Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 85: Chrono Trigger

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Todays game is Chrono Trigger. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

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Previous Results:
Planescape: Torment - 9.83 (12 votes)
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.6 (21 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (34 votes)
The House in Fata Morgana - 9.14 (7 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Red Dead Redemption 2 - 9 (8 votes)
Steins;Gate - 8.94 (9 votes)
Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward - 8.89 (19 votes)
Persona 3 - 8.85 (19 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.85 (10 votes)
Silent Hill 4: The Room - 8.83 (6 votes)
Umineko When They Cry - 8.82 (11 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask - 8.56 (27 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.56 (16 votes)
Undertale - 8.45 (42 votes)
What Remains of Edith Finch - 8.41 (19 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.38 (28 votes)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 8.37 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.35 (55 votes)
Final Fantasy VII - 8.28 (37 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.17 (18 votes)
The Walking Dead Season 1 - 8.17 (21 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.15 (40 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.13 (35 votes)
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 8.06 (18 votes)
The Wolf Among Us - 8.04 (14 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles - 7.94 (27 votes)
Spec Ops: The Line - 7.9 (17 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.88 (20 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (31 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.81 (25 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 7.7 (30 votes)
Celeste - 7.62 (25 votes)
Skies of Arcadia - 7.62 (13 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.47 (29 votes)
Mortal Kombat (2011) - 7.46 (13 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Red Dead Redemption - 7.23 (11 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (24 votes)
Mass Effect 3 - 7.16 (21 votes)
To the Moon - 7.07 (7 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7.05 (22 votes)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 7 (5 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (21 votes)
INSIDE - 6.93 (15 votes)
Gone Home - 6.91 (17 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.69 (16 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.67 (31 votes)
Firewatch - 6.65 (10 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.61 (28 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 6.5 (13 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 6.31 (35 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.15 (13 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.16 (14 votes)
Star Fox 64 - 5.8 (25 votes)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 5.72 (9 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.78 (30 votes)
Metroid Prime - 5.67 (24 votes)
Kingdom Hearts - 5.59 (30 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.79 (29 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.83 (12 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4.72 (9 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.43 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy - 4.24 (19 votes)
Resident Evil 6 - 3.74 (17 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - 3.69 (13 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.46 (15 votes)
Starcraft II (overall) - 3.4 (5 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.32 (11 votes)
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void - 2.83 (6 votes)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - 2.66 (16 votes)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm - 2.57 (7 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.33 (9 votes)
Tales of Zestiria - 2.14 (7 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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10

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10

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10

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8/10

Solid story, likable cast, excellently paced. Plus, I'll always be a sucker for time travel stories.

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8/10

Very good overall with really strong premise and solid but not great characters.
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5/10

Not bad, not good. It is very much an RPG story.

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10

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7.5/10

Has some clever and intensely scary, dramatic moments and its use of time travel is awesomely paced! Also has a lot of corny filler and most of the cast strikes me as arbitrary.

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6.5

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7

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8

8.4

EDIT: Decided I wanted to add .4 extra points to it.
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9

Pretty much perfect in every way. It's simple but ambitious enough to be compelling. Mostly lighthearted but develops in surprising ways. Pacing is mostly excellent.


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8.5/10

Magus and Frog are fantastic characters, the plot is fun, and the locations are still burned into my mind even though I haven't touched this game since 2004.

Shame that Crono's mute and the rest of the playable cast is pretty meh.

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I really need to play this game at some point.

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8

Somewhat-standard JRPG plot executed very well.

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9.5

Everything about it is great and fun and works for the game perfectly. The pacing is probably the highlight? The extra endings are a big perk that gets it the extra .5 from me. Basically a flawless story, but it doesn't have as many special moments as some games I'd rate higher storywise.
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8.5

9

I'll give it an 8.

I'm kind of with Mac in that I'd be hard pressed to name any serious flaws but I also don't know so much about special moments that elevate it. I know that makes my rating seem kinda weird, but I place a pretty high importance on special/powerful moments like that!

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9

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10

xp1337 posted...

I'll give it an 8.

I'm kind of with Mac in that I'd be hard pressed to name any serious flaws but I also don't know so much about special moments that elevate it. I know that makes my rating seem kinda weird, but I place a pretty high importance on special/powerful moments like that!

The end of 65,000,000 B.C. and pretty much the entirety of the Kingdom of Zeal would be the highlights for me.

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9.5 / 10

works as both a simple traditional rpg story, but has enough thoughtful moments in there to give it some emotional heft. great characters throughout and excellent pacing.

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Zeal is definitely the high point, yeah.

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7/10

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I think for me the thing holding Chrono Trigger back is that I generally want my stories to have some type of emotional climax* and I don't really feel like Chrono Trigger provides that. The setting and concept are good; Zeal, Frog, and Magus are all cool; but it still feels like something is missing. I'm sure there's moments one could point to, but I don't really think any of them hold up when you're comparing them to the equivalent parts of any of my other favorite games.

*This is not necessarily true for all stories, but for the type of stories JRPG's are usually trying to tell I would say this is almost always the case.
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9

Chrono Trigger has turned into a timeless classic for me over the years. There isn't anything that it does that is mind blowing but what it does with its simple time travel story, it delivers in spades.

It really helps that the characters are so vibrant with each having their own memorable theme. Over the years, the CT party have become iconic in JRPGs and that prestige adds to the story. The dialogues also feel like they have more weight to it because of how tightly paced the story is.

New Game+ also really helps revisiting Chrono Trigger from time to time. I believe it is the first JRPG to have that feature and something every game should have.

8

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8

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10
Amazing to say the least.

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7/10

10

One of the best gaming has to offer.

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9.5

Does the trick perfectly

7/10. I agree with Snake and pyresword's complaints. I had great fun with the game, and the middle act is really good, but the characters aren't interesting at all to me and I didn't really have any emotional investment in what was going on. CT is a game that is greater than the sum of its parts but the writing isn't anything spectacular IMO.

Also it's been a while but IIRC the opening couple hours of the game treat time travel differently than the rest, with the Marle disappearing paradox type stuff not being factored in to the rest of the game. I may be wrong on this, but I remember it being odd.

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I don't see a universe where Crono dying/being resurrected or the ending aren't emotional climaxes but different strokes I guess

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10

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10

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8

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colliding posted...

I don't see a universe where Crono dying/being resurrected

This specific one is a moment where the game is really hurt by the decision to have Crono be a silent protagonist. This is probably the closest thing to an emotional climax in the game but it just doesn't have anywhere near the impact on me that it should.
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pyresword posted...

This specific one is a moment where the game is really hurt by the decision to have Crono be a silent protagonist. This is probably the closest thing to an emotional climax in the game but it just doesn't have anywhere near the impact on me that it should.

You nailed it. Crono's death fails emotionally for two reasons:

1) It's a temporary death (unless you choose not to resurrect him, obviously), which negates the impact. If you're not going to permanently kill off a character, don't kill him to begin with. This is a gripe I have with a certain Wii RPG and with a lot of superhero stories. Pulling emotional punches is weak writing.

2) He's a silent avatar. Hard to define his personal values other than saying he'll "do the right thing" or "do whatever it takes." When he "dies," what do we really lose? Not someone complex and/or real; we just lose the red-haired katana guy.

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colliding posted...

I don't see a universe where Crono dying/being resurrected or the ending aren't emotional climaxes but different strokes I guess

Well when a game has a main hero and main villain I don't care about at all...

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6.5/10

It isn't ever boring because as others have said the pacing is outstanding.

But it doesn't really hit any high notes to speak of. There just isn't much that feels exciting and properly built to.

Magus stuff in 600 AD is about it for me.

That being said it's not bad at all. If the cast was filled with fun characters I could easily rate it closer to 10 as good character interactions can carry a mediocre story easily, but they're for the most part drab template characters only there to fit in their places as the story needs them.

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7

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7.

Well paced and a lot better than its contemporaries but there have been a lot of advancements in storytelling since then.

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4/10