Since its decades-old debut, Final Fantasy sought to distinguish itself from its contemporaries in the RPG scene with the ambition to make a game of strategy exciting. Rivals like Phantasy Star followed the example set by Dragon Quest, featuring first-person perspective combat and minimal battle animations/effects. They succeeded in conveying the necessary stats and information for the player to understand they are engaged in combat with an enemy, and execute a strategy to defeat it, but the battle itself was mostly explained to the player in colorless textboxes, with the enemy in question typically the center of attention, staring right into the camera. The game, then, made little attempt to belie itself; there wasn't truly a wizard eradicating a goblin, or two skilled swordsmen engaged in a deadly dual. There was really just the player, and how they respond to numbers, information, and the graphics. Having its roots in tabletop and text-based adventure games, RPGs could be said to not truly require visuals at all the way, for example, an action game does. Therefore, visuals were typically a secondary concern for the genre, instead focusing on refining the rules and balance of its rigid strategy. This is not to say encounters were not engaging, or could not be dynamic or layered, but could not compare to the excitement of seeing a more visually exciting and believable depiction of an encounter in something like an action game.

Developer Square, perhaps because of their history with relatively elaborately animated PC visual novels and console action games, chose to harness their artistic talents in creating the first Final Fantasy. Its biggest innovation to the genre was not mechanical (equipment/elemental weaknesses were in games like Wizardry, multiple party members were in DQ2), but experiential. It demonstrated the value of even minor cosmetics and furnishings to the campaign. Not only could you choose your party of characters from the start, but you can see them fight, get injured, and faint. You can see them use the spell you just bought, or see them swing the axe you just found. Final Fantasy owes much to other RPGs and adventure games, but what made it unique from the beginning was the commitment to make the player believe in its own fantasy, sparking their imagination with what they can see and time and time again.

As the hardware accelerated, the games attempted to depict more detail and move more believably. The SNES era injected real-time elements into the conventional, ludic turn-based format. The PS1 games rendered sprites in three dimensions to portray a sense of scale, while the PS2 fully realized proportional, detailed 3D worlds along with, in the case of XI and XII, fully real-time combat systems. Again, the insistence is not strictly on realism, but the excitement of witnessing a believable and well-defined fantasy world in action. Now with XVI, following the action-based direction from XIV and XV, there is a minimization of abstraction in the name of maximizing excitement and believability. This is all to say the technical action inspiration a la DMC makes sense for this series in this context to a degree, but the likely reason some feel so alienated by the approach regardless is more of a recent trend defined as a conflict between expressions of skill and strategy. I-XIII, despite the changes in hardware and central mechanics, are ultimately all games of strategy. Of the player they demand every little skill, or proficiency with control of the characters, and this was an intentional choice for the games to remain accessible yet complex; however, this choice would somewhat impede upon the developers' desire to make these games more exciting and visually spectacular. Even with ATB, an encounter can only be so exciting and believable when all of the characters are lined up in neat rows waiting for their chance to attack. XII in particular took great pains to retain the full suite of both party-based and command-based strategy the series was known for in a real-time, offline format, resulting in the genius concept of the gambit system to mitigate the demands of the strategy in battle by allowing the player to anticipate and automatically counteract much of them before the fight starts. XIV is, for all intents and purposes, the beginning of the series primarily demanding player skill and proficiency, particularly with the expansions, to properly execute rotations and avoid fatal damage. Strategy is however still important for coordination in party-based raids and trials, which some might consider the real meat of the gameplay. With XV acting as an ineffective compromise between demands of skill and strategy for the offline series, XVI minimized strategy more than any other game in the main series to date, to the extent that the quality or depth of player strategy no longer singularly determines victory but instead only determines how efficiently or quickly you win. Accessibility rings and easy balancing seem to dodge around the fact that unlike the rest of the series, if you aren't skilled enough with control of the game, you simply aren't going to beat it, no matter how carefully you build out your character or think out your strategy beforehand.

The original thesis of making strategy exciting feels somewhat diluted now, but for a game that refuses to be enslaved to its own legacy, it does not feel fair to judge it on that standard. XVI is different from series conventions, even moreso than normal, but different is not worse. When combat is the most consistently engaging its been in the entire series, it's hard to complain. Criticisms of repetitive gameplay against damage sponge opponents confused me; if anything, like VIIR I wish combat only lasted longer. There are so many abilities to experiment with and many ways to weave them into your basic combo. The satisfaction lies in the loop experimentation and discovery, supplemented by a steady stream of eikonic ability unlocks and generous re-speccing. Also, a serious commendation is in order for successfully engineering cinematic set-pieces with the eikon battles that don't sacrifice much mechanical depth or rob the player of too much control. After years of Uncharted and the like streamlining their control schemes to provide surface-level thrills, XVI proves these sequences can actually be fun to play. However, the balancing on the base difficulty threatens that fun, defeat is rare despite decently hard-hitting enemies because of overly generous means of recovery.

Others have commented on the lack of mini-games or additional ways to engage with the world outside of combat. In my mind, this choice hearkens back to the progression of the classic games I-V, but where those games provided a consistent sense of exploration of their fields and dungeons, XVI struggles to fill its runtime with overlong sections of talking, sidequesting, and other mechanically unengaging tasks. The bulk of this is centered on the hideaway, and considering the lack of interactive variety I think focusing so much on a hub like this was a mistake, mostly serving to prevent the game from naturally moving its story forward by exploring within the world itself. In the rest of the series, you're usually rewarded for pushing through a long, repetitive string of combat encounters with more story, but in XVI the opposite is true, the monotony is in progressing the story because you do the same sorts of things in the same place. I won't go much deeper into the story because if you made it this far you've indulged me plenty already, but I find after a familiar but well-balanced introduction it gradually loses steam about mid-way through, and the campaign structure cannot mainly be held responsible. It does not expound enough in the narrative to match the depth of its thematic ambitions, and while I like all the antagonists (sans Ultima) they do lack a certain depth or definition that would get me to see them as the human, tragic figures the game wants me to see them as. There are fascinating thematic elements, and some neat character arcs, but it is quite telling that a Final Fantasy ending left me feeling almost nothing at all as the credits rolled. I've warmed on it since, but it requires a lot of digging and extrapolation for what may be there but is not expressed clearly.

Claiming Final Fantasy has some kind of identity crisis with this installment misunderstands that this was ever a series interested in subtle innovations. I don't think Sakaguchi ever had the intention of making a sequel to his Final Fantasy. Though each numbered game bears the same name, they are truthfully standalone works, turns of a page unbeholden to what came before, except for the commitment to believe in their own fantasies. That boldness is refreshing in such a creatively stifling climate, and the fear of missteps or misdirection should not dissuade the fans from attempting to embrace each entry on their own terms and in good faith.

With great shame, I've always been apathetic to Mario's plight. His journey is a noble one, but I do not see myself in his bings, nor his bings. His wahoos do not reach me. I feel like a cunt rat bastard for giving this Three Succulent Backloggd Stars ⭐⭐⭐ and absconding with the ultimate sayaway that this is "still one of the better Marios" but that's-a my burden, not yours - my paesano in cristo. I pirated and completed the game days ago and earnestly found myself worrying I'd forget I even played it before it released and I could officially log the game on BL.

It's good!!! Honest and true!!! Nice to see what felt like notes of 3D World in here with the little rosary bead structure and rhythm of each level having their own little wonder flower acting as an F5 button, refreshing the level's objective into a unique blink-and-you'll-miss-it sleight of hand trick. It keeps u guessing but only so much. It's still Mario, it's still the charisma of a cereal box free toy, but credit where it's due - the soundtrack is nice and they did a great job in shuffling the artstyle up into representing illustrative 3D. Not losing my nut over this but it's nice to see some sparks of personality rattling around behind mario's shark eyes.

Wonder Flower gimmicks are cute until they turn repetitious, which they do by the end of World 2. The badges largely make up for a lack of platforming aptitude which, as a seasoned gamester, means I have to play the game wrong to accommodate their use. But I'm not gonna unlearn my Mario skills so I don't remember to use them outside of when they are clearly necessary for side objectives like an over-polished immsim. You mean I should use the Dolphin badge on the levels right after I got it? Wowee Zowee!

Broadly speaking this feels like an attempt to teach the kids that grew up with the Switch what Mario is about. The hypersleek UI elements, mountains of spoken text as a replacement for other markers of design intent, the badges, the Wowee Zowee, the oodles of characters, the gacha elements of the standees, the multiple currencies (and decimalisation of Flower coins to further litter the field with shinies), the little emojis, the lack of points. These additions and subtractions are by no means bad but I won't lie, it feels a little like I'm playing a AAA game from the 2020s. Because I am. It's hard to read Wonder as a creative reinvention and reinvigoration of Mario because I know it took thousands of people to make this. That every decision was subject to board meetings and focus groups. It's the same problem as your New Super games -- the formula must be adhered to. And even if the formula changes, it's still a formula. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not what I look for at this point in my life.

I'll keep playing it, I'll probably finish it. It's like a Coca-Cola Creation, y'know? You see it on the shelf, you think 'what the hell do '+XP' or 'Starlight' taste like, the first sip is novel and enchanting, before long you're still drinking Coke. If I want true innovation, I'll reach for the local-made can of kombucha flavoured with some berry I've never heard of before. Like Haskap. Uhhh, for the purposes of this analogy I guess the random shit I pick up on Steam and itch.io are the kombucha.

And I gotta say, I'm sorry but I can't hear the Mario Gang say Wowee Zowee without having flashbacks to Game Grumps Kirby Super Star Part 2 where Jon and Arin argued for like a minute straight over whether or not Arin had said Wowee Zowee before. Back then life was so simple. I was so young. Games held so much potential. Eleven years, gone in the blink of an eye. In another life, I'm the Mario Wonder kid, growing up on a Switch. Who could have known things would turn out the way they did, that I'd be the person I am today...

Feels like a rebrand to cover up some controversial past half the time.

WOAH JUST LIKE GAME GRUMPS 😱

Chaotix is a game which takes the idea of Sonic as a physics based platformer in an interesting direction. You technically play as two characters at once, controlling one, with the other being bound to you by a rubber-band. You can press the "hold" button to lock you partner in place, turning them into an anchor from which you can stretch the tether out by pulling away from them, then releasing hold to blast off in the direction you're pulling, or release the d-pad to be pulled back towards them, after which you can release hold to be flung back the other way.

This is all well and good, but many people struggle with the mechanic because the most important element of how it works is never explained to the player. In the air, the hold button works slightly differently. Rather than anchoring your partner to a spot, it switches who is the heavier character. When not held, you, the player, are the heavier character, and the game will prioritise your inputs over your partner's. But if you hold "hold" in the air, your partner will become the heavier one, pulling you around with them. They will also take priority if they're pulling on the cord while you aren't making any inputs. The latter, and the lack of clarity as to how this works can make the mechanic seem broken and unwieldy, but once you understand how it works it is one of the most interesting platforming tools I've ever seen.

If you grab your partner (press hold while standing next to them), throw them upwards and press hold as they fly up, they will pull you into the air, then if once you pass them, you release hold, you will be able to launch far higher than a regular jump can take you. You can also grab your partner in mid-air to repeat this, allowing you to essentially juggle yourself and your partner infinitely if you're skilled enough. You can also throw your partner in different directions for different results. In essence, your partner acts as a counterweight in the air. Once you understand this, the game opens up into some of the most nuanced platforming ever, even among other Sonic games. It's honestly incredible.

The only mechanical flaw I can identify is an admittedly pretty significant physics bug. When facing left, all variables pertaining to how the game should respond to interactions with sloped terrain are inverted. For example, typically, when you jump off an upward slope, you should gain height at the cost of horizontal motion. When facing left, the opposite happens. It can be quite intrusive whenever the game does ask you to maneuver left.

The other major issue with the game is not one of mechanics, but level design. The levels in this game suffer from massive reuse of setpieces and a serious lack of variety in mechanics and level structures. Considering this is one of, if not the longest Sonic game so far in terms of level count, this can get tiring fast as every level is unique largely in name only.

Chaotix is a very deep game spread quite thin across levels which are well designed in a vacuum for the most part, but which all begin to blend into each other despite the game's stellar art direction giving each game its own unique vibe.

I had the (mis)fortune of racing this with my wonderful friend Weatherby while Jenny read out a giant manifesto of Ken Penders' war crimes.

+The tether mechanic is obnoxious but I came around on it and actually had a lot of fun using it to vertically cheese the levels. With good timing you can do some fun tech like throwing your partner up, bouncing along with them, then grabbing them midair and repeating again, then chaining it into a glide to reach a wall. It took about 70% of the runtime to fully understand it, but I was having a good kick when it all made sense.
+The color palette and environmental art is super rich and inviting, very reminiscent of Ristar and Sonic CD, though admittedly a lot more directionless. You're in a lot of non-descript technological spaces that don't necessarily feel like part of a larger world, even with the carnival theme they attempt.
+The special stages are cool-looking and fun (((WHEN PLAYED WITH SAVESTATES)))
+The music is amazing, I am so sad Deflemask doesn't have 32X support
-Barely any present level design, and way too many levels
-The stage with the clocks can go to hell
-Some of the bosses were insufferable because your partner can get KO'd, and sometimes the game will just kick you out of the fight when that happens. I'm sure there's a consistent trigger that causes it, but I could not find any pattern between whether or not my partner would re-appear or I'd be sent back to the hub
-Special stages are totally uncooperative at random points in the collision that can cause you to just lose out of nowhere, it's too damning a tech issue to make these rings worth collecting, even if the stages themselves are neat.

I probably would've rated this lower if played in isolation, but whatever. This is just one beautiful mess. It's insane this was the game they tried to sell the 32X through, tho - this feels like it should be a spin-off or companion piece to a larger Sonic project with better use of the 32X's rendering tech. Really goes to show how dire things were at corporate SEGA at the time.

Ken Penders should have his head dunked in toilet water

i had my doubts about it because i generally do not like open world games and i still much prefer Adventure 2 and Black Knight because those games also have a similar quality of writing and spectacle without having to eat my open world veggies (those have other veggies but i like those veggies more than these veggies) but i got so giddy when I was parrying rockets at a dragon flying across the whole stage i spent the last five hours in as a very incredibly talented vocalist was screaming NO MORE COMPROMISE//THIS IS DO OR DIE so suffice it to say this is the best sonic game since 2009

there is one point in this whole game where everything the game is attempting comes together - the political intrigue, as derivative as it is, is executed deftly, with excellent, focused characterisation, the melodrama is sufficiently melodic and dramatic, the combat both human and eikonic flows beautifully, the spectacle so beautiful, the visuals genuinely breathtaking - the battle against Bahamut over the skies of Twinside. the game until then is a series of peaks and valleys, intentionally so, long periods of breathing room in between the kaiju battles where millions of dollars evaporate on screen. after this point however, the valley is so deep, the character of Barnabas Tharmr genuinely sleep inducing. the final boss ascends somewhat, but fails to summit higher than the Twinside encounter, leaving this hollow feeling in the difference.

what leaves me wanting is the feeling that this game does not have any meaningful contributions to fantasy fiction or to the japanese role playing game, which i have come to expect from the final fantasy mainline series - a game that is excellent at just catching up to the shadows it wants to chase, but too afraid to cast its own lest it makes known that it cannot shine brighter than its influences.

on a funnier note it's so crazy that they portray Archduke Elwin as this perfect angel regarding the treatment of bearers in Rosaria when the first bearer you meet in the game is so scared at having dropped a single apple, and his slave owner proceeds to chastise him for not bowing to Clive. Elwin is a loveable character for being a good father to Clive and Joshua, it is not necessary to characterise him as a progressive paragon to make the player like him - clear evidence of the game's lack of confidence in its own themes at times it saddens me

I'm somewhat torn on this work in the sense that I think it wants to be culturally specific but also broadly relatable to diasporic audiences in a grander sense (and of course, non-diasporic audiences with their pre-conceived notions of what the diasporic experience is) and in turn ends up sacrificing some specificity in order to do so. I love that every chapter opens with a quote from the Tirukkural, but it's contextualised as being displayed on a tacky calendar that's publicity merch from some random company in India. I love that you wouldn't know it's from the Tirukkural if you don't know what the Tirukkural is or that the picture on the calendar is of Valluvar and who Valluvar is. It took me halfway through the game before I put two and two together because I'm not Tamil, my parents are from Kerala, so I'm one step removed from Tamil culture but still broadly knowledgeable in it. I wish that was more of the game. I wish the game was written with less North American idiomatic expressions even knowing that much of the game is in Tamil that's abstracted and "translated" into English for the player's benefit. This English abstraction could have been closer to Indian English I think. For all the alienation the game wants you to feel through language, it wants the alienation to remain between the characters and not between text and audience. It's smoothed over for palatability, which is ultimately where I land overall, and is ultimately a problem I have with diasporic fiction at large. But, this is a good first step in games, and I hope to see more in the future.

Regardless of my criticisms, if you have no/limited knowledge of Tamil and/or broadly South Indian culture and have Game Pass and two hours to spare, you should play this. It's a good introduction to us from that perspective. I will be recommending this game to my brother and my parents as a little transient, relatable experience for what its worth.

I walked into this expecting to really find it annoying, but it was more annoying in a gay way than a diaspora kid way so I felt able to be more lenient towards it. Still, I still find it lacking in having the conversations it needs to have. It’s moulded in the American liberal tradition of diaspora narratives, always ultimately optimistic about the ties that bind us and the motherlands, always finding the right angles where all our identities can be overlaid on top of each other perfectly. Even when this game is critical of the conservatism embedded in much of south asian social relations, it is reductively simplistic - the homophobic parents of one of the side characters are Brahmins who have brought all of their casteism to the new world that they have different plates for non-Brahmin guests! Jala’s, the protagonist’s, parents have historically progressed a generation ahead having eloped in a caste-exogamous marriage which informs how they raised their children. Their homophobia was dealt with in their generation too, with Jala’s aunt’s lesbianism leaving decades of room to have it addressed and sorted out. But this is a cowardly artifice rooted in contemporary anxieties of representation - our families are not violently homophobic satans clinging on to feudal hierarchies or futuristically progressive angels. Our anxieties are a lot more complex. My communist mother and liberal father (don’t say this is a good sitcom setup, I know, I’ve lived it for 22 years, Kerala has a great tradition of comedy of this vein) have always allowed me to do and be whatever and whoever I want, but they are still a pair of 52 year old Indian Gen X-ers. I don’t talk to them about queer issues. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know if their allowance of “what and who I want” extents to being a woman. I wish the game was interested in navigating this complexity instead of black and white depictions of south asian conservatism and progressivism. It reads very much like a “we don’t want to scare off a white liberal audience with a more nuanced engagement with the baggage of history”, and every time the game dips into “haha Asian parents am I right” humour I wanted to destroy the state of california.

On the flipside, and maybe this is what they were going for, Jala is a perfect fantasy. She is absolutely what people like me wish to be. Aside from the whole being a life-ruining mess for everyone part. She’s empowered, confident, supported by everyone, effortlessly cool. It is absolutely good that we have a game with a protagonist like her, as much as I can be critical of what that game is.

There’s a part of this game where Jala is criticised for choosing “the pleasures of the imperial core” over family and tradition. While the character suggesting this serves an antagonistic function, they are still suggested to be making a correct assessment. But Jala is a Tamil Brahmin whose family lives in Bangalore. The imperial core is where she is minoritised and racialised. The “pleasure of the imperial core” she has access to is queer struggle, not burgers and milkshakes. It’s a much easier struggle than what she’d face in the motherland, but it’s not easy, especially with this game’s weird anachronistic 90s setting. It just appeared so strange to me that such an idea would pop up in this game at all, and so evidently shows the game’s frustrating crisis in managing an original, personal story and the monomyth of asian diasporic narratives.

So I am a huge huge fan of Star Fox 64. One of the pillars of my video game interest as a whole. It does so much right and almost never gets old to me. That being said;
I kinda avoided this game for years.
But I finally played through it.
Aaaannd.. It was ok. Not AS bad as I had heard, but also drops the ball in so many weird ways, that I honestly never hear critiqued.
The controls were the least of my concerns. When it works, it works well. I can see why they don't jive with everyone, myself included. But what they wanted to achieve, is achieved with the controls.
I think the game's level and senerio design is where the real slop is. The stages can feel either too short or too long. Bosses can feel aimless and boring, or super exciting.
Its all over the place.
It retreads 64 so much it basically has no identity of its own. And ultimately just feels like a lesser version of that game as a result.
It's missing so much of juice that made 64 so satisfying to play, taking literally.. Zero, steps forward.
For example; your crew in 64 is cute. They each serve a purpose beyond just being funny dialog. Falco helps you with combat, Peppy gives you tips and Slippy reads the bosses HP.
But it's all pretty miniscule, so KO'ing them never felt too detrimental, even if they were gone for a stage.
But not only does Zero remove the whole, they're out a stage if they KO, the crew serve NO purpose beyond their quirky dialog. (Most of which is lifted straight from 64 anyways)
Having a greater imprtance to your crew on a gameplay level could have been such a great addition to this game, adding a new element of focus and problem solving to each stage.
It feels like a step down, and makes the crew feel even less significant. Which is such a shame, because it's a huge part of the original's charm.
Also the music and visuals were pretty forgettable. Serviceable, but nothing that will stick with me.
I was disappointed, but not in the way I thought I'd be.

I recall buying this for a rock bottom price on Amazon a few years ago, heard shitty things about it, but the kid in me really wanted to try the character customizer at least.

Couldn't recreate my character, because apparently Sega doesn't think Fox OCs exist. No Blue Tails for me, imagine making a game whose character customizer gets it's ass kicked by a game from 1994. No reptile characters, so no lizard boy OC. Couldn't even make a nice rabbit character because the ear options were all dogshit. That's fine, I never wanted to be Sonic's friend anyway, bad guy OCs for life.

Big word of advice for aspiring fan fiction writers, never trust a corporation to bring you what you want. Your own creativity with pencil and paper will always win.

Chrono Trigger is a bad game to spiritually succeed- not because I consider it insurmountable, but because there's not really anything to succeed. Its greatness mostly stems from an intangible combination of structure, pacing, and presentation instead of any single concrete gameplay or narrative hook. From a game design standpoint, the lessons to take away from Chrono Trigger aren't exclusive to JRPGs, as evidenced by the fact that New Game Plus, as a concept, is now a mainstay across a wide range of genres. Fortunately, Sabotage has a good track record here, considering The Messenger was a Ninja Gaiden clone that played nothing at all like Ninja Gaiden, and this game similarly manages to avoid feeling derivative. Chrono Trigger's combat was fun but not particularly deep or complex, and instead focused on trying to make fights feel dynamic and fast-paced by expanding on Final Fantasy's ATB system, a feat that it accomplished better than most actual action RPGs from its era. Sea of Stars opts for a more standard turn-based approach, and borrows inspiration from Chrono Trigger's fluid character positioning, the Mario RPGs' action commands, and, against all odds, Octopath Traveler's lock/break system, and it actually ends up working out great! There was clearly real thought put into how all of these ideas fit together in ways that might not be obvious at first. For example, the Koopa shell special move from Mario & Luigi is repurposed here, but the fact that enemies aren't in static positions means that using it requires foresight about how long it'll take to hit each one in order for it to be most effective. Underlining these three core mechanics is the fact that health and mana pools are both small, but easily replenished. You die in three hits but are revived automatically after a few turns, regenerate magic on using normal attacks, and can swap out party members freely. It's a really unique combat system where you really feel like your decisions cause the flow of battle to turn on a dime. Missing a single action command can, and often does, mean that your opponent's turn isn't skipped, which means he hits and kills you, which means you lose. And so, with this solid foundation in place, Sea of Stars then expands on its gameplay throughout the course of its runtime by doing... absolutely nothing. There aren't any status effects, every piece of equipment just boosts one of your stats, and enemy variety is extremely low. The only two things you can do to your opponents during your turn is damage them or delay their turns, which means the gameplay plateaus in complexity once you get all your party members about halfway in. It's a bizarre, extreme example of constructing a genuinely compelling set of mechanics, and then missing the landing and letting your game slip into the doldrums anyway. But it's not like it tried and failed here: the game isn't boring because of balance issues or some other oversight, instead it feels like the dev team came up with the battle system and then immediately gave up. And, even more strangely, this sentiment feels like it applies to every other area. The combat is great mechanically but battles are still bland. The pixel art is outstanding but there's pretty much zero optional content or NPC flavor dialog, meaning that locations look pretty but have no texture. The music is solid but the story is barebones (mostly comprised of endless Proper Noun namedrops that I haven't been given reason to care about) and characters have no personality, so none of the narrative beats feel memorable or climactic. What makes this game so uniquely disappointing is that it seems like every aspect of it that Sabotage actually gave a shit about turned out great, but they just put in zero effort everywhere else. In hindsight, I regret calling Signalis "rudderless," because by copying an existing experience you're at least going for something. This game feels like a rough sketch of a JRPG with only a few portions colored in and no apparent plan to fully capture the genre's likeness. And, really, that's about as far from Chrono Trigger as you can get.