Welcome. I too played this on SNES when it first came out. It is also one of the few RPG that I finished! I wish this was coming to iPad though.
The two games are completely different, one being a turn based RPG and the other action based. Final Fantasy doesn't need precise movements to play the game.
Chrono Trigger had new content and was a full port. They paired down some of the interface graphics for this game so you're actually getting less. Also for those who talk about how good the combat is...well for its time it was really good but it really boils down to spamming your level "0" swing (it's pretty much never worth charging up because it takes too long and you'll do more damage over time with 100% swings). For spells it just amounts to staying near an inn when you attune to a seed, spamming your defensive spells until all your spirits are maxed. Then going outside and spamming your offensive spells, inn, repeat. It's powerlevelling but it's very fast compared to most JRPGs and you pretty much wreck everything. Plus once you get the MP drain spell it's just faceroll. It's still one of my favorite RPGs for the soundtrack alone but don't try to pretend the combat is really all that good.
Give me a break... is this what you're missing? They actually added quick-access slots for items and abilities, so I would say you're actually getting more.
You save at the inn in each town. Also various NPCs will ask whether you would like to save. There's also an auto save which saves everytime you enter a new area.
Spamming swings hardly does any damage. Once monsters get hit once they usually have a defence mechanisim so further dealing 0's defeats your arguement of mass low dmg = one charged high damage.
You don't see the stats on items until you already have them in your inventory, the quick slots don't even bother to tell the count remaining, you have to be careful not to let your thumb deviate on the stick or you'll accidentally access the ring by hovering over a character. No you're getting less. This is the first legit mobile port of this game so I hope it does well but people are in a good position to complain. Chrono Trigger for DS was an improvement over the original in many ways but this is feels more like a fan-made port.
You're ignorant of the mechanics. Nearly every non-boss enemy in the game can be chain "stunned" by timing your 100% swings correctly. You don't mash them the instant they are up but rather the moment the enemy comes out of their "defensive" state. If you time it right every enemy can be continuously be knocked down, plus you have the irrefutable advantage of repositioning (w/o a horrible speed debuff) if there is another enemy incoming. I'm making it sound more strategic and interesting than it actually is...as the animations are very obvious and the timing is pretty much the same for every non-boss enemy where you could pretty much just do it blindfolded once you're in range. Also a lot of enemies can be hit in the downed state if timed correctly as well which will cause them to take the damage in a delayed fashion and get a repeated knock-down. You only get 0s if you don't know what the hell you're doing. The charged damage is fail because it doesn't scale the damage more than 100% based on time spent (i.e. 2 properly timed 100% swings will do more damage than the charged swing you can accomplish in the same time frame, on top of not having an obnoxious slow, and the fact that a critical on the first 100% swing could be enough for the kill anyway). The only time it may even be remotely considered is if you charge up to any of the bars that provide an aoe damage animation, but I usually find it more effective to just rope up the mobs and 100% swing as it will still hit them all. I can't imagine how terrible your clear times are charging up to kill simple enemies. I'd have cleared Gaia's Navel by the time you got banished from the village.
I agree about the quick-slots -- an item count would be appreciated. But looking at the original game, I don't see where you get stats for items before they're in your inventory. Perhaps I'm missing something.
They also removed some spell effects (just an example, use a candy on yourself in this port and then on the SNES version), as well as sound effects (example, when leaving the spiky boss encounter, when you step on the checkered squares at the bottom you don't get a teleport sound). There's plenty of nuances missing if you remember the original fondly enough.
Still, after spending so much effort and time making this port as best as they could. This little thing does stand out quite a bit. I still don't understand why everyone keep on bringing action rpgs to ios when they could easily port over turn based rpg's, crappy controls don't really hinder those games =/
I'll definitely notice some of the nuances, but I'm still going to pay full price for this to have it on my iPhone. Bought it on VC and have the SNES cart, I'll buy it on multiple platforms just to show some support for the series. I'm stupidly trying to give them money so they might officially port Seiken Densetsu 3, or make a new Mana game that doesn't suck. Here's to hoping... If not, I'd still rather have a port of Secret of Mana than a shitty new Mana game! I'm kind of curious though, why is the iPhone port so large at over 70mb? The SNES ROM is barely over 2mb... Better sound maybe?
Is it still possible to kill the bosses in one hit, starting casting a spell just after another one was casted to get cumulative damage? The most exploitable bug in an RPG ever.
Personally, I am glad that they are doing so and I hope that they will continue in the same vein and eventually port the PSP remakes of Tactics Ogre and FF IV compilation, as well as Chrono Trigger. And one of the Dragon Quests that I keep hearing about would be nice, too. I can understand how it could be frustrating for fans who have already played these games on other platforms, but for a lot of us it is all new. And modernized content would be way too expensive for them to make, not to mention that good design isn't something that can be invented anew at the drop of a hat. Heck, I loved The Shining Force on Sega emulator! Yes, it's age is noticeable, but it is still a great game with tons of enjoyable content. And if it was substantially modernized, it wouldn't be coming to iOS in forseeble future, if ever.
you are correct and the graphics are not quite the same.. at least it plays smoothly and the music is perfect
I'm simply not going to read through all えいghてえn pages of replies yet. My impressions so far. First is just pure nostalgia of one of THE rpg classics. Second it is fairly faithful to the original. In some ways, I'm still amazed that pretty much all the media I could want can all fit in my pocket, even after two years of having this tech. The negatives, well just a couple, first the controls make it hard to simply turn without actually walking that way, which makes turning to aim your power attack at monsters difficult in narrow spaces. Second, I know the original didn't have automatic save, as in you quickly had to quit and couldn't make it to the next save point, but I can't see bringing that over to the iPhone where interruption is highly likely. Ture autosave would be a boon, at least for those of us still on the iPhone 3G (perhaps it doesn't really affect those with multitask support). Nonetheless, I'll be playing it through it's entirety just for nostalgia's sake, it was one of two games my best friend and I played through, and he had moved away, so any time we spent together was just plain cool.
