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-

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

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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.