Children of Mana - thoughts?

[Warlock]

Makes me hope they never do a Chrono sequel simply because you know they will screw it up.

They already did. It's called Chrono Cross

Here are the problems with Chrono Cross:
-It's too big for its own good. 50+ characters? Do we need 50+ characters? Every character is practically the same. One of the things that was so amazingly great about Chrono Trigger was you had this core cast of characters, each one was extremely unique and had his or her own unique abilities. So it felt like you could really design some great teams by just changing up the characters. Each character also had an insane amount of story development which made you care for each one.
-No Techniques - well, I take that back. I think there was *ONE*. If you got Glenn (which forced you to not get another character I think!) he could do a technique. But I never bothered. That is so lame. One of the most awesome aspects of Chrono Trigger was the ability to combine spells with other teammates for double and triple techniques.
-No real time travel.. I think there was some here and there, but it was generally not in the game. Time Travel was one of the things that made CT so great, because it was awesome just to see how much the world changed, or how your actions in the past would change the future. That was one of the cool things about that game.
-Bastardization of CT story - once you even *get* to some connections with the CT story in this mess of a unneedlessly complex plot, every instance is like a smack in the face to CT. It's like "Well Robo died." "Well Chrono, Lucca and Marle are dead". "The kingdom of Garnia (sp?) was overthrown". etc. And then they have this huge big reveal that Lavos (sp again? I havn't played CT in awhile ) was actually the cause of Humanity's birth. It's like, gee, thanks. The thing that was the worst bad guy in the first game is actually the reason why I'm here at all. That's nice to know. I'll also add to this the utter lack of locations from the first game, to the point where I couldn't even tell where the heck I was in the game world. It was extremely confusing, and I almost think the game was indicating that the CT world was like an "experiment world" or something and the CC world was "the real world". It was so stupid.
-No Dragonball Z artist - say what you want, but that art style made the whole game.

And that's only what I remember, keeping in mind I last played this game like 6 years ago.

Edit: BTW, CT was the only game I can think of (at least at that time) where the main character actually *dies* halfway through the story. That was huge.

[Orion]

Oops... I meant another Chrono sequel . I have played Chrono Cross, which wasn't as good, but I still enjoyed it (I just tried not to think of it so much as a direct sequel and more as a spiritual sucessor, like the FF titles are to one another).
What I meant to say is I hope they don't make a 3rd Chrono installment, because frankly, SE doesn't seem to have the talent to pull of a sequel that's as good as the first two.

[vegeta1215]

I'm sure you've already read my post about the pros and cons of Chrono Cross. If not, search for it in GGD.

[Warlock]

Ah I think I saw it a long time ago. But I checked it out again. You know Daarkseid said there that the CT team went to Enix? I wonder if they are still around over there. If so, with the two companies merged it might actually be a good time to do a real CT sequel since they could get much of the original team back.

[vegeta1215]

Chrono Cross had a lot of things going for it, but they just tried too hard to make connections with Chrono Trigger and the game suffered because of it - both because of unrealized potential and because of the inevitable comparisons made with CT.

If they make another "Chrono" game, they should start fresh. Personally though I think they should just leave things alone.

[Mak-X]

There's an interview with Chrono Cross' director, Masato Kato, on Yasunori Mitsuda's site.
http://www.cocoebiz.com/mitsuda/engl...ends/kato.html

What he basically says about Chrono Cross is that they tried to make the best "Chrono" game they could with the available technology at the time, and that it was a "Chrono" game, but not "Trigger 2".

I still haven't played Chrono Cross myself. I might have to take up that recommendation of Magical Starsign (Magical Vacation 2) though.

[vegeta1215]

If you haven't played Cross yet Mak, you should check it out. Despite being disappointed in it, it did keep me hooked and I had fun playing it, as I'm sure you will too.

That interview was a good read. I understand Kato didn't just want to make a Trigger 2 game, which is fine. In fact, I liked most of the new stuff added to the game. The parallel worlds idea was neat, the battle system was fresh and fun, etc. It's just missing a lot in terms of character, which I consider the main strength of Trigger. It also doesn't help that the story is confusing at times, and you can tell they rushed to finish the game near the end (you'll know what I mean when you get there)

[Warlock]

If you haven't played Cross yet Mak, you should check it out. Despite being disappointed in it, it did keep me hooked and I had fun playing it, as I'm sure you will too.

That interview was a good read. I understand Kato didn't just want to make a Trigger 2 game, which is fine. In fact, I liked most of the new stuff added to the game. The parallel worlds idea was neat, the battle system was fresh and fun, etc. It's just missing a lot in terms of character, which I consider the main strength of Trigger. It also doesn't help that the story is confusing at times, and you can tell they rushed to finish the game near the end (you'll know what I mean when you get there)

Yeah it wasn't a bad game. It just wasn't Chrono Trigger. Not even close. And the story is pretty confusing at times like vegeta said. And yeah, I think the main thing it lacked was real character development. If they had chose to focus on say, 10 characters tops, that would have made it a much better game IMO.

And yeah, I will once again recommend Magical Starsign. It's a simple game, in that it's not this super-deep RPG like the Final Fantasy series (the recent ones at least). And it's a light-hearted game compared to a lot of other RPGs. But it's just so much fun. If you remember all the quirky-funny stuff from Secret of Mana, like "Rabbite Man", the Otter people, some of the wierd enemies, Santa Claus (as a monster), and even a lot of the dialog, this game has a lot of that same style to it. It's got the same quirky charm. And that's what I love so much about it.

[Lotus_Eater]

*Shameless Plug*
Hey guys, I am working on a project right now that will allow you to make Mana games, it will play much like SD3 and SoM combined with things from LoM and SwoM, so, keep your eyes peeled, though we may never see a good official game again, we'll see some unofficial ones.

*/Shameless Plug*

Also check out http://www.seikens.com for other Mana fans.

Later,
Lotus