[Dracorion]

Episode 1: Crono versus the Ruined ChildhoodsEpisode 1: Crono versus the Ruined Childhoods

After the development team sends us off, we get a short glimpse of this screen:



I think it's a stage selection screen leftover from the beta.

We're supposed to get the option to rename Crono, Lucca and Marle after this screen, but there's some kinda bug in this version. If you started the game with the greeting from the developers, you won't get the option to rename the characters. But if you start a new game from the load menu (which means you need to already have a CE savegame, so as to avoid the developer's greeting), then you do get the option to rename.

But I'm okay with not giving you guys the option to call Crono BUTTS or something.



And now we open to the prologue proper, with a shot of Crono and Marle standing in front of a fountain while another couple runs off to shag make out behind the trees.

Music: Far off Promise



The camera pans up to center the two lovebirds.

Tomorrow is the big meeting with Porre. Daddy's worried... I hope nothing bad happens!
Sad to think that we can save the world, and yet we can't change these people's minds...
Hey, don't worry too much. Things will settle down.

... What.

MY CHILDHOOD IS RUINED FOREVER!!!!


Marle says everything that needs to be said about the whole "Crono talks" thing. Minus the beatiful night, depending on what time it is for you.

Well, it's getting late. Don't sleep in tomorrow! I...



Awwwww.


And the date ends with Crono getting to first base. Let's face it, he did better than the rest of us ever have. Not bad for a fictional character.

Cut to black. We hear Nadia's bell ringing in the background.




But there's no "wake up, sleepyhead"!


Music: Morning Sunlight

Today's the big day!

Are you getting married?


Marle opens the blinds, letting light into the room. Crono just squirms around in bed. He'll get up when he wants to get up, bitch.


Daddy's got a meeting with some diplomats and we've gotta be there!

Oh right, meeting with Porre. No wedding, then.

Lucca's waiting too!
Get ready and c'mon!


And she walks downstairs, leaving Crono to get his lazy ass out of bed.



But first he closes the fucking blinds because he's his own man and he fucking wants to.


Having successfully rebelled against his bitch girlfriend, Crono procee- Oooh shiny thing.


You're going to be a great king, Crono.


Finally we head downstairs and get assaulted by Crono's mom.

Music: Peaceful Days

Mom: Marle already left for the castle. Go catch up with her!

She scoots off to do housework, but if we talk to her she says:

Mom: I swear, you kids are so busy these days! Have fun, Crono, and don't get in any trouble!


This is probably a meal we can wolf down!

Recieved Cake and Postcard.

Awwww.

Mom: This is a cake I made for Mrs. Elisa. There's a postcard for Bandeau's wife, too.
Mom: I didn't post these yet, so if you have the time, maybe you can deliver them yourself! You'd be even faster than the postal service, son!

Fine, mom. Jeez, Crono's dating royalty, which pretty much means you're set for life and yet you're still passive-aggressively nagging him to go out and get a job?

By the way, Bandeau and Mrs. Elisa are NPCs from the original game who did something or another, I don't really know. They weren't really relevant at all.

Whatever. It's off to the world map with us!


Music: Memories of Green

We stop by the Mayor's Manor, which some of you might remember was basically a beginner's room offering helpful tips in the first game. It still serves the same purpose in this game.

But we're seasoned CT players so really we're just coming here to move along with this delivery quest.



Gave Mrs. Elisa the cake!

Mrs. Elisa: You're such a caring young man Crono! Here! Take this!

She gives us 300G for our trouble.

Mrs. Elisa: ...but don't tell your mom!

We grab a Tonic from that chest. And I lied before, we're actually going to talk to a few NPCs, starting with a certain special little girl.


I don't even know what to say. Sure, all kids think time travel is cool, but actually learning about it should make their heads explode with all the intricacies.

Also, Crono, you're kind of standing uncomfortably close to the kid. Just sayin'.

I'm going to go ahead and present her explanations in full.



Time Traveller Immunity Theory:

















As you can see, the graphics during this presentation glitch out a bit.

TL;DR: Crono can travel back in time and kill his grandfather and he wouldn't disappear because of it. The grandfather paradox doesn't exist in the Chrono Trigger universe.

Readers: But Dracorion, the thing that kickstarted the whole game back in Chrono Trigger was Marle disappearing when her ancestor, Leene, almost died! That's classic grandfather paradox, right there.

Me: I don't know what to tell you, other than CT's writers made an oopsie.

Time Bastard Theory:













TL;DR: Remember the sidequest back in CT, where Lucca goes back in time and stops her mother's legs from being crushed?

Well, that resulted in a new timeline where Lucca grew up knowing her mother's legs were whole. She existed as far as the the people in the timeline are concerned. But then she was overriden by time traveller Lucca who saved her mother's legs from being crushed.

Basically, our Lucca killed the other Lucca.

Anyway, now that we're done with that, we head upstairs to harass an old man.


Old Man: What? You better be! If you're using SNES9x or an early version of ZSNES, the game will inevitably glitch at some point!
Old Man: Don't blame me! Go grab the latest version at http://www.zsnes.com. It's free.

What? I played through this game on SNES9x before and I don't remember glitching at any point. I'm playing it on SNES9x now!

Anyway, we grab 100G from the chest and head off, since all other NPCs in this dump just give out information we should already know.


The dialogue from all the other citizens in Truce basically boils down to "Man, Porre sucks" or boring useless NPC blabber. We can head up to Leene Square, where there's a couple of things of note. Firstly, the best NPC ever:


You are so cool.

There's also an item shop, as well as a little girl who sells lemonade for 20G, which heals our HP and MP completely. There's also an old man who sells Crono some "pickles" for 1G, which causes our hero to trip out for a few seconds before going back to normal.

In the right side of the square, where the Prehistoric Dance minigame used to be in Chrono Trigger, we find...


The Hero's Gallery! Recognizing the efforts of our band of intrepid heroes to save history and the world from a gigantic space hedgehog. You'll notice Magus isn't there. Either he was too shy to get his statue taken, or maybe he's dead in Crimson Echoes.

Moving on. On the left side of the square, we run into...


A Black Tyranno's head? Let's poke it.


Well that's-


Wait, what's it doing?


Oh, sweet!


Crono slashes at it for like two damage. I can tell this is going to turn out well.


It retaliates by roaring a black hole at Crono for 2000 damage, which you won't see because I suck at taking screenshots.


Well that went well. Arright let's start this sonnuvabitch over and avoid the Tyranno from no-



Except losing doesn't net us a game over. The Tyranno head disappears and Crono is left with 1 HP. He remains in his "dead" pose, but we can move around like normal.

Does this mean we can play through the whole game with a dead Crono?!


Haha yeah, no.

Back to the world map...


Yeah, 1005 AD now has a Cathedral. It's the boringest place ever and there won't ever be anything to do here. It's also got like four more screen than the Cathedral back in 600 AD.

Anyway, we can actually cross the Zenan Bridge. Fiona's Forest is now an area we can explore.




It's just a one screen forest with some encounters here and there and a couple of treasure chests. No biggie.


Oh, and a Magic Tab.


We run into these guys at the exit.

Guards: Well, that's our lines for the game. Maybe they should have called it, 'Mystical Ninja: Starring Fiona's Forest Guard NPCs 3, 9 and 14'.

As you have no doubt noticed, CE isn't afraid to go meta every now and then. For the record, I would play the shit out of that game.

I don't know if these guys are supposed to stop you from going into Porre, but if so then they are absolutely terrible at it. You can easily scoot under them and exit the forest.


Like so.

There's nothing interesting at Fiona's Shrine, but surely Porre must be interesting, right? Yeah, no. All the dialogue is about the army being jerks and the citizens whining about the army being jerks.

By the way, that building you can see in the lower left corner of that screenshot is a research facility, but we'll get kicked out immediately upon entering. We can also pick up a Power Tab at the Porre Army's barracks. So! What now?

Well, if we head back to Truce, we can take the ferry to Medina (the Mystic village).


Wait what?


The ferry is actually useful?!


MY CHILDHOOD IS RUINED FOREVER!!

Anyway, Medina is similarly uninteresting. We can find Toma XIII the adventurer and his assistant in the ruins in the forest to the right. You know, those ruins that had a couple of sealed chests back in the original game. He just talks about having money problems and a son called Toma XIV.

In the Elder's House, we can find Bandeau trying to strong-arm Medina's elder into letting Porre's merchants peddle their wares in town. The Elder refuses because he doesn't want to get involved in Zenan's mess aside from the ferry, and because the agreement states Medina would have to trade only with Porre. Good for him.

If we visit the house that had a gate hidden in the closet...


Yeah, the gates all disappeared at the end of Chrono Trigger, since Lavos was dealt with. And the Epoch isn't around, so presumably the heroes opted to crash it into Lavos' shell and skip that battle.



The rock he's talking about is the one you can see a couple of screenshots back, when the ferry arrives in Medina. As far as I know, it never becomes relevant.

Yeah, CE has a bunch of dropped quests. The cathedral and the rock are some of them.

If we stop by Medina Square and talk to some guy...


Sure!
Guy: Cool! Well, seeya around some time, Prince!

Wait what? Crono and Marle got married inbetween games? Then why is he still living with his mother, and why is she still nagging him to get a job?


There's also this guy here. I guess the developers didn't want to be too blatant by having him say "the price of freedom is vigilance".

Crono heads over to the cafe to finish that delivery quest...



Bandeau's nameless wife reveals that Crono's Mom actually has a name!

Gave Bandeau's wife the card!

Bandeau's wife: Take care of yourself. Things will get better... I'm sure.

And that's it for Medina. We can visit Melchior's hut nearby, but it's empty except for a note explaining that he's away on a trip.

But! We can take a ferry from Medina to Choras. You know, that other town from Chrono Trigger. The one that had the Hero's Grave.


To the left is the ticket office for the ferry and this is... what?


Huh.

Yeah, this is a museum dedicated to the original Toma (from 600 AD). There's nothing here except for a couple of NPCs. One of them tells us that Toma XIII only gets 5% of the proceeds from the museum before tax, because they're not trying to fund the Truce brewery.

He's basically taking a shot at Toma for being a drunk. Ha!

Choras also has a shooting gallery minigame, but we can't do anything because Crono can't wield guns! I wonder, do we know anyone who does?

Incidentally, I wonder how that place stays in business if they make customers bring their own guns, and there's literally only one person in the world who owns one.

There's also a Casino with three minigames, and I briefly succumb to gambling addiction.


There's no fancy graphics for cards. We basically just get text boxes telling us what card we drew and how much we're up to now. We can bet 100, 1000, 2000 and 4000G in this game, and winning means we get the same amount back. So basically winning doubles how much we bet.

There's also...


For 10G, we get to spin the figures above (which rotate between queen, chancellor, king and some other sprites). If we get three of a kind, we win 1000G. I abuse savestates to win Slots once, then play Blackjack three times, betting 1000, 2000 and 4000G each time.

By the time we leave the Casino, I've got 8000G in my pocket.

The lady next to the blackjack dealer gives us a free Wallet, an accessory that turns the experience we recieve at the end of a battle into G. We'll never use it because levels are important in this game.

To the left, we find the last minigame this place has to offer.



We can bet the same amounts as in the blackjack game, and as with blackjack, winning doubles our cash. When you start the game, the glowy dot you see there will start moving from left to right, and when it reaches the end it'll move down and start going right to left, and so on. It'll move less and less until it stops completely.

Color means picking the color of the square it'll end up in. Number means you have to pick how many moves the glowy dot will make before it stops.

... Yeah, I didn't really bother with this one.

Anyway, most of the NPCs in town talk about not getting involves in Zenan's mess, or about the Hero's Grave being turned into a museum and how totally awesome that is.


There's also an auction house in Choras, but our 8000G really isn't enough to properly take advantage of this place. We'll see what it has to offer later.



The Hero's Grave museum doesn't really live up to the hype everyone's giving it. The only things here are Cyrus' grave and a replica of the Masamune. As we progress through the game, we'll be able to bring some stuff to the museum so it can have actual exhibits.

And with that, we're done sightseeing the world. If we head back to Truce, we can pick up our reward for finishing Mom's deliveries.



The Nautishell is a nice armor upgrade compared to what we have now. But wait, I haven't shown off Crono's specs yet, have I?

Well, after running off to Porre to pick up equipment upgrades for Crono, as well as stocking up on more recovery items than we're likely to need at this point in the game, Crono's wallet is 4000G lighter but his mind is at ease.


Crono's stats and equipment. As you can see, killing a world-eating abomination from outer space didn't get him a lot of levels or high-end gear.

You might also notice that the CE team dumped Toriyama's character portraits in favor of their own. I believe this is supposed to represent that the characters are more grown up.

Anyway, we toss on the sword and helmet we bought in Porre as well as the armor mom gave us...


The sword raised Crono's weapon power by 2, and each piece of armor raised his defense by 5. So yeah, not bad.


Crono's techs. Even at level 1 with no experience under his belt, he already has three techs unlocked.

Let's go pick a fight, shall we?


We find this lone Roly in Fiona's Forest. It's going to be like taking candy from a baby.


OH GOD.

Music: Battle 1

Whatever, Crono still Cyclones two of them at the same time.



It takes about four Cyclones to kill one of these jerks, so they have around 80-90 HP.



They each hit Crono for 9-15 HP at a time, so it's kinda touch-and-go for a moment there. I end up having to use a Tonic to heal Crono.




Eventually there's only one left, though, and even though Crono's out of MP he still runs up to that sonnuvabitch and slashes it in the face.


Eventually...




Huzzah!


Crono agrees.


Or maybe he's constipated.




Welp, there's no escaping it now. We've been everywhere and we've seen everything worth seeing. Next time...

*Puts on sunglasses*

We go to a meeting.


YEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!



Welp, that's a wrap folks. I apologize for not showing off the towns proper. There's actually a couple of interesting folk we can talk to, but this update was getting long enough as is.

You'll get a proper tour of the world soon enough, don't worry.

Next Update: Plot! Duplicity! Theft! EXPLOSIONS!!