Author Topic: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger  (Read 4487 times)

ChronoMoogle

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Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« on: June 05, 2011, 09:53:58 pm »
First one in the topic: Black Sigil (DS)

Everything reminds me of the classic. The graphics, the sound and even the fighting system.
The story has a overall other setting, but I am very impressed how much this game feels like a Chrono game... :oops:
 check this trailer out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PioZ3ievw-c
« Last Edit: June 06, 2011, 11:17:53 am by ChronoMoogle »

HeadlessFritz

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Re: Have you ever seen a game which is this close to Chrono Trigger?
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2011, 12:24:28 am »
I started playing the game and it looked good. However there were way too many random battles, and my party was often too exhausted to continue fightning in the middle of dungeons.

The game could have been better, but some bad design decisions wasted its potential.

Mr Bekkler

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Re: Have you ever seen a game which is this close to Chrono Trigger?
« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2011, 01:04:16 am »
I, too, am a Black Sigil enthusiast, in that I recognize and appreciate what they're trying to do. I have to say they did an amazing job considering how small the team was, what their budget was (nothing) and that they're from Canada, a place you don't hear often enough when it comes to game production. I'm impressed with it, but not finished playing yet. Still, I think this is a great idea for a thread! Touting games that are similar to Chrono Trigger in some way or another.
The obvious games that come to mind come in two categories:
Games of the Era of CT and Games that have been Influenced by CT

Games of the Era: (SNES mid 90s)
The Final Fantasy series - Specifically FF3 (sturdy Square RPG, can't go wrong)
The Mana Series - Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 (active battle system, weird menus, cool gameplay)
The Dragon Quest series - Specifically the character art, the PSX and DS remakes, and newer titles (DQ8,9,etc) (from the Enix side, and character designer Akira Toriyama has been on just about every game, so it feels familiar with CT before you even start playing)
The Soul Series - Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma (beautiful designs and music, complex stories woven into the time/space continuum)
Zelda - A Link To The Past (counts as an RPG, critically acclaimed, etc.)

Edit: What I find interesting is that story art and music aside, if you look at the programmed features, the way the game plays, it's really settled itself in the middle of a spectrum that goes from dragon quest (totally menu based battle) to earthbound (menu based but with interactive literary feedback in battles) to final fantasy(see the characters during battle) to secret of mana(see and move characters in an interrupting "battle mode") to illusion of gaia (I don't recall very much except you could change into 3 forms and it was an active system, to zelda(no distinction between in & out of battle, all happens onscreen, gameplay uninterrupted). CT falls right in the middle between FF and SoM. That itself is the game's saving, almost genre-bending grace. People who like active battle don't have to wait, people who like menus get menus. The duo/trio techs and memorable enemy AI are just icing on the cake.

feel free to add more...

And Games that have been Influenced by CT: (post 1995)

Obviously RD and CC, being sequels

Xenogears is the PSX game that, from what I gather, was intended to be a Chrono sequel early on, but they scrapped the idea and used the engine for a "new" story, which became the first of the Xeno games. It's a great game in its own right, but the sprites on 3D environment really let your mind wander into the Chrono game that would have been. It also had Mitsuda and Kato working on it, so in my mind it is part of the Chronoverse.
[youtube]qqQc-Lkyy-o[/youtube]

Black Sigil is what happens when you take the characters from CT, the battle system and encounter rate from FF (but with a moving gimmick that shows off as many battle sprites as CT) towns from SoM, and put it all into a portable RPG that was meant to be released ten years ago, minimum. If it was released ten years ago, or even twenty, it might not have even turned heads. But the fact that it is SO specifically stuck in 1994-1996 Squaresoft mindset TODAY is noteworthy. As a DS title, it falls a little short, as the touch screen aspects are not very well done. As a Chrono spiritual successor, it's nostalgic and the story is fun.
[youtube]S5ZFI_XRNyA[/youtube]

Radiant Historia is what happens when you take PSX style graphics and decide Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger weren't enough, but combining them would be a good idea. What you get is a very stylized and attractive (though aliased, jagged, and a tiny bit nauseating at first when in motion) world where you play as a morally ambiguous character with a book that lets you go back in time to established points, and even switch from one timeline to another as you make different choices on the same decision. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but the battle system is clever, engaging, and (best difference between this and Black Sigil) FAST.
[youtube]xD9FevMw1_o[/youtube]

XenoBlade is an as-yet-unreleased in the US game apparently only tangentially related to Xenogears, but if you look at the footage, the battle system is unmistakably taken straight from CT and put into a lush 3D environment, exactly what everybody's been asking for ever since games HAD lush 3d environments.
[youtube]q3PDz8I2_aE[/youtube]

I'm not putting up youtube links for the games of the era, you should know them!
« Last Edit: June 06, 2011, 04:40:49 am by Mr Bekkler »

FaustWolf

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Re: Have you ever seen a game which is this close to Chrono Trigger?
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2011, 03:10:29 am »
Haha, I had flashbacks to 3AM some morning in October 1998 when I watched the Xenogears video. Thanks for the memories.

Bah, Black Sigil's graphics aren't dated! They're rich, wonderful, and scrum-diddly-umptious! Too bad we haven't heard anything from the team since then.

ChronoMoogle

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Re: Have you ever seen a game which is this close to Chrono Trigger?
« Reply #4 on: June 06, 2011, 06:47:26 am »
@Bekkler:
Awesome posting! The games you mentioned are really close to CT in some points, yes.



If you ask me, there are only four games who are technically and gameplaywise on the same level like Chrono Trigger in the SNES Era:

Terranigma - Seiken Densetsu 3 - Chrono Trigger - FF VI

Starting from the most action- based game to the most traditional RPG. But they all share a very deep story for their time, awesome graphics and battle system and some of the best soundtracks in video game history. Lets face it: everyone is still waiting for sequels who can get to the same level like these golden era rpgs. Sadly, Terranigma (my all- time favorite, even more than CT) remains without a sequel since 1996 and Quintet is gone :( Not even a Virtual Console release... I wonder if (Square-)Enix still holds the rights on this franchise.

@Fritz:
« Last Edit: June 06, 2011, 06:58:46 am by ChronoMoogle »

Ethasus

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Re: Have you ever seen a game which is this close to Chrono Trigger?
« Reply #5 on: June 06, 2011, 09:27:22 am »
Yeah Terranigma was a great game, more so than its prequel (Illusion of Gaia, which you can deduce from the dev room)
and I like the real time battle mechanic, and with which you can dodge most battle. Am I right, FW? :wink:
From the CE vids I can see you like to dodge battles too!

Iyellalot

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Re: Have you ever seen a game which is this close to Chrono Trigger?
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2011, 12:19:56 am »
I started playing the game and it looked good. However there were way too many random battles, and my party was often too exhausted to continue fightning in the middle of dungeons.

The game could have been better, but some bad design decisions wasted its potential.

Kinda like Crimson Echoes.

Oh snap!


Magus22

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #7 on: June 07, 2011, 04:27:14 am »
From what fans have gathered on the recent E3 trailer for FFXIII-2 was intriguing. There are rumors going around that it's "Chrono-related" due to the time, space & dimension plot. There is also evidence of a "meteor" and creatures falling from the sky. I'll do some more research and hopefully more info will surface as E3 continues.

Samopoznanie

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #8 on: June 07, 2011, 06:11:26 pm »
Wow - that Black Sigil game totally slipped under my radar. I'm going to have to head to Amazon after making this post.  Encounter rate be damned -- I grew up on the original Dragon Warrior for NES, and Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean was one of my favourite games on the Saturn.  The nostalgia gamer in me would buy this just for the graphics.  Thanks for the heads-up!

maggiekarp

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #9 on: June 08, 2011, 11:02:31 am »
Some of the sprites from Black Sigil look like they were taken directly from CT and recolored. Going for a 199X feel though, that's not exactly a bad thing.

Licawolf

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #10 on: June 09, 2011, 05:58:48 pm »
From what fans have gathered on the recent E3 trailer for FFXIII-2 was intriguing. There are rumors going around that it's "Chrono-related" due to the time, space & dimension plot. There is also evidence of a "meteor" and creatures falling from the sky. I'll do some more research and hopefully more info will surface as E3 continues.

Any news about this? I haven't heard about this rumor, but sounds interesting.

Synchronization

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #11 on: July 10, 2011, 07:36:49 pm »
Phantasy Star 4 may have served as a model for much of Chrono Trigger.  The Zio character parallels Magus being a dark magician who inhabits an evil tower, also serving as the first major type boss responsible for the world's hardship until the greater enemy Lavos/Dark Force is revealed.  Also the final boss profound darkness produces spawn of itself in the emanations of dark force, it resembles lavos in its appearance beginning as a lower life form type entity, as lavos does in the porcupine exoshell form, and later reveals a more refined form like the lavos core; its origin is also extraterrestrial and it later crashes into the planet forming a crater where the final battle takes place.  The side quest for Robo resembles the side quest for the android Wren where a computer controlling the environment called Mother/Daughter must be confronted and destroyed and in those same dungeons obtaining the strongest weapons for these characters.  Epoch's time travel interface is similar to the space shuttle in PS4, except with space substituted for time, they expand the explorable to many worlds rather than one.  The combination techniques were quite extensively featured in PS4 and Chrono Trigger.

Of course most RPG's have precedents including phantasy star 4 but I feel it may be the closest to Chrono Trigger as an immediate predecessor. If this thread has been done already let me know, otherwise I may try to work out more details and make a legitimate post in the analysis section of the forum.

Nexus

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #12 on: July 16, 2011, 10:30:15 pm »
Radiant Historia seems to be a game I would play, even without mentioning it potential of being similar to Chrono Trigger. Also Xenogears is a wonderful game and that is saying something, since a good part of the game was cut out near the end.

I'll have to see about picking up a copy of Radiant Historia now that my interest in it has been piqued.

Lennis

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #13 on: July 16, 2011, 11:28:07 pm »
Some people have said that Xenogears very nearly was a Chrono game early in its development.  I'm not sure how much truth there is in that, but it certainly has that Chrono feel to it.  Lucca's cameo in the beginning makes you wonder.

(Xenogears could have been the best RPG ever if it had been truly finished.  As it is, it is merely great.)

Boo the Gentleman Caller

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Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« Reply #14 on: July 17, 2011, 09:32:01 pm »
I wouldn't say the Golden Sun series is akin to Chrono Trigger, but they do have that SNES-era nostalgic feel. And they're great games! The gameplay of a traditional JRPG with the puzzle elements of a Zelda game... Can't recommend the series highly enough!