The magic system in Chrono trigger is lost to time by the time the party can receive it. they must be granted it by a magic sage man in the little hub world. In a rather amusing blunder I just, didn't grant Lucca this ability! I used her off in on, bemoaning her seeming lack of utility all the way until Chrono left the party. Once I realized my mistake, Lucca became the default party member to catch up. Painting the story from that point from her POV. At least, in my eyes! Have a real fondness for her now thanks to this.

Okay this is just this whole series' bread and butter right? Its like, the entire point? Anyway, in one of my playthroughs of this game, I went into cynthia woefully underleved, and with a combo or Rampardos and Hippowdon on my team. The match is super close (no healing items, set switching is always a blast) And the game comes down to her togekiss and my Rampardos. Now rampardos has piss all spdef, 1 hit SHOULD kill it. But it lives! It holds on! Hippowdon setting sand created this gamestate letting my dinosaur tank a hit otherwise game ending and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat! wonderful stuff.

A compilation of the series here. My friend group and I decided to voice out these games as we read, and its turned out to be one of the greatest, most memorable experiences in my tenure playing games. We have an all-star voice cast let me tell you. With yours truly as Keiichi, a poor sap with both Sonozakis, someone with both Rena AND satoko (dunno how she pulls that off) but our greatest trick is the same person doing both Rika AND Takano. We really cooked with that one, we love our thematic parallels.

Ah Ch7. What a beautiful piece of ludonarrative fiction you turned out to be.
Keiichi, the main character (that's my character !! its me guys!!) spends a vast majority of the middle half of this arc infuriated and the slow, bureaucratic, lethargic speed the Child Protective Services takes to their work. I felt quite the same while reading! It was slow, annoying, and took forever! It was actively frustrating to read. And in large part because of how long it took us to finish this one, coming back once a month to read such similar prose was rough! I've grown to appreciate this far more than when I first read it now, a wonderful little moment.

The larger reason for this shout though, was an absolutely incredible moment at the end with Takano, as she proceeds to shot each protagnist dead. Starting with Ooishi. then Keiichi. In this moment I decided to mute on our discord call. No more coughs or sniffles or cries for peak fiction. In the same turn, our Sonozaki did the same when both of them collapsed dead too. Then it was Rena. Then Satoko. In 1 quick scene our merry band of 4 was turned into just 1. A killer and her victim. With no one to bounce off on, to riff too, to joke with. It was a very sobering moment.

Serving different drinks to customers for different reactions is par for the course. But how was I ever meant to know server a girly drink to Ingram just to piss him off, actually has him break into emotional vulnerability, sharing the trauma of losing his daughter. Intended by the developer? Absolutely. So maybe it doesn't deserve to be here, but hey, its my list.

Played this game thru an emulator (dont tell Nintendo) on a DualShock with no motion controls. Beating Rotom's survival game with a fraction of the screen and pitch-perfect aim just felt so truly powerful.

I gave Edgeworth the soul-tama thing and he called me an idiot. a moron. a total fool.

the way this game works makes it so that sometimes it can be a real pain to get the full rank on characters, and keep them to pace with the others in their area. sometimes this enhances the story when Akyuu wants to be an elusive wench and not visit for 6 days in a row, or Tenshi won't stop being a little fuckin asshole and ordering food I DONT HAVE INGREDIENTS FOR.
this was patched out of the game but special guests could also just, rate you poorly if they didn't like their questline meals. or if they didn't match their current order requests. I wish they kept it, it was fun and in spirit of the series!

perhaps intentional, perhaps not. But when Ms Madeline Celeste seemed to be at her lowest, I always felt like the game was far harder. Typing this out it absolutely WAS but I'm keeping in on the list cause I LIKE Celeste

the game doesn't Actually Do This, but Flandre, the final boss, makes comment that the gems you've collected and spent at the shop do nothing but power her up. This doesn't effect the fight (sadly!) but it did make a real "oh shit moment" where after I lost, I purposely ignored the shop to not spend more money, and (seemingly) boost the little twerp's power. Making it harder than it really was!

I also lucked out and first encountered Remi at exactly midnight. Making the clock look really cool and edgy and stuff.

Very much like Pokemon where the game concept sorta is defined by this. But having a completely unique weapon load out makes every boss a fun sorta puzzle on how to best use your tools.

Stumbled into Iris' route first. Made me think for a lotta the games runtine the entire plot twist would be aliens and or a secret society. But nah, her brain really was mush the whole time.

I only put this here because the game really and truly does feel like it wants you to do the Mizuki routes first.

Several puzzles in this game can be rerouted by just getting a bit quirky w it.
the randomness of each floor doesn't hurt this either

A small short horror game about the subliminal feeling of a public pool, played while working a dead shift at a public pool. talk about theming !

Much like the one before it, I played "Endless Mondays" A game defined around a poor office worker's tight schedule due to procrastination, while procrasting studying for my college finals. (as I am right now!) I get ya Penny, I really do.

Its been a long time, so I do not remember exactly, but at some point, one puzzle had me so stumped I shot the portal at the ceiling in frustration. Turns out thats all you had to do anyway!

RPGs really are the heaven for this form of interaction huh?

Anyway, the way this game's magic system works enables everyone to learn everything! Even the strongest abilities in the game! So when the protagonist of the first half and the protagonist of the second half are the two best mages, things get kinda wacky. My fight against Kefka basically boiled down to Terra dragon installing and spamming Ultima, while the cast played healing support. But when she finally went down, who was there to defeat the mad clown, who came in at the perfect time? It was Celes babyyyyy. No better character to finish such a wonderful game.