I’ve recently been on an old school RPG kick and picked up Chrono Trigger which is a phenomenal game. Any other suggestions on similar games?
Chrono Trigger is so far ahead of its time, it’s insane. Enemies visible on the field map, battles taking place directly on the field map, character positioning mattering immensely, multi-character attacks, incredible music that holds up today, a compelling story with something like 15 total endings (granted, it’s not like they’re ENTIRELY different from one another, there are a few major branches with a few variations each)… Most of these things would all but vanish from games for twenty-plus years. I remember when Final Fantasy 12 came out, it was lauded for having the enemies shown on the map and battles taking place on the map as well.
@PrinceHabib72 Chrono Trigger also had New Game+, which basically created the term for RPGs. I played another JRPG long before Chrono Trigger, where enemies was visible on the playfield in dungeons: the infamous Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (fantastic soundtrack BTW).
One of the best RPGs ever made. I’d jump to either the Breath of Fire series, Wild Arms, or Suikoden. All are solid, though none quite as brilliant.
I wish Wild Arms had an official mobile port. Such a great series with no modern IP usage to take advantage of its cult status.
I played Wild Arms back in the day and I don’t remember too much about them although I did enjoy them all. Might be worth picking up again. Also, isn’t Suikoden getting a remake soon?
Yes it is! The first 2 games. It’s kind of an odd situation where the 2nd game is kind of a remake-ish retelling of the first game, sort of like Final Fantasy or Zelda, where it is different characters but same themes. I just thought of 2 more I could recommend! Grandia and Live a Live. Both fit nicely in Chrono Trigger’s orbit, though none are quite as good. Live a Live just got a low up and re-release recently too.
Director of Chrono Trigger, Takashi Tokita, directed Live a Live the year prior. Definitely a throughline there.
Nothing is exactly like Chrono Trigger, it’s in a league of its own as one of the best games of all time.
Final Fantasy 6 was released around the same time on SNES, and many people debate whether Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 6 are better, because they’re both great. 4, 5, and 6 are all really good. The Lufia series is also great.
From the same era but with much different gameplay is Terranigma, and there’s also the Legend of Mana series.
More modern examples of games that want to invoke Chrono Trigger are Septerra Core and Anachronox. Both are PC games, but they’re old enough that any reasonably modern PC can likely play them at full speed.
FF6 is such a great game. I saved up and bought both of these games as a kid, lots of late nights irrigating fields and killing rattlesnakes to get those titles. Both titles were great in their own way and I can’t imagine my childhood without them. Another great game was Secret of Evermore.
There is a game coming out next month called Sea of Stars by the devs who made The Messenger. No idea how it will stack up against the greats but it’s looking really good from what I’ve seen. It even has Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger composer) contributing some track.s.
I think Xenogears [same team] is absolutely in the same league and IMO a whole different bracket of excellence.
I played through disk 1 on a rental back in the day and it was amazing. I’ve heard that the ending is disappointing though.
Oh, I forgot Legend of Dragoon, that was a really cool game too.
The ending is absolutely mind blowing. The final FMV isn’t the greatest but you’ve already got the ending by the time you fight the final boss.
And for those who don’t know, Yasunori Mitsuda worked himself so relentlessly on the soundtrack that he ended up developing stomach ulcers that required hospitalization. You know the soundtrack is good if the composer would rather be shitting blood than let his work be less than perfect.
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I was walking around the Iowa State Fair for an hour last summer before I realized I was whistling the theme to the Millennial Fair.
highly recommend chrono symphonic as an interpretation of the incredible original.
My favorite was always Frog’s theme, alternating between the triumphant knightly and the devastatingly tragic (which perfectly fit the character). Ah, what a perfect game with a soundtrack to match!
Now you gotta play Xenogears and really be ready for some mental shit.
I played Xenosaga forever ago, are they related at all? I have heard really good things about Xenogears so I will put it on my to play list.
I never played Xenosaga, but the teams that made them are totally different. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s like Chrono Trigger with a more complex plot and characters. There’s something about it that feels a bit similar, it’s hard to describe. Good to go in without too many spoilers. Might be your thing and might not, but definitely worth giving a shot!
I’ve given the newer Xeno series a few looks over the years, but I just don’t think I’m the target audience. I feel really strongly JRPG’s declined in quality after (and in part during) the PS1 era. Not to say this didn’t exist previously, because it certainly did, but the genre began to include more traditional anime-tropes; and I feel the stories within them suffered greatly as a result.
Chrono Trigger (as an admittedly superb standout even amongst other 90’s offerings) is a captivating story filled with interesting characters and world building first. Characters are more than a one-note trope, or an archetype that can be boiled down to a Shonen protagonist and their motley crew of companions (the irony is not lost on me that Akira Toriyama, the creator of DragonBall which is ostensibly the model most other Shonen Manga and anime are still emulating, was a character designer for the game).
This feels rather difficult to put into words without dismissing an entire medium of animation and art, which is NOT my intention, but I don’t that nk it is controversial that the average quality of animation and Manga out of Japan began to decline around the early 2000’s, with obvious exceptions of course. The weird, Otaku culture began to be catered to and I believe in some respects actively cultivated; and the end result was a large swathe of media that communicated in rather immature and shallow methods. Again, totally cool if you’re into that, not trying to take anyone’s favorites away from them, but with the establishment of both a fanatical customer base and a sucessful formulaic plot structure JRPG writing began to follow in suit. In some ways the had to, as gaming technology advanced and allowed for a wider array of dynamic moment to moment gameplay the perception of the genre as somehow lesser or worthwhile became more prevalent; forcing it to cater to the markets that were interested more heavily. Which, of course, leads to dumbing down of the storytelling, and the adherence to the aforementioned stereotypical structure of the market at large.
It’s also worth mentioning that games as a whole become tremendously more difficult to produce, but this rant is already pretty lengthly. I concede I could be wrong about Xenogears, and if that’s your jam then live your best life man, but I don’t know if I’d consider it to be a direct jump from Golden Age of Squaresoft.
