Author Topic: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!  (Read 29318 times)

DBoruta

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #150 on: June 20, 2009, 05:25:32 pm »
Funny thing is, in practice CE would have made the player rely far more on double and triple techs than anything else, by virtue of the fact that enemies are so much stronger than in the original CT. It's unfortunate that I somehow managed to screw up tech progression on my New Game+ runthrough, or you would have seen a lot more use of them. I think we could have made a couple triple techs more flashy -- giving Dreamless to Magus/Marle/Lucca would have been an easy task with the knowledge we had acquired by May, for example.

Oh, okay, I see.  That's one thing I really had been wondering about, and it's something I actually argue about (still) with some of my friends who are old CT fans - which is better - running 3 power characters with strong single techs or running characters that do great double and triple techs together?  I usually side on the double and triple techs side because I was able to milk out more cumulative damage that way.  From the New Game + playthrough in CE, I really did get the feeling that the "run 3 power characters with awesome single techs" route was being encouraged, especially with Robo's new awesome toolbox of single techs and Glenn's one-man-army thing going on. 

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In my mind Ayla wasn't using magic so much as channeling natural energies through tribal song and dance -- Chrono'99 made sure that this we promoted this message in her tech descriptions. It might be more akin to the Elements in Chrono Cross, only using one's voice as opposed to an artificial construct to summon the energies, and Leah could use the artificial constructs just fine in Chrono Cross. Ayla's very name means "Song of Land" or "Song of Earth" or something like that, so it seemed fitting, and they definitely would have remained in.

Yeah, I wasn't too much a fan of the whole "song of the earth / tribal song" techs.  To me, Ayla was always more of a very physical character, but when given the tribal song techs, it seemed to detract from the role she played in CT as just this hardcore physical damage dealer and made her more into a "Glenn-light" in CE.  Maybe if I had been able to do a New Game playthrough myself I might have seen it differently.

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Glenn isn't quite so broken as he appears to be given the number of times I use Nirvana X just to get battles over quickly in the New Game + runthrough. His "Braveheart" is based on a subtraction of his current HP from his maximum HP * approximately 3, so when he's only got 250HP, it's not a huge boss destroyer, and only for players who want to pursue a high-risk strategy. His magic never reaches a high enough rating to make *Venom Mist a crowd destroyer, but its poison effect makes it useful even late in the game, which I thought worked really well. The fact that Nirvana X gobbles huge amounts of MP isn't shown either because I gave Glenn either a Silver or Gold Stud all the way through.

See, I thought Glenn was a near-broken character in CT.  He was just good at everything - healing, dealing damage, teching.  He wasn't particularly the strongest in any area in CT, but his well-roundedness made him lethal throughout the whole game.  In CE, you guys developed his techs even farther that he became a big damage dealer  as well as still a good healer. Over  3K from Nirvana Strike is just plain insane.  Granted, it was New Game + and with Gold Stud (as he should be using Gold Stud for his techs anyway).  Anyway, my point of Glenn being a broken character in this game is that he's just kickass at everything.  Once you have him in your party, there's no good reason to ever not have him in your party, as he does seem to be a one-man-army like I said above. 


Oh, and Sefiros has done some CT OC Remixes.  I have them on my iTunes, and they're phenomenal.  Sefiros should be really proud of the work he did for composing for CE.

FalconHit

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #151 on: June 20, 2009, 05:52:55 pm »
Personal gripes;

Not a fan of the new equipment names. They don't seem in the spirit of CT, and some of them seem too outlandish and try hardy. Also, armors should've been clearly labelled as such, rather than "Inferus" for example, have "Infernus plate" or mail or vest in it same with helmets.

Crono with a tech similar to Braveheart would've been great, I really think he got the short end of the stick. Maybe it's just because I'm a fan.

FaustWolf

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #152 on: June 20, 2009, 06:05:03 pm »
Points well-taken DBoruta. I absolutely detested Robo and Ayla in Chrono Trigger as playable characters, so I think that's why I was inspired to go particularly hog-wild with them. I think, once we show some archival footage reserved as the "bonus finale" to wrap up the Month That Could Have Been, everyone playing the final version would have had Glenn in their party anyway, hehe.

Falconhit, completely agreed that Crono got the short end of the stick tech-wise. I was worried about "messing up" his "classic" tech set, but even so I think I might have tried to work in an HP steal tech, or something else uber for him, had development continued. On the other hand, Crono is already the most versatile character when you take into account double and triple techs. Had we given him something uber on top of that, people would no doubt label Crono "too" uber, probably.

EDIT: Oh, just to be clear, Sefiros didn't compose specifically for CE. That was a track from his album "Deconstruct" (I think) that lent itself to the occasion, with the environments surreally collapsing and reforming in the DBT.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2009, 06:14:24 pm by FaustWolf »

V_Translanka

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #153 on: June 20, 2009, 07:21:59 pm »
See, I thought Glenn was a near-broken character in CT.  He was just good at everything - healing, dealing damage, teching.  He wasn't particularly the strongest in any area in CT, but his well-roundedness made him lethal throughout the whole game.  In CE, you guys developed his techs even farther that he became a big damage dealer  as well as still a good healer. Over  3K from Nirvana Strike is just plain insane.  Granted, it was New Game + and with Gold Stud (as he should be using Gold Stud for his techs anyway).  Anyway, my point of Glenn being a broken character in this game is that he's just kickass at everything.  Once you have him in your party, there's no good reason to ever not have him in your party, as he does seem to be a one-man-army like I said above. 

See? That'd be true...if you were talking about Robo. The only thing Robo gives up to Frog is Speed, and with the amount of Speed Tabs readily available in-game, Frog ain't got nothin' over Robo...well, I guess Frog has a slightly higher critical hit % (he got better in CTDS with some new equip, but so did Robo)...but Tech-wise, Frog is outclassed from Prometheus Dome on~....

mav

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #154 on: June 20, 2009, 07:25:45 pm »
I'll have to go back and read the last few posts, but I couldn't go without congratulating you guys. Well fucking done.

odekam

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #155 on: June 20, 2009, 07:43:28 pm »
Nice job!  :D

DBoruta

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #156 on: June 20, 2009, 08:14:12 pm »
See? That'd be true...if you were talking about Robo. The only thing Robo gives up to Frog is Speed, and with the amount of Speed Tabs readily available in-game, Frog ain't got nothin' over Robo...well, I guess Frog has a slightly higher critical hit % (he got better in CTDS with some new equip, but so did Robo)...but Tech-wise, Frog is outclassed from Prometheus Dome on~....

Nah, Robo didn't double tech quite as well Frog did, and I remember Frog's Heal being the better multi-character healing tech/magic. Also, I think you're forgetting Robo's god-awful magic defense stats in CT. 

V_Translanka

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #157 on: June 20, 2009, 08:25:29 pm »
Double and Triple Techs kind of become redundant wastes after a while, but Robo had quite a few great ones (doubles with any of the girls really were superb, hell, even with Frog)...

Heal              ~ Mag × 6.5
Heal Beam     ~ Mag × 10

Magic Defense is like one of the first stats that ** for everyone and fairly early too...and if you haven't gotten to that level by endgame, the max armors will more than split the difference.

Chocobo_Fan

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #158 on: June 20, 2009, 09:06:17 pm »
Hi, sorry I haven't been posting recently, I'm more of a reader that a poster. However, I would like to give a bit of a "review" of Crimson Echoes, not that the playthrough has been fully uploaded.

First off, awesome job. Truly a spectacular piece of art. Loved the storyline; ties up a lot of loose ends and connects CT to CC extremely well. However, there are some flaws to it, and it's a pity it was never completed. I must say, though, there were so many things that weren't added that I have to say I think it had a bit more than just "2%" to go before it was completed... I'd say it was more ~95% completed.

Battle balancing is one issue. I agree with a lot of people; Glenn is waaaay too overpowered. (So is Ayla, but she's optional, and is only available for the last third of the game or so...) Braveheart pulverizes pretty much everything even when Glenn isn't in critical health, and Nirvana Strike deals over 3000 damage?! o_O And yes, you did go crazy with Robo's techs...I liked them though. However, I think you should have toned down Braveheart a bit and had it replace Leap Slash, (though with the same animation: I think the "brave" would fit well with jumping really high into the air... o_O) and have Braveheart just be a normal line-hit tech. (I believe someone said this in an earlier thread) Some of the Flame Trial bosses, too... When comparing Yakra to Lavos Core, you see what I mean. Even though Crono is undoubtedly better than Marle at solo fights, that seems a bit...unbalanced. I agree that you should have made Marle a better solo character...

Plus there's the techs, like previous posters have said. How come Crono, Marle, and Lucca don't get new techs? D: Everyone else got awesome new techs, but they just had their normal ones... :/ I agree with other posters that learning the same techs that you learned in the original game can be a bit boring. Though I don't know a thing about coding, and you did say that editing Crono's techs messes up everything else... But I still would have liked to see some new techs for those three.

Music placement is another thing. You did well for most of the scenes, but some just don't work well in my opinion. Boss Battle 2 for the Atash Kedah scene, for example. Lavos's Theme would have worked better there, in my opinion. Also, A Ruined World for the Yakra battle in Marle's Flame trial and destroyed Truce don't really fit in my opinion; it sounds too futuristic, and the wind effect sounds really weird and out-of-place, too... The Day the World Revived/The Last Day of the World would have worked better for destroyed truce, in my opinion. Finally, the character's themes for the flame trials were a bit out of place...they sound too upbeat most of the time. I would have gone with something like "Strains of Insanity", though since they are supposed to be personal for each character, I can see why you'd think the themes would be good choices... Still, I think a creepy theme would have worked better for the trials.

The only other thing I didn't really like was that the destroyed Ocean Palace looked...weird... It didn't really look "destroyed", just had its pieces moved around a bit... o_O But you did the best you could, so I don't mind. Oh, and the Time Eggs being handed out like party favors, though that's already been discussed to death...

Not that all that matters, since the game will never be completed... *sigh*, SE, why did you have to kill such a wonderful fan project...? Oh well. The rest of the game was great, though. I loved the storyline, even if it was a bit dark, though I don't mind that. The new areas and such were pretty cool too. It was great to watch. You guys definitely outdid yourselves with this.

DBoruta

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #159 on: June 20, 2009, 09:09:34 pm »
Double and Triple Techs kind of become redundant wastes after a while, but Robo had quite a few great ones (doubles with any of the girls really were superb, hell, even with Frog)...

Heal              ~ Mag × 6.5
Heal Beam     ~ Mag × 10

Magic Defense is like one of the first stats that ** for everyone and fairly early too...and if you haven't gotten to that level by endgame, the max armors will more than split the difference.

I never bothered to supe up Frog's or Robo's magic stats in a New Game (those went to Lucca, Marle, and Magus), so that explains it.  As far as M. Def goes, at the end of a New Game, Robo's magic def stats are still crap compared to everyone else.  No other character at near-full health would die for me after a Dreamless from Lavos Core.  That's always what put Frog ahead of Robo in my book.  

FaustWolf

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #160 on: June 20, 2009, 10:26:31 pm »
Aaaah, with all the complaints about battle balance, I'm kind of regretting using a New Game Plus for the video walkthrough -- but I still think the resulting speed of the playthrough justified it. Agent 12 actually did a ton of difficulty, stat, and enemy AI rebalancing throughout the beta testing phase, and I made sure to adjust new tech power levels so as not to throw all that out of whack on a regular New Game run through. Trust me, the game was still nicely difficult on a regular playthrough even with the new techs in place.

Nirvana X might do 3000 damage to one enemy in a New Game +, but consider that in Chrono Trigger, Luminaire does 3000 damage to all enemies, or more, on a regular basis. Not to mention Luminaire could easily outpower Dark Eternal (a triple tech, and a secret one at that, and using the game's three best magic users at that) on a New Game Plus as Crono continued to advance in levels. Also, Nirvana X's physical nature leaves it at a huge tactical disadvantage to Luminaire when fighting Spekkio, where Glenn is pretty much worthless for being a more physically-oriented character in CE than he was in CT.

One thing I was really satisfied with difficulty-wise even in the recorded New Game + playthrough was the stats and AI of the last boss. The last boss' implementation hadn't been finalized at that point, so what appears in the video walkthrough is more of a concept mockup that I ran off and whipped up; I think Chrono'99 wanted to place the classic flames in the palms of the statue's hands, and make those flames additional enemies (in which case the Daemon would have been removed). But even in the mockup, the last boss posed a slight challenge to the New Game+ characters on account of me using the weakest magic-defense party members. I just love how King Zeal starts out with a 1200+ damage attack to Robo, that was priceless.

Oh, it looks like I screwed up Chrono'99's plan to have the full Lavos shell present when Magus saw Schala in the DBT. I must have overwritten the Lavos shell in inserting the King Zeal shell on my copy of the ROM, and thus the game code called that up as opposed to the full shell. Still, my interpretation at the time was that the "King Zeal" shell was actually the defeated remnant of Lavos, so I thought all the scenes played out appropriately at the time of recording. Hehehe, I was multitasking with some other side projects at the time, and wasn't in full communication with the core CE team when I flew off the handle and did the KZ mockup, so I wasn't aware of their original interpretation of the graphical elements in question.


EDIT: For a better sense of the new techs on a non-NG+ runthrough, see this demonstration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnw9KH_WnfI

And even that's using techs that wouldn't normally be accessible at that point in the game without near-suicidal grinding (I used a Pro Action Replay to get the end-techs early to do a cool demo for the core CE team).
« Last Edit: June 20, 2009, 10:55:57 pm by FaustWolf »

ZeaLitY

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #161 on: June 21, 2009, 02:01:24 am »
Alternate endings up.

IAmSerge

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #162 on: June 21, 2009, 02:27:23 am »
ill check em in a bit =D

FaustWolf

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #163 on: June 21, 2009, 03:08:12 am »
When I first saw the "Temporal Utopia" ending, I thought for sure there was going to be a Robo textbox where he starts singing "Never gonna give you up..." Kudos for resisting the temptation to do that, though I think it would have been hilarious.

IAmSerge

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Re: SUMMER'S CRY ULTRA UPDATE! A lot of stuff plus CE chapters!
« Reply #164 on: June 21, 2009, 03:17:10 am »
When I first saw the "Temporal Utopia" ending, I thought for sure there was going to be a Robo textbox where he starts singing "Never gonna give you up..." Kudos for resisting the temptation to do that, though I think it would have been hilarious.

You don't realize, I had the same feeling...

hahaha