don't know if you like MMO PvP but you like PvP games, I may also suggest you check this game out. It's free, so you have nothing to lose but time by checking it out, and the worst that happens is you think it's bad and you never pick it up again - or you get hopelessly addicted to it and spend way too much money on it.

The action in the game is fast paced, matches are quick, and (in theory) there should eventually be something for everyone in the heroes to choose from.

I'm hoping that since Jeff briefly mentioned the game a few weeks ago on the bombcast that maybe once the game leaves Open Beta he, or someone else from the crew, will do something to get the game some more attention, but until then, I suppose it's up to me to try and get the word out on this game. So go, give the game a shot! You can check out more of the game, and download it, from the official site at wrathofheroes.warhammeronline.com

I also have a topic going for players to post their IDs so GBers can play together and another one for people to just talk about the game. Neither one has gotten many responses yet, so, hey, shameless plug to encourage people to go check those out!

So, after going and playing through more than a handful of hours of Chrono Cross (which you can check out over on my blog page!) I decided to take a look at other old PS1 RPGs that I own that I have either never beaten or for the life of me barely remember anything about the game.

After some eliminations this lead to me to one of four options - Beyond the Beyond, Thousand Arms, Tales of Destiny, and Final Fantasy 9. Of those, I sort of cut things down to Tales vs FF9. Beyond the Beyond I know is a game that's very rooted in an older style of RPG. I may give it a go some time, but, after being so frustrated with Chrono Cross I decided not to push my luck with something that may frustrate me for really dumb reasons. Thousand Arms also got knocked off of the list for a similar reason. I've never beaten Thousand Arms, but I remember parts of it. The one thing I remember most of all though is that it is a very Japanese ass Japanese RPG. I won't get into it a lot, but, the dialogue and what not in the game does not hold up well (though the unique battle system and some of the interesting systems they have in there still make me want to go back to it some day, just not today.)

So, I was staring down Tales of Destiny and FF9. I've never beaten Tales of Destiny before. I've owned it for a real long time, but never played more than a few hours in. FF9, on the other hand, I've beaten all the way through. I could not tell you anything about the story in FF9 though beyond a point and the very, very end. However, I wanted a small break from the Square Enix style of RPG so I went with Tales of Destiny. (As a side note, Suikoden was also on the list, but, my friend is currently borrowing it, so, I took it off the list for the time being.)

Oh, also, I'm playing the PS1 version, not the better, enhanced, PS2 version.. Because holy crap does Namco-Bandai love having two versions of every single Tales game.

Oh Tales of Destiny, where do I start with you.

How about with an image.

The effort that I went to to get that image sums up how I feel about the game, unenthusiastic with very little desire to put much effort into it.

Ok, ok, you may be worried that I'm just going to start going off about how bad the game is. Don't worry, I don't think that is going to be my intention here. For the record, I have yet to beat it. I've played it for maybe 11 hours and I think I'm maybe about halfway or so through the game (if I'm not and I have another 20+ hours ahead of me, then I really don't think I'll finish it.) That being said, the main things to focus on really are the negative things, but that doesn't mean that I think this game is bad. I kind of just think that the game feels half-hearted and like it fell short of some real potential. I'll cover each of the different things that has bugged me the most, starting with the thing that has bugged me the most.

The Combat

Ugh.

Ugh.

UGH.

The combat of this game. The battle system is fine. The line battlefield with four characters and real time action is fine. The concept behind the combat is fine. I actually really enjoyed the later iterations that they took this system in with Tales of Symphonia and the like. My problem with Tales of Destiny though is that the combat is so freakin' easy.

I was something like six or seven hours in before I fought what I even thought was my first boss fight (against a man named Batista. No, not that Batista.) I then looked up an FAQ/Walkthrough for ToD and found out that, surprisingly, this was actually something like the 11th boss fight in the game. It turns out that I had done just under half of the boss fights in the game. They were so easy that as far as I was concerned they were just normal fights. Even the boss fights though (of which I've had several of now) are so bloody easy. I've killed a couple of bosses in 30 seconds to a minute. And I think I'm even somewhat under leveled. It's just so easy. The problem here though is that when you have an active battle system that's supposed to be really engaging, but then your fights are real, real easy, it's still real, real boring.

The best thing I can compare this to is something like Persona 4. Ok, ok, yes, comparing something from very different time periods, but it's two different styles of combat. P4 is a turn based combat system. But when you're fighting things at level, it feels like every battle matters. Every battle feels random and as long as you didn't waste a bunch of time grinding levels, things can really still feel dangerous. Boss fights feel like boss fights, they feel threatening. ToD, on the other hand, even with an active battle system, is just boring. The fights are so boring that I began to realize that every 'zone' of enemies will have something like only 4-6 different possible monster encounter builds (and even then, it's mostly just how many of what monsters show up) except that the monsters per zone is only about 4 monsters big. So every fight feels the same. There's no reason to not just blow through your TP (the points you use for mana and special abilities) and just annihilate everything because you recover some after every fight and eventually you get so many TP that you will almost never run out. Even if you do run out though it doesn't matter because you can just stop using them, still do every fight in about 30 seconds, and get back to full in just a handful of encounters. And boy oh boy will there be enough encounters for you, but I'll get to that next. In this same vein though, you get 3 other party members and you only control one directly.

It feels like all of the fights were designed for you to be able to win them completely by yourself to make up for somewhat unreliable AI party members. The problem then, however, is that when you then have your 3 party members actively helping you (or even worse, when you issue commands to your party members) fights are just fields of slaughter for the enemies.

So something else weird, this kind of connects in with combat, is how it deals with encounters. That's maybe a bit of a weird thing to say, but, some games give you random encounters, some games let you see the monsters on the field and you fight them and then they're gone (i.e. Chrono Trigger, Persona 4, Earthbound, etc.) Tales of Destiny? It has both. I couldn't tell you why it includes both on-screen enemies for some locations and then random encounters for everything else. I can tell you though that I hate it. This game is so easy it doesn't need random encounters. The random encounters also happen way too often when you're in a random zone. When the enemies are on screen it feels like there's actually just enough. It feels right in those zones, like that's how it should be for the whole game.

Now I'm something like "14" or "15" bosses in out of about "26". I'm 11 hours in. I just don't want to keep playing the combat. I appreciate what it is and what it does, but because it's so easy, I'm just so bored by it. It's so easy it's just not fun to play it. I can enjoy a combat system that I don't particularly love but that is actually challenging and engaging at the same time. I don't even have boss fights to look forward to because even those are absurdly easy, and thereby, uninteresting.

The Story

The story in the game isn't great. I won't complain about it very much, but it's just a very, very standard fair. The characters aren't bad though, they're kind of average, sort of stereotypical (but not painfully so.. partially because they almost never talk about anything at all.) I'd probably be more willing to keep playing if I felt like there was much hope for some serious character development. The most development to happen so far was with a character named Mary. The short of it is that I just got her to recover from her amnesia she's been suffering from the whole game. Even that though was just like 5 minutes or something of dialogue of her and her husband and then me kicking some ass and now she's out of my party for almost the entirety of the rest of the game as a result.

Then again, the Tales games have never had particularly strong story I feel like. Symphonia feels like it's had the strongest story so far, but even that wasn't fantastic, it was just pretty good, slightly above just average. So I can't hold it so much against the game other than to say that I wish they had more of a focus on a better story, or, at least a better character story. I think the character stuff has gotten a lot better, but the overall story seems to pretty much still come down to "bad guys want to destroy/rule world because that's what all bad guys want and for no reason other than just because they're bad guys" and that only carries something so far.

That's About It

Sadly that's really all I can think of to say about the game. I find myself bored and uninterested with it.

Has anyone else out there played through this game before? If so, can you tell me if this game picks up at all? I'd love to know if I'm like just on the other side of this game seriously picking up, or if maybe there's actually some challenge somewhere to be had in this game, or, hell, even just how LONG the game is. If it's taken me 11 hours to get Mary her memory back, how much longer do I have to go in the game? Am I about halfway through? Less than halfway through? Do I have another 20+ hours to go? I kind of want to finish the game to mark it off my list, but, if I have another 20 or so hours to go, I just... no, I won't do it, I have other shit to play.

It's really not that I dislike the game, I just feel very apathetic towards it. It at least ranks somewhat higher than Chrono Cross does so far though, so, that's a good thing for it!

I may try and finish it up sometime. Right now I'm playing some Bully but I'm looking at some of my older RPG collection debating what I may want to go to next or if I just want to finish up Tales of Destiny before touching another RPG in my collection. We'll see though!

That's right, this is the last (for now, at least) installment of -

Chrono Cross This! 6!

This is going to be a bit more freestyle. So, let's see where to start. (as a warning, this is going to be long. Really long.)

I'm done with Chrono Cross. I didn't beat it, I just can't keep playing it. The last thing I did was clear out the Hydra Forest in the normal world and go back and 'save' Kid. So much of the last two hours or so that I played just felt so downright half assed and shitty that I just can't keep playing. The hydra forest was bad, containing something like the equivalent of SIX boss battles in that place (two beeba fights, a fight with a giant dragonfly, a hectopus, the seven dwarves, and the hydra.) Then I went and saved kid and she told me she would have been fine even if I hadn't done anything, but she appreciated it (not that I get anything for this either) and then some kid comes and steals the elements from her element bar.

That particularly was where I just said I was done. I played for maybe a half hour longer, but I knew then I was done. The fact that the game acknowledges that the element bar is like a real, physical thing was so stupid. It's a bar that grows as you gain stars, and you socket elements in it so you can cast spells. Right? So... how is that a physical thing? Where does that go, physically, on a person? Do you tape it to your shirt? What goes on with it that makes it work? How can you steal elements out of it? Not to mention that the whole thing just reeked of "Oh, you mean like in FF7 when Yuffie stole your materia? Like that? Really?" After that though I went and hunted down the kid that stole it. This took me even longer than it should have because I started by going to the housing sector of the floating town, nothing there anywhere, then I went back over to the dragon hut where I was told that since she wasn't here she must be in the housing district (you know, the place I just came from) so I zipline down (because it seemed fun) then ran my way back up and over then, ran around there for a while, nothing, go back to the dragon hut, nothing there, then I WALK back to the screen I came from and then you see her run off to the housing district. Why did I not see this any of my three other times in this sector? This seems like a really poorly designed specific sequence you have to go through to get her. Anyway, I get her, I get the elements back and... nothing.

No. Really. Nothing happened. I got the missing elements back but I didn't get a new party member, I got no new items, nothing. What was the point of all that? To piss me off? To frustrate me? What?! Anyway. So, this is going to be kind of a recap of some of the things in the game that bothered me so much to the point of just needing to call it quits.

The Characters

The characters in this game, by far and wide (but not all), are terrible. You've heard my rantings and ravings over the fact that every character talks funny. There's no reason for it, but they do it, they ALL do it, they ALL talk funny for some reason or another. I don't know where this piece of land is located where people from countries that don't even exist in the Chrono Trigger world have migrated to (French, German, British, Australian, so on, so forth, all there) but it's a shitty place to be. Beyond that complaint however I have two rather large complaints about the characters.

Number One

I don't CARE about any of the characters. I'm probably something like 15 hours in and I don't care about anyone. Not a single character. I don't care about the dog with a lisp that joined my party only because I gave it a bone. I don't care about the voodoo doll that joined me because of... something...? I don't care about the magician, the luchador priest, the science lady, the Australian thug. I don't even care about the main character, Serge. I just don't. Nothing at all has endeared me to a single character. In fact, if anything, I want these characters to lose this mystery battle of the fates or whatever this is billed as.

The actions of the characters are honestly borderline villainous. I started the game as a poacher killing off komodo dragons for their scales and ONLY their scales (and only ever one scale per dragon) so I could make a girl happy (and then killed the mother komodo dragon for good measure.) I broke into some innocent mans mansion to steal his stuff. I didn't even want to go but a mage that wanted to steal something from the treasury and an Australian tom-boy that wanted to steal the frozen flame dragged me there to be a part of their nefarious ongoings. And then I beat up a bunch of guards, if not murder them. Oh, and then I killed off an ENTIRE FOREST to save one girl. I'm not shitting you. I killed a hydra in the hydra forest, which apparently sustains the life in the forest somehow, and was then told that my actions have doomed the forest to destruction (as you can see in the alternate world where all of the hydras in the forest have already been killed off and now the place is a poisonous shit hole that can only sustain the most befouled life forms.) I destroyed a forest. So, poaching, thieving, probably murder, and now the destruction of an entire forest.

These are BAD people. These are not good people here, they are bad. They are evil people, even if they claim their motives might be good, they are evil. If they showed any remorse at all for their actions I might call them morally grey, but they don't. They don't care what awful acts they commit. They do it happy and carefree.

Beyond that none of them have any stories. None readily apparent anyway. Most of them are just sort of nameless faceless figures with different ways of talking. That doesn't endear them to me. That just makes me dislike them more. The only character that seemed to have had any story at all whatsoever, Glenn, I missed. I made the wrong choices and I cannot get him in my party any longer. Glenn has story, he has more story than anyone else in this game so far. And the designers decided that this guy, this one guy that actually has story, is OPTIONAL. It's almost disgusting that they would design it in such a way as that. If only one guy out of the first fifteen guys you meet has a story, don't make him optional, make him mandatory.

It all just feels so lackadaisical. I think the game summed up my feelings about a lot of the story stuff perfectly when I finally noticed on the status screen that it gives you a brief description about every character in the game (like wandering magician, psychic ex-wrestler, voo-doo-doll come to life, etc.) and all they could be bothered to think of and put down for Serge was "Silent Protagonist."

Number Two

There are too many characters and too many of them are too poorly balanced. This is sort of a combat problem more than anything. When you have 40 characters in your game, balance them out. If you have 40 characters in the game, and you can get 20 of them on your team in one play through, but only 3 of them have stats that aren't total balls in combat, then why bother?

No, seriously, the degree to which I may be exaggerating is minimal. Guile, one of the guys I've been working with for a long time now sucks. His physical stats are bad. Really bad. Like 3 damage hits on 500hp monsters bad. He makes up for it by having a really high magic though. Which is then promptly thrown away in the gutter by giving him fewer spells than any other character. When your average character can have, say, 10 spells and he can only have 5 spells despite needing spells to be at all useful in battle, something is wrong. The Luchador Priest that had be super exited for the first time in the game turned out to be shit. He has lower physical attack power than Serge and only slightly better than Magus (I mean Guile. Really, I wrote this as Magus and then had to come back and add that his name is actually Guile.) His magic, however, is garbage. He casts spells of his affinity on full red fields for less than 10 damage.

Why give me choices if the game designers clearly felt there were right choices and wrong choices to be made. If a game is designed where you can go one of two ways, you can go left or you can go right, but going left kills you, so you can only go right, that's not a real choice. That's them wanting you to feel like you have a choice, but in reality, no, you don't. Except instead of only having two choices you have 20, and most of those 20 choices are the wrong choice. It's bad design. I already don't like the characters, so when the game tells me that I can't even use the characters that look interesting or seem interesting because they didn't bother making them useful? Fuck that shit. It's bad design and they should feel bad for it.

The Story

Ok look; I know that I'm early on in a JRPG. The story won't be in full blown awesome mode for like another twenty hours. I get that about most JRPGs. However, that does not mean that the story so far, 15 hours in, should be non-existent. There is nothing but uncertainty, questions, confusion, and an over all lack of a sense of direction.

I don't know if there are simply too many ideas going on at once here, but there's just too much and too little all at the same time. They've foreshadowed crazy end of the game stuff for me already. They've babbled on about the most inane shit. Things/terms get thrown around at random with zero context (who are the Radical Dreamers? Who is the Porre Army and why are they a thing (pssst, I know some things about them but only because of Chrono Trigger, this game doesn't do a damn thing to tell you about any of it though) and a bunch of other crap. It feels like they went halfway on developing this world, or this version of the world (as this is a parallel dimension to the one from Chrono Trigger.. or... something) but they just kept all of the detailed notes on what any of the finer points are or what they mean to themselves.

This is kind of a problem that happens when you play a character that has always been apart of a setting. The character should know all of this stuff. The character should know who and what the Porre Army is, they should know what FATE is, they should know who Lord Viper and the Dragoons are, and all this other random crap. But you, as a player, you don't have a clue. So if you just go through and treat the game as the character is going through it, nothing gets explained, or you have to really dig deep for some of it. But if you would go through treating the game as if the player is going through it, then the main character seems like a total freaking idiot to the world around him. Maybe I'm being a bit hard on it in this regard, but there are just so many things that have no answer or explanation and it just feels poorly written.

The Chrono Trigger References

This is a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Don't ask me to get into the details. All you need to know is that it's really not, but it really is. But it's really not. It was going to be. Then they got side tracked and then it's not a sequel, but it's billed as one. And the lengths they go to to try and make you think that it's a sequel is saddening.

You mean The Great Explorer Tomas the..something something number. He's just a one off thing. He's in the starting village gardening. That's all, he's just there and tells you who he is and that's all he does.

The Porre Army is a reference to the town of Porre in the southern part of the Chrono Trigger world. As it turns out, in some in between stuff that is NEVER shown, revealed, or detailed anywhere, Dalton from the Kingdom of Zeal finds himself located there and builds the town into a military state and creates an army that takes over the world. How do I know this? DS Version of Chrono Trigger's bonus ending and some half-hearted research.

Lynx directly references Serge as being "The asassin of time! THE CHRONO TRIGGER!" Yes. Serge, the main character, is the Chrono Trigger. Do I know what this means? Fuck no. Do I know why they used that term when the original Chrono Trigger was an egg that held infinite potential or some bullshit and then broke so that Crono could be saved from death? Fuck no. Does it sound real fucking stupid that they worked that 'phrase' into this game? Fuck yes.

Glenn, a knight in the Dragoon Army is more or less a direct call back to Frog (who's human name was Glenn. Dun-dun-dunnnn.) And he reeks of it too.

Magus is in the game as Guile. But it's not Magus. But maybe it is Magus. But it's totally not Magus because the developers said that he was originally Magus but then they had too many characters and so he's not Magus anymore. But the bonus DS Version ending in CT suggests that maybe it still is Magus. But the developers said no, so clearly it's not. He also looks like him. He even floats everywhere instead of running.

They remixed the Chrono Trigger victory music to be this game's victory music. This is slightly less offensive since the music is good and it's sort of like how the FF victory music is in just about every FF game.

And this isn't everything either. It all feels so much more like fan service and easter eggy inside reference bad-ness than in any way tying these two games together. It's done too often, too poorly, and without any real reason for any of it.

The Combat System

This is a bit more of a nitpick. The combat system is not great. It's not inherently BAD either. I actually somewhat enjoyed it up until I had a breaking point.

The short version of my problem with the system (go read all of my other blogs and their responses if you want to piece together the full picture) is that it makes backtracking far more of a hassle than it needs to be. Combat takes about the same amount of time fighting crappy things that pose no threat to you at all whatsoever and that you have far out leveled as it does when you're fighting something of comparable level. I'm just going to leave it at that since, like I said, details can be found in the other blogs.

It's Not All Bad

So much of this game is just annoying. If it was just one or two of these things maybe I wouldn't have so readily threw my hands up in the air. I don't expect, and didn't expect, this game to be perfect. There are just so many flaws and cracks that they all pile up ontop of one another that it makes it too hard to want to keep going.

That said, not everything in the game is bad. Visually this game is really good. The environments still look interesting and sharp. The corner of the world that they've created here is beautiful. The tropical setting is a nice change of pace and everything feels so vibrant and lively. It feels really good. The character designs, visually, are also pretty good. Characters look unique and interesting. It's a shame that their personalities suck and they don't even really have any reason for being around most of the time.

The music in the game is also really well done. I may have to listen to some of the later game music just to see how that progresses. What I've heard so far though is really good. It feels appropriate and almost 'right' for the settings.

Unfortunately, a game looking and sounding good, maybe even great, doesn't save it.

Or maybe my tolerance for bullshit in RPGs is just shorter than it used to be because I've played some truly better games now. I don't know.

I may add something more to this later, I'm not sure. This is all I can really think of for now. I think I may hold a poll to see which game sitting on my shelf I should try and revisit next. I'm not sure. All I know right now is that I have Chrono Crossed this middling game off my list of things I feel compelled to play.

(P.S. pictures getting added later.)

Ok, not really fifth element style, I just recently caught the movie on t.v. and this is the fifth blog, so, there you go.

Chrono Cross This! 5!

Check my blog page for all the Crossings of This That is Chrono.

Last Time on Chrono Cross This!

Alternate universes, bad dialogue, a story that I honestly barely care about, poison, too many characters..

Where Have I Gone From Here!

So, last time Kid was poisoned by Lynx after we invaded Viper Manor looking for the Frozen Flame. I mean, looking for why Lynx attacked Serge. I mean, looking for something for Guile that I don't even know if I got. I think I got it, but I pretty much forgot about it because they, in game, even sort of just brushed that whole thing aside REAL quick. This reminded me about it though, so, looks like I need to go back to the alternate universe and go see the old fortune teller lady about that.

So, I recruited some more characters, a mexican wrestler priest named Greco. And a German scientist lady that I got when I went back to Viper Manor (because apparently everyone closed up shop and just moved on after I broke in that one time.) And then I went back to the other world, then I recruited that stupid ass dog because... I dunno. I don't think I can recruit Leena at this point, think that boat sailed.

I went to the Hydra Marshes and then got side tracked fighting Beebas or Beebos or something, and then a giant insect. I have no idea why I did this. Seriously, I have no idea why. It has no story relevance as far as I can tell, and I didn't even get any kind of real reward for beating the hardest boss I've fought so far. It felt like a giant waste of time and now I need to go back down and try and find this hydra again.

My Thoughts (I saved up a lot for this.)

I'm starting to actively dislike this game. I'm even over all of the terrible accents/dialects/dialogue. Whatever, it's shitty and annoying, but it's the least of the problems lately.

Some of this is my own fault, but at the same time, it's making me grow really sour on some of the aspects of this game. What is "this"? Lots of things, but probably primarily combat.

I did a great big rant about the combat in the comments on the last blog, but, something I didn't touch on is how tedious it is. Let's say, in something like Chrono Trigger, you're well over leveled for an area. What happens? You crush everything beneath your heel in one or two shots and combat lasts all of five to ten seconds. Or you just avoid the combat all together. In Chrono Cross what happens when you fight monsters in an area you are far over leveled for? You still spend a good minute or more in combat. 80-90% hit attacks miss constantly, you have no AoE attacks at all that don't FIRST require you to hit something at least 2 or more times, and you still constantly get interrupted by enemy attacks that don't hurt you at all but still take SO LONG to animate and finish and for you to get back to doing your thing that it's infuriating.

Where did this all break down for me? When I went back to Viper Manor. I went back to check for stuff I missed, and Viper Manor itself wasn't too bad. What WAS bad was when I went to check out the alternate entrance to Viper Manor that requires going through a forest and down through some caves to a well. I went from Viper Manor down into a cave and worked by way back into this forest. The enemies here only hit me for like 2 damage a hit, on a health pool of about 160. Every. Single. Fight. felt soooo tedious and boring, and there were so many fucking fights. I spent probably half an hour running through this cave up to this forest. It felt like it was something that should have taken me five minutes, at most. And then I get to the forest and.. Something is blocking my way. They won't show me what it is, or tell me what it is, they just tell me "something is blocking the way." If I want to find out, I have to go ALL the way back and then find this from the other way through the forest itself. ...So I backtrack all the way out of this cave and all the way back through Viper Manor, and got to this forest. And the forest was just as bad as the caves. Then I found the thing blocking my way. A giant sleeping plant monster. Can I attack this giant sleeping plant monster? No. Why not? I don't know. Literally, it's just laying here, dormant, and it won't let me pick a fight with it. I just get told that I have to wake it up first. WHY?! WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO WAKE IT UP?! Why did I need to run ALL the way around and approach it from the front? Why couldn't I have attacked it from behind and murdered it in its sleep? I don't seem to have any problem with killing innocent monsters (like the komodo dragons) so why do I have some moral quandary about this fucking plant? So I go and LURE ANOTHER MONSTER TO ITS DEATH so I can murder this other monster. WHAT THE FUCK! ARGGH!

Then the stupid Hydra Marshes. Combat is quickly becoming the worst aspect of this game because of how long and tedious it is and boring it is. Combat doesn't even look cool. Why? Because instead of being able to watch the action I have to watch these hit percentages so that I know if I need to worry about the attack at all or anything. And even if I watched the action, it would still be really bad because I would get two hits of this cool looking combo in and.. then get interrupted, for no reason, so that I can't even see this "cool combo" finish out. Spells are half hearted most of the time right now. Either much longer than they need to be or just not really enjoyable to watch for some other reason. Maybe that's a result of combat already feeling like it takes way too long.

On a related note, why do they have so many random characters you can recruit when so many of them are useless? Why does the best spell caster I have available, Guile, have THE WORST spell selection? Let me see if I can explain this. When your mastery level goes up, you get more spell slots, each dash is a spell slot. Most of my characters look something like this-

- - -

- - - -

- -

-

Guile, however, the character that is billed as a magician, and has the highest magic, looks like this

- - - -

-

Meaning he gets four spells (one is auto filled with a personal ability) where all of the rest of my characters get about nine spells. Why? Why does he get a fraction of the spells available as everyone else? It's stupid. No, there is no defending it, it is stupid. He sucks at melee, and he sucks at magic because the game decides to arbitrarily restrict the number of spells he can use compared to any other character.

And Greco, the Luchador Priest, he SUCKS at magic. No ifs ands or buts, he's awful at it. He has no magic skill to speak of. Spells that other characters cast and do about 50 damage with he casts and does less than 10 damage with - no this has nothing to do with innate color of enemies, and they're spells that SHARE a color with him, so he should be better with them, and they're not slotted below what their element level requires either, he just sucks at them. So you would think, maybe his physical attacks make up for it, right? Wrong. He does only slightly, marginally, even, better damage than Guile. Why have so many characters that just suck? Why have stats on characters that make them near useless/unenjoyable to use? What is the point of that?

I've come to the conclusion that the people that look upon Chrono Cross fondly must have some nostalgia goggles on, or, at least, are far more willing to look over the many faults and down sides that this game has for.. some reason that I'm not sure I can understand. I can get appreciating games that aren't the most masterfully crafted things, or that are kind of bad but do have some things in them that are still worth experiencing. I haven't come across a single thing yet, other than the music, that is worth experiencing in this game. The story feels shallow and hastily put together. I don't care about any of the characters, not the dying Kid, not the main character Serge, no one. The characters I would want to use because I think they're interesting are useless in combat. The dialogue is poor. The combat is tedious and there's no answer to fighting stuff well below your level, which actively discourages you from exploring or backtracking at all, and low level enemies still seek you out with malicious intent as if they stand any chance at all of killing you when all they're doing is wasting your time and making you want to quit playing.

I don't know if I'm going to keep playing this game. I really don't. Nothing is compelling me to want to keep playing. Maybe I'll write another blog or something talking about why I quit playing, or my deeper thoughts on where there story had been and was going, but at least for right now, I have zero desire to play that game any more. Which is unfortunate because I really did want to play through it, and after much of the start I felt like there could be something more to this game, even if buried, but, I'm not seeing it, or even glimpses of it.

PS- I'll add images later.

Welcome to...

Welcome to!

WELCOME TO!

Chrono Cross This! 4!

You can find all my other Chrono Crossings of This at my blog page, because, why not just give you one place to look instead of a bunch of individual links.

The Story So Far?

Not great. Bad dialogue, an ok combat system, annoying characters, crossing parallel dimensions, being attacked by dragoons, picking up Guile (still not the cool Guile, and also not Magus) and a bunch of other characters (most of which I couldn't care less about. I should go make the other Guile page though..) Foreshadowing, more foreshadowing, even more foreshadowing. Some demi-human racism, Chrono Trigger reference after Chrono Trigger reference (those aren't going away in this episode either.)

Last left off having recruited Guile and am breaking into some place called Viper Manor because everyone but me wants to, me, as Serge, couldn't care less. I'm supposed to believe that I will find all of my answers at Viper Manor (except I already have any answer that matters and I think I'd be better off if I just ignored all of it, went back to my own world, and called it good.)

This Time In The Days Of Our Lives.

I break into Viper Manor! Go figure, right? First I go get... Korcha? Something, I dunno, he uses CHA instead of "you" - "I gotCHA some cookies." and yes it's in capitals. Anyway, one of the lesser offenders for dialogue so far in the game, but, he seems sort of annoying, so, I still don't really care about him. But, we go by boat to Viper Manor (the supposedly impenetrable fortress) and climb some rocks while one single guard throws boulders down at me to try and get me to stop going up. (It doesn't stop me by the way, go figure.) Actually, the whole scene sort of reminded me of the mini game in FF7 where you have to stop the invaders from climbing up and attacking your outpost.

So, I get to the top (there are a couple of chests I can't figure out how to get to, but, whatever, they can't be that important) and the guard freaks out and jumps down and fights me. I whoop his ass then he throws another boulder which comically (not really) goes awry and angers some bird monster off screen and causes it to come and kill the guard and then attack me. Boss fight, I win.

I get up to the mansion then and... get told we should wait until night fall because... something? It seemed pointless, really. And why did this one inept guard not put the ENTIRE MANSION ON ALERT. I guess because he was inpet, but, really. This seems like the least impenetrable fortress... with some really awful guards.

Anywho, moving on.

So I find a guy and he wants me to feed some dragons as a mini game. I end up feeding them 10 times, 20 times, 30 times, 40 times, and 100 times, getting a different reward each time. Getting iron armor for 100 times (as difficult as that was before I realized I could just hold down the X button to feed the dragons) seems kind of silly. But that's nothing specific to Chrono Cross, so, whatevs. From doing this I earn a key to get into Viper Manor.

Really barely anything happens. I learn that there's a guest at the Manor, that monsters have been showing up in the Manor (I don't know how, they house an entire military unit within its walls, apparently they're all so bad at their jobs that they can't even clean up these random monsters.) I fell to a trap (that you pretty much had to fall to because you have to enter a password that you have no way of knowing) and then stole some uniforms to impersonate soldiers. I found a handful of locked doors; I don't know if there was maybe some way for me to get into them, if they're something I get to come back to later, or whatever, so I just left them and kept going.

I met a scientist with a German accent, I met a French speaking Harlequinn, I met a science experiment that talks like Bugs Bunny, I met a big tough soldier THAT TALKS IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME, I met a little girl that talks like she's either a valley girl or from the 60's or something.. I dunno. Harle, the Harlequinn, I think maybe confounds me the most. Surprisingly I don't find her the most offensive on her own, but, why the fuck does she talk in French randomly? France isn't even a place in the Chrono Trigger universe. So why does she speak French?! UGH! So stupid. Whatever though, this isn't going anywhere, I gotta get used to putting up with it.

What else, let's see..

Oh, I met Belthazar. He told me he was a prophet, and explained the whole two worlds thing to me (again..) and then told me how to get to General Viper. Which, lo-and-behold, I get to General Viper's room, meet the viper, find out that Kid is looking for the Frozen Flame (for some reason) and that she's with this group called The Radical Dreamers and I met Lynx, who wants Serge and his soul so that he can...do... something.. then he called me -

THE CHRONO TRIGGER!

Probably not that Chrono Trigger though, probably the Chrono Trigger mentioned IN Chrono Trigger, but, eh, all sorts of references and mystery and so on, so forth. The important part is that Kid got hit by a poisoned dagger thrown by Lynx and now I need to go find a Hydra (which is extinct, I bet I can find one in my own world though) and then I can save her! I had a choice to just not go find a cure for her, and I kind of am curious where that would have lead, but, I know that Kid won't die one way or another, so, whatever.

This is roughly where I stopped, needing to go back to my world and kill a hydra (and probably drive them into extinction in my world too) to save this one girl (who is just a clone... but we'll be getting to that later in the future.)

My Thoughts?

The game is growing on me a little, but, I still think the people that say CC is better than CT are crazy people. I don't even think that this could be a case of personal preference, CT is just strictly a better made game. You may LIKE CC more than CT, but CT is, by far, a much better made game.

The dialogue in the game still bugs the shit out of me, but I'm putting up with it.

Combat is ok. It continues to grow on me a bit, but, it doesn't seem 'great', just 'ok.' It's serviceable.

The pacing of the game seems really, really awkward. I couldn't tell you exactly what it is, but, it just doesn't feel good. So much of it feels so forced, and like I'm just kind of along for the ride, like, I have no emotional attachment to anything that's going on, it's just happening and I'm going along with all of it because I'm supposed to. CT felt more natural about that. I kind of went along with things in CT because I had to (I couldn't just let this girl disappear and not go looking for her) and after I get back I don't have a choice, I'm wrapped up in some serious shit where the Counselor wants to kill me, and then I get flung into the far distant future where I find out that some real bad shit goes down somewhere between my time and this time and that gives me an emotional attachment of wanting to see the story through, because I want to save the planet, if I can, somehow, because I know stuff is going to happen and who else is going to do it?

In CC, though, I feel like random shit is just happening around me, and they couldn't figure out how to get it to all fit together so they just gave me really aggressive personalities around me that will force me to go places and do things for no reason. And then I find out that "I'm special and a chosen one and that I'm the key to everything that ever existed and.." ugh, sorry, I've never really liked the whole "chosen one" story that finds its way into so many JRPGs. One way or another you are always "the chosen one" because for one reason or another you're the only one so special that you can save the world/universe/whatever. But when they shove it down your throat blatantly telling you that you were chosen from birth to be this...key.. and blah blah blah, it just sounds awful. It sounds like they couldn't come up with any real story for your character so they just fell back on something easy. Maybe that's not the case, and hey, these people are, or were, talented enough to make a living off of the stories they wrote and created, but that doesn't excuse it for me, personally. Games where you are somehow 'the chosen one' can be presented better than this though. I look at something like Persona 3 or 4, where the main character is special and unique and is sort of a key to a puzzle and is unique in the world, they still make the main characters feel special and fleshed out BEYOND that trope. CC doesn't do that, and it's worse for it.

So where am I at with the game? At this point in time I could still just put the controller down and not finish the game and be perfectly ok with it. I don't feel compelled to keep playing the game. It hasn't done anything, at all, that has drawn me in so completely that I need to keep playing it. Will I keep playing? You bet. This gives me something to do and gives me a reason to write, and I want to write more. Plus, by the end, I think I'd like to be able to potentially write a review or something. But, we'll see where it goes. Anyway, thanks for reading.

Check out the other blog entries on my blog page and check back probably next week for part five where hopefully things start going a bit faster.

Welcome to -

Chrono Cross This! 3!

You can find Chrono Cross This! 1! and Chrono Cross This! 2! at their links here, and down below at the bottom.

The Story So Far!

This will get increasingly long if I keep giving full recaps of what happened last time, so, I'm going to start giving very brief summaries here and if you want to know more detailed info on what happened last time, check out the other blogs.

So far in the game let's see what's happened!

I woke up like Crono in Chrono Trigger, I met Leena down at the docks, I listened to a bunch of people tell me about all of the major events in the game including a demon cat, parallel worlds, FATE, a dragon temple, and probably other stuff I forgot about. I listened to a bunch of terrible accents. I met Toma the 14th. I learned how to do battle. I killed an entire generation of a species for their scales and their murdered their mom to make sure no one else from the village can collect scales to give to the girl that they like. I was sent to a parallel world (told you.) I DIDN'T pick up an annoying dog. I DID pick up an annoying blonde Australian girl (ok, she's not that bad, it's just her accent and its somewhat inconsistency.) I met a talking skull. I fought off some idiot knights named Solt and Peppor, twice. Oh, and I met a voodoo doll that-om likes to raaaaandomly add -om to-om his woooords and stretch out other words for nooo reason.

I think that catches us up to the city (really it's a town, there's like maybe fifty people living here, come on) of Termina!

The Story Now!

Last I left off I was just outside Termina, this time, I went into Termina. It's another sea side town. I imagine there are a lot of those, being that this is kind of all island-y down in this part of the world. Which as far as I can tell this game will only ever take place in this sectioned off area from the rest of the world. They keep talking about Porre (the southern most town in CT, that in the DS version Dalton turns into a military state and...something. It's not explained how he succeeded, why he succeeded, why I didn't just go stop him instead of worrying about the Dream Devourer that I couldn't ever beat, but whatevs) and its military from up above "coming down." I don't know, honestly this whole thing is really poorly explained. Maybe it gets explained later, but, I'm going to try not to worry about it.

Now that a small side tangent about the mystery of Porre is over, back to Termina. As I first enter town I see a man named Glenn (who looks a lot like what I imagine Frog in human form did.. so.. another CT reference. They really like getting those in here, don't they? "Hey, hey, remember that other game, CT? That really good game on the SNES? Ok. Just wanted to see if you remembered it." Maybe it's sort of in service of the fans or whatever, but I'm not sure it helps to remind people of a classic game that is so well loved in your sequel game. It kind of just makes me want to go play CT instead.)

Glenn is there talking to a flower shop owner about wanting a specific kind of flower (go figure, a kind I happened to pick up on my way here.) The owner doesn't have the flower, something about Dario being dead, Dario loving the flower and they want the flower for their formal praying at his grave. Long story short here, I ended up giving the flower to Glenn and some woman at the grave site. Maybe I should have held onto it so I could give it to the other world Dario at some point to recruit him (because I imagine he's still alive in Serge's version of the world) but oh well. They thank me, talk about the sword, about how Dario is Glenn's brother, how the sword at the grave has been passed down generationally (but Glenn doesn't use it, probably because of an inferiority complex) and then they're on their way.

I spent a lot of time in Termina, by the way. A good hour or so just talking to people. The element shop keeper has a special portrait, so I bet I can recruit her or something later. I also met a kid with a mohawk who's name I can't remember, but adds CHA to his words randomly in no discernible pattern, that scared off customers to a guy showing off a fake mermaid. The kid likes mermaids, apparently, which brings me to -

Apparently Termina, or this entire continent is kind of shitty. There are "demi-humans", humans that are part animal part human, and apparently there's this great big racist thing going on with them. Maybe it'll get touched on more later, but, so far some guy was using them as slaves, people seemed to have no problem with the concept of shoving one into a tank (not that it was a real mermaid anyway, but still) and they use the term somewhat derogatorily "Go back to your demi-human friends you kid that I hate!" This kid also tells me that he has a boat and that he can take me around on a tour in the boat, but for some reason I don't have time for that.

Why don't I have time for that? Because I need to get into Lord Viper's Manor. Why? Hell if I know. No, really, at this point, I have no idea why. It's not until I meet a guy cleaning a statue of Lord Viper that Kid decides to pipe up with "we should go there because you need to find out why he was maybe after you and so that I can do..something... that I'm going to be very vague about..." For telling me all of the major enemies in the game, just about, and some of the big plot twists (by the way, there was a kid in bed being read stories by his mother that was friendly enough to tell me ALL about this thing called the Frozen Flame. I'm sure it's nothing important, though, right?) they seem very unwilling to ever tell me any specifics about what's going on in the now. So, whether I like it or not (I told Kid I didn't want to go, she's still making me) I need to find a way into Lord Viper's Manor.

Which is where I meet Guile. Not that Guile, another Guile. A Guile that was going to be Magus, but then they added so many characters to the game that they scrapped that idea. I'm not kidding either. They felt it was a better idea to have 40 characters in the game, most of whom are useless, instead of have a potentially interesting story involving Magus and this alternate world and his search for Schala. So, Guile is a magician that looks an awful lot like Magus, but he isn't, that has a bet with a fortune teller. Guile needs to sneak inside of Viper Manor and obtain something from some room. Again, they're REALLY vague about this stuff. However, Guile tells me that even though Lord Viper's Manor is impenetrable, all he needs to get in is a boat. So looks like this fortress is impenetrable every place except for..nowhere at all because a mushroom man told me that you can also get into the manor from a "secret" underground passage in some forests. Do these people know the meaning of the word impenetrable? Because so far it's sounding like this place is anything but.

I know where to get a boat, I just don't want to go get it though. Because it requires I go spend some more time talking toCHA! that weird kid. So, in my reluctance, I spent some more time in town, helped a man sell his Lord Viper food by lowering the price from 100 to 50. I found the talking skull's (who's name is Skelly.. of course it is) mom, or grandma, or something, lamenting their son or grandson or whatever having gone off and disappeared. By the way, I looked up where ALL of his body parts are, and I kind of want to say fuck it. This isn't like "Go collect three things and we'll be good" this is along the lines of collect six or so things, all over the world, at different locations, some of which sound like they won't be available for a pretty long time. I also talked to a blacksmith and his wife. Zappa, and Zippa, Zappa's Wife. Seriously, that was her name every time she talked. How must she feel knowing that the only way anyone will ever identify her is as "Zappa's Wife." She even has a portrait and everything, but she's relegated to being Zappa's Wife every time she opens her mouth. The black smith was cranky, told me about putting a soul into the weapons he makes. I'm sure I can get one or both of them in my party later if I find out the magic way to make it happen.

Mojo is apparently looking for his brother, as I found a straw doll that he called brother, but then said no, that's not him, and he wondered where he might be. I also met a kid named Van, who's an artist and son of a wealthy merchant trader guy that doesn't really love his son and loves his work more because he came in and broke a promise to Van while I was just casually standing beside him and told him that he wouldn't get to go to the festival because he had to go work. I bet I get Van in my party later too if I really try for it.

And I think that's about where I stopped. So, I found out what my objective is, though.. not really WHY it's my objective other than "come on, you have to find out the truth of what happened to the other you, why some people were after you even though they only seemed to try once and I kicked their asses pretty easily, and because I need to be a tool for two of the other party members. Really, there's more reason for me to go to Lord Viper's Manor right now for Guile and for Kid than it seems like for myself. But hey, I'm sure I'll met a cat demon named Lynx there who can fill me in on everything that's going on.

Impressions & Closing Out!

So, not a lot happened this time, despite me having a lot more to write about. It seems they're finally starting to get to at least some story stuff; though more of it seems to be about everyone but Serge. That's fine though. Serge will get his time to shine when he switches bodies with... eh, I'll cover that when I get there. I know it happens, it's one of the few things I remember from the game when I played it the first time.

The game's not bad. The dialogue in the game still seems pretty annoying. It also still looks pretty good. Well, good for its time.

I also spent some amount of time doing research on the Dream/Time Devourer, and, that shit is fucking convoluted as all hell. Apparently it's a combination of Lavos, Schala, some air ships that FATE the super computer made, and the dragons and it needs Serge for some reason to come to maturity. What the fuck? I'll cross that bridge more when I get there, but, what the fuck?! The Lavos-Schala thing I got. That kind of made sense. The fact that it's supposedly actually like five entities in one is absurd.

I definitely want to keep playing the game though, but I won't be back until Monday or Tuesday due to going on a trip for New Year's Eve. So I'll see you all then when I get back and hopefully things will pick up a bit more in game.

Blogs CCT1 and CCT2 can be found at their respective links.

Welcome to the second installment of

Chrono Cross This!

You can find Part 1 Here, or down below in the next paragraph, or all the way at the bottom.

The Story So Far!

So, in my last trip back to Chrono Cross, I barely played the game at all. I went through a tower dream, got bossed around by Leena, heard a lot of foreshadowing of events to come (cat demons, dragon castle, talk of fate, alternate realities. The only thing they haven't spoiled, I feel like, is the only thing that semi-connects Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross and everything being one of a bajillion parallel worlds.) Then I slaughtered an entire generation of komodo dragons, and their mother, for THREE of their scales. Then I stopped after a CG cutscene that brought me to a parallel dimension (even though I "don't know it yet".)

So, where did the story take me from there? No place interesting yet, I can tell you that.

The Story Now!

So, strange guy on the beach told me to go back to town to find Leena because she was babysitting (but wait, she had just finished babysitting to come visit me! What's going on here?!)

Ok, side tangent.

Sorry about that. Back to the story.

So, I stop by the dragon rock to fight my way back to the town (because of treasure and xp) and find out that there are completely different monsters here! Eh, I'm sure the local wildlife just switched out while I was unconscious and it's the exact same place. Right? I make it back to the village only to find out, long story short, it's not the same village! Well, it IS the same village, but it's different! All of the people are different! The guy that had caught a monster fish has no fish at all and can't catch anything for the life of him! The poet girl in the restaurant gave up on poetry and is all cynical! And the chef's wife is running the place while the chef went off on an adventure! And a great fisherman hasn't been a fisherman and now worships a voodoo doll, and had a friend that had a son that died 10 years ago! And there's a different village chief! And Serge's house is owned by someone else! And a boy in the village was attacked by a cat and then drowned a couple of years later! And.. this all feels super heavy handed. So heavy handed, in fact, that the girls in the village even like a necklace made out of rainbowshells, NOT komodo scales. I get what they're going for, and hopefully this is something that they don't continue to be so forceful about, but man does it feel kind of crappy right now. Maybe the problem is just that I like talking to random NPCs though and they don't expect that you want to do that.

So, I find Leena and she explains the whole story to me about how she used to like this boy, named Serge, that lived in the village, but then he died, and she doesn't know why she's telling me all of this (other than the fact that I asked...) and then she doesn't believe that I'm Serge and she tells me that I should go visit Serge's grave up on cape howl (because for some reason this boy is the only boy that ever died of drowning and therefore is the only one that gets a grave up on some cliff overlooking the ocean/sea.) She's also very insistent about this. Off to cape howl it is.

So I get there, fight my way to the top, then I get jumped by three guys. Three guys that are after me because a mysterious "He" said I would be here. Why bother with "He" (they even put it in quotations, yes) when even if they SAID the guys name, I would have no clue who it was. This seems pointless. Well, we're about to fight when Kid, the Australian Sch-girl, I mean, the Australian girl, shows up. Her accent is so thick and constant it makes me long for the days of Ayla and Frog's original CT accents. In fact, almost EVERYONE seems to have some kind of crappy accent, and none of them are the same. Anyhoo, we fight the guys in what is a semi-tutorial boss fight about natural colors and weaknesses.

Then I win and go back to the village to rest. Where I then also go down to the not-a-fisherman-anymore and show him a giant tooth that the other-him gave me and explain the whole thing about parallel worlds to him, he doesn't believe me (or, rather, he does, but doesn't want to admit that he's been wasting the last 10 years of his life worshiping a voodoo doll.) When I go to leave the doll comes to life! It's name is apparently Mojo, and he has a dumb as shit accent too! He likes adding -om to the end of words, randomly, and drawing words out all the time. This is growing a bit infuriating, actually, and maybe I'll bitch about it in the next installment. Anyway, he senses a destiny and joins me. So, here I am, not even two hours into the game, and I already have 3 party members. There are going to be a LOT of party members in this game. I know that, and I could piece it together even if I didn't. I'm not liking the sound of that.

So, I leave the village, go up to this fossil dig site. While up there I lie to some soldiers about me being an exorcist and sure I'll take care of their problem. So I climb a ladder and find a talking, moving clown skull that tells me that it knows I'm dead too and that he can't remember anything but that maybe if he found the rest of his body he'd remember, so, I agree to help him out. I'm guessing he's going to be another party member. So, four-ish party members already. Really?

I fight some dodo's and some dingo's and some creepy plant things and steal a dodo's egg and some flower and then head back down and go off to the other side where I meet... SIGH

Solt and Peppor!

No really, those are their names, Solt and Peppor (and apparently they don't have wiki pages on the site.) One is a really tall skinny knight, the other is a fat, short knight, and the one named Peppor is forced to work the word "shake" into every sentence he utters. "Shake it to him!" "Let's shake it on out of here!" this is groan inducingly bad. Anyway, it's another boss fight (by the way, these are two of the guys that jumped me back at the cliff.) This is, again, more of a tutorial boss fight than anything as Solt tries to use black magic on me (because I'm white... these racist assholes), but all he does is turn my color alignment black, meaning that I'm now weak to white magic, except they didn't bring any white magic, because they're bumbling idiots. So we kick their ass. They were considerably easier than the two seperate giant dodo's I had beat up like five minutes ago, but whatever, they're trying to be played up as incompetent.

Then I keep on going and get to the other side of this canyon and stop just outside the town of Termina, which is where I was headed.

Impressions!

All right, I'm talking kind of a mess of shit about this game (there's a lot to talk shit about so far, honestly) but I don't actually hate this game. I'm still playing it, and it's enjoyable enough. I just honestly have no idea if the game was written this badly or if the localization team for the game is the one that so thoroughly helped screw the pooch here. Why does everyone and their dog (I'm not kidding about that dog part, and I'll get to that in a moment) have some stupid accent? Is it because they figure there are so many f'ing characters in this game that if each and every single one of them didn't have some kind of accent that I wouldn't be able to tell who was talking at any given time?

As for the battle system. I'm not hating that either, and I understand it pretty well by this point, even if some of the decisions don't make sense and I don't understand WHY some things happen, just that they work that way. Why, in the middle of me attacking, does the enemy get to override me? Why do enemies sometimes get to take two attacks in a row? (Like the Dodo, that will spend a turn squaking at me, will spend another action squaking, and then as soon as my action window pops up, for just a split second, it then gets to attack instead of me getting to do anything at all?) I also don't entirely think it was really necessary for them to go to such lengths in this whole element thing. It's not bad, and maybe it will get more interesting later, but it just seems needlessly involved for relatively little pay off.

The party characters.. Boy oh boy. This is something that will piss me off to no end. When you have 30 some odd characters in a game like this, they don't feel cool, they feel wasted. I won't end up caring about any of these guys. Why should I care who Mojo, the talking voodoo doll is? He just woke up and joined my party for seemingly no reason. I know nothing about him other than he loves love and talks really badly. And I know the clown skull will be a dude if I can find his body. And the Chef that's off on a journey will undoubtedly be able to join me. And then I have Kid who I 'might' care about to some degree, but, I know the story there, so, not really. The other problem I have with this sort of comes from me being a completionist. While doing some wiki work and research I found out that I already missed recruit the dog with the funny accent. I don't know if I get a later chance to recruit her or if I already messed that up and I won't ever be able to get her now or not. I know that there will be characters in this game that if I do not do specific things for, I will not be able to recruit them. I hate that. So, I'm in a position here where I have to decide if I'm going to start the game over or not so that I can get the stupid dog. I'd just like to point out - I don't care about the dog because I care about the CHARACTER of the dog, I only care about the dog because I'm a completionist that gets annoyed by things like this.

The one saving grace to this game so far, or rather, the one thing that I haven't had any real issue with yet, is the music. The music in this game is legitimately good. The CT victory music remix is "ok" (I guess they wanted it to be like the FF victory music, so, I can put up with that) and everything else music wise has been fantastic.

I'll also say the game looks better than I was expecting. Most PS1 era 3D games hold up very poorly, but this game looks pretty ok. Sure there are jagged edges and everything, but, this is really good looking by comparison to stuff like FF8 or FF7 even.

Closing It Out!

For those of you that have played through this game before, or at least remember the game better than I do, should I restart the game to get the dog? I figure I'm not really that far in, so restarting now wouldn't be too big of an issue. Or can I still pick the dog up later? Should I really worry about collecting all of the party members? CAN you even collect all of the party members? I know most will be a pain in the ass if I don't use a character guide for them. But, if I did do a run through where I collected them all, I could fill out all of the wiki pages on the site about them (there are a lot that are missing still, and some that have almost no information at all.) I'll probably take a small break from the game while I wait to hear back about collecting all of the companions (including the dog.) Unless I don't hear anything, then I'll just go do a bunch of research on my own.

Anyway, thanks for reading (hopefully. I can't imagine this will be a popular blog series, the episodes are kind of long and a bit drawn out and I imagine people don't care much about reading about someone playing through a game, but, hey, maybe, just maybe) Hope you join me again next time!

Edit: Here's the link to Chrono Cross This! 1! In case you haven't seen it yet.

Welcome to my first installment of Chrono Cross This! my journey back to the "sequel" to Chrono Trigger.

So, as a forward for this, I want to get a couple of things out of the way. This is a result of a couple of things, 1) the Chrono Trigger endurance run. 2) a poll on these forums asking which was better, Cross or Trigger. 3) me beating the special ending added to the DS version of Trigger.

As a quick warning; spoilers. Everywhere. There will be spoilers all over the place. You don't like it, don't read. I won't give warnings before the spoilers.

Now, what does the bonus ending of CT:DS have to do with this? For those of you that haven't seen it, or haven't played Cross, or haven't beaten Trigger, the important thing to know about this extra ending that they went through extra effort to create specifically for the DS version of CT is that it only serves a purpose to connect CT and CC. The ending literally serves no other purpose than to justify the existence of CC as an actual sequel. I just want to reiterate that one more time - Square Enix went back to CT and added an ending to the game to try and better justify the existence of a sequel that is (now) 11 years old. How fucking crazy is that? Not like, crazy awesome, just, crazy. Was this a regret that someone at Square Enix had that CC was viewed as a non-sequel because for all intents and purposes it WASN'T a sequel until the end of the game? Was this something they had wanted to do back in the day but just couldn't get around to it/fit it into the game? This is like them adding the anime videos to the PS1 version of CT that also tried to 'support' the existence of CC (the ending video of Lucca finding the child in the basket in the wild) and shouldn't be that offensive or anything? I dunno.

I will say it felt like a real shitty ending. It took me from a great high of fighting Dalton YET AGAIN and him escaping YET AGAIN, to probably the lowest of lows I've felt during a CT play through (wait, I don't get to go fight Dalton again even though he specifically told me where he was going and what he was going to go do? wait, I got to fought Lavos-Schala and WON but then they just one-shotted me? And then Schala teleports me back to my time and this all becomes a non-issue? Oh, and other-Magus (because an alternate reality Magus is there, by the way, because alternate realities are a thing in Chrono Cross, and that needs to be addressed) gets teleported to a new place where he loses his memory; forgets who he is, where he's from, everything, and then vows to do everything in his power to remember who he is. And that's the end. We have no idea where he ended up, what happens to him, anything. He could be a character in CC, and maybe this is an attempt to say that he IS the same character (a man named Guile. No, not THAT Guile, a different Guile) as that was the original intention with Guile in CC, that it would be Magus, except then they added way too many other characters to CC and scrapped that idea and made him his own new character. So what was the point of having other-Magus get thrown into a different dimension and lose all of his memory? Ugh.

Ok, sorry, my disgust over that ending still kind of lingers in my mind.

So, back on topic. This blog is going to be my return visit to the sequel of Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross. I played through Chrono Cross once when it first came out. Now, however, I barely remember anything at all about it other than feeling kind of ripped off that they called it "the sequel to Chrono Trigger!" Now that I'm older and can potentially appreciate the game some more, and maybe follow it's rather absurd and complex plot better, I want to take a look back at it and see if it is really as bad as I remember, or if I was just being too harsh on the game at the time. Hopefully, one way or the other, I'll be able to make it all the way through CC so I can have a better idea of what this game truly is, isn't, was trying to be, where it succeeded, and where it failed. So without further ado-

CHRONO CROSS THIS!

So, Chrono Cross, where to start.

I put the game in the PS2, turned it on, and it worked. And then the game started and I watched a cinematic that is undoubtedly full of spoilers, that talked about fate and cogs turning and was being all melodramatic. Then I got into the game. I kept the main character's name the same, Serge. I hate his name so much already. Serge. But whatever, games are great and naming characters poorly and who am I to argue with the creators of the game.

The game starts in a dream sequence where you're, undoubtedly, already much farther into the game (about a forth or halfway through the game, if I had to guess) and are in some strange tower with two other companions (who you didn't get to name.) One is a really obnoxious female character named Kid. For some reason she has an over the top Australian accent. The other is an older guy with a mustache, named Fargo (he's not special enough to have a page in the wiki, apparently.) I have no idea, at all, what I'm doing in this tower, just that I should be playing. So, I run around, find a balcony overlooking a crystal thing I'm supposed to get to. Kid makes some comment about how "we're so close to the crystal but so far away still." I just shouted at my screen "Then how about you jump over the fucking railing and hop down to the room below where it is. I bet that would work really well and save me a lot of time." But nope, no such luck, so, I had to leave the room and go explore and fight some more in the tower.

At this point in the game the fighting system isn't explained at all, in any way. But it breaks down like this (and this is really an overly complex system for little to no reason) -

When you attack you have 3 levels of attack; 1 (weak), 2 (standard), and 3 (strong.) Your have so much energy to spend on those three different strengths of attacks. So, you may have 7 stamina, for example, and a strong attack will use up 3 stamina, leaving you with 4 to spend. So then you use a weak attack, which uses up 1 stamina, leaving you with 3. So then you use a standard attack, which uses up two, leaving you with 1. Then you do a weak attack since it uses up 1. Ideally, you start with a weaker attack (which has higher accuracy) and build up to a strong attack (which has lower accuracy, but gets better the more times you hit an enemy in the same attack.) Now, while all of this is going on you're building up elemental levels. It's sort of complicated, but, the important thing to know is that you assign elements (or magic) to slots on your character, after you attack you build up power to use those elements. Each element can only be used once per fight (unless otherwise noted.) So if you have 3 bars, like this - - - you have 3 different levels of elements. When you attack, those bars fill up, granting you access to those bars, and thusly, their elements (bars go both horizontally as well as vertically. The power level being horizontal, vertical slots granting you access to more than one element of that level.) Also, there's an oval in the upper left hand corner of the screen that isn't explained at all, but has different colors to it. I later find out that that has to do with the element affinity of a fight and that casting elements of the same element increases the power of that element while weakening the opposite element. Don't worry, some old guy in a village later explains this all to me.

Ok, so, gameplay is confusing and a bit needlessly complex it seems. But that's ok. I keep on fighting and murdering stuff and collecting a crystal and listening to this Australian girl ramble on with her terrible accent. Then we get teleported through the floor. This causes Fargo and Kid to FLIP THE FUCK OUT. I don't know WHY in a world where I can call down meteors from outerspace to hit my enemies inside of a building being teleported causes these two to lose their shit and be unable to comprehend what just happened. Maybe it was an excuse for Kid to talk some more with her Australian accent and to give Fargo a chance to say something, ANYTHING. Then I reach a door and I find out I was dreaming.

So, then I wake up. The exact same way that Crono in CT frst wakes up. In his bed, eyes closed, text on screen of his mom calling out to him. Then I open the blinds to my room. And then I go downstairs, and meet my mom, and my two cats. That's how you can tell it's different than Chrono Trigger, there are TWO cats, not just one. This felt like it was trying too hard to give a wink and a nudge at CT fans, but, whatever. I found out that my friend Leena has stopped by, but because I was sleeping I missed her and she went off somewhere, and that I should be nicer to Leena because girls something something... I dunno, I stopped listening to her.

I make my way out of the house, I'm in some sea-side tropical village. I don't remember any place like this being in CT, but, whatever. I'm sure it will ALL get explained EVENTUALLY, right? Aaaaanyhoo. I wander around town, there's a guy talking about a dragon castle under water (I'm sure that won't come up later) and a guy talking about the Porre army (for those that don't know, Dalton escapes and goes off and makes an army from the town of Porre in CT:DS to get back at you. You never get to see ANY of that, by the way.) So, Porre army, something something, all very vague and kind of useless information other than to have another CT callback. Speaking of CT references, I then meet Toma the 14th (Or, The Great Explorer Toma, as he likes to be called) who insists that he's exploring for treasure, not gardening (he seems kind of insecure about the matter.) And then I have a long conversation with a guy talking about taking alternate paths and wondering what life would be like if he made a different decision a long time ago (this is a really long, drawn out conversation that only serves as foreshadowing for the whole alternate realities thing.) It's briefly mentioned somewhere that Serge was attacked by a panther demon when he was a kid, but was saved and he used to be afraid of cats because of it, but not anymore. So far there's just a whole lot of CT references and foreshadowing. Also, there's something known as a cube of fate, or the fate something something that records everything. They felt the need to explain save points in the game (and I'm sure this won't become a thing later as a result of that either) for some reason. Anyway. I also hear a lot of talk about girls, and some kid asked me to break his sister in to make her more ladylike? What the fuck was that about, it seemed kind of creepy, to be honest, and maybe a bit sexist, I'm not sure.

Ok, so, lots of exploring, finding useless items, people telling me about komodo scales and love and blah blah, fight tutorial, blah blah, a girl gives me a foreshadowing hint about how to recruit her dog as a character later, blah blah, so much pointless talking that seems bent on trying to suck me into the world or to make me want to keep playing because "don't you want to know more about this thing that was mentioned in passing now?" It all feels kind of weird and maybe a bit forced. But we'll see, maybe it all pays off. So I find Leena down at the docks babysitting (since because I was sleeping she had to babysit instead? I'm not sure how that logic worked, but, it is what it is. Then she breaks out the whip and tells me to go fight some komodo dragons so I can make her a love necklace.) I guess this Leena is my love interest and childhood friend.

So, I go off to fight some komodo dragons and get their scales (after getting some advice from an old man about how to catch them all.) Honestly, it's all pretty boring, standard combat. I stab stuff, stuff dies. It's at this point though that the combat is actually starting to frustrate me. Not because it's too complicated or anything though. Remember how I was explaining that you have stamina and you have to spend that stamina on attacks and that you have varying levels of attacks? Well, let's say I attack something, I tell the game to do - 1, 1, 2, 3. Except that after I hit the second 1, before it gets to 2, the enemy's turn comes up. The enemy INTERRUPTS MY ATTACK and gets to hit me in the middle of me doing these bloody combos (because I can't tell it what combo to do ahead of time or anything) and then after the enemies attack I'm forced back to the original action menu screen of "Do you want to attack, cast spells, use items?" meaning every time I'm in the middle of attacking, if an enemy interrupts me, it's like I have to start all over again. It's frustrating as all get out and it has no reason for being this way.

Ok, anyway. I trap some dragons, kill them, for ONE scale each (I need 3, and apparently each dragon only caries one scale on its entire person. Sometimes only one scale for TWO dragons. This seems pretty brutal, actually. My love interest wants me to massacre an entire species just so she can have a necklace that proves that I love her?) Then after I kill the third one the MOTHER komodo dragon comes out. She's probably pretty pissed that I've been murdering her children in cold blood. So I kill her. This is all really easy so far. After every battle you also get to heal back up to (if not full, then almost full, using left over unused elemental energy and the cure element/spell. So I'm not even being drained of resources as I do all these fights.)

Next I make my way down to the beach where I'm supposed to meet Leena and give her the scales of the innocent dead. She takes the scales, talks about how if I remember when we were kids and used to sit at the beach and listen to the water, and how water is as old as time, and then talks about having kids, and wonders if we'll remember this when we're older, and how memories are funny because when you've forgotten them they then come floating back up to the surface. Then a strange voice started talking to me. Then I had a flashback to when I was a kid and a demon leopard attacked me. Then there was a tidal wave, some magic, and I passed out. Leena was mysteriously absent for ALL of this cutscene. When I awake Leena's gone and some strange man is standing over me wondering if I'm ok. I ask where Leena is, he says "oh, I think she's in the village babysitting. if you're a friend of hers you should go visit her."

Ok, I already know what happened, but they lay this on pretty thick about what just happened without showing it to you yet. I'm in an alternate reality. Plain and simple. I know this. The guy talking about "other possible futures", the mention of me being attacked when I was a kid and that I was lucky to survive, the flashback to that event, the mysteriously missing Leena, the fact that she's still babysitting despite the fact that I know she's not babysitting anymore and that she wouldn't have just left me to go back to babysitting. I'm positive, however, when Serge finds out he's in another reality, he will be flipping his shit (as much as a silent protagonist can) an be dumbfounded and confused about what's going on.

This is where I stopped.

So, I haven't been hating the game so far, but it seems very uninteresting at the same time. I guess it's an RPG though and I shouldn't expect for anything genuinely exciting to be happening so far. The game seems to be relying so much on foreshadowing so far though that I wonder if they realized that there was nothing compelling about the events that start the game off that they want to try and dig some hooks into you to make you want to see all of the hinted at stuff to get you to keep playing instead of just giving you good stuff from the start. I mean, think of it this way, if Lavos, Zeal, and Magus were all hinted and nudged at in the first half hour to hour of play in Chrono Trigger, would that have made it any better? Or would it have tainted the fun of everything that was going on? I'm thinking it would have made for a worse experience. But who knows, maybe things will get turned around at some point. I don't have high hopes though, know what things I already know about CC, but, I'm trying to keep an open mind and to keep on playing regardless.

So join me next time as I find out that I'm in a parallel world! And that Leena thinks I'm dead! And that nothing is as it was! And combat continues to be just sort of annoying and mediocre!

Episode 4 is here a day late! Episodes One, Two, and Three are at their respective links.

This one is going up late because, well, honestly, I got wrapped up in Blizzcon, and then by the time I realized I should be working on D&D for Sunday it was suddenly 10pm at night and I had to call it a night so I could get up early for a brunch meeting with some friends stopping through town.

So let's see what we can come up with in the last day before I need all of this stuff ready!

Creating A D&D Campaign: Episode 4! (Oh Shit, Tomorrow's Sunday!)

Ok, so, while this blog may be up a bit late, I have been doing 'some' amount of work on the side to at least have a playable session ready for tomorrow.

As such, this episode will take a haaaaard swing in a different direction to start with and will talk about my sort of 'last minute preparation to get a runnable session ready in time' and less about creating the region or the city or anything.

I Need A Start to the Story!

This was actually taken care of pretty quickly once I decided I wanted them to be based out of one single city. More or less I decided that the start for the campaign would be that all of the players have just joined an Adventurer's Guild (for their own personal reasons, that's up to them.) I know that the party make up is going to be, roughly, a dwarf crusader (from the Book of Nine Swords), a human barbarian, an elf rogue, and.. well, a very indecisive player that last time I was talking to was thinking of a shifter ranger/barbarian (but this was his like third character idea, so, I have no idea what he's doing.) This does mean they have no healer at all, but, being apart of an adventurer's guild, I can easily help assign helpful NPCs to their group to help them fill out rolls they might be missing.

So, this is a nice, simple start that lets me send them off wherever, gives them an excuse to work together despite potentially not knowing each other, and sets up future potential plot hooks with inner guild problems, guild vs guild problems, crooked people hiring them for jobs that seem innocent to start with, so on, so forth. Also gives them something to potentially lose within the city already. Not that I plan on just stealing away their guild just because I can, but, giving them things that they can lose gives them things to get attached to, which is good.

So, as a starting point, they'll have just joined the guild, and they'll be given a 'handler' that will assign them missions or give them missions to choose from. Early on they'll be given a rather straight forward escort mission, something to 'cut their teeth on.'

The players will be escorting a merchant and his cart of supplies (mostly food and water) to a border town/fortress that rests on the edge of a desert (between two mountains) but the traditional 'safe' path has recently suffered from a rock slide, meaning that the merchant needs to take a longer, older, more dangerous path that may be littered with monstrous humans or just dangerous animals. I still have to actually decide WHAT they are going to fight, but I have set up an old abandoned travel house on the path that they can rest in.

I'm thinking on the path TO the house they'll probably get jumped by a couple of random wild animals, maybe some wild dogs or some eagles or something. At the house I'm a bit sketchier. I could have goblins or kobolds or something squatting in the house and needing to clean the house of them, or, I may fill it with insects or vermin or something, something more 'innocent'. I think I'll lean more towards bugs and what not, have it be a bit more of a 'surprise', like, them going up to the beds in the house, pulling back the sheets and going "Oh shit! a bed full of centipedes!" Yeah, I like the sound of that. Ok, I'm going with vermin/pests/etc for the house. I have a map drawn up of the house that I'll be posting up later (probably tomorrow morning since I don't have access to my scanner at the moment.)

Where Do We Go From There?

So, I know they'll go through this old mountain path, get down to these badlands that connect to this fortress type town on the border. They'll spend at least a night there in the fort town while the merchant does business, off loads stuff, picks up stuff to take back to the trade city, etc. I'm thinking there may be another encounter during this, maybe involving hyenas attacking the town, or attacking a child just outside of the town or something. The problem there is that I have to come up with a reason for why the town guard can't handle it themselves. Maybe I'll have a child fall down into an antlion/ankheg pit or something just outside of town and the players will need to get down there and rescue the child. Though an antlion or ankheg would be far too difficult for the group, so, may just be that the creature's lair is currently empty, or maybe filled with something else (could be an old pit that is just no longer inhabited.)

From there the players will head back through the mountains and back to the city.

I'd like to hope that this will be enough for one session, but, you never know. It's hard to say how long these things will go sometimes. So just in case, I'd like to have the START of something else. So I think after getting back to the city they'll get their reward and everything from the merchant escort (some of which in turn goes to the guild) and then either later that night or the next night will get sent to a nearby tavern or butcher shop that is having rat troubles. This won't be as simple as "clear the basement of rats" that you see everywhere, but I love the feel of taking that sort of overused idea and putting a spin on it. These aren't just rats, these are rats that are being controlled by a wererat below the city that the players will need to locate, possibly in the sewer system, and take out, lest he become too powerful.

Complications and Things to Consider

So, one thing that is really different between 3.5 and 4th ed D&D is the combat and creating encounters. In 4th ed you can throw encounters together really easily going by an xp budget and the creatures are almost guaranteed to be a decent challenge (but not too much of a challenge) to players so long as you build the encounter intelligently (a fight of nothing but minions won't be that difficult, or nothing but swarms will probably wipe them out pretty quickly.) In 3.5, however, although combats are still pretty easy to piece together, gauging player strength is a lot more difficult. Players building characters smartly in 3.5 or ones with really good stats can make such a difference in how easily they deal with monsters. Something that, according to the book, is a proper challenge may not even come close to putting up a fight. I'll have to be ready to adapt these combats on the fly as need be once I see how the players deal with the encounters. This will be tricky, but, hopefully I'll be able to create proper encounters that won't be too hard or too easy, but we'll see. It's one of the things that I enjoyed a lot more about 4th ed vs 3.5, but, it's not something that bugs me enough to keep me away from 3.5, so, I'll manage, I'm sure.

Rewards!

Well, fighting so many creatures that wouldn't carry loot, I have to find other means by which to give the players loot. Thankfully, I have two good outs for this, and a third minor one that can work. The first is to simply say that gems or artwork was left in the travel house on the mountain path that the players can take with them. Another good source is a reward from the merchant who hired them. This is an easy way to give them a reward without any enemies dropping loot. The third one is that if they do rescue a child at the fort town, the family may try to offer them some kind of small reward. I still have to figure out how MUCH money to give them, but, I can do that pretty easily and come up with that pretty last minute. I don't think for their first adventure I'll give them any kind of item reward. I may save that until after the wererat that they'll deal with at the end of the session or at some point during the second session.

Yo, They Will Probably Interact With Some People

Oh, right! Yeah, so, I'll still need to create NPCs. So, I know that they'll need to deal with their guild handler, and the merchant that they're escorting, as well as their healer, and maybe some people in the fort town. Let's start in order of appearance.

• The Handler

So, first thing's first, I should have a name for the handler. How about... Randal Cutback. Randal, or Cutback if you want to call him that, will be an older fellow. I picture him wearing more 'proper'/'elegant' clothing that is just dingy and grungy that he's probably owned for a very long time and simply refuses to get rid of them. I picture him getting people's names wrong rather often, maybe due to poor memory or just bad hearing. Keeping with his dirty clothes, I picture him being a tobacco chewer. As for his physical description, I think he'll be a bit shorter of a human, maybe about 5'5", is a bit portly or pudgy, but not really 'fat.' I also think that he'll be somewhat balding.

• The Healer

This helpful NPC will be somewhat on the young side. I haven't decided on race or gender yet, I'll figure this all out when I sit down and make the character later, but I can still figure out a name and personality bits here. The personality.. I picture them being somewhat impatient, something that they need to work on as a healer, or, if not 'impatient' then 'easily agitated', a short temper. Despite being easily riled up, I picture them being very quick to try and make penance for any outburst they may have. I think the healer will be a male, or, at least this first healer will be a male. And as for a name... Gregory Johana. I'll figure the rest out later.

• The Merchant

The Merchant... hmm.. The Merchant will be female, impatient, very punctual and kind of grouchy. I think she will be a halfling. I also like the idea of her whistling a lot while traveling. Her name will be Gloria Goldpocket and she'll have a scar horizontally across the middle of her face, across her nose and under her eyes. I think that will be about it for her.

I think that's all I'll really bother coming up with a lot for right now. In the fort town I don't expect them to interact with too many people that I can't come up with stuff for on the fly using random charts and the like.

Bonus Talk!

So, this is something I've been meaning to get to but keep forgetting about. I won't have this done in time for the first session, and I recognize that, but it isn't too much of a problem considering the party make up I don't think. When thinking about the world I'm making, I'd like to create a new pantheon of deities for this world, or, at least this region. I want at least something to really stand out from the core books and everything, and for me, I've chosen to go for the deities. I know that I'm going to have six prime deities, an aspect for Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and then one deity for Life and the Sun, and Death and the Moon. I certainly will have more deities than that, more minor deities, I think, probably only six PRIME deities. I'll have to come up with names for each deity, I'll probably look to historical or mythological history for names. No need to create a new name for a fire god if somewhere in history someone already believed in a fire god with a really great name. I will need to come up with domains that fit for all of the gods however and that will probably be one of the harder parts of it all. If anyone has any suggestions though, if anyone's created their own pantheon or anything and has some advice to give for doing this, I'd love to hear it.

That's it for now though. Thanks for reading again. There won't be a blog tomorrow since that's D&D day and I'll be too busy getting everything ready and then actually playing to post anything, so, next one may be on Monday where I hopefully can finish fleshing out the region and everything and I can draw up city plans/layouts and region layout and all of that. As well as maybe more Pantheon information.

In today's news, Episode 3! Here you can find Episodes One and Two, and now episode Four!

So, these blogs don't seem to be getting much response at all, least right now, but, that's ok because I'm still using them to help me finish getting the start of this campaign ready for Sunday, so, at least until then, they shall continue!

Last time we did some basic history work and talked about population ratios within the city. This time I'll be talking about city government and law. There may be time for something else to work its way in here, but, I'm not going to force anything else in if it doesn't feel natural.

Creating A D&D Campaign: Episode 3! (I Am The Law!)

Here we are today talking about government. This one shouldn't be too long, I don't think. I'm not going to get into a great big list of laws that the city has, most laws are pretty common sense after all. Don't murder, assault, harass, steal, so on, so forth, you get the idea. But there are still things that have to be worked out.

As a starting point, I'm going to answer some questions proposed in the Dungeon Master Guide 2 regarding-

Law Rank

Law Rank is more or less defined as "The degree to which any jurisdiction upholds the rule of law. The fairness of its authorities and their effectiveness in suppressing criminality." (pg. 101 DMG2) The scale isn't so much defined by exact numbers as it is by whether or not your total is positive, negative, or approximately zero. To get this Law Rank Number, you answer a few simple questions that have some math associated with your answers.

Question 1!

• What is the alignment of the local power center? (+2)

3.5 D&D is based off of an alignment system consisting of 9 different alignments: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil, which create a 3 x 3 grid with the upper left corner (Lawful Good) being "the most good guy" and the lower right (Chaotic Evil) being "the worst bad guy." So this question more or less comes down to "is the local power center good or bad, are they lawful, neutral, or chaotic?" Civilized power structures don't tend to be chaotic, as they don't often do whatever they want whenever they want because they simply have the power to do so. Not that they CAN'T be, but, chaotic societies don't tend to advance very far. At the same time, many power centers don't actually tend to abide by the law all the time. They may put on a face of abiding by the law as often as possible, but they also tend to bend and break the rules when others aren't looking. People are prone to moments of corruption or self interests more than they are to uphold the law even behind closed doors. Anyway, I'm getting into this probably more than I need to. So the answer here I think is that the power center will probably be good, but neutral. By the book, this gives me +2 points.

Question 2!

• Over the past fifty years, have all transfers of power from one ruler to the next been peaceful? (+4)

Hmm, this means I have to consider the history some. Let's say the city is maybe... close to 300 years old (the lycanthropy incident taking place maybe... around 200 years ago.) As for what the power structure/ruling body is, let's say that there's a prime ruler that has a council working directly under him or her that keeps the city running. The prime ruler, let's say, is an elf that has been in power since just shortly after the lycanthropy incident, meaning he's been in power for let's say 174 years (oh elves and their absurdly long life span) and let's say that the council members have never been replaced through violence or anything. So, according to the book this means that there's +2 for 50 years and another +2 for more than 100 years. Putting us up to +6

Question 3!

• Does the city have a written legal code? (+3)

It sure does. A legal code that has more or less been in place since the town's founding, it may have been adjusted a bit over the years, but, not major overhauling of the legal code. So this means that we add +1 for a code of law and +2 for it being around for more than 100 years. Another +3 for a total of +9.

Question 4!

• How strongly does the ruler enforce the laws?

This is sort of on a four option scale. Very Strong - nearly always catching or killing criminals. Moderately Strong - catching or killing criminals more often than not. Weak - crimes tend to go unpunished more often than not. Virtually nonexistent - Criminals are almost never dealt with. Well, being a trade city, crime is probably at least somewhat common, and the law can't catch all of them, especially when some people are too afraid to even let the crimes existence be known, so it definitely won't be very strong. There is however law and law enforcement in the city, so, it's certainly not nonexistent. This leaves us with moderately strong or weak. I think I'm going to go with moderately strong, even though I'll probably use the definition of "catch criminals more often than not" a bit more closer to, say, a 60/40 ratio than, say, an 80/20. Either way, that's +1 to the total, putting us at +10 so far.

Question 5!

• How many of the ruler's law enforcement officials are ready to ignore crimes or harass innocents in exchange for bribes?

Well, of the given options, I'm going to go with 1/3rd of officials are corrupt. I think had I gone with a weak strength of enforcement I would be more likely to run with 2/3rd of the officials being corrupt. I certainly want corruption to be rather common place in the city, despite it's overall good standing. I mean, this is a trade city where people's lives are made or broken behind the curtain, where guilds struggle against each other just to survive, and many people are out to make enough of a living to not just scrape by, even if they have no direct intention of actually being bad people. So, 1/3rd corrupt officials gives us a -2 rating, putting us at +8.

Question 6!

• In many places the difference of social standing/power/influence between two parties in a case of law effects the outcome. How often do these conditions effect the law cases in your city?

In this city, money, power, influence, status, it's all very important. If the city has to lose an influential person, for example, because the owner of guild A did something bad to random poor citizen B, the entire city would suffer an economic loss. This means I know as much that it WILL matter, now I just have to decide if it just simply 'usually' matters, or if it 'always' matters. Could random noble person being apart of a murderous cult really get off lighter just because he's a noble, even though he's murdered 20 people for the cause of trying to perform black magic? Probably not, I suppose. I'll say that it only usually matters, even though always matters is actually rather tempting. This choice is a -1 to the total, bringing the total to... +7.

This is a pretty healthy positive law and it means that it has a deserved reputation for justice over all and legal cases are mostly decided in favor of the deserving party. Which, brings us to the conclusion of the decision of Law Rank! Yeah, this may not have been very exciting, but it did make me come to a couple of theoretically important decisions concerning the way that this city handles the law and criminals and what kind of power structure it has.

The next part regarding the laws of the city is actually pretty simple and shouldn't take up much time, but, is at least a tad more fun for me than answering questions about how corrupt or not corrupt the city might be.

Laws The Characters/Players Probably Need to Know Even Though They Will Totally Ignore Them Most of The Time Anyway!

That's right, laws specific to the city that may actually effect the party members on a somewhat regular basis. This won't be a long list since, as I mentioned earlier, most of this stuff is already pretty much common sense. What follows are things that may not be as much common sense, but, totally make sense when you think about the reality of the world these characters would live in.

1. Your weapons must be bound with chord at all times within the city to make drawing your weapon a difficult task. If I was running a very heavy magic campaign I would probably have this solved by magical means within the city, but, since this campaign will actually be somewhat lighter on the magic, people in the city will be expected to be able to police themselves to some extent and bind their weapons in their sheathes with rope or some other similar type material.
2. Drawing / wielding your weapon against an innocent person is a crime. This essentially will be part of the common sense law of "don't assault people" but sort of extends the "don't assault" to also include "don't threaten with a brandished weapon."
3. You must have a city granted permit to cast any spells at all within the city limits, and even then any spell that may cause area damage/property damage/or rob people of their free will in any way are still illegal, as are invisibility spells. (More spell type effects may get added to this later, but, those are what come to me off the top of my head.)
4. Lycanthropes are forbidden from residing within city limits, whether natural or infected. If seeking treatment for the disease, one must send a messenger into the city as a representative for yourself to contact someone that can attempt to perform treatment.

And really that's just about it. I mean, there may be more I think of down the line, but, much is covered under common sense laws that I hopefully will only really have to worry about laws regarding weapons and spells. I'll glance back over the kinds of things they tell you to take into consideration later, I'm sure, just to double check, but, I'm running out of time and that will suffice for now I believe.

There is one last thing I'm going to throw in here, since it's also pretty short.

Superstitions Within The City

These aren't really 'laws' but are more behaviors or the like that they may see within the city. I only really have three primary ones off the top of my head, and if you've been reading along with the blog so far, you'll probably understand why.

• Residents within the town stay inside during the three nights of the full moon. They are cautious during the day time even during the event of the full moon, but come nightfall parents bring their children in early and the streets are barren until sunrise.
• Many families hang a sprig of belladonna somewhere within their home (although this makes the belladonna potentially useless for preventing the lycanthropy disease as only fresh belladonna grants the effect needed to counteract the disease, many families look at the spring as a good luck charm and a ward for evil.)
• The guards in town are all outfitted with silver weapons that have also been blessed by holy clerics, and the majority of holy symbols within the town are also made of silver (although a silver holy symbol wouldn't do much to fend off a lycanthrope, silver has more or less come to be viewed as a blessed material within the city.)

I'll probably, at some point, come up with some non-lycanthrope related superstitions, but right now those will do fine as little quirks for the city I think.

And with that, I'm calling this a blog folks. As usual, please feel free to leave any feedback at all that you may have. Or, at the very least, I hope you read all the way through and are finding this to be an at least somewhat interesting blog even if you aren't commenting. Thanks again and see you tomorrow for the next installment of Creating A D&D Campaign where I might actually get into some map making!