I've had a chance to give the game another test on my SNES. I got as far as Mt. Woe, before losing in a somewhat embarassing manner, and decided since I can't save to just leave it there. Here's what I've found:
- Saving and loading games still isn't working. I tried loading SRMs from Prophet's Guile and the original Chrono Trigger, but neither were recognized.
- There was a sprite positioning error the first time Magus asked for an audience with Queen Zeal. After being told he could enter, he stepped back diagonally back-right instead of straight back and consequently clipped the right side of the door on the way through. My second time through that event, it didn't happen.
- When Magus was being shown the way to his room, there was a Nu standing in front of the wall where the door was hidden. It disappeared shortly before the servant opened the door. ZSNES doesn't appear to show this Nu.
- The music is mixed. Some new songs are fine others have severe problems. I'll go through them in the order of the tracklist as given in the SPC set that came with the patch; I've made recordings of new songs even when they sounded fine.
I seem to have lost my post in the process of typing this up, so let's see if I can get this redone somewhat coherently:
01 Zeal Palace - Sounds fine.
02 Lavos's Theme - Sounds fine.
03 Wind - Sounds fine.
04 Zeal - This is still my favourite song from the game. Sounds fine.
05 Enhasa - As mentioned before, this suffers from bad "mechanical" glitch sounds, though the basic melody is audible.
Recording06 Brink of Time - Sounds fine.
Recording07 Kajar - Sounds fine.
Recording08 I'm not sure if I heard this one.
09 Silent Light - Mostly sounds fine, but I noticed a few subtle divergences between the SNES and ZSNES - not glitches like the others. The volume balancing of instruments seems different; as well, am I just noticing things or is there a longer decay on background instruments on the SNES? (I think it sounds better that way.)
Recording10 Battle 1 - Sounds normal.
11 Boss 1 - Sounds normal.
12 I didn't really notice much about this one, sorry.
13 Grieve - Seems fine. I didn't get a chance to record this song, sorry.
14 Zeal 2 - More mechanical glitching. It destroys the melody in the second half of the song, unfortunately.
Recording15 Mt. Woe - Yet more glitching; it suffers basically the same problems as the others.
Recording17 Cerulean Lake - Seems to play fine, but I'm not really sure what this song is meant to sound like.
RecordingI'll also give my impressions of the hack as a whole from what I've played, both answering your questions and a few points on my own:
1. His monologue came across as clichéd to me. Unfortunately, it's hard to express this kind of surprise well without having resource to facial expressions, and Magus's sprite is one of the least expressive in the game.
2. The pattern is nice, but it makes the limitations of the palette a bit too evident by ephasizing the colour banding.
3. It seemed fine.
5. Yes, and this was one of my least favourite things about the hack. He reminds me a bit too strongly of Redd White from Phoenix Wright.
- Following up on that, I also found the dialogue of the people of Enhasa to be similarly overwrought. For lack of a better word, they and the Prophet seem "fanfictiony" - they have that style that seems popular among amateur authors who want to make their characters seem regal, intellectual, or the like. They didn't seem to fit with the rest of the dialogue in the hack. In general, the wide plotting was well done and fit very well into the original game, but the actual dialogue was rough. It could have used at least one round of external copy-editing, preferably by someone from outside the fandom. (I hope this doesn't sound too harsh - I'm not meaning to insult you or your writing, Zeality. Communicating tone over the internet is difficult, and I worry about sounding the wrong way when I'm trying to make constructive criticism.)
6. It was a bit too short. I realize this is a short hack, but I would have preferred something a bit more involving. What design is there is well-done and fun, but it feels as though it ended just as I was leaving the introductory room. The boss was slightly anticlimactic as well, since it was essentially no more difficult than the regular enemies. The scene with the Lasher seemed fine, but it didn't really seem to play much of a role. It was better than having Magus leave without nothing happen.
7. The song fit the scene quite well, but see my comment later.
8. Unfortunately. There doesn't seem to be quite enough indication which enemies can be attacked with him running away safely and which will involve his being hit by the enemies.
As well, some general comments:
- It's surprisingly coherent and polished for a fangame; everything seems to fit together quite well. It fits into the plot of the original game nicely, and I can imagine it having happened there. It's certainly a better sequel than Radical Dreamers.
- The choice to include new music and arrangements was a good one, and I enjoyed those ones that worked. The Romancing SaGa songs are noticeably different from Chrono Trigger's in style, however, and they just don't seem to meld properly.
