I think your doing great don't focus to much on the levels and gear. Just have fun and follow the story. If you find that your chars are to weak see a local vendor to buy better gear or grind some lvls. But a game like Ct lent it selfs great for just enjoying the story with al his twists and turns.
I just got past The Derelict Factory which was a breeze once I'd levelled myself up to 19 by grinding on Acids and Alkalis near the elevator. Can't get enough of this game so far!
Thehyperborean - You shouldn't need to grind too much. Don't be shy in using your Techs in random battles - you should be picking up plenty of MP-restoring items as you defeat enemies. Also, try to save money where you can - equipment is expensive. I would recommend spending a bit on Shelters to keep with you as you go, just in case you have a rough stretch of dungeon and you have to heal up at a save point in the middle. You'll typically find plenty of equipment as you go, thankfully.
On Twitter, Shaun guessed that I'd be done by the end of the weekend. If I weren't beta testing a different game and spending an hour or so a day on that, he might have been right. I've made very good progress, only stopping to grind at two points, just to finish off getting a couple of abilities. Crono, whom I renamed Reload, learned all his techs WAY earlier than I ever remember him learning them before, largely due to a series of enemies that gave 100 TP each that we were one-shotting. By the time we got to the boss Giga Gaia, he'd learned Luminaire and we weren't worried about much of anything. Y'know, until the next dungeon where everything is color coded and woe is you if you cast the wrong magic on the wrong enemy. Anyway, I'm currently sitting in the hub area at the point where you get a ton of side quests. Game veterans will know exactly what has just happened to put me there, but as a coded reminder that I will hide behind spoilertags: Spoiler "The black winds howl. One among you will shortly perish." So, I'm currently debating what to do. There are a couple of easy sidequests I could knock out, or I could start gathering equipment that's very helpful for the final battle. Currently rocking a girl squad that's absolutely wrecking stuff... and yes, Ayla's wearing the Berserk Ring, like I almost always do. It's just SO GOOD, with the exception of a couple of bosses that punish you for physical attacks. The guys have been benchwarmers for a while. I might swap some of them in soon since Ayla's already learned all of her techs and Marle's getting close. Playtime so far just shy of 10 hours. I took a screenshot with my iPad, but the file size was too big, so I'll have to grab a shot with my Pod later. Another tip for new folks: If you want to grind in the early-to-mid game, a great place to do it is near the end of the Fiendlord's Keep. All you need is one character who's learned a "hit all" magic (Marle's Ice II, Lucca's Fire II, and Crono's Lightning II are the ones you will likely see first - alternately, you could use the Frog/Marle dual tech Ice Water). From the final save point, you will move into a room with a long diagonal stairwell and a bat. Get into combat with the bat and he'll call 5 of his closest buddies. Cast an area magic and they all die in one hit, giving you some decent XP/TP for where you're at in the game.
Three sidequests (forest, rainbow, and sun) and the final dungeon later, and I'm sitting at the final boss with a playtime of 13 hours, levels in the low 50s, and reasonably well-equipped. My party of Spoiler Character #7, Marle, and Ayla just brutally destroyed the series of bosses at the end of the final dungeon. I have specifically ignored one sidequest that would have sent me to a very windy mountain because I always do that one and I want to see how things play out differently. I've learned every tech in the game thanks to some repeated abuse of Ayla in the final dungeon. This could be repeated anywhere, really, as long as you have a good source of Ethers. Step 1: Find repeatable encounter for high TP (in this case, 72). Step 2: Get Ayla killed off in one battle - she revives at 1 HP between fights. Step 3: Turn battle speed down to Slowest and give Ayla a Haste Helm. Step 4: Cast Dino Tail to one-shot the entire battle before anything else gets a chance to move. Rinse and repeat. I burned a lot of low-level Ethers that way, but those aren't super useful in battle at this point, and it got me a LOT of techs unlocked really quickly. Don't think I'll have time for the final boss tonight, but I'll be sure to get it done soon. I leave you with this screenshot of Ayla's take on how life should go as you get older.
Finally had a crash in this area. Thankfully it was only a couple minutes after my latest save. Also, I totally forgot about Lapis here, since we get it in FFBE now.
Oh, good, you DO get "To Far Away Times" when you finish with the ending I got. ...and a couple of screens that actually don't make any sense given the context of the subquests I skipped. Guess not everything has little flags like, say, all the crazy combo endings in Star Ocean 2. The same party I mentioned in the previous post laid utter waste to the final boss to the tune of 5000 damage a round. Kind of hard for anything in this game to stand up to that. Should anyone get stuck there later, I can offer some thoughts. Old and new players alike should marvel at the all-star cast who worked on the game when they get to the credits. As of 2008 when the DS version came out, I'd never touched a Dragon Quest title; now that I've played 7 of those titles, I better understand the significance of Yuji Horii's name alongside Hironobu Sakaguchi's. Edit: that picture shows as right side up on my iPad but appears to have flipped when I posted it. Oh well.
Well that was quick. The play-a-long just officially started today! What are you going to go for the rest of the month?
I have two unstarted Vita games (FFX-2 HD Remaster and Odin Sphere). I'll probably pick one of those and give it a whirl. If I could get some more PC time, I'd love to play Xanadu Next or Trails in the Sky the 3rd, but I can't commit to things outside of handhelds right now. I find myself sorely tempted to play one of the PS1 classics on my Vita, but I really should continue through my backlog first.
Oh, this is great! Really enjoying this. The Trial has particularly tickled me so far, and I've still barely started.
This thread is so quiet! Anyone else still working their way through CT? I'm kind of enjoying how on-rails the experience is, but it's still got loads of personality. I've just gone back to prehistoric times and met Ayla, whom I've renamed Loana from One Million BC. Probably missing loads of secrets and good min-maxing, but haven't done any grinding yet - which is unusual for me in JRPGs. I'm sure I'll hit a wall soon, though.
I've got the dreaded RPG ADD. I'm 30 some hours into it, but I'm also playing FFII, IX, XIITZA, XV, etc. So, it's hard to decide what to play when work isn't consuming me! I might get back to it before the month's done though.
How are you guys doing? I'm curious to what next month's game will be. Hoping it's one I haven't just beaten like this one
That's kind of what happened to me. I didn't just play it but it was less than a year ago so I tried to use new game + to see all the endings. I gave up after 5. On the plus side, with the extra time I had this month, I finally finished up Zelda BoTW and Blaster Master Zero so it was a productive month.
Soo... I am up Lavos Beckons, which I gather isn't too many chapters away from the end of the main campaign, though there are clearly plenty of side quests I haven't even found yet. Sunken Cave is the only one I've seen, but I've gotten caught up in the main story, and will have to come back to it. My main thoughts are that, yes, it lives up to its reputation. The atmosphere is excellent, the characters are really nicely differentiated and the music is first class. The story is still unfolding for me, but I've mentioned before how on-rails it feels. Reminds me very much of FFX in that way - I think, having played FF1-2, 7-10, CT definitely feels most like that last one. Given me a new appreciation for FFX, in terms of its traditions.
I don't think I've ever heard Chrono Trigger described as being "on the rails." I don't think that's a wrong way to describe it. I'd just add that if it is keeping players on the rails, it's probably the best example of how to do that right. There's so much variation on how you get to the end, despite everyone moving along essentially the same path, that I never felt like I was on the rails.
Just going to pretend the Bastion playalong isn't a thing... (sticks fingers in ears, hums loudly) Anyway, I've stumbled across a very annoying bug. Got to The Time Egg chapter, have a new guy joining my party, and suddenly Lucca and Marle have stopped accruing TP for their skills. That was annoying. Then, I took on Spekkio - and Lucca and Marle got their magic reset back to the beginning. So now I'm kind of grinding for TP on Death Peak. Anyways, it's been a fun ride so far, even with that.
