Having recently finished the DS version of Chrono Trigger, it's time to share some, likely disorganized, thoughts on the game.
I first played Chrono Trigger one the SNES back in highschool, which would place it in 1995 or 1996, which puts it back a ways. I borrowed the game from a friend and loved the game back then and have since played it through several times on emulator. It's been quite some time since I last played it though (for some reason I never did play the version that came as part of the FF Anthology for PlayStation) so I was glad to have the chance to play it again on the DS.
First, I loved the game every bit as much as I did when I first played it. It's a great game. The graphics are spectacular and hold up really well - being 2D, it doesn't suffer from some of the problems of early 3D games such as the blocky characters in FF7. The sprites are large, backgrounds are detailed and it generally looks pretty wonderful. The music is great too and has some spectacular and memorable themes in it. I especially like the "music box" special feature on the DS version.
I thoroughly enjoyed the story for Chrono Trigger as well. The intricate way that things tied together across the different time periods, the sense of the inevitability of fate as things come crashing down in Zeal, and the big "shock" that happened there - all fantastic.
Chrono Trigger was shorter than other RPGs of the time, but the New Game+ feature and multiple endings made it easily replayable, and I replayed it a lot. I think the length helped make it a nice, tightly woven experience.
One of my few gripes about Chrono Trigger is that the artist was the Dragon Ball guy, and I've never liked his art. Fortunately, the sprites don't (and can't) reproduce his art style exactly so they still looked ok.
Anyway, Chrono Trigger was, and still is, a great game and I think it's certainly stood the test of time and will likely be considered a classic.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Chrono Trigger "Summary"
Chrono Trigger Plot Summary
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- Crono's Mom wakes him rudely from slumber and shoves him out the door to go spend his day at the Millenial Fare (though she does at least give him his allowance first) where his friend, Lucca, is showing off her new invention.
- At the Millenial Faire, All sorts of carnival games are vieing to part fools from their money. Heading towards Lucca's invention, Crono is mercilessly assaulted by some girl who just plows into him, knocking him over. She seems more preoccupied with the whereabouts of her missing pendant than Crono's well being.
- Crono, ignoring the assault upon his person, picks up the pendant and returns it to the girl who calls herself Marle (despite having the opportunity to hawk it to the swordsmith Melchior) who then insists that Crono entertain her by letting her tag along after him around the Faire.
- So, Crono and Marle amuse themselves by running around the Faire for a bit, which includes returning a lost cat to its owner and fighting the robot Gato, another of Lucca's inventions.
- Eventually, Lucca's new masterpiece is ready to go. It's some sort of teleporter, but the crowd is all too sissy to give it a try so Crono bravely volunteers, probably expecting nothing will happen. Lucca and her father work the controls and Crono is, to the surprise of everyone (even Lucca's father) successfully transported from one platform of the contraption to the other.
- Marle then gets it into her head that she wants to give it a try so she gets up on the platform and Lucca and her father start things up again. But wait! The happy-go-lucky Millenial Fair music has now been replaced by an altogether more foreboding tune so you know something's up.
- The teleporter goes haywire, seeming to react to Marle's pendant, and a strange portal opens up between the two platforms which sucks Marle in.
- "Um, nothing to see here folks," Taban shoes the onlookers away as his daughter ponders what went wrong and wonders why Marle looks familiar.
- In the first of what is going to be a long line of foolish acts, Crono picks up Marle's pendant from the teleporter and volunteers to go after her. Lucca and Taban fire up the Teleporter and manage to send Crono into the portal, presumably in pursuit of Marle.
- The portal spits out Crono is some canyon like place. First thought: "Yay, I'm not dead!" Second thought: "Oh look, there are monsters here." Fortunately the monsters aren't too tough, allowing Crono to fight his way out, emerging into an eerily familiar place...
- Oh, look, it's that Truce place, but missing some buildings. Snooping around in private residences and talking to random people, Crono learns a couple of interesting tidbits: first, there's a war going on against the "Fiendlord" (hi, Magus) and Queene Leene is (or rather was) missing. That's right, it's the Middle Ages (600 AD).
- In the local pub, an explorer named Toma tells Crono that he had traced the Queen's whereabouts to the Cathedral in the woods, but when he finds out the Queen has recently been found he's, like, "oh, well, nevermind then"
- With a lack of other options at the moment (the Zenan bridge having been destroyed in the fighting) we go through Guardia Woods and into Guardia Castle. The guards don't like Crono's hairdo, but the Queen appears and tells them Crono is her friend and to let him through (strange since Crono's never been here before...)
- The King seems to have been lead to believe that Crono played a part in saving the Queen so gives him free reign of the castle. Time to snoop around and loot the place!
- Going up into the west tower, Crono comes across the Chancellor acting all mysterious and suspicious. Others in the castle claim he sneaks out to the Cathedral every night which means he's either very pious or the worst kind of evil, there is no in between in this situation.
- Then paying a visit to the Queen's tower, it turns out that the "Queen" is really Marle from the Fair. She chooses just that moment to experience a spontaneous existence failure and vanishes. Oh no!
- Sensing that it is good time to leave, Crono starts to make his escape, but as he's on his way out, Lucca shows up. Guess she managed to figure things out. When she finds out that Marle disappeared it confirms her suspicious that Marle is really Princess Nadia from present day Guardia.
- Princess Nadia has been mistaken for her ancestor, Queen Leene, and because of that the real Queen has not been rescued. Thus, in a pixelated explanation of the bird and the bees (thanks, I somehow had trouble visualizing it before that), Lucca explains that history has been changed and if the real Queen is not rescued then Princess Nadia will never be born. Of course, we sweep the messy issue of time paradoxes under the rug and hope nobody is watching too closely.
- Naturally, as the only ones present, Crono and Lucca must now go save Queen Leene in an attempt to fix history. This means one immediate course of action: to the Cathedral! Dun, dun dun!
- Over in the Cathedral, the nuns, or whatever they are, are saying somewhat ominous and not entirely nun-like things. When we go to pick up a hairpin off the floor (the pin having the Guardia royal crest on it), they reveal themselves to be a bunch of Naga and attack us!
- Oh well, so we defeat them, only one other one that was hiding around somewhere decides to make one last strike, but that's when this frog-thing with a sword drops in and saves the day - not that we couldn't have handled it. It introduces itself as Frog (well, at least it's easy to remember: hey, you, er, frog, thing) and offers to help save the Queen.
- Lucca, as it happens, has an aversion to frogs but manages to get over it to allow the amphibian to accompany us. So we descend to the depths of the Cathedral which we proceed to plunder. In the course of doing so, we rescue a couple of guards and find a room full of monsters singing praises to some guy named Magues. Well, a statue of him, anyway, as he's clearly important and probably wouldn't be caught dead fraternizing with the peons.
- In the end, we find the Chancellor about to off the Queen, but when we interrupt he turns out to be a monster by the name of Yakra, impersonating the Chancellor. In response to that revelation, we defeat him swiftly and surely.
- When the monster is dead, we find the real Chancellor tied up in a chest. When freed, he runs after the Queen declaring himself to be "undamaged". Not quite how I'd put it.
- That done, everyone traipses back to Guardia castle where Princess Nadia reappears exactly where she disappeared, no longer a victim of a time paradox. Everyone in the castle remarks how much she looks like the real Queen. Whilst everyone is rejoicing at the Queen's safe return, Frog blames himself for allowing the Queen to be captured and leaves for parts unknown. Turns out he's an emo frog.
- With the Guardia of 600 A.D in our debt we are free to come and go as we please and prepare to return to the present.
- The trip back through the time warp in Truce Canyon is uneventful and we arrive back by Lucca's teleporter pods. Lucca then runs off to crunch some numbers and tells Crono to take Marle back to the castle. But before leaving the Fair, Crono decides to eat some guy's lunch. Mwahaha. That'll teach him.
- Arriving in the castle, the Chancellor demonstrates his ability to jump to conclusions by assuming that Crono had kidnapped the princess and has him arrested, despite princess Nadia saying otherwise. The guy sure doesn't listen, does he?
- Crono is put on trial with the Chancellor prosecuting and some guy named Pierre defending. In the face of overwhelming evidence (mainly 'cause Crono helped some girl find her lost cat at the Fair), Crono is found not guilty by the jury. But the judge sentences Crono to three days in jail anyway for cavorting with the princess. Damn the aristocracy!
- When the Chancellor delivers Crono to the jail's warden, he goes on about impending executions, regardless of the actual verdict. The guy seems to really have it in for Crono.
- Well, Crono's not the sort to sit around and idly wait to be executed so he bangs on the bars to his cell until he annoys the guards enough that they bust in to forcibly shut him up. That's when they discover that Crono was NOT DISARMED!! Why has he still got his sword? Guards these days are stupid.
- Anyway, Crono makes his escape, though rescues another prisoner named Fritz and grabs some loot in the process. Just as he's nearly busted out and the warden is going for help, Lucca shows up to "rescue" him. A bit late for that, I guess, but at least she's helpful for destroying the Dragon Tank that the Chancellor sics on us.
- After destroying the tank, Crono and Lucca run through a gauntlet of guards for the castle exit. They're largely overwhelmed, until Princess Nadia shows up and tells the guards to stop. The actually listen for a bit.
- Then the Chancellor (who's taken the short way down from the tower, it seems) and the King show up. The King tries to convince Nadia to remain bored inside the castle rather than running off to do exciting things. Well, the Princess (henceforth refered to by her alter ego, Marle) would rather do the exciting things it seems so she runs off with Crono and Lucca.
- Still being chased by the guards, Crono, Lucca and Marle are backed into a corner. But wait, there's a time gate here! Just as the Chancellor thinks he has them cornered, his jaw drops to the ground as the three miscreants vanish into the gate. Take that, nya!
- Crono, Lucca and Marle emerge into the futuristic looking Dome Bangor. Since there's no point going back with the King's guards waiting, we may as well explore a bit.
- The world outside the dome is something of a wasteland. A bit to the south is Dome Trann. The rather dishevelled inhabitants of the Dome suggest we might have some luck finding food in Dome Arris past the Site 16 ruins, which are dangerous and full of mutants.
- The mutants in the ruins don't turn out to pose too much of a thread, but there are some annoying rat-things that steal my potions. Arg.
- In Dome Arris, the people are just as dishevelled as in Dome Trann, only there are more of them. According to the old man Doan (descendant of the original director of the Dome when it was actually a functioning information centre), the food stores are down below, along with a super computer, but the food is guarded by the security system. One of the Dome's inhabitants went down there recently but has not returned.
- Well, down we go. We smash the security system and its drones only to find that the food is all rotten and that one guy who came down here is dead. Oh well. But we do find a seed.
- While down here, we snoop around in the super computer where we locate another time gate off to the east in Proto Dome (past the ruins of Site 32). Then, Marle decides to mash some buttons which brings up a recording of the "Day of Lavos".
- Sometime in 1999, a fissure opens up and a big spikey thing emerges (presumably Lavos) and rains down destruction on the planet. This distresses Marle for some reason. She seems suddenly determined to change history. Lucca agrees, though reluctantly, and suggests the first order of business should be to return to their time and learn more about Lavos.
- The group returns to the Dome entrance where they give the seed to Doan and the inhabitants and give them a rousing pep talk about hope and all that. The inhabitants seem to be slightly cheered up and will try growing the seed. Doan also gives us the key to a jetbike he used to ride in Site 32.
- When we try to start up the jetbike, some robots try to interfere - it seems like a fight is about to break out, but that's when some human-motorcycle-cyborg-thing shows up, calling himself Johnny. The robots, it turns out, are his groupies, and Johnny challenges us to a bike race if we want to cross the ruins. Looks like we've got no choice! Cheesey racing sequence go! We win and go on our merry way.
- We find Proto Dome deserted except for a single, broken, humanoid robot. Girl genious Lucca decides she can fix him up and goes to work. When the repairs are complete, the robot activates and calls himself R-166 or something (his serial number) but we call him Robo instead.
- The gate seems to be past a door we can't open. Robo says the Dome's power is completely shut down but there's an emergency generate in the Derelict Factory just north of here, but someone has to stay behind to open the door since the power won't last long.
- With Robo in tow, we go to the old factory and eventually find a promising looking button to push, which we do. This causes the security system to go haywire so we beat a hasty retreat. On the way out, a bunch of R-series robots attempt to stop us and treat Robo as a traitor, thoroughly trashing him. We dispose of the evil robots and drag Robo's, uh, corpse back to Proto Dome.
- Fortunately, Lucca is able to repair Robo again. Robo then decides that there's nothing left for him here and that he wants to help us change history, so the four of us pile into the time gate and off we go!
- The gate gives off some unusual sparks and we find ourselves in a forlorn place with an old man standing under a street lamp.
- The old man tells us that this is the End of Time and spews out some technobabble about four people travelling at once overloading the time flux, or something, and ending up at the place of least resistance or somesuch. Anywho, looks like we can only move about as a group of three at a time.
- The old dude tells us we should hurry back to our own time before galavanting around the rest of history, but before we go we stick our noses into a neighbouring room and meet Spekkio, the master of war, who teaches us some magic, which some ancient kingdom used to use.
- Walking into the light, we warp to Medina village, 1000 AD, where (and when) we burst out of some poor unsuspecting imp's cupboard. Fortunately, the imps seem to be the live and let live type so it's all good. We are warned that the village, home of the "Fiends" (previously, Mystics) who followed Magus 400 years ago, won't proove too friendly and suggests we visit some old human guy to the west.
- Snooping around town, we find some Fiends in the town square singing praises to a statue of Magus and complaining how he failed to wipe out humans using Lavos when he had the chance. Hmmm. Also, the village mayor is Ozzie VIII, descendant of one of Magus' generals and he has no qualms about lording this fact over the townsfolk.
- Anyway, that old dude turns out to be Melchior from the Millenial Fair and he doesn't do much for us right now other than to offer to sell us some overpriced weaponry and inform us that we can get back to Truce through the cave to the north.
- So we journey into the cave, home of the fierce Hekran. Everything here is largely resistant to physical attacks so it's a good thing we just learned magic recently. Convenient, that. We eventually face off against the fiersome Hekran who basically tells us that Magus was responsible for creating Lavos, before we defeat him. Lucca suggests the obvious at this point: that we go back to the Middle Ages and stop Magus.
- Jumping into a whirlpool, we get washed up outside of Lucca's house then proceed through the Time Gate at the Fair to take us back to 600 AD. The word on the street is that the Fiendlord's armies are on the move, marching on Zenan Bridge, that the King was wounded in battle, but some legendary hero has appeared so it's all good.
- Visiting Guardia Castle, the King is recouperating from his wounds and the Head Chef has us deliver some rations to the soldiers at the bridge.
- So we deliver the rations just in time for the Fiendlord's armies to attack, lead by one of his generals, Ozzie. Ozzie seems to be a bit of a pansy as he just has a bunch of skeletons, and eventually a bigger skeleton Zombor, do his dirty work. None of these presents much of a problem for us 'cause we're, you know, the heros and all that, and Ozzie just runs away.
- Having repelled the attack we cross the bridge to Dorino village which, ominously, does not exist in the present. Not much going on here, people are just going on about the hero who's originally from Porre to the south (our next stop, most likely) and that some sword called the Masamune is supposedly the only thing that can kill the Fiendlord. Also, the village elder sends Toma off to search for the rainbow shell, despite misgivings about Toma's reliability.
- On the way south, we stop briefly at Fionna's Villa where Fionna is protecting a forest she and her husband planted whilst he is away at the war. She's not important now, but you know she will be sooner or later.
- In Porre, we learn two useful bits of information: a frog-thing has been seen lurking around, muttering about Queen Leene and the Masamune (why hello there, Frog) and the Hero, Tata, is said to be off in the Denodaro mountains searching for the legendary Masamune.
- The lead on the whereabouts of the Masamune seems more solid so we go sword hunting in the mountains. When we first get there, some kid, presumably Tata, runs off like a coward and tells us we should to the same. Pfft. Pressing on, we eventually come to a cave with a kid running around. Wooosh! I'm the wind.
- Under a conveniently placed beam of light is what appears to be a sword. Trying to take it, the kid, along with his brother who had been hiding, try to stop us. Masa and Mune turn into some sort of creature and eventually merge into one bigger thing, but we paid attention to some random dude in town that told us that wind slash dissipates whirlwind energy, so it's not too tough.
- Masa and Mune turn over the sword to us, but it turns out to be broken. They then, conveniently, return us to the foot of the mountain. Back in Porre, Tata fesses up that he just picked up the hero badge after a drunken frog-man dropped it. Which means its time to go hunt for Frog.
- Frog turns out to be lurking in a hidden hovel in the nearby Cursed Woods. He gets all mopey on us about not deserving to wield the Masamune, even if it were fixed. We also find the hilt of the broken sword when we loot his room. Letters on the hilt spell the name Melchior... curious.
- We return to Melchior's cabin in 1000 AD. He seems surprised to see the sword, but tells us he needs Dreamstone to repair it (since that's what the sword was made from) a rare, ancient mineral that he doubts we'll be able to find.
- Just to show him, we go off looking for some Dreamstone. The old dude at the End of Time suggests we go looking in the prehistoric era. Next stop: 65 million BC! But wait, the gate puts us halfway up a cliff. Aiiiieeee!
- We plummet and find ourselves surrounded by some lizard men. We fight some off, but there are too many. Just our luck that some prehistoric woman dressed up in a cat outfit comes to our rescue. She calls herself Ayla and seems to like strong people so has us follow her back to Iota village where she is chief.
- Ayla's people are fighting the Reptites for dominance, who are lead by Azala. There's another prehistoric village, Laruba, but they're all in hiding.
- Ayla throws us a party, with much dancing and drinking, and offers to give Crono some Dreamstone, but he must defeat her in a drinking contest. It turns out Crono is a good drinker. Also of note, during the festivities, Kino, another tribesman who has a curiously similar colour scheme to Ayla (both different from the rest of the prehistoric folk), meaning he must be important, seems a bit jealous of Crono.
- In the morning, Lucca walks up with a hangover and we discover that the gate key has been stolen! Ayla immediately suspects the Reptites and accompanies us south into the Forest Maze after a trail of footprints.
- Just inside the Maze we find Kino who admits to stealing the key out of jealousy, and Ayla baps him for it, but the Reptites then stole the key from Kino so we've still got to go chase it down.
- Through the Forest Maze we eventually come to the Reptite Lair. At the bottom of the Lair we find Azala pondering the Key. He demands to know what it's for, but doesn't believe us even when we tell him. Instead, he sics Nizbel, a triceritops on steroids, on us. He proves somewhat difficult, but ultimately we emerge triumphant. Azala is momentarily cowed, letting us have the key back, but vows that the planet belongs to the Reptits. Yeah, whatever buddy. We know differently.
- With the gate key recovered, we can now return to Melchior in 1000 AD. Again, he seems surprised that we managed to find it (better get used to that) and agrees to repair the sword. When done, it's as good as new so the next stop will be Frog's hovel back in 600 AD.
- We take the Masamune to Frog and he spends the night pondering things. He reminices on when he was a human named Glenn, adventuring with his old friend and mentor, Cyrus (the greatest knight in the kingdom, if the flashback can be believed): taking the Hero's Badge from the Frog King and encountering Magus and Ozzie while seeking the Masamune. Magus defeats Cyrus and does something to Glenn, causing him to fall off the cliff.
- In the morning, Frog decides its time to go pay Magus a visit. We go to the Magic Cave in some mountains to the east where Frog takes the Masamune and slices a cliff in two (now there's a sword for you), revealing the cave's entrance. The cave leads to the island where the Fiendlord's Keep is located. A bat starts following us when we enter the Magic Cave.
- In the Keep we meet Ozzie who says we'll have to beat him, Magus' other two generals, Flea and Slash, and all the beasts in the Keep if we want to stop Magus, and then disappears.
- First we encounter Flea, a cross-dressing male sorcerer and defeat him. Shortly thereafter we fight and defeat the swordsman Slash. After that, we pursue Ozzie through a series of ineffectual traps until he's cornered. At that point, the coward encases himself in some barrier, but we just open up a trap door under him to quickly dispose of the fool.
- Entering the Keep's intermost sanctum, we find the Fiendlord, Magus, in the centre of an elaborate magic circle, doing something distinctly dastardly and not nice. The Black Wind blows... And we have a friendly little duel with Magus. Well, perhaps friendly is not quite the right term, but we win so that's what's important.
- Then things start to go a little wonky. Magus complains that we've interrupted his summoning of Lavos... apparantly he didn't actually create the thing as we'd been led to believe. Instead, he was trying to summon Lavos from his slumber deep within the planet (where it's absorbing the planet's energy, supposedly), though he does not explain why. We've just managed to interrupt things at a bad time and now Lavos seems to be a little cranky.
- A massive gate forms sucking Crono's party along with Magus into its swriling maw, flinging us to some unknown time and place. Well, it turns out we wake up in Ioka village in 65 million BC. Ayla's there and tries to eat Frog (to no avail) and says she wants to find Laruba village to get them to help fight the Reptites and decide who gets the planet once and for all. That's when a villager comes in to say (or grunt) that there's a large fire to the north. Also, Magus appears to be nowhere to be found.
- Just to the north we find the smoking ruins of Laruba village, having just been attacked by the Reptites. A kid informs us that Kino's been kidnapped and Ayla is arguing with an old man and essentially informs him he's a pansy. Anyway, she gets his permission to take a Dactyl from the Dactyl's nest, 'cause apparantly they belong to the Laruba people.
- We go to the Laruba nest and insist on joining Ayla on her expedition to the Tyranno Lair, castle of the Reptites. As we take off, we notice a sparkly red thing up in the sky. Hmmm.
- Next we bust our way into the Tyranno Lair, free some villages and rescue Kino. With Kino sent back to Ioka, the rest of us continue through the Lair until we encounter our old pal Nizbel who insists on fighting us before we get to Azala (who is apparantly a she)
- We arrive at Azala's throne for the final showdown between Reptites and Humans. There is a might roar and Azala runs out a door behind the throne. Following, we come to a huge Black Tyranno with Azala pearched on its shoulder. Azala swears at the red star and the battle commences.
- Natrually, the victory is ours. Defeated, Azala curses fate, but that sparkling red thing turns out to be... Lavos, falling from the sky as a meteor. Uh oh, that's not going to be good. Kino shows up with some Dactyls so we can make a hastey getaway before the Tyranno Lair becomes ground zero for a huge meteor impact.
- Lavos crashes into the Tyranno Lair, obliterating it, leaving a smoking crater behind. By the time we get to the crash site, Lavos has already buried deep underground, but has left a gate behind in its wake. Something about stretching the fabric of time with its immense energy. But nevermind that, I wonder where the gate will take us?
- Because curiosity hasn't killed us yet, we step into the gate and find ourselves in a small cave that opens onto a bleak, snow covered world. There doesn't seem to be much choice other than to wander off and see what we can find and this eventually leads us to some sort of teleporter that takes us up to a floating landmass, above the clouds where everything is green and sunny.
- We find Enhasa, the city of dreams, where everyone is narcoleptic. This is part of the Magical Kingdom - no, not Disney, it's Zeal, ruled by Queen Zeal who has apparantly encouraged magical development, affording everyone a life of luxury, though she seems to be turning the Kingdom away from using the power of the sun to something else... but what? Also in Enhasa, we encounter some blue haired kid with a cat who says "The black wind blows..." before running off. Now where have we heard that recently? Must be a coincidence.
- Jumping back down to the surface then back up to another of the floating landmass, we briefly look at the Blackbird, a large airship, where we encounter some goof named Dalton (no, not the premier of Ontario) who goes on about some prophet. But that's not too important for now, as we stop in at the city of Kajar.
- Much as with Enhasa, the people of Kajar are going on about how great the Queen and the new energy source are, and how the old things are forbidden. They also have a large superiority complex with regards to the Earthbound ones (non-magic capable humans confined to the surface)
- Moving on to Zeal Palace itself. The music is certainly... ominous. And what's with everyone going on about how the power of Lavos and how great Lavos is? Shit, this is very not good.
- Word on the street is that the Kingdom's three Gurus have all mysteriously vanished, as do those who oppose the Queen. Sounds fishy to me. Also, there's talk of an Ocean Palace being constructed (by the blood, sweat and tears of the Earthbound Ones) under the sea (looks like this is a Magic Kingdom production after all) to better leech Lavos' energy.
- We snoop around in the royal bedrooms (really, shouldn't they have guards or something?) and find Princess Schala and her younger brother Janus (that blue haired kid from Enhasa) with his cat. They're talking about how the Queen has changed, but Schala has to do what she says anyway. A servant comes in to tell Schala that the Queen requests her presence and the princess runs off.
- We follow Schala and witness her going through a door with a seal on it that, oddly enough, we saw on a door in the distant future. The door reacts to the pendant she holds up and she is able to enter the Queen's audience chamber.
- People have been remarking how Marle's pendant looks alot like Schala's, but holding it up doesn't do squat to the door. So we run to the next chamber over where the Mammon Machine (a large machine thing that harnesses Lavos' power) and use it to charge up the pendant which is now able to open the sealed door. Also, the Mammon Machine requires someone with lots of magical power to control and Schala seems to be the only one who's up to the task these days.
- In the audience chamber, the Queen obviously calls us out as to just who we are and what the hell we're doing here. The prophet (wearing a long hooded robe, though there's a bit of blue hair sticking out) tells us we're the troublemakers he was warning her about so the Queen has Dalton deal with us. Dalton summons a golem which then mops the floor with us. Ouch. The Queen then reveals her sadistic side and has us imprisoned in some sort of energy field.
- Schala takes pity on us and comes to rescue us, hoping that we'll be able to help Melchior who's been imprisoned on the Mountain of Woe - wait, could this be the same Melchior that repaired the Masamune in 1000 AD? The prophet, however, discovers what Schala is up to and, while he agrees to spare our lives, drags us to the gate we travelled through to arrive in this time period and kicks us back in, forcing Schala to seal it behind us. Nuts.
- We then return to the End of Time and talk to the old guy there. He tells that we'll have to find a way to move through time more freely and that there was someone working on a Time Machine and it is further suggested that he can be found in the 2300 AD time period.
- So, it's back to the future. We go to the area around Death Peak via some old sewers and arrive at the Keeper's Dome where we find the memories of Belthsasar, Guru of Reason. Due to a cataclysm he was thrown into this era and learned that Lavos arrived during prehistoric time and had been feeding off the planet's energy since then. Now, Lavos nests in Death Peak and its spawn continue to ravage the planet.
- We then find a large device with some sort of cockpit. A Nu-like thing comes - Belthsasar has copied his memories into the thing and he tells us about his Time Machine, called the Epoch, with which we will be able to travel to pretty much any time period we wish.
- With the Epoch we now return to the Dark Ages where we wander up to a cave that was blocked off earlier. Oh look! A ladder has conveniently been left down for us. How thoughtful. This leads us to the village of Algetty where the Earthbound Ones live.
- A cave connected to Algetty takes us to the Mountain of Woe, a large floating mountain tethered to the earth by a giant chain. At the top, we find a crystaline thing and are attacked by the prerequisite guardian monster. Once it falls, the crystaline thing dissolves, releasing the Guru of Life, Old Man Melchior, who seems less fazed about being called an "old man" than being addressed by name by people he doesn't know.
- With the guardian creature defeated, the mountain crashes to earth, but we make it back to Algetty unscathed. Schala then comes in to tell Melchior that the Ocean Palace is now operational, however she has also decided that she will never activate the Mammon Machine again.
- Unfortnately, Dalton followed Schala and kidnaps her, planning to force her to activate the Mammon Machine. As Melchior says, this is bad, as it would awaken Lavos and cause unspeakable horror. However, Crono steps up and offers to save the day (without actually saying anything, strangely enough). That sort of heroic nonsense is going to land you in trouble one of these days, boy.
- Before we leave, Melchior gives us a knife made of the same red stone as the Mammon Machine which he thinks may be able to stop it.
- Run back to Zeal Palace to try to save Schala, but the Queen and her lackies have already gone to the Ocean Palace, leaving Dalton behind to guard the gate. He's stewing over the fact that he has to stay behind while the Prophet got to go and have fun. When he notices the trio intruding on his ennui, he decides he doesn't need to keep us around anymore, but he proves ineffective in combat and flees into the portal to the Ocean Palace.
- We follow Dalton's lead and teleport down to the Ocean Palace. After traversing its corridors and getting to the bottom level, we catch up with Dalton and he sics the Golem Sisters on us. After the battle, we proceed into the chamber where the Queen, Schala, the Prophet and various flunkies are gathered around the Mammon Machine.
- The Queen forces Schala to activate the Mammon Machine. Things don't look good as the Machine starts to go haywire. Good thing Crono and company are here, though, as we toss the knife at the Machine and ... it turns into a sword? The Masamune?
- Even that seems to be no good as Lavos awakes and swiftly pounds us into oblivion as the Queen watches and laughs. This is when the Prophet decloaks, revealing his true identiy: why hello Magus! He attempts to take on Lavos one-to-one, but is severely outmatched.
- As the Queen gloats, Crono decides it's time to end all this and tries to immitate Magus' one-on-one bout, but with more success. However... he just goes and gets himself dissintegrated by Lavos. Ooops. Oh well, can't say I didn't warn you.
- Things have gone from worse to totally crappy and the Ocean Palace seems to be falling apart around us, even as we mourn a lost comrade, and Schala uses the last of her pendant's power to send the survivors (and Magus) to what she hopes is safety.
- Lavos, however, has been woken up early and he's cranky. Very cranky. So he throws a temper tantrum and completely destroys Zeal in the process. So passes the Magic Kingdom in all its arrogant glory.
- The world is pretty much reduced to a single landmass of survivors. The Earthbound Ones and the survivors of Zeal are living together in a village, apparantly mending their differences since there's not much difference between them anymore, except the former Zealots are dressed better, at least for now.
- Just as we're talking with the village elder, Dalton appears, proclaiming himself King over the remaining rabble. Well, if he wants to rule a junk heap, that's his perogative, I guess. He doesn't like the thought of leaving our group roaming free to spread dissent against his rule so he pulls a dirty trick (look over there!) and takes us prisoner.
- And this time, they actually take our weapons away! And all our other stuff too. Remarkable, the villains actually have half a brain for once. Unfortunately for Dalton, Ayla fights with her fists, and since her hands weren't chopped off, we've still got a functional party member. Also unfortunately for them, they've neglected to weld the air vents shut. I did say the villains only had half a brain, after all.
- As we crawl through the air ducts, we discover we're aboard the Blackbird and that Dalton has taken the Epoch on board and is modifying it into his own personal air chariot. We also discover where our captors hid all of our equipment. Presumably they were planning on pawning it off somewhere...
- We crawl out onto one of the Blackbird's wings and encounter the Golem Overlord which turns out to be afraid of heights so it just cowers while we beat on it until it runs away. Then Dalton shows up - he's had wings attached to it so it can actually fly through space as well as time.
- Which is all very convenient for us (or will be shortly) since we plan to take the Epoch back, by force. Doing a crazy leap from the Blackbird onto the Epoch as it flies below us, Dalton tries to summon the Golem Overlord, only it doesn't come as it's already been scared off. Instead, Dalton gets sucked into a black vortex and we get our time machine back.
- Returning momentarily to the last remaining village, someone informs us that there was someone looking for us up on the north cape. Following this timely tip, we find good old Magus waiting for us and he's kind enough to share a flashback with us...
- See, Magus used to be Prince Janus when he was younger. At some point, presumably after Schala warped us out of the Ocean Palace (though perhaps before we got there), the three Gurus tried to talk the Queen down, only they got sucked into three different time portals. Melchior ended up in Medina village in 1000 AD, Belthasar in the ruined future circa 2300 AD and Gaspar in the End of Time.
- Janus was also present at this event and he also got sucked into a time gate, ending up in 600 AD where he was picked up by Ozzie and the mystics - a bad influence if there ever was one. Since then, he's been plotting revenge against Lavos by any means necessary and had just summoned him when Crono and crew arrived to interrupt things, the meddlesome kids that they are. The time gate resulting from the interrupted attempt at summoning Lavos sent Magus back to Zeal where he used his knowledge of the future to earn the Queens trust.
- And, as we know, Magus' attempt to destroy Lavos failed utterly and Zeal got wiped off the map anyway. Then he offers to come with us. Frog is a little put out about this idea at first, but ends up deciding that killing Magus now wouldn't really be all that sporting. Kicking a guy when he's down and all that. And so, Magus becomes part of the team.
- Magus mentions that Gaspar had been researching a way to restore lost time streams, implying that there may be a way to bring Crono back (way to string them along on a false hope there), so I suppose we should go visit him at the End of Time, now that we know who he really is.
- The old man at the End of Time plays coy, but gives us a time egg and suggests talking to Balthasar regarding its use. Balthasar mentions something about a power on Death Peak able to restore the lost, but we need a doll duplicate of the person we want to revive. One Dr. Bekkler is supposed to be an expert at this sort of thing, but he's off messing around at a festival somewhere, most likely.
- Back to the Millenial Fair, since that's the only festival going on any where, at any time, ever. Bekkler's got a tent set up and allows us to play a simon-says game to get a life size doll of Crono. Just where the good doctor got it from or what he was planning on using it for, well, probably best not to ask.
- Returning to Balthasar, he instructs us to take the doll and the egg to Death Peak and activates three, uh, puff-ball-like things that will give us a hand as we climb the mountain.
- So we go and climb the mountain, encountering some Lavos spawn on the way, and eventually reach the peak where we attempt to activate the egg, only to have the thing shatter on us. Lousy good for nothing...
- But then there's this nifty full eclipse of the sun (don't look directly at it!) and Death Peak is replaced by a tableau of the scene where Crono bit it - a time freeze. The obvious thing to do is exchange the real Crono for the life-sized doll of Crono so that it only looks like Crono gets dissolved by Lavos. In fact, it's so obvious that that is exactly what we do.
- With the switch made, we return to Death Peak, Crono slumped against the tree (which is inexplicably sparkling like a Christmas tree). Marle then throws herself at him and fills him in on some of the details that he's missed while he's been dead. Unfortunately, the other two party members don't exactly get the hint so that Crono and Marle don't get any "alone time".
- That done, everyone reconvenes at the End of Time where the old man finally admits that, yes, he was once called Gaspar. He then tells us we might as well go beat Lavos whenever we're feeling up to it, but incase we feel the need to beef up a bit, he gives us a laundry list of side quests we can go and pursue in the name of leveling up. Yay!
- We'll start by putzing around in the Middle Ages for a bit. There's a continent to the south east that was previously inaccessible, but we can conveniently now get to it since the Epoch had its makeover. So we fly down there and snoop around the sleepy town of Choras.
- In the tavern, we find Toma, the explorer, who still looking for the rainbow shell. He asks us to pour some spirits on his grave should anything happen to him. Also in the tavern is a carpenter who's lost his tools. His carpentry tools, that is.
- Warp ahead to the present and visit the cape where we find Toma's grave. Pouring some spirits on it, his ghost appears and tells us that the rainbow shell is on an island just to the northwest (the Giant's Claw), but it's mysteriously absent in the present so we'll have to go back to the Middle Ages to find it. While we're here, a lazy carpenter drinking away in the tavern lets us have his carpentry tools since they're not so good for drinking beer.
- Back to the Middle Ages, we give the tools to the non-lazy carpenter and he gets in gear and gets his assistants to help repair some old ruins to the north. We have to clear out monsters before they can complete the job, but eventually we discover Cyrus' grave. Cyrus' ghost appears and praises the knight Glenn has become and the Masamune powers up! Yay! This also allows us to freely plunder the ruins in the present, having been fixed up and all.
- Then, acting on ghost-Toma's tip we go to the Giant's Claw, which appears to be the ruins of the Reptite castle. After slaughtering the last remnants of the Reptites, we find the rainbow shell and haul it off to Guardia Castle for safe keeping.
- Zooming ahead to the present, the King of Guardia is on trial for, supposedly, absconding with a royal heirloom, ie, the rainbow shell. The Chancellor's farce of a trial is exposed, however, as the rainbow shell is safe and sound. Marle jumps into the courtroom through the big stainglass window with a shard of the shell as proof of the King's innocense. The Chancellor is revealed to be an imposter (not again...), Yakra XIII who is hell bent on revenge. He is, however, a wimp and is easily defeated. The real Chancellor is discovered stuffed inside a chest (again)
- The King then makes peace with Marle and we're no longer treated like wanted fellons. Melchoir puts in an appearance, offering to make some cool stuff out of the shell. We'll talk to him a bit later.
- Next we'll zip into the future for a bit of fun at Geno Dome where Robo meets his maker... sort of. His original name was Prometheus and this seems to have been the factory that produced him. We encounter another Robo-style robot named Atropos, only this one is *pink* so presumably it is meant to be female, or possibly a UW math student. Atropos has apparantly been reprogrammed to want to kill humans and has a one-on-one duel with Robo in which Robo is victorious. Defeat an imminent "death" brings Atropos back to her senses.
- The Mother Brain of the factory seems to have decided that humans are to be wiped out and that when Lavos' spawn eventually leave for other planets, the Robots shall inherit the earth. Well, we have a thing or two to say about that and promptly destroy the computer, shutting down the factory for good. Mission complete.
- While we're in the future, we pay a quick visit to the Sun Temple where we find an old sun stone that has lost its energy, making it a moon stone. So we take it back to prehistoric times and leave it in the Sun Shrine where it can bask in the sun and soak up energy for millions of years.
- The sun stone temporarily goes missing in the Present. A passing explorer took it to Porre where we find it in the mayor's house. Good thing we'd previously taught his ancestors the value of generosity as he decides to just hand it over. We return it to the shrine and then jump ahead to 2300 AD where we retrieve a fully charged sun stone.
- Lucca decides it would be a good idea to use the sun stone to make herself a new gun and then we take the leftovers to Melchior who makes the extremely over powered rainbow sword. This now gives Crono an 80% counter rate and 70% critical hit rate. What's not to like?
- There are still a couple of things to do in the Middle Ages so we go to Fionna's Villa in 600 AD where Fionna is attempting to replant a forest, but there are monsters underground that are making things difficult. We go in and clear things out (we should be professional exterminators or something) and then leave Robo behind so that he can spend 400 years of forced labour as he tends the forest.
- The rest of us get to skip all the tedious work and jump ahead to the present in 1000 AD where the desert is now a thriving forest, in the midst of which is Fionna's Shrine. A broken down Robo is on the pedastal so we just up and remove him. Funny that the shrine maidens don't try to stop us or anything seeing as we're basically making off with what could be considered a prized artefact.
- Lucca reactivates Robo and we celebrate our reunion. Well, Robo does anyway, since for everyone else there was hardly any intervening time. Everyone camps out in the woods as Lucca fixes up Robo and Robo explains that he had a lot of time to think and now believes that Lavos is not responsible for the time gates, but some other entity that either wishes us to see these events for some reason or is reliving important moments, like life flashing before ones eyes in the face of death. When asked if there is anything she would like to relive, Lucca is curiously silent.
- Whilst everyone sleeps, Lucca goes off a short ways and finds a special gate that deposits her in her home 10 years prior. Her mother gets herself caught in one of Taban's machines and has her legs injured, permanently crippling her. This is apparantly the motivation for Lucca to study machines and all that.
- Last up, Magus' generals are still sulking around in the Middle Ages and, while they don't seem to have harmed anyone, it's best to make a preemptive strike and make sure they don't get any ideas.
- Ozzie is still using his old lame traps while he, Flea and Slash put up a bit of a fight, they are ultimately defeated once and for all (or so we hope). This has the side effect of making the Mystics in the Present much more friendly towards humans.
- With all of that erratta out of the way, it is time to invade the Black Omen and put a stop to the Mad Queen's plans once and for all and to defeat Lavos. The Black Oman is quite large, but we eventually make it to Queen Zeal who is still determined to use the power of Lavos to attain immortality.
- The Queen attempts to feed us to the Mammon Machine, but we destroy it and then finally face off against the Queen herself. She's no pushover, but we emerge victorious and she is finally sent to her rest. This finally brings us to the big boy himself: Lavos.
- Lavos starts off by immitating many of the bosses we've faced so far, up to and including the Mountain of Woe boss. Fortunately, his immitations are no more powerful than the original versions and we've leveled up a bit so it's mostly pretty easy. Finally Lavos gets tired of the mime-thing and we get to fight the real version. Well, it's the "head", anyway, and beating it lets us penetrate into Lavos' shell.
- It's spooky inside that shell, but we find this kind of oddly humanoid cybernetic thing with tubes and stuff, so we what anyone would do in this situation: kill it.
- This is not the end, however. Inside, we find some humanoid in a space suit with a couple of acorn-looking things accompanying it. Yay for multi-stage bosses! Lucca perceives that this, the true face of Lavos, is a parasite that harvests DNA from the world it infests for as long as it can before sending its spawn to other planets to repeat the cycle. Unfortnately for Lavos, it has chosen the wrong planet to infest. A battle that warps through the different eras of history ensues and Lavos is finally destroyed, once and for all.
- Lenne's bell rings and Crono is woken up from sleep by a guard from the castle. He informs Crono that his stay of execution has been canceled and drags him off to face his fate, bringing him before King Guardia XXXIII.
- However, it all turns out to be a cruel, cruel joke engineered by Lucca as Doan, King Guardia XXII and Kino arrive (all brought there by Lucca - talk about screwing with the timeline) and the King congratulates Crono for saving history.
- The Moonlight Parade is held on the last night of the Mellenial Fair as Crono and Marle do a victory lap. Everyone seems duely impressed, except for Crono's Mom who wishes he'd spend more time helping around the house and looking after the cat.
- Finally, the group of time travelers gathers by Lucca's telepods and everyone departs for their own time. Just before the gate can close for good, Crono's cat, being chased by Crono's Mom, run by and into the gate. As the King dedicates a new bell (this being Nadia's bell) and Taban sets off some fireworks, Crono, Lucca and Marle pile into the Epoch to mess about in time, looking for Crono's Mom.
- The End
=====================
- Crono's Mom wakes him rudely from slumber and shoves him out the door to go spend his day at the Millenial Fare (though she does at least give him his allowance first) where his friend, Lucca, is showing off her new invention.
- At the Millenial Faire, All sorts of carnival games are vieing to part fools from their money. Heading towards Lucca's invention, Crono is mercilessly assaulted by some girl who just plows into him, knocking him over. She seems more preoccupied with the whereabouts of her missing pendant than Crono's well being.
- Crono, ignoring the assault upon his person, picks up the pendant and returns it to the girl who calls herself Marle (despite having the opportunity to hawk it to the swordsmith Melchior) who then insists that Crono entertain her by letting her tag along after him around the Faire.
- So, Crono and Marle amuse themselves by running around the Faire for a bit, which includes returning a lost cat to its owner and fighting the robot Gato, another of Lucca's inventions.
- Eventually, Lucca's new masterpiece is ready to go. It's some sort of teleporter, but the crowd is all too sissy to give it a try so Crono bravely volunteers, probably expecting nothing will happen. Lucca and her father work the controls and Crono is, to the surprise of everyone (even Lucca's father) successfully transported from one platform of the contraption to the other.
- Marle then gets it into her head that she wants to give it a try so she gets up on the platform and Lucca and her father start things up again. But wait! The happy-go-lucky Millenial Fair music has now been replaced by an altogether more foreboding tune so you know something's up.
- The teleporter goes haywire, seeming to react to Marle's pendant, and a strange portal opens up between the two platforms which sucks Marle in.
- "Um, nothing to see here folks," Taban shoes the onlookers away as his daughter ponders what went wrong and wonders why Marle looks familiar.
- In the first of what is going to be a long line of foolish acts, Crono picks up Marle's pendant from the teleporter and volunteers to go after her. Lucca and Taban fire up the Teleporter and manage to send Crono into the portal, presumably in pursuit of Marle.
- The portal spits out Crono is some canyon like place. First thought: "Yay, I'm not dead!" Second thought: "Oh look, there are monsters here." Fortunately the monsters aren't too tough, allowing Crono to fight his way out, emerging into an eerily familiar place...
- Oh, look, it's that Truce place, but missing some buildings. Snooping around in private residences and talking to random people, Crono learns a couple of interesting tidbits: first, there's a war going on against the "Fiendlord" (hi, Magus) and Queene Leene is (or rather was) missing. That's right, it's the Middle Ages (600 AD).
- In the local pub, an explorer named Toma tells Crono that he had traced the Queen's whereabouts to the Cathedral in the woods, but when he finds out the Queen has recently been found he's, like, "oh, well, nevermind then"
- With a lack of other options at the moment (the Zenan bridge having been destroyed in the fighting) we go through Guardia Woods and into Guardia Castle. The guards don't like Crono's hairdo, but the Queen appears and tells them Crono is her friend and to let him through (strange since Crono's never been here before...)
- The King seems to have been lead to believe that Crono played a part in saving the Queen so gives him free reign of the castle. Time to snoop around and loot the place!
- Going up into the west tower, Crono comes across the Chancellor acting all mysterious and suspicious. Others in the castle claim he sneaks out to the Cathedral every night which means he's either very pious or the worst kind of evil, there is no in between in this situation.
- Then paying a visit to the Queen's tower, it turns out that the "Queen" is really Marle from the Fair. She chooses just that moment to experience a spontaneous existence failure and vanishes. Oh no!
- Sensing that it is good time to leave, Crono starts to make his escape, but as he's on his way out, Lucca shows up. Guess she managed to figure things out. When she finds out that Marle disappeared it confirms her suspicious that Marle is really Princess Nadia from present day Guardia.
- Princess Nadia has been mistaken for her ancestor, Queen Leene, and because of that the real Queen has not been rescued. Thus, in a pixelated explanation of the bird and the bees (thanks, I somehow had trouble visualizing it before that), Lucca explains that history has been changed and if the real Queen is not rescued then Princess Nadia will never be born. Of course, we sweep the messy issue of time paradoxes under the rug and hope nobody is watching too closely.
- Naturally, as the only ones present, Crono and Lucca must now go save Queen Leene in an attempt to fix history. This means one immediate course of action: to the Cathedral! Dun, dun dun!
- Over in the Cathedral, the nuns, or whatever they are, are saying somewhat ominous and not entirely nun-like things. When we go to pick up a hairpin off the floor (the pin having the Guardia royal crest on it), they reveal themselves to be a bunch of Naga and attack us!
- Oh well, so we defeat them, only one other one that was hiding around somewhere decides to make one last strike, but that's when this frog-thing with a sword drops in and saves the day - not that we couldn't have handled it. It introduces itself as Frog (well, at least it's easy to remember: hey, you, er, frog, thing) and offers to help save the Queen.
- Lucca, as it happens, has an aversion to frogs but manages to get over it to allow the amphibian to accompany us. So we descend to the depths of the Cathedral which we proceed to plunder. In the course of doing so, we rescue a couple of guards and find a room full of monsters singing praises to some guy named Magues. Well, a statue of him, anyway, as he's clearly important and probably wouldn't be caught dead fraternizing with the peons.
- In the end, we find the Chancellor about to off the Queen, but when we interrupt he turns out to be a monster by the name of Yakra, impersonating the Chancellor. In response to that revelation, we defeat him swiftly and surely.
- When the monster is dead, we find the real Chancellor tied up in a chest. When freed, he runs after the Queen declaring himself to be "undamaged". Not quite how I'd put it.
- That done, everyone traipses back to Guardia castle where Princess Nadia reappears exactly where she disappeared, no longer a victim of a time paradox. Everyone in the castle remarks how much she looks like the real Queen. Whilst everyone is rejoicing at the Queen's safe return, Frog blames himself for allowing the Queen to be captured and leaves for parts unknown. Turns out he's an emo frog.
- With the Guardia of 600 A.D in our debt we are free to come and go as we please and prepare to return to the present.
- The trip back through the time warp in Truce Canyon is uneventful and we arrive back by Lucca's teleporter pods. Lucca then runs off to crunch some numbers and tells Crono to take Marle back to the castle. But before leaving the Fair, Crono decides to eat some guy's lunch. Mwahaha. That'll teach him.
- Arriving in the castle, the Chancellor demonstrates his ability to jump to conclusions by assuming that Crono had kidnapped the princess and has him arrested, despite princess Nadia saying otherwise. The guy sure doesn't listen, does he?
- Crono is put on trial with the Chancellor prosecuting and some guy named Pierre defending. In the face of overwhelming evidence (mainly 'cause Crono helped some girl find her lost cat at the Fair), Crono is found not guilty by the jury. But the judge sentences Crono to three days in jail anyway for cavorting with the princess. Damn the aristocracy!
- When the Chancellor delivers Crono to the jail's warden, he goes on about impending executions, regardless of the actual verdict. The guy seems to really have it in for Crono.
- Well, Crono's not the sort to sit around and idly wait to be executed so he bangs on the bars to his cell until he annoys the guards enough that they bust in to forcibly shut him up. That's when they discover that Crono was NOT DISARMED!! Why has he still got his sword? Guards these days are stupid.
- Anyway, Crono makes his escape, though rescues another prisoner named Fritz and grabs some loot in the process. Just as he's nearly busted out and the warden is going for help, Lucca shows up to "rescue" him. A bit late for that, I guess, but at least she's helpful for destroying the Dragon Tank that the Chancellor sics on us.
- After destroying the tank, Crono and Lucca run through a gauntlet of guards for the castle exit. They're largely overwhelmed, until Princess Nadia shows up and tells the guards to stop. The actually listen for a bit.
- Then the Chancellor (who's taken the short way down from the tower, it seems) and the King show up. The King tries to convince Nadia to remain bored inside the castle rather than running off to do exciting things. Well, the Princess (henceforth refered to by her alter ego, Marle) would rather do the exciting things it seems so she runs off with Crono and Lucca.
- Still being chased by the guards, Crono, Lucca and Marle are backed into a corner. But wait, there's a time gate here! Just as the Chancellor thinks he has them cornered, his jaw drops to the ground as the three miscreants vanish into the gate. Take that, nya!
- Crono, Lucca and Marle emerge into the futuristic looking Dome Bangor. Since there's no point going back with the King's guards waiting, we may as well explore a bit.
- The world outside the dome is something of a wasteland. A bit to the south is Dome Trann. The rather dishevelled inhabitants of the Dome suggest we might have some luck finding food in Dome Arris past the Site 16 ruins, which are dangerous and full of mutants.
- The mutants in the ruins don't turn out to pose too much of a thread, but there are some annoying rat-things that steal my potions. Arg.
- In Dome Arris, the people are just as dishevelled as in Dome Trann, only there are more of them. According to the old man Doan (descendant of the original director of the Dome when it was actually a functioning information centre), the food stores are down below, along with a super computer, but the food is guarded by the security system. One of the Dome's inhabitants went down there recently but has not returned.
- Well, down we go. We smash the security system and its drones only to find that the food is all rotten and that one guy who came down here is dead. Oh well. But we do find a seed.
- While down here, we snoop around in the super computer where we locate another time gate off to the east in Proto Dome (past the ruins of Site 32). Then, Marle decides to mash some buttons which brings up a recording of the "Day of Lavos".
- Sometime in 1999, a fissure opens up and a big spikey thing emerges (presumably Lavos) and rains down destruction on the planet. This distresses Marle for some reason. She seems suddenly determined to change history. Lucca agrees, though reluctantly, and suggests the first order of business should be to return to their time and learn more about Lavos.
- The group returns to the Dome entrance where they give the seed to Doan and the inhabitants and give them a rousing pep talk about hope and all that. The inhabitants seem to be slightly cheered up and will try growing the seed. Doan also gives us the key to a jetbike he used to ride in Site 32.
- When we try to start up the jetbike, some robots try to interfere - it seems like a fight is about to break out, but that's when some human-motorcycle-cyborg-thing shows up, calling himself Johnny. The robots, it turns out, are his groupies, and Johnny challenges us to a bike race if we want to cross the ruins. Looks like we've got no choice! Cheesey racing sequence go! We win and go on our merry way.
- We find Proto Dome deserted except for a single, broken, humanoid robot. Girl genious Lucca decides she can fix him up and goes to work. When the repairs are complete, the robot activates and calls himself R-166 or something (his serial number) but we call him Robo instead.
- The gate seems to be past a door we can't open. Robo says the Dome's power is completely shut down but there's an emergency generate in the Derelict Factory just north of here, but someone has to stay behind to open the door since the power won't last long.
- With Robo in tow, we go to the old factory and eventually find a promising looking button to push, which we do. This causes the security system to go haywire so we beat a hasty retreat. On the way out, a bunch of R-series robots attempt to stop us and treat Robo as a traitor, thoroughly trashing him. We dispose of the evil robots and drag Robo's, uh, corpse back to Proto Dome.
- Fortunately, Lucca is able to repair Robo again. Robo then decides that there's nothing left for him here and that he wants to help us change history, so the four of us pile into the time gate and off we go!
- The gate gives off some unusual sparks and we find ourselves in a forlorn place with an old man standing under a street lamp.
- The old man tells us that this is the End of Time and spews out some technobabble about four people travelling at once overloading the time flux, or something, and ending up at the place of least resistance or somesuch. Anywho, looks like we can only move about as a group of three at a time.
- The old dude tells us we should hurry back to our own time before galavanting around the rest of history, but before we go we stick our noses into a neighbouring room and meet Spekkio, the master of war, who teaches us some magic, which some ancient kingdom used to use.
- Walking into the light, we warp to Medina village, 1000 AD, where (and when) we burst out of some poor unsuspecting imp's cupboard. Fortunately, the imps seem to be the live and let live type so it's all good. We are warned that the village, home of the "Fiends" (previously, Mystics) who followed Magus 400 years ago, won't proove too friendly and suggests we visit some old human guy to the west.
- Snooping around town, we find some Fiends in the town square singing praises to a statue of Magus and complaining how he failed to wipe out humans using Lavos when he had the chance. Hmmm. Also, the village mayor is Ozzie VIII, descendant of one of Magus' generals and he has no qualms about lording this fact over the townsfolk.
- Anyway, that old dude turns out to be Melchior from the Millenial Fair and he doesn't do much for us right now other than to offer to sell us some overpriced weaponry and inform us that we can get back to Truce through the cave to the north.
- So we journey into the cave, home of the fierce Hekran. Everything here is largely resistant to physical attacks so it's a good thing we just learned magic recently. Convenient, that. We eventually face off against the fiersome Hekran who basically tells us that Magus was responsible for creating Lavos, before we defeat him. Lucca suggests the obvious at this point: that we go back to the Middle Ages and stop Magus.
- Jumping into a whirlpool, we get washed up outside of Lucca's house then proceed through the Time Gate at the Fair to take us back to 600 AD. The word on the street is that the Fiendlord's armies are on the move, marching on Zenan Bridge, that the King was wounded in battle, but some legendary hero has appeared so it's all good.
- Visiting Guardia Castle, the King is recouperating from his wounds and the Head Chef has us deliver some rations to the soldiers at the bridge.
- So we deliver the rations just in time for the Fiendlord's armies to attack, lead by one of his generals, Ozzie. Ozzie seems to be a bit of a pansy as he just has a bunch of skeletons, and eventually a bigger skeleton Zombor, do his dirty work. None of these presents much of a problem for us 'cause we're, you know, the heros and all that, and Ozzie just runs away.
- Having repelled the attack we cross the bridge to Dorino village which, ominously, does not exist in the present. Not much going on here, people are just going on about the hero who's originally from Porre to the south (our next stop, most likely) and that some sword called the Masamune is supposedly the only thing that can kill the Fiendlord. Also, the village elder sends Toma off to search for the rainbow shell, despite misgivings about Toma's reliability.
- On the way south, we stop briefly at Fionna's Villa where Fionna is protecting a forest she and her husband planted whilst he is away at the war. She's not important now, but you know she will be sooner or later.
- In Porre, we learn two useful bits of information: a frog-thing has been seen lurking around, muttering about Queen Leene and the Masamune (why hello there, Frog) and the Hero, Tata, is said to be off in the Denodaro mountains searching for the legendary Masamune.
- The lead on the whereabouts of the Masamune seems more solid so we go sword hunting in the mountains. When we first get there, some kid, presumably Tata, runs off like a coward and tells us we should to the same. Pfft. Pressing on, we eventually come to a cave with a kid running around. Wooosh! I'm the wind.
- Under a conveniently placed beam of light is what appears to be a sword. Trying to take it, the kid, along with his brother who had been hiding, try to stop us. Masa and Mune turn into some sort of creature and eventually merge into one bigger thing, but we paid attention to some random dude in town that told us that wind slash dissipates whirlwind energy, so it's not too tough.
- Masa and Mune turn over the sword to us, but it turns out to be broken. They then, conveniently, return us to the foot of the mountain. Back in Porre, Tata fesses up that he just picked up the hero badge after a drunken frog-man dropped it. Which means its time to go hunt for Frog.
- Frog turns out to be lurking in a hidden hovel in the nearby Cursed Woods. He gets all mopey on us about not deserving to wield the Masamune, even if it were fixed. We also find the hilt of the broken sword when we loot his room. Letters on the hilt spell the name Melchior... curious.
- We return to Melchior's cabin in 1000 AD. He seems surprised to see the sword, but tells us he needs Dreamstone to repair it (since that's what the sword was made from) a rare, ancient mineral that he doubts we'll be able to find.
- Just to show him, we go off looking for some Dreamstone. The old dude at the End of Time suggests we go looking in the prehistoric era. Next stop: 65 million BC! But wait, the gate puts us halfway up a cliff. Aiiiieeee!
- We plummet and find ourselves surrounded by some lizard men. We fight some off, but there are too many. Just our luck that some prehistoric woman dressed up in a cat outfit comes to our rescue. She calls herself Ayla and seems to like strong people so has us follow her back to Iota village where she is chief.
- Ayla's people are fighting the Reptites for dominance, who are lead by Azala. There's another prehistoric village, Laruba, but they're all in hiding.
- Ayla throws us a party, with much dancing and drinking, and offers to give Crono some Dreamstone, but he must defeat her in a drinking contest. It turns out Crono is a good drinker. Also of note, during the festivities, Kino, another tribesman who has a curiously similar colour scheme to Ayla (both different from the rest of the prehistoric folk), meaning he must be important, seems a bit jealous of Crono.
- In the morning, Lucca walks up with a hangover and we discover that the gate key has been stolen! Ayla immediately suspects the Reptites and accompanies us south into the Forest Maze after a trail of footprints.
- Just inside the Maze we find Kino who admits to stealing the key out of jealousy, and Ayla baps him for it, but the Reptites then stole the key from Kino so we've still got to go chase it down.
- Through the Forest Maze we eventually come to the Reptite Lair. At the bottom of the Lair we find Azala pondering the Key. He demands to know what it's for, but doesn't believe us even when we tell him. Instead, he sics Nizbel, a triceritops on steroids, on us. He proves somewhat difficult, but ultimately we emerge triumphant. Azala is momentarily cowed, letting us have the key back, but vows that the planet belongs to the Reptits. Yeah, whatever buddy. We know differently.
- With the gate key recovered, we can now return to Melchior in 1000 AD. Again, he seems surprised that we managed to find it (better get used to that) and agrees to repair the sword. When done, it's as good as new so the next stop will be Frog's hovel back in 600 AD.
- We take the Masamune to Frog and he spends the night pondering things. He reminices on when he was a human named Glenn, adventuring with his old friend and mentor, Cyrus (the greatest knight in the kingdom, if the flashback can be believed): taking the Hero's Badge from the Frog King and encountering Magus and Ozzie while seeking the Masamune. Magus defeats Cyrus and does something to Glenn, causing him to fall off the cliff.
- In the morning, Frog decides its time to go pay Magus a visit. We go to the Magic Cave in some mountains to the east where Frog takes the Masamune and slices a cliff in two (now there's a sword for you), revealing the cave's entrance. The cave leads to the island where the Fiendlord's Keep is located. A bat starts following us when we enter the Magic Cave.
- In the Keep we meet Ozzie who says we'll have to beat him, Magus' other two generals, Flea and Slash, and all the beasts in the Keep if we want to stop Magus, and then disappears.
- First we encounter Flea, a cross-dressing male sorcerer and defeat him. Shortly thereafter we fight and defeat the swordsman Slash. After that, we pursue Ozzie through a series of ineffectual traps until he's cornered. At that point, the coward encases himself in some barrier, but we just open up a trap door under him to quickly dispose of the fool.
- Entering the Keep's intermost sanctum, we find the Fiendlord, Magus, in the centre of an elaborate magic circle, doing something distinctly dastardly and not nice. The Black Wind blows... And we have a friendly little duel with Magus. Well, perhaps friendly is not quite the right term, but we win so that's what's important.
- Then things start to go a little wonky. Magus complains that we've interrupted his summoning of Lavos... apparantly he didn't actually create the thing as we'd been led to believe. Instead, he was trying to summon Lavos from his slumber deep within the planet (where it's absorbing the planet's energy, supposedly), though he does not explain why. We've just managed to interrupt things at a bad time and now Lavos seems to be a little cranky.
- A massive gate forms sucking Crono's party along with Magus into its swriling maw, flinging us to some unknown time and place. Well, it turns out we wake up in Ioka village in 65 million BC. Ayla's there and tries to eat Frog (to no avail) and says she wants to find Laruba village to get them to help fight the Reptites and decide who gets the planet once and for all. That's when a villager comes in to say (or grunt) that there's a large fire to the north. Also, Magus appears to be nowhere to be found.
- Just to the north we find the smoking ruins of Laruba village, having just been attacked by the Reptites. A kid informs us that Kino's been kidnapped and Ayla is arguing with an old man and essentially informs him he's a pansy. Anyway, she gets his permission to take a Dactyl from the Dactyl's nest, 'cause apparantly they belong to the Laruba people.
- We go to the Laruba nest and insist on joining Ayla on her expedition to the Tyranno Lair, castle of the Reptites. As we take off, we notice a sparkly red thing up in the sky. Hmmm.
- Next we bust our way into the Tyranno Lair, free some villages and rescue Kino. With Kino sent back to Ioka, the rest of us continue through the Lair until we encounter our old pal Nizbel who insists on fighting us before we get to Azala (who is apparantly a she)
- We arrive at Azala's throne for the final showdown between Reptites and Humans. There is a might roar and Azala runs out a door behind the throne. Following, we come to a huge Black Tyranno with Azala pearched on its shoulder. Azala swears at the red star and the battle commences.
- Natrually, the victory is ours. Defeated, Azala curses fate, but that sparkling red thing turns out to be... Lavos, falling from the sky as a meteor. Uh oh, that's not going to be good. Kino shows up with some Dactyls so we can make a hastey getaway before the Tyranno Lair becomes ground zero for a huge meteor impact.
- Lavos crashes into the Tyranno Lair, obliterating it, leaving a smoking crater behind. By the time we get to the crash site, Lavos has already buried deep underground, but has left a gate behind in its wake. Something about stretching the fabric of time with its immense energy. But nevermind that, I wonder where the gate will take us?
- Because curiosity hasn't killed us yet, we step into the gate and find ourselves in a small cave that opens onto a bleak, snow covered world. There doesn't seem to be much choice other than to wander off and see what we can find and this eventually leads us to some sort of teleporter that takes us up to a floating landmass, above the clouds where everything is green and sunny.
- We find Enhasa, the city of dreams, where everyone is narcoleptic. This is part of the Magical Kingdom - no, not Disney, it's Zeal, ruled by Queen Zeal who has apparantly encouraged magical development, affording everyone a life of luxury, though she seems to be turning the Kingdom away from using the power of the sun to something else... but what? Also in Enhasa, we encounter some blue haired kid with a cat who says "The black wind blows..." before running off. Now where have we heard that recently? Must be a coincidence.
- Jumping back down to the surface then back up to another of the floating landmass, we briefly look at the Blackbird, a large airship, where we encounter some goof named Dalton (no, not the premier of Ontario) who goes on about some prophet. But that's not too important for now, as we stop in at the city of Kajar.
- Much as with Enhasa, the people of Kajar are going on about how great the Queen and the new energy source are, and how the old things are forbidden. They also have a large superiority complex with regards to the Earthbound ones (non-magic capable humans confined to the surface)
- Moving on to Zeal Palace itself. The music is certainly... ominous. And what's with everyone going on about how the power of Lavos and how great Lavos is? Shit, this is very not good.
- Word on the street is that the Kingdom's three Gurus have all mysteriously vanished, as do those who oppose the Queen. Sounds fishy to me. Also, there's talk of an Ocean Palace being constructed (by the blood, sweat and tears of the Earthbound Ones) under the sea (looks like this is a Magic Kingdom production after all) to better leech Lavos' energy.
- We snoop around in the royal bedrooms (really, shouldn't they have guards or something?) and find Princess Schala and her younger brother Janus (that blue haired kid from Enhasa) with his cat. They're talking about how the Queen has changed, but Schala has to do what she says anyway. A servant comes in to tell Schala that the Queen requests her presence and the princess runs off.
- We follow Schala and witness her going through a door with a seal on it that, oddly enough, we saw on a door in the distant future. The door reacts to the pendant she holds up and she is able to enter the Queen's audience chamber.
- People have been remarking how Marle's pendant looks alot like Schala's, but holding it up doesn't do squat to the door. So we run to the next chamber over where the Mammon Machine (a large machine thing that harnesses Lavos' power) and use it to charge up the pendant which is now able to open the sealed door. Also, the Mammon Machine requires someone with lots of magical power to control and Schala seems to be the only one who's up to the task these days.
- In the audience chamber, the Queen obviously calls us out as to just who we are and what the hell we're doing here. The prophet (wearing a long hooded robe, though there's a bit of blue hair sticking out) tells us we're the troublemakers he was warning her about so the Queen has Dalton deal with us. Dalton summons a golem which then mops the floor with us. Ouch. The Queen then reveals her sadistic side and has us imprisoned in some sort of energy field.
- Schala takes pity on us and comes to rescue us, hoping that we'll be able to help Melchior who's been imprisoned on the Mountain of Woe - wait, could this be the same Melchior that repaired the Masamune in 1000 AD? The prophet, however, discovers what Schala is up to and, while he agrees to spare our lives, drags us to the gate we travelled through to arrive in this time period and kicks us back in, forcing Schala to seal it behind us. Nuts.
- We then return to the End of Time and talk to the old guy there. He tells that we'll have to find a way to move through time more freely and that there was someone working on a Time Machine and it is further suggested that he can be found in the 2300 AD time period.
- So, it's back to the future. We go to the area around Death Peak via some old sewers and arrive at the Keeper's Dome where we find the memories of Belthsasar, Guru of Reason. Due to a cataclysm he was thrown into this era and learned that Lavos arrived during prehistoric time and had been feeding off the planet's energy since then. Now, Lavos nests in Death Peak and its spawn continue to ravage the planet.
- We then find a large device with some sort of cockpit. A Nu-like thing comes - Belthsasar has copied his memories into the thing and he tells us about his Time Machine, called the Epoch, with which we will be able to travel to pretty much any time period we wish.
- With the Epoch we now return to the Dark Ages where we wander up to a cave that was blocked off earlier. Oh look! A ladder has conveniently been left down for us. How thoughtful. This leads us to the village of Algetty where the Earthbound Ones live.
- A cave connected to Algetty takes us to the Mountain of Woe, a large floating mountain tethered to the earth by a giant chain. At the top, we find a crystaline thing and are attacked by the prerequisite guardian monster. Once it falls, the crystaline thing dissolves, releasing the Guru of Life, Old Man Melchior, who seems less fazed about being called an "old man" than being addressed by name by people he doesn't know.
- With the guardian creature defeated, the mountain crashes to earth, but we make it back to Algetty unscathed. Schala then comes in to tell Melchior that the Ocean Palace is now operational, however she has also decided that she will never activate the Mammon Machine again.
- Unfortnately, Dalton followed Schala and kidnaps her, planning to force her to activate the Mammon Machine. As Melchior says, this is bad, as it would awaken Lavos and cause unspeakable horror. However, Crono steps up and offers to save the day (without actually saying anything, strangely enough). That sort of heroic nonsense is going to land you in trouble one of these days, boy.
- Before we leave, Melchior gives us a knife made of the same red stone as the Mammon Machine which he thinks may be able to stop it.
- Run back to Zeal Palace to try to save Schala, but the Queen and her lackies have already gone to the Ocean Palace, leaving Dalton behind to guard the gate. He's stewing over the fact that he has to stay behind while the Prophet got to go and have fun. When he notices the trio intruding on his ennui, he decides he doesn't need to keep us around anymore, but he proves ineffective in combat and flees into the portal to the Ocean Palace.
- We follow Dalton's lead and teleport down to the Ocean Palace. After traversing its corridors and getting to the bottom level, we catch up with Dalton and he sics the Golem Sisters on us. After the battle, we proceed into the chamber where the Queen, Schala, the Prophet and various flunkies are gathered around the Mammon Machine.
- The Queen forces Schala to activate the Mammon Machine. Things don't look good as the Machine starts to go haywire. Good thing Crono and company are here, though, as we toss the knife at the Machine and ... it turns into a sword? The Masamune?
- Even that seems to be no good as Lavos awakes and swiftly pounds us into oblivion as the Queen watches and laughs. This is when the Prophet decloaks, revealing his true identiy: why hello Magus! He attempts to take on Lavos one-to-one, but is severely outmatched.
- As the Queen gloats, Crono decides it's time to end all this and tries to immitate Magus' one-on-one bout, but with more success. However... he just goes and gets himself dissintegrated by Lavos. Ooops. Oh well, can't say I didn't warn you.
- Things have gone from worse to totally crappy and the Ocean Palace seems to be falling apart around us, even as we mourn a lost comrade, and Schala uses the last of her pendant's power to send the survivors (and Magus) to what she hopes is safety.
- Lavos, however, has been woken up early and he's cranky. Very cranky. So he throws a temper tantrum and completely destroys Zeal in the process. So passes the Magic Kingdom in all its arrogant glory.
- The world is pretty much reduced to a single landmass of survivors. The Earthbound Ones and the survivors of Zeal are living together in a village, apparantly mending their differences since there's not much difference between them anymore, except the former Zealots are dressed better, at least for now.
- Just as we're talking with the village elder, Dalton appears, proclaiming himself King over the remaining rabble. Well, if he wants to rule a junk heap, that's his perogative, I guess. He doesn't like the thought of leaving our group roaming free to spread dissent against his rule so he pulls a dirty trick (look over there!) and takes us prisoner.
- And this time, they actually take our weapons away! And all our other stuff too. Remarkable, the villains actually have half a brain for once. Unfortunately for Dalton, Ayla fights with her fists, and since her hands weren't chopped off, we've still got a functional party member. Also unfortunately for them, they've neglected to weld the air vents shut. I did say the villains only had half a brain, after all.
- As we crawl through the air ducts, we discover we're aboard the Blackbird and that Dalton has taken the Epoch on board and is modifying it into his own personal air chariot. We also discover where our captors hid all of our equipment. Presumably they were planning on pawning it off somewhere...
- We crawl out onto one of the Blackbird's wings and encounter the Golem Overlord which turns out to be afraid of heights so it just cowers while we beat on it until it runs away. Then Dalton shows up - he's had wings attached to it so it can actually fly through space as well as time.
- Which is all very convenient for us (or will be shortly) since we plan to take the Epoch back, by force. Doing a crazy leap from the Blackbird onto the Epoch as it flies below us, Dalton tries to summon the Golem Overlord, only it doesn't come as it's already been scared off. Instead, Dalton gets sucked into a black vortex and we get our time machine back.
- Returning momentarily to the last remaining village, someone informs us that there was someone looking for us up on the north cape. Following this timely tip, we find good old Magus waiting for us and he's kind enough to share a flashback with us...
- See, Magus used to be Prince Janus when he was younger. At some point, presumably after Schala warped us out of the Ocean Palace (though perhaps before we got there), the three Gurus tried to talk the Queen down, only they got sucked into three different time portals. Melchior ended up in Medina village in 1000 AD, Belthasar in the ruined future circa 2300 AD and Gaspar in the End of Time.
- Janus was also present at this event and he also got sucked into a time gate, ending up in 600 AD where he was picked up by Ozzie and the mystics - a bad influence if there ever was one. Since then, he's been plotting revenge against Lavos by any means necessary and had just summoned him when Crono and crew arrived to interrupt things, the meddlesome kids that they are. The time gate resulting from the interrupted attempt at summoning Lavos sent Magus back to Zeal where he used his knowledge of the future to earn the Queens trust.
- And, as we know, Magus' attempt to destroy Lavos failed utterly and Zeal got wiped off the map anyway. Then he offers to come with us. Frog is a little put out about this idea at first, but ends up deciding that killing Magus now wouldn't really be all that sporting. Kicking a guy when he's down and all that. And so, Magus becomes part of the team.
- Magus mentions that Gaspar had been researching a way to restore lost time streams, implying that there may be a way to bring Crono back (way to string them along on a false hope there), so I suppose we should go visit him at the End of Time, now that we know who he really is.
- The old man at the End of Time plays coy, but gives us a time egg and suggests talking to Balthasar regarding its use. Balthasar mentions something about a power on Death Peak able to restore the lost, but we need a doll duplicate of the person we want to revive. One Dr. Bekkler is supposed to be an expert at this sort of thing, but he's off messing around at a festival somewhere, most likely.
- Back to the Millenial Fair, since that's the only festival going on any where, at any time, ever. Bekkler's got a tent set up and allows us to play a simon-says game to get a life size doll of Crono. Just where the good doctor got it from or what he was planning on using it for, well, probably best not to ask.
- Returning to Balthasar, he instructs us to take the doll and the egg to Death Peak and activates three, uh, puff-ball-like things that will give us a hand as we climb the mountain.
- So we go and climb the mountain, encountering some Lavos spawn on the way, and eventually reach the peak where we attempt to activate the egg, only to have the thing shatter on us. Lousy good for nothing...
- But then there's this nifty full eclipse of the sun (don't look directly at it!) and Death Peak is replaced by a tableau of the scene where Crono bit it - a time freeze. The obvious thing to do is exchange the real Crono for the life-sized doll of Crono so that it only looks like Crono gets dissolved by Lavos. In fact, it's so obvious that that is exactly what we do.
- With the switch made, we return to Death Peak, Crono slumped against the tree (which is inexplicably sparkling like a Christmas tree). Marle then throws herself at him and fills him in on some of the details that he's missed while he's been dead. Unfortunately, the other two party members don't exactly get the hint so that Crono and Marle don't get any "alone time".
- That done, everyone reconvenes at the End of Time where the old man finally admits that, yes, he was once called Gaspar. He then tells us we might as well go beat Lavos whenever we're feeling up to it, but incase we feel the need to beef up a bit, he gives us a laundry list of side quests we can go and pursue in the name of leveling up. Yay!
- We'll start by putzing around in the Middle Ages for a bit. There's a continent to the south east that was previously inaccessible, but we can conveniently now get to it since the Epoch had its makeover. So we fly down there and snoop around the sleepy town of Choras.
- In the tavern, we find Toma, the explorer, who still looking for the rainbow shell. He asks us to pour some spirits on his grave should anything happen to him. Also in the tavern is a carpenter who's lost his tools. His carpentry tools, that is.
- Warp ahead to the present and visit the cape where we find Toma's grave. Pouring some spirits on it, his ghost appears and tells us that the rainbow shell is on an island just to the northwest (the Giant's Claw), but it's mysteriously absent in the present so we'll have to go back to the Middle Ages to find it. While we're here, a lazy carpenter drinking away in the tavern lets us have his carpentry tools since they're not so good for drinking beer.
- Back to the Middle Ages, we give the tools to the non-lazy carpenter and he gets in gear and gets his assistants to help repair some old ruins to the north. We have to clear out monsters before they can complete the job, but eventually we discover Cyrus' grave. Cyrus' ghost appears and praises the knight Glenn has become and the Masamune powers up! Yay! This also allows us to freely plunder the ruins in the present, having been fixed up and all.
- Then, acting on ghost-Toma's tip we go to the Giant's Claw, which appears to be the ruins of the Reptite castle. After slaughtering the last remnants of the Reptites, we find the rainbow shell and haul it off to Guardia Castle for safe keeping.
- Zooming ahead to the present, the King of Guardia is on trial for, supposedly, absconding with a royal heirloom, ie, the rainbow shell. The Chancellor's farce of a trial is exposed, however, as the rainbow shell is safe and sound. Marle jumps into the courtroom through the big stainglass window with a shard of the shell as proof of the King's innocense. The Chancellor is revealed to be an imposter (not again...), Yakra XIII who is hell bent on revenge. He is, however, a wimp and is easily defeated. The real Chancellor is discovered stuffed inside a chest (again)
- The King then makes peace with Marle and we're no longer treated like wanted fellons. Melchoir puts in an appearance, offering to make some cool stuff out of the shell. We'll talk to him a bit later.
- Next we'll zip into the future for a bit of fun at Geno Dome where Robo meets his maker... sort of. His original name was Prometheus and this seems to have been the factory that produced him. We encounter another Robo-style robot named Atropos, only this one is *pink* so presumably it is meant to be female, or possibly a UW math student. Atropos has apparantly been reprogrammed to want to kill humans and has a one-on-one duel with Robo in which Robo is victorious. Defeat an imminent "death" brings Atropos back to her senses.
- The Mother Brain of the factory seems to have decided that humans are to be wiped out and that when Lavos' spawn eventually leave for other planets, the Robots shall inherit the earth. Well, we have a thing or two to say about that and promptly destroy the computer, shutting down the factory for good. Mission complete.
- While we're in the future, we pay a quick visit to the Sun Temple where we find an old sun stone that has lost its energy, making it a moon stone. So we take it back to prehistoric times and leave it in the Sun Shrine where it can bask in the sun and soak up energy for millions of years.
- The sun stone temporarily goes missing in the Present. A passing explorer took it to Porre where we find it in the mayor's house. Good thing we'd previously taught his ancestors the value of generosity as he decides to just hand it over. We return it to the shrine and then jump ahead to 2300 AD where we retrieve a fully charged sun stone.
- Lucca decides it would be a good idea to use the sun stone to make herself a new gun and then we take the leftovers to Melchior who makes the extremely over powered rainbow sword. This now gives Crono an 80% counter rate and 70% critical hit rate. What's not to like?
- There are still a couple of things to do in the Middle Ages so we go to Fionna's Villa in 600 AD where Fionna is attempting to replant a forest, but there are monsters underground that are making things difficult. We go in and clear things out (we should be professional exterminators or something) and then leave Robo behind so that he can spend 400 years of forced labour as he tends the forest.
- The rest of us get to skip all the tedious work and jump ahead to the present in 1000 AD where the desert is now a thriving forest, in the midst of which is Fionna's Shrine. A broken down Robo is on the pedastal so we just up and remove him. Funny that the shrine maidens don't try to stop us or anything seeing as we're basically making off with what could be considered a prized artefact.
- Lucca reactivates Robo and we celebrate our reunion. Well, Robo does anyway, since for everyone else there was hardly any intervening time. Everyone camps out in the woods as Lucca fixes up Robo and Robo explains that he had a lot of time to think and now believes that Lavos is not responsible for the time gates, but some other entity that either wishes us to see these events for some reason or is reliving important moments, like life flashing before ones eyes in the face of death. When asked if there is anything she would like to relive, Lucca is curiously silent.
- Whilst everyone sleeps, Lucca goes off a short ways and finds a special gate that deposits her in her home 10 years prior. Her mother gets herself caught in one of Taban's machines and has her legs injured, permanently crippling her. This is apparantly the motivation for Lucca to study machines and all that.
- Last up, Magus' generals are still sulking around in the Middle Ages and, while they don't seem to have harmed anyone, it's best to make a preemptive strike and make sure they don't get any ideas.
- Ozzie is still using his old lame traps while he, Flea and Slash put up a bit of a fight, they are ultimately defeated once and for all (or so we hope). This has the side effect of making the Mystics in the Present much more friendly towards humans.
- With all of that erratta out of the way, it is time to invade the Black Omen and put a stop to the Mad Queen's plans once and for all and to defeat Lavos. The Black Oman is quite large, but we eventually make it to Queen Zeal who is still determined to use the power of Lavos to attain immortality.
- The Queen attempts to feed us to the Mammon Machine, but we destroy it and then finally face off against the Queen herself. She's no pushover, but we emerge victorious and she is finally sent to her rest. This finally brings us to the big boy himself: Lavos.
- Lavos starts off by immitating many of the bosses we've faced so far, up to and including the Mountain of Woe boss. Fortunately, his immitations are no more powerful than the original versions and we've leveled up a bit so it's mostly pretty easy. Finally Lavos gets tired of the mime-thing and we get to fight the real version. Well, it's the "head", anyway, and beating it lets us penetrate into Lavos' shell.
- It's spooky inside that shell, but we find this kind of oddly humanoid cybernetic thing with tubes and stuff, so we what anyone would do in this situation: kill it.
- This is not the end, however. Inside, we find some humanoid in a space suit with a couple of acorn-looking things accompanying it. Yay for multi-stage bosses! Lucca perceives that this, the true face of Lavos, is a parasite that harvests DNA from the world it infests for as long as it can before sending its spawn to other planets to repeat the cycle. Unfortnately for Lavos, it has chosen the wrong planet to infest. A battle that warps through the different eras of history ensues and Lavos is finally destroyed, once and for all.
- Lenne's bell rings and Crono is woken up from sleep by a guard from the castle. He informs Crono that his stay of execution has been canceled and drags him off to face his fate, bringing him before King Guardia XXXIII.
- However, it all turns out to be a cruel, cruel joke engineered by Lucca as Doan, King Guardia XXII and Kino arrive (all brought there by Lucca - talk about screwing with the timeline) and the King congratulates Crono for saving history.
- The Moonlight Parade is held on the last night of the Mellenial Fair as Crono and Marle do a victory lap. Everyone seems duely impressed, except for Crono's Mom who wishes he'd spend more time helping around the house and looking after the cat.
- Finally, the group of time travelers gathers by Lucca's telepods and everyone departs for their own time. Just before the gate can close for good, Crono's cat, being chased by Crono's Mom, run by and into the gate. As the King dedicates a new bell (this being Nadia's bell) and Taban sets off some fireworks, Crono, Lucca and Marle pile into the Epoch to mess about in time, looking for Crono's Mom.
- The End
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
VENETOR!
The route that some friends used to take to get to the 401 would take them past a company called Venetor which appears to be a supplier of heavy machinery for construction, probably farm vehicles and so on. They found the name Venetor amusing and had come up with a spiel involving Venetory, the full moon, the blood of virgins and all that. I've not been that way in a while and had pretty much forgotten about it, until today when I saw a machine with the Venetor label on it on campus, which gave me a little chuckle.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Friday, June 19, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Calling Card
Yay! It's my 50th post, or so Blogger tells me. And to celebrate this momentous occassion, I'm going on a bit of a rant. Enjoy!
I hate buying greeting cards. It seems to get harder and harder each time societal conventions obligate me to do so. The reason for this is that the vast majority of cards out there are, in a word, lame. They either try to be funny and simply aren't (or, at least, fail to appeal to my sense of humour) or they try to be sentimental and are so over the top that it triggers a sort of gag reflex. There's not much of a happy medium. Occassionally it's possible to find the rare gem in a sea of crap - one of the best I've come across involved a dead elephant carcass - but it seems to be harder and harder to sift through all the junk, though it could just be me getting more and more impatient. And, of course, buying cards for people who don't share my sense of humour makes the ordeal harder.
The worst part is, though, that I suspect that the vast majority of cards are read once and are then never looked at again. I know that I seldom bother to look at old cards. I probably don't even remember anything about most of them. In fact, the only card that I can think of, off the top of my head, that I've looked at more than once was a home made one. I mean, I know I've gotten some amusing and bizarre cards at times, but they just seldom stick with me, so I tend to think that the whole greeting card industry is rather superfluous, at best.
And the whole industry is propped up on guilt, really. Because you'd feel guilty, or be made to feel guilty, if you didn't get someone a card. In the end, it's just a big ruse to part people from their money.
So what's my point? I'm not really sure. Maybe I'm just getting cynical. Maybe I should start giving out home made cards, or at least use the blank ones and write my own bad jokes or whatever strikes my fancy.
In the end, I hate buying cards and just wanted to complain about it.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
I hate buying greeting cards. It seems to get harder and harder each time societal conventions obligate me to do so. The reason for this is that the vast majority of cards out there are, in a word, lame. They either try to be funny and simply aren't (or, at least, fail to appeal to my sense of humour) or they try to be sentimental and are so over the top that it triggers a sort of gag reflex. There's not much of a happy medium. Occassionally it's possible to find the rare gem in a sea of crap - one of the best I've come across involved a dead elephant carcass - but it seems to be harder and harder to sift through all the junk, though it could just be me getting more and more impatient. And, of course, buying cards for people who don't share my sense of humour makes the ordeal harder.
The worst part is, though, that I suspect that the vast majority of cards are read once and are then never looked at again. I know that I seldom bother to look at old cards. I probably don't even remember anything about most of them. In fact, the only card that I can think of, off the top of my head, that I've looked at more than once was a home made one. I mean, I know I've gotten some amusing and bizarre cards at times, but they just seldom stick with me, so I tend to think that the whole greeting card industry is rather superfluous, at best.
And the whole industry is propped up on guilt, really. Because you'd feel guilty, or be made to feel guilty, if you didn't get someone a card. In the end, it's just a big ruse to part people from their money.
So what's my point? I'm not really sure. Maybe I'm just getting cynical. Maybe I should start giving out home made cards, or at least use the blank ones and write my own bad jokes or whatever strikes my fancy.
In the end, I hate buying cards and just wanted to complain about it.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
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