Game Reviews: Etrian Odyssey and Chrono Trigger

Etrian Odyssey (2007) 

I loved this! Pure joy from start to finish, just a precisely tuned machine for generating happy brain chemicals. Loved the art, the music, the crunchy sound design, the battle tactics, the varied and distinct map layouts, the minimal restrained storytelling. I especially loved the FOEs; those are Etrian Odyssey's "big idea" and they explore them beautifully.

One interesting wrinkle: stratum four felt to me like "the real climax" of the game. It has the most demanding map layouts and the hardest scariest finale (which incorporates the FOEs in a wonderful way). The fifth stratum is more of an extended wind-down. Your party has already proven their resolve to discover the labyrinth's mysteries. All that's left is to see it through to the end.

I finished the game happy and satisfied. I'm glad I played the original DS version, since the FM Synth, crunchy bosses, and overall spareness of the game were big parts of its appeal for me. I'm okay putting it down for now without playing the post-game dungeon. I'd rather finish the game feeling pristinely warm and content than play it for 10+ more hours and then potentially quit in frustration at the superbosses.

I've wanted to open my heart to epic 40+ hour dungeon crawlers for a long time. Etrian Odyssey got me there. This was a perfect comfort food game; I'm happy I've found a new source of joy I can turn to next time I'm feeling beaten down by life stressors.

Chrono Trigger (1995) 

Chrono Trigger was the first RPG I played to the end as a kid. I imprinted very hard on it and replayed it probably a dozen times. This was my first playthrough in a decade though, so I'm up for sharing some fresh thoughts.

The obvious triumph of Chrono Trigger is its editing. I can't think of a more cut-to-the-bone RPG story of this scope. There are shorter and faster games, but they get there by building smaller stories with more intimate stakes (e.g. Undertale). Chrono Trigger has the same grandness as Final Fantasy VI and VII, with two momentous status quo-upending act breaks before the finale, with maybe two thirds the run time. Coming off 50+ hour modern Tales or Xenoblade games, Chrono Trigger feels even more revelatory.

Nearly everything forwards the story, the slow unfurling mystery of how exactly the world ended. The "find and repair the legendary sword and defeat the evil wizard" arc of the game seems like standard RPG fare, but even that quietly sows the seeds for major reveals later on. Dungeons last exactly as long as they need to to serve the pacing requirements of the story and not a second longer. Major locations like Tyrano Lair or the Undersea Palace felt endlessly expansive to me as a kid, but now I'm struck by how compact they are. There's very little you could cut from the game without immediately weakening the overall skeleton of the story.

What elevates it for me though are when it slows down for just a moment, just long enough to make a beat stick. Slowly dragging Robo across the world map after he gets trashed at the factory. Wandering Melchior's workshop for a minute or two as he and a teammate refine and repair the sword. Getting wasted at a playable dance party with Ayla and your friends. A conversation around a campfire. A classic like Phantasy Star IV matches Chrono Trigger's breathless pacing, but it's these arty flourishes that make Square's successes resonate even more warmly with me. 

 

 

I don't need to replay Chrono Trigger often. Even after ten years away I was struck by how much the game plays itself once you know its tricks. I frequently avoided enemies and finished the game in 16ish hours, and I still dismantled all the endgame bosses. I think it's fine to streamline systems and sacrifice hardcore RPG credentials at the altar of pacing, as long as you meet the challenge of making the story engaging enough to make up for it.

Chrono Trigger isn't a miracle. It's not a lost Eden we can never return to, despite the repeated missteps of its would-be successors. In the 80s and 90s, a handful of creatives made console RPG after console RPG for a decade and slowly honed their craft. They had the resources to work consistently in a single medium to tell stories, but not so many resources that they could afford to collapse under the weight of their ambitions. Chrono Trigger is one gem among many from that period.

I'm gonna speak directly to RPG devs for a moment here: don't set out to make "a Chrono Trigger successor." That's a recipe for failure. Make story-forward games that don't waste the player's time. Make them quickly, make a lot of them, make them for a long time. If you do that, your own gems will emerge naturally.