This is a long overdue response to Dark Serge's post from the CTDS thread, which will be made here.
Nice attempt at trashing CC but now let me tell you why I am right and you are wrong (also see my sig)
The problem here is you saying "Many crappy characters" and "Kato cancelled my Magus 'cause of them", alright let's divide that into points shall we.
First of all, if you're going to quote me, quote something that I've actually said. I never called any of the characters in Chrono Cross "crappy", but merely unnecessary. We didn't need them, and I felt that the effort that went into designing 30 characters could have instead been used to improve the other 10 and make them into even more memorable characters.
1. Too many underdeveloped characters that don't work together and have no relationship.
WRONG. Most of the characters had a backstory developed whereas some characters in Trigger didn't. Let's take Ayla shall we? Aight. What do we know of her? Hmmmm. We know nothing of her past. We know she likes Kino and we know she wants to fight Reptites. We also know she has a strong will of surviving and that she probably had a link with Guardia (even though this is never confirmed). Well that's it for her. What a great development. Yes, Cross has those too, ofcourse. Take Draggy for example, probably one of the most underdeveloped characters that was put in for fun. I don't know which other characters you think are underdeveloped; I know there are some of them. The problem is that you seem to think that Trigger didn't have these, which is wrong, the only difference is that in Trigger they weren't playable
I don't deny that there are characters who don't exactly have a Shakespearean background in Chrono Trigger. Although Ayla is definitely the weakest of the bunch in that regard, I will give you that -- she is still a vital part of the game. First of all, she is the one that they need in order to acquire Dreamstone to repair the Masamune. Second, when the Gate Key went missing, they would have been left stranded forever if Ayla didn't help them. It is also strongly implied that she is a distant ancestor of Zeal/Guardia, as you noted. And despite her fighting with the Reptites and being a far more primitive race, she displays compassion when she tries to get Azala to escape with them. She is among the physically strongest of your party, and shares plenty of double and triple techs with the rest of the cast. This is already more than anyone can say for over half the playable roster of Chrono Cross.
Let's get down to a more vital character: Serge. Although a mute as well, Serge's past is something that absorbs you into the game the moment you see him holding a bloody knife in the dream sequence. He didn't develop as a character at all, but of course neither did Crono, so Serge has the advantage regardless. Switching bodies with Lynx also added an interesting twist to the story because enemies became friends, and friends became enemies. However, although Crono was a speechless character with no past, his supporting cast had enough charisma and unique traits so that you could pretty much determine what kind of character he was through them. When Crono was set to be executed, Lucca went in to save his life, and Marle pretty much told her father and the whole Guardian empire to go fuck themselves. When Crono dies, everyone except for Magus is deeply effected by this, and they go to great lengths just for the hope of bringing him back to life, which they all knew was absurd but gave it a shot anyway. And when it worked, they were overjoyed, and you had a powerhouse back on your team. From what I remember, the only person who really seemed to give a rat's ass about Serge was Kid.
As for not working together, some of them have double and triple techs. Not a lot, but they're there.
I am aware of this, as I've never stated that they didn't exist in Chrono Cross. However, they were disappointingly rare. I could definitely overlook their lack of plot development if they at least shared double/triple techs with at least the
mandatory characters of the game, but we didn't even get that. Take a moment to look back on all those characters and think of what you could or would have added if you were in the developers' shoes, and then tell me that you were satisfied with what they gave us. If you are, that's fine -- I'm not trying to convince you to NOT like Cross, but merely respect my reasoning.
Not to mention you can equip any element on any character you wish (almost) to variate their actions.
I felt that this made the characters even less unique, actually. It didn't really matter who I chose to be in my party because as long as I allocated the right elements to the right character, I was pretty much guaranteed to win.
And to be honest, the amount of characters shows the fucking HUGE world you're playing in. Even though you can timetravel in Chrono Trigger I always feel like I'm in a small world with the small amount of characters and small world map. You're right, there's some characters in Cross I never used to this day. All the reason more to go and play it again.
But that's exactly what I'm saying, even though everything is bigger in Chrono Cross, that doesn't automatically make it better. Chrono Trigger does more with less, and Chrono Cross does the complete opposite. Even though you go back and use those other characters, you're not going to get a much different experience because of the fact that you can just equip any element to them. Superficially you'll be using brand new characters, but you'll find that your strategies are going to basically remain the same.
2. Kato cancelled Magus 'cause of em.
A load of bullshit. I don't see how Magus wouldn't have fit in right there in the role of Magil next to Serge and Kid. The other characters could be developed, so why not Magus? A big f*cking load of bullshit and a crappy excuse why Magus isn't in the game.
Is that so? I guess you can take that up with Kato himself, tough guy.
Masato Kato: To let the cat out of the bag, in the early stages of development, Guile was indeed meant to be Magus. In our original plan, the true identity of Guile was supposed to be Magus after the events in Trigger. (At the end of Trigger, Magus [a.k.a. Janus in Trigger and Magil in Radical Dreamers] disappeared into a Time Gate to go searching for his big sister, Schala, who was lost somewhere in time.) However, as the game's development progressed and we decided to use such a huge number of playable characters, we decided not to make him be Magus. We thought it was impossible to portray the relationship between Magus and Schala adequately in this game. So we changed tracks, made the colors of the Magus character design paler, and turned him into Guile, the magician. In a way, it's a pity, as I really would like to have seen the valiant figure of Magus come to life again.
You can either sit there and try to tell me with a straight face that you know more about what's going on with the story of the Chrono series than the
main writer himself, or you can admit you were wrong and this argument ends here.
Poll