Hoping I'm putting this in the right forum subcategory. Sorry if you have to move it.
I know I'm a wee bit late to Crimson Echoes. Ya'll put this little miracle together years ago, and by then I had long stopped playing video games, even though I'd periodically collect some stray piece of CT memorabilia and remember what the game meant to me as a teen. I've been so far removed from my gamer youth for so long, that even when CC came out, I wasn't terribly thrilled with it. At the time, I thought it was burdened by cliches that in hindsight I should have ignored. And nowadays, the most gaming I do is when it's time to let my niece win at Wii Sports Resort.
This spring break, that urge came to play this game at the suggestion of an internet rando on OKCupid. I had finally had some spare cash to collect some of the outrageously priced Chrono Trigger memorabilia and it sparked the urge to rediscover the universe. I decided to devote spring break to Crimson Echoes. I figured I'd be amused and then lose interest and find other ways to spend my vacation time.
It's been three days and I've only left my laptop for food and bathroom breaks.
All of the original sprites and music being used in tandem with beautiful new locations and artful use characters, new and old, make it feel like some secret "part two" that could very well have been hidden on the original SNES cart. And while that's to be expected, what wasn't was the creative story that was told, using parallel realities and creating challenging new situations. I mean, really, some of this is totally clever. The part with the team being split in time and each fighting their way through the same dungeon throughout the ages feels like an opportunity that Square missed out on.
The best thing so far is the battle strategies. Playing through CT could usually be done by brute force and heals, but in CE I'm finding myself using spells like Provoke, Hypno, and Protect more than I ever did in the original games. Not only that, but they end up being essential strategy for certain monster encounters, which really allows maligned battle characters (like Marle) to shine in ways the original wouldn't allow them to.
And the changes to spells are magnificent, but not overpowering, because the monster encounters are tuned to be just the right amount of challenging, sometimes even moreso than bosses. The opportunities to use AOE spells are much more plentiful, without actively nerfing the content. In the original, Napalm and Max Cyclone were kind of wasted for me. Now, Frog's Venom Mist is far superior to Water 1, and it actually fits the character, you know? He's a frog. Why wouldn't he be poisonous? Duh. I use that all the time, but even with the added poison status, the high enemy HPs still make it a process to win fights. Interesting battles are so essential, because so often in RPGs, slogging through easy random encounters is like grinding levels and drops and it becoms tedious. In CE, it is really really easy to die if you don't pay attention, which is so wonderfully engaging.
The biggest thing for me is this sensation of needing to play this game. Like watching a really engrossing TV show or reading a really compelling book, any time I try to put the laptop away I get that sense of anxiety that pulls me back to the story. I feel like I'm sixteen again, with all the time in the world to spend on the only thing I want to spend it on: Chrono Trigger. I'm not a sucker for geek nostalgia like most people my age, but this is a really special thing that brings up a lot of feelings and memories, and I get the sense that it's going to inspire the same creativity in me that the original did when I was a little weirdo writing terribly weird Chrono Trigger fanfiction and obsessively drawing Magus all over my notebooks.
So I'm writing this post just to say thanks for that. This was clearly an incredible undertaking frought with legal peril but the results are well appreciated. If SquareEnix had any sense, they'd adopt this game into the universe, add what they need to make it fit their worldview, and sell it out for $10 a pop on the Wii Store so you all could get your due for what you put in. Clearly they don't have a lick of sense.
