Pokemon GO

Niantic - 2016 - iOS/Android

This is probably the most timely review I've ever written since at the time of this writing, practically everyone I bump into is on their phones furiously tapping away at Pokemon GO. I was on my lunchbreak and saw people in the restaurant playing, on my way back, I saw a car pull up next to a known gym and whip out their phones, and on the way back to work, there was a lady in my elevator trying to catch a Pidgey. It's safe to say that Pokemania is sweeping the nation again for the first time since the franchise's initial release. 

So for those not swept up in the fever of Pokemon GO players, this game is a phone app that functions largely by placing virtual objects in real space by using the Google Maps API and your phone's GPS. It functions very similarly to Ingress, Niantic's other popular game, albeit much less popular. The game encourages you to explore the real world to find virtual monsters on your phone. The terrain around where you are may encourage certain types of pokemon to appear. For instance, water type pokemon are often found near bodies of water while more common Pokemon like Pidgey or Ratatta can be found pretty much anywhere.

Real world places of interest appear in the game as either Pokestops or gyms. At a Pokestop, you can restock on poke balls or other healing items where at a gym what you can do depends on what team controls the gym and also what team you've decided to join. There are three teams: mystic, valor and instinct all vying for control over in game gyms. At an enemy gym, defeating all Pokemon in the gym will allow you to claim the gym for your team and earn daily rewards as long as you still have a Pokemon present in the gym. Training at a friendly gym may increase the gym's prestige level and allow it to house more friendly Pokemon. Battles are not turn based, as in nearly all other Pokemon games. In Pokemon GO, battles pretty much consist of furiously tapping on the enemy Pokemon to reduce its health. You can also hold down on the screen to attempt a stronger attack, but this can only be done once a stamina meter has been sufficiently charged. 

Summary

The shell for a really amazing Pokemon game is all here, but I find this game to be pretty feature incomplete at the moment in addition to being very buggy. The app seems to freeze a lot when catching Pokemon or battling at a gym which can only be remedied by restarting the game completely. But the freezes only occur when you can login to the game in the first place, as the servers are very frequently down due to overloading. I'd love to see trading and friendly battles added soon, and maybe a little more depth added to the combat system, although I'd like to see server issues addressed first obviously. None of my concerns about bugs or lack of features have dissuaded half the population from playing this though and it's exploding in popularity at the time of this writing. Gotta catch 'em all!

Pocket Mortys

Big Pixel Studios - 2016 - Android/iOS

Ho ho another free to play game. And a licensed game no less. I've become a filthy casual. I guess. Developed by Big Pixel Studios and published by Adult Swim games, Pocket Mortys is based on the television show Rick & Morty and is a blatant and often self aware Pokemon clone. If you haven't checked out Rick & Morty, this game probably won't have much mileage with you. And if you haven't checked out Rick & Morty, you totally should. It's like Adventure Time but with more swearing. It's co-created by Justin Roiland (Earl of Lemongrab) and both title characters are also voiced by Roiland. It really is one of the best things on television right now. Anyway Pocket Mortys is mostly based around Season 1 - Episode 10: Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind which establishes that there are multiple concurrent timelines with multiple Ricks and multiple Mortys. In the game you play as Rick and you must collect and train your Mortys to eventually defeat the council of Ricks to get your teleport gun back to return to your own timeline.

Pocket Mortys is free to play, but also doesn't rub your face in the paid content for the game hardly at all which I really appreciated. Most of the paid content is just to buy more items which can capture new Mortys or heal your existing team, but it's certainly not necessary to pay money to progress in this game. There is also a crafting system in the game where random items you pick up throughout your adventures. Pro tip - look up all of the crafting recipes. The only other way to figure them out if by trial and error which is really tedious. Once you progress far enough in the game, it'll become clear that the core loop of this game is simply collecting and battling Mortys and there's not much more content to the game. But considering I paid nothing for this experience, I can't complain too much.

Summary

For a free game, Pocket Mortys is pretty solid even if it is a shameless rip of of Pokemon. I can't really strongly recommend this if you're not a Rick & Morty fan as a lot of the references are going to fall flat. But if you're looking for a free version of Pokemon, you could probably do worse that this

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Blizzard Entertainment - 2014 - PC/iOS/Android

For the longest time, I've never understood Magic: The Gathering. I have several friends who are way, way into it, collect all the cards and go to weekly tournaments. It just never clicked with me. Then I played Hearthstone. I get it now. Magic is still not something I'm interested in diving into, but now I at least understand its relatively large popularity and massive player base. 

Hearthstone is Blizzard Entertainment's take on Magic The Gathering. I haven't played too much Magic so I can't speak to the differences and similarities between the two games, but I can tell you what Hearthstone is. It's a two player digital card game where the objective it to reduce your opponent's hero's health to zero. All heroes have a starting health of 30, a unique special ability and a unique card set which can govern your high level playstyle. There is also a common pool of cards from which any class can draw from to compile their deck, but usually the class specific cards are slightly more powerful and can synergize better around the hero's playstyle. All heroes are unlocked at the beginning, but playing as a certain hero will unlock more of that class' unique cards. That seems to be the main philosophy behind the progression system in Hearthstone: play more to unlock more cards. Of course you can spend real money to buy card packs as well but I'm happy to report I've resisted that temptation thus far. Which isn't to say that Hearthstone isn't worth spending money on, it's just that my personal reaction to the free to play model is to see how much fun I can have with the game without spending any money on it. And Hearthstone is very facilitative to my preference towards playing free to play games as the in game currency is given away fairly liberally to encourage buying more card packs. 

There are 4 main game modes in Hearthstone: "play" where you can play against a friend or be paired up against a random online opponent of supposed equal strength. "Solo play" is similar to the normal play mode, but here you can practice strategies against an AI or pay real money to play through an adventure campaign where you can unlock unique cards. The "Arena" mode costs a modest entry fee of real or in game currency to construct a semi-random deck of cards from a semi-random list of heroes. You're given three lives to play against other players in the same mode. The longer you last, the better your reward will be. But once you die three times, you're out of the arena until you pay another entry fee. The final game mode is the "Tavern Brawl" which is a weekly event that applies different wacky game changing rules each week. One of the last Tavern Brawls I did was to construct a deck out of just two different cards. Pretty interesting. 

Summary

I've had a pretty fun time with Hearthstone. It's neat as a mobile app to pick up and play a few rounds while I'm waiting on something. I don't think this is a game I'd ever get into playing competitively as I'm of the opinion there's way too much luck involved. But it's still a neat little game that scratches the itch in my brain that enjoys making rapid cost/benefit analysis decisions.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

 Spike Chunsoft - 2010 - iOS/Android/Vita/PSP/PC

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a visual novel style game with elements of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games. I was turned on to Danganronpa after it released on Steam and I saw it was developed by Spike Chunsoft who was also responsible for 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, both of which I'm quite fond of despite their respective flaws. Even though Danganronpa and the Zero Escape games do not share the same writing talent, they do all feature Japanese anime styled characters and have similar-ish themes.

In Danganronpa, you play as Makoto Naegi - an average student who was nevertheless accepted to an elite high school academy that only admits students considered to be the best at what they do. During his first day of school, Makoto blacks out and when he comes to he finds that he is one of several students that are trapped in the high school. All the exit doors have been barred and the windows sealed. The high school is deserted with the exception of the students and a creepy remote-controlled teddy bear who calls himself Monokuma. Monokuma tells the students that the only way to escape the high school is by killing another student without getting caught. As the days go by, various murders eventually take place and it's up to you as Makoto to gather the evidence and solve each crime

After investigating a murder scene and gathering evidence, a "class trial" takes place where the facts of the case are deliberated. Here, you'll often need to catch other students either misstating a fact or outright lying and support your cause with pieces of evidence from the case that contradict what a classmate is saying. This is where Danganronpa is most game-y and most separates itself from being just a pure visual novel. It's also where I feel this game is at its worst. The evidence puzzles seem to usually fall into one of two categories. Either the puzzle is so painfully obvious that it feels unsatisfying to solve or the puzzle is so contrived and obscure that you have to trial and error your way into the game's very specific line of thinking. The latter is particularly frustrating when the game tries to railroad you down one particular line of thinking when other possibilities seemed just as plausible to me. There are also weird rhythm game sections during the class trial that feel weak and forced. I appreciate that the game was trying to break the monotony of just reading text forever, but I often found these sections to be more frustrating than exciting

The strength of Danganronpa lies with its storytelling. It's probably unfair to compare this with the Zero Escape games even if it's the same developer, it's a different writer, but I'm going to do so anyway. I felt Danganronpa had a pretty good cast of well written characters - probably a stronger cast than any of the Zero Escape games. If you like wacky high school anime characters, Danganronpa is your game. But I found the mystery of each murder and the overall mystery of the high school much less compelling than anything written in the Zero Escape games. The Zero Escape games had me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out "whodunnit" and how it was possible and the revelation of those mysteries was always mind-blowing. Danganronpa's murders seemed a little too random and contrived. The revelation of its mysteries was always weird and wacky, but in a way that was often too unbelievable.

Summary
Danganronpa was fairly solid - good enough for me to await the release of its sequel on Steam. But I can't recommend this game without a caveat. It's still probably unfair of me to compare Danganronpa to another game not even in the same series or by the same writer, but I feel these games are similar enough to warrant me doing so: If you haven't played 999, do that first. If you have, then know that Danganronpa sacrifices a focus on a compelling and well thought out mystery in favor of more character focused moments full of anime melodrama and silliness.

Five Nights at Freddy's

Scott Cawthon - 2014  - PC/Android/iOS

I don't like jumpscares. At least not the ones in movies, television or games. Strangely, I enjoy events like Universal's Halloween Horror Nights which are entirely predicated jumpscares, but there's at least a high production value and good spooky atmosphere present in the many scare houses and other attractions at the park. And that, to me, is the key. I think jumpscares are at their most effective when a good atmosphere is constructed that makes you a little nervous and on edge. Then just when you least suspect it - BAM! Something pops out and scares you. And that's it, now you've got your audience terrified. It's tempting to keep going back to the well and get more jumpscares over and over, but each subsequent jumpscare loses some effectiveness as they become more frequent and expected - especially in the case of Halloween Horror Nights where something pops out at you every 5 seconds. Which now that I think of it is probably why that event doesn't get to me. But most games/movies/TV shows know how to use jumpscares effectively, which is when I start not to like them. I just don't enjoy being scared that way... Which is why I've been hesitant to play Five Nights at Freddy's for a while. It's a game entirely predicated on jumpscares and it uses them effectively

The premise of this game is that you are a security guard who takes a night shift at a restaurant known as Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria. During your shift, it's revealed that the establishment's mascot animatronics have come to life and of course are trying to murder you. Your job is to last from midnight to 6am which is approximately 8 minutes of real time. In order to complete the game, you have to survive five consecutive nights, hence the name of the game. My question is: after surviving one night and knowing the animatronics are homicidal, why would you ever come back? Anyway, you're instructed that the animatronics only move in the dark when you're not watching them, so you're safe as long as you keep an eye on their locations. Your player is stuck at their guard post so your only defenses are checking security cameras, turning the lights on in the dark hallways adjacent to your guard post and closing the electronic doors, but each of these actions consumes electrical power, of which you have limited supply. If you run out of power, you're totally defenseless and more than likely are going to get jumpscared. This game is particularly effective at using audio, or more specifically the lack thereof, to create atmosphere. It's really unnerving to only hear the quiet humming of the security cameras or the buzzing of the florescent lights while your're waiting for what seems like an inevitable loud and disruptive jumpscare.

Since people love to watch other people get scared, this game got a huge boost in popularity from "let's play" videos on YouTube. This first game in the series was relatively critically and commercially successful and has spawned 3 sequels with an upcoming RPG spinoff as well as a movie adaptation from Warner Brothers pictures coming soon. All of this is a little much for me, especially considering the game came out only a little more than a year ago. Don't get me wrong, I liked the game well enough, but having 3 sequels and a movie deal in less than a year seems a bit excessive, no?

Summary

Five Nights at Freddy's is a game that knows how to use jumpscares effectively. It creates a tense atmosphere and keeps the player busy tracking the locations of multiple homicidal animatronics which pop out to scare the player when least expected. I think it's a good enough game, but this game's relative popularity has always been a little confusing to me... I suppose most other people a good jumpscare a lot more than I do.

80 Days

Inkle - 2014 - Andriod/iOS

I've returned from my very first Pax Prime and it was amazing. I demoed Dark Souls 3, Final Fantasy XV, Mario Maker, Rock Band 4 and played many other indie games and met some of their developers. It was a really cool convention and I'd recommend it to anyone who's really interested in games as long as you don't mind long lines. One of the things I did to pass the time in these long lines, plane trips and other downtime was download and play a game called 80 Days.

80 Days is a game that re-imagines Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel "Around the World in 80 Days" as a choose your own adventure style video game. For those unfamiliar with the novel, the book tells the story of an Englishman named Phileas Fogg who makes a wager to the tune of 20,000 pounds that he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. In the game, you play the role of Phileas Fogg's valet, Passepartout, and you manage finances and make decisions on how to plot your route around the globe. The setting still takes place in the 1870s, but now everything is steampunk for some reason. It was kind of an odd creative choice to rewrite the world this way. It didn't do anything for me, but then again I've never understood the appeal of steampunk.

From a gameplay standpoint, this game is sort of like a cross between the Oregon Trail and maybe FTL, but it's more narrative focused than either of those games. It's really more of an interactive novel and it never really gets too "gamey". Most of your interaction will come through picking your character's dialogue from a few choices. It's probably the largest, most involved example of a choose your own adventure book. You can pick your destinations from a map kind of FTL style, but you have to weigh the pros and cons of each decision. Each route has a monetary cost, a time cost, and a "comfortability" cost. In addition to managing finances, you also have to keep an eye on Fogg's health which may start to decrease if you take wearisome routes, or don't stop to rest enough. You can also chat up strangers in each town which may unlock new routes or faster/cheaper routes on your map. Some conversations may even extend the narrative in a surprising way. Events in the game occur randomly as well, so each playthough is guaranteed to be different, even if you take the same routes through the same cities. This is perhaps 80 Days' most interesting feature, as it grants this game a high amount of replayability.

I can remember reading the novel in middle school, I think, and little bits and pieces of it came back to me as I was playing through the game. Most of the story is entirely new, and totally random and also based on the decisions you make, but there are lots of little winks and nods to the novel like the characters being very aware that traveling eastward with the sun vs. westward against the sun will gain them extra time (Spoiler alert for a 150 year old novel). It's a fairly well written game, which is good because there really isn't too much else about this game. The "gamey" parts of 80 Days feel somewhat ancillary to the story; they exist in more of a supporting role. The spotlight of 80 Days is on the story, not the gameplay

80 Days is a well written interactive novel, but it's a game that expects its players to draw enjoyment from its plot, so you might not care for this game if you come into it expecting a strong gameplay hook. At the very least, it's an interesting example of the concept of a choose your own adventure book taken to its absolute farthest point. I personally accomplished my journey around the globe in 68 days, easily winning Fogg's wager with ample time to spare. Check this game out if you'd like to experience your own version of Jules Verne's classic novel.

The Wolf Among Us

Telltale - 2013 - PC/PS3/X360/Mobile

Looking back at some of the things I played last year, I think Heavy Rain might be one of the most important games I played. It was a flawed game, but I enjoyed it immensely. I loved the focus on interactive storytelling and the fact that it was not necessarily worried about being a "game-y" game. It opened the door for me to play other excellent interactive narrative games like 999, To the Moon and Gone Home. But despite the fact that I know I love these types of games, I still had to be sold on The Wolf Among Us. I belonged to the very small camp of people who wasn't completely blown away by Telltale's breakout hit, The Walking Dead game. Although I admit it probably had more to do with the setting and themes of the story than the actual quality of the game. No more zombies for a while, okay popular media? I'm burned out on zombies. But I'm happy to report that The Wolf Among Us won me over and it feels just as fresh and compelling as Heavy Rain did the first time I played it.

The Wolf Among Us is based on the Fables comic book series which I had never heard of prior to playing this game. The basic premise of Fables, and consequently The Wolf Among Us, is that fairy tale characters are real and have adopted magical human disguises to live alongside normal people. TWAU follows the lives of several fairy tale creatures, or "fables" as the game calls them, who are living in a small community called "Fabletown" within New York City. You play as sheriff Bigby Wolf (The Big Bad Wolf) whose job it is to protect and maintain order in Fabletown. Not too long into the game, one of the fables in Fabletown is murdered, which puts Bigby on the trail of a mysterious and dangerous killer

I really liked the setting and themes in this game. It places fairy tales, which we usually think of as light-hearded children's stories, in a dark, gritty and seedy New York City. It deals with mature themes like murder, drugs and prostitution. The narrative loves to dance in morally gray areas and force the player to make morally ambiguous choices throughout the game. The fables themselves are also really interesting and are brought to life through great voice acting. Being not familiar with the Fables series lead me to wonder which fairy tale would be introduced next, and it was always cool to see this game's dark twist on a classic character. In contrast to what seemed like a budgetary and game engine constraint in The Walking Dead, the comic book art style really suits TWAU. I especially liked the purple, black, magenta and yellow neon color palettes that were used during the nighttime scenes in Fabletown.

Mechanically, TWAU plays very similarly to The Walking Dead or Heavy Rain. Most of the game is spent watching a scene play out and then making dialogue choices with the occasional quick time events mixed in. The dialogue choices are where TWAU excels. Making difficult decisions in a short amount of time was the thrilling part of the game. The quick time events were... not. I get that they're included to provide tension during the action sequences in the game, but I didn't like that messing up too many QTEs just put you in a game over fail state. You then have to replay the exact same sequence over again. I much preferred the Heavy Rain implementation of QTEs where messing up a button prompt didn't give you a game over, but instead had a negative effect impact on what your character was doing in the story. That's way more intense to me because I feel more resigned to accept the result of my QTE fest and not just simply repeat it over until I get it right. 

Summary:

Overall, I found The Wolf Among Us to be another excellent interactive story game if you're into this sort of thing. And if you've never tried this kind of game before TWAU is a great place to start. I really enjoyed the characters, setting and themes in the game. Like Heavy Rain before it, the story occasionally stumbles and some of it feels like filler, but overall it's written pretty well. I would love to play a "season 2" of this game similar to what Telltale has done with The Walking Dead. Check out The Wolf Among Us if you want to take a dive into a gritty world of darkly twisted fairy tales

Minecraft

Mojang - 2011 - PC/X360/XboxOne/PS3/PS4/Mobile/Vita

(On my Top 10 Favorite Games list)

Wooo 50 reviews! Wooo!! When selecting which games I'll write about each week, I give priority to the more obscure games that people may not have heard of. I think it's important to shine a spotlight on the smaller indie titles that may have slipped through the cracks. Games like To the Moon, The Swapper and The Stanley Parable all offer amazing unique experiences and are deserving of attention and discussion, but tend to run under the radar because they're not behind big publishers. I was thinking for my 50th review maybe I would review one of my all-time favorite video games. A game that I really love, like Ocarina of Time or Final Fantasy VII. But nah, people already know about those games. So I'm here this week to shine a spotlight on a game you may not have heard of. It's a little indie game I discovered called Minecraft.

If you didn't pick up on the heavy sarcasm at the end of that last paragraph and/or are otherwise oblivious to the video game world, Minecraft is hugely popular. Like HUGE. To date, it's sold nearly 50 million copies across all platforms making it one of the best selling video games of all time, according to Wikipedia. That's more than the original Super Mario Bros. A public beta of Minecraft was released in 2009 and it spread like wildfire across the internet, solely through word of mouth. It was officially released in 2011 and has now made it's creator, Markus Persson (a.ka. Notch), like 97 trillion dollars from sales and merchandise. Don't look that last number up, but it's probably true.

So what makes Minecraft so popular? First of all, it's mind blowing. The first time I played Pokemon Red/Blue? Mind blown. First time I played Ocarina of Time? Mind blown. If you've never had your mind blown by a video game, I don't really know how to quantify that for you. The first week I owned Minecraft, I played it obsessively. And when I wasn't playing it, I was thinking about playing it. It's a completely absorbing experience. The other reason I think Minecraft is so popular is that there are just so many ways you can play the game. You can play it like a survival game where you forage for resources and see how long you can stay alive. You can play it like an exploration game, just traversing the vast landscapes and seeing what you'll discover. You can play it like a traditional single player game where you upgrade your weapons and equipment and eventually get strong enough to take down the final boss. You can play it like a creative game because the game engine literally allows you to construct whatever you can dream up, as long as you have the materials. Or you can play with friends and blow each other's stuff up. And the best part is that none of these playstyles are mutually exclusive.

I was a huge fan of LEGOs as a kid. And I guess I still am as an adult. So the creative building block element of Minecraft is really appealing to me. The entire world of Minecraft is randomly and procedurally generated each time you start a new game or explore a new area. The terrain that is generated is essentially just made up of little blocks that the game engine will allow you to remove and replace however you see fit. There's quite a bit possible with just that game mechanic alone. But then you add in the fact that there are rare blocks that are generated like the gold ore block or the diamond ore block that can be used to make more complex objects or tools in the game... this really makes the exploration aspect of the game addicting and satisfying. Then there's the redstone ore. Oh man the redstone. Minecraft's redstone actually allows the player to create complex circuitry with logic gates in the game of Minecraft. People have made calculators and functioning CPUs in the game of Minecraft. That's CRAZY. I hope that helps you understand what a powerful creative tool the engine of Minecraft is. Then there's the people that have recreated famous structures or landmarks in Minecraft. There's the Minecraft Enterprise, the world of Game of Thrones in Minecraft, and Pharrell Williams' "Happy" recreated in game through the engine of Minecraft. That's just awesome.

Summary:
If you want to learn more about Minecraft, its developers, and the impact it's had on the games industry, check out this pretty cool documentary on youtube. If you somehow haven't played this game, you really should give it a try. If you know me personally and want to play on my server, give me a shout. And if you're one of those people who've stayed clear of this game because "eww the graphics are bad", I'm gonna come smack you. You're missing out on one of the most important and unique video game experiences ever created.

Chrono Trigger

Squaresoft - 1995 - SNES/PS1/DS/Mobile

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

I wonder why Japanese style role playing games aren't made much anymore. At least they're not released as frequently as they used to be. Especially when you compare what's been released in the last generation of gaming systems to what was released on the SNES or the PS1. It seems like SNES/PS1 JRPGs usually sold well, were usually well received and games like Final Fantasy VII (PS1) and Chrono Trigger (SNES) are now often referred to as some of the best games ever made. A video I watched recently suggests that JRPGs like Chrono Trigger are on the rise again. I sure hope so. By the way, you should totally watch all of PBS Game/Show's videos. Good stuff.

Referring to themselves as "the dream team", Chrono Trigger was the brainchild of Hironobu Sakaguchi (creator of the Final Fantasy series), Yuji Horii (creator of the Dragon Quest series) and Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragonball Z). Sakaguchi designed the battle system, so everything will feel familiar to anyone who has played a Final Fantasy game before. There's the active time battle system, potions and ethers and all that stuff. Horii wrote most of the story and scenarios with input from Toriyama. Both Horii and Toriyama were big fans of time travel fiction and wrote the game around the theme of time travel. Toriyama did a lot of the artwork for the game including the character designs and the visual styles for each time period. When I think about it, Chrono Trigger shares quite a few stylistic similarities with Dragonball Z. It's especially evident in the future and prehistoric time periods, whereas the present and middle ages feel more like they're out of Dragon Quest. So it's pretty much like playing a Dragon Quest game set in a world out of Dragonball Z with the battle system of an old school Final Fantasy.

Squaresoft also commissioned a then unknown and unproved composer, Yasunori Mitsuda to do the soundtrack for the game. Chrono Trigger has become one of my all time favorite video game soundtracks and it's some of Mitsuda's best work. Tracks like Time Circuits, Silvard, Secret of the Forest, Chrono Trigger and Frog's Theme blow my mind. Keep in mind when you listen to these they were made in 1995 on a SNES. Also keep in mind this was Mitsuda's very first soundtrack. Crazy. No one should be this good on their first try. The tracks perfectly complement the time period and scenery and art style to create mood. Exactly what a good soundtrack should do. There's even little musical motifs he repeats throughout the soundtrack, altering them slightly to fit the mood of each track. Amazing stuff. Also Robo's Theme sounds suspiciously like Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give you Up". Just sayin'.

The main character of Chrono Trigger is a boy named Crono. Yeah, Chrono and Crono. It gets confusing. I'm guessing in Japanese, Crono's name is written as some clever play on the word for "time" rather than just dropping the "h" from "chrono", but whatever. In the beginning of the game, Crono's scientist friend accidentally transports them 400 years into the past while testing a new invention. When trying to get back to the present, the party way overshoots their destination and winds up in the year 2300. When they arrive in the future, they find the world is in ruins. Few humans are left, there is no food and the Earth is a barren wasteland. The find out that the Earth was practically destroyed in 1999 by a giant monster called Lavos who emerged from deep in the Earth's core, where he had been resting for millions of years, slowly absorbing the Earth's energy. Yes, the Earth is destroyed in 1999. Keep in mind this game was made 20 years ago, but they probably should have picked a date farther in the future to avoid dating themselves. Most of the game's plot then deals with the party trying to find a way to defeat Lavos and spare the Earth from being destroyed in 1999. You'll need to time travel to different eras to learn how to defeat Lavos, enlisting help from a robot from the future, a cave woman from the prehistoric era, and even a talking frog from medieval times. The story's tone covers everything from adventurous & light-hearted to mysterious & thrilling and even sometimes bleak & depressing. It's well paced, and there are memorable characters and events that held my interest throughout the game

Gameplay wise, Chrono Trigger feels like a pretty standard old school Final Fantasy style RPG. You wait for your action meter to fill up, perform an action and repeat. There's really nothing too special about the battle system in Chrono Trigger, which is kind of disappointing. But even with a bland combat system, there's still fun to be had in battles though. The fights will feel challenging, but also not unfair. I never feel like I need to sit and grind in Chrono Trigger, and I do feel like that's necessity in some of the older Final Fantasy games and other older JRPGs. Which is fine if you like grinding, but I don't. If you get stuck on a boss in Chrono Trigger, you're probably not using the correct strategy. Some bosses are susceptible to physical attacks, while others are magic weak. Some bosses are susceptible to physical attacks, but only after using magic. Some have attack patterns you can exploit. You kind of have to experiment to find which strategies work best on which bosses. And I like having to figure out that these strategy puzzles rather than having to grind to get past bosses.

Chrono Trigger is notably one of the first RPGs to have a seamless transition between exploring and fighting. When you encounter an enemy while exploring, a menu just pops up and you start fighting, no transition or screen wipe to another battle scene or anything like that. It's also one of the first games I can think of to have multiple different endings depending on what actions you choose and which sidequests you do. There's also a good amount of optional sidequesting you can do to see more of a certain character's background story while also obtaining more powerful weapons and equipment for that character. There's even a secret party member you can unlock if you make the proper dialogue choices and do the appropriate sidequests.

Summary:
In short, Chrono Trigger is a fun and memorable adventure if you like old school JRPGs. The battle system is a bit unimaginative, but the game is carried by its well paced story, inspired art design and its incredible soundtrack. I played through its sequel Chrono Cross and... kinda didn't like it much. I'd love to see another game in the Chrono series and it seems now is a perfect time for it what with Square Enix's recent financial struggles. Another Chrono game seems like money in the bank to me. That and a FF7 HD remake.

Final Fantasy V

Squaresoft - 1992 - SNES/PS1/GBA/iOS/Android

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

(Author's note: This review was initially posted on 2/17/2014 and was rewritten on 9/25/2015. You can read the initial review below as a comment)

I have somewhat of a soft spot for old school turn-based JRPGS, and this is one of my favorites. FFV tragically gets overlooked quite a bit because it didn't have an official U.S. release/translation until 1999, seven years after it came out. This is really a shame because I think FFV outshines the other SNES era Final Fantasy games in a lot of ways. I'm sure this is a controversial opinion as debating which games in the Final Fantasy series always tends to get heated, but if you don't believe me and you haven't played this game, you really should.

FFV's story is kind of... ehhh. It's pretty standard template "heroes save the world" writing. Story is not where this game shines, but pretty early in the game, you’ll unlock FFV’s job system. FFV's job system is what sets this game apart from other Final Fantasy titles, for better or for worse. The various jobs are slowly unlocked at key story points as you progress through the game. You initially unlock knight, monk, thief, white mage, black mage and blue mage but will eventually unlock all 21 jobs (25 in the enhanced remake). You can assign any of your 4 party members any job and can reassign them at any time. Changing jobs will affect your character’s stats and what items they're able to equip as well as grant them different abilities to use in battle. Once you master a job’s ability you can carry it over to use with other jobs. This, to me, is where FFV is at its best. Trying to figure out which combinations of jobs and abilities were powerful and which were useless was really fun and rewarding. For instance, combining the Ninja job's "dual wield" ability with the knight class' high innate defense and ability to equip high damage longswords was pretty good if my memory serves. FFV is paced pretty well such that you'll unlock more jobs just as you were mastering previous ones so you always have new combinations and tricks to try out and experiment with. The ending of the game comes right about the time you've mastered enough jobs to be dangerous. Unleashing all of your ridiculous tricks and crazy combinations on the final boss feels like an adequate final exam of your mastery of the job system.

I think FFV is one of Nobuo Uematsu’s first really excellent soundtracks . Not that any that came before were inferior, but FFV really showcases Uematsu's musical range and his ability to create timeless and catchy tunes one right after the other, over and over again. “To the North Mountain”, “Home, Sweet Home" and "Clash on the Big Bridge" are some of my favorite tracks.

Summary:
If you enjoy old school RPGs or are a FF fan who missed out on this game the first time around, you should check this game out. If you don't mind the slower pacing of the turn-based combat, I've found experimenting with FFV's job system while listening to the genius of Uematsu to be a really enjoyable experience