Hours Played/Hours Total - 4 hrs / 10-1/2 hrs
Starting Point - 65,000,000 BC
Current Goal - Chase after the Reptites and retrieve the Gate Key. Use the Dreamstone to repair the Masamune. Stop Magus. Defeat Lavos and save the world!
What Happened - And thus Chrono Trigger continues the journey of the journey to defeat evil and save the world and all that fun stuff.... ONWARD!
Where I left off, I was heading to the Forest Maze in 65,000,000 BC to locate the missing Gate Key. As we enter inside, we find Ayla's tribesman, Kino. He was shown briefly during the village party, and he seemed confused of Ayla's gratitude towards us. Kino admits that he took the Gate Key because he was jealous of the attention he was getting from Ayla. (More or less.) Ayla called Kino stupid for feeling this way, and she tells him that she likes Kino the most. He feels better after hearing that, but then reveals that the Gate Key was stolen from him by Reptites. Ayla sends Kino back to the village, and now we're going through the Forest Maze!
And turns out that it wasn't too bad. It's a singular path that's masked a bit as you go through it, but you can just follow this Reptite foot path and find your way just fine. (Probably could without it honestly but whatevers.) There's a lot of battles as I make my way through the maze. Each enemy seems to also be dropping items like Fangs, Feathers, Horns, and Petals. What use are these? You can take them to the village and trade them for various equipment. Basically, it goes something like this:
- Ruby Gun = 3 Petals and 3 Fangs
- Sage Bow = 3 Petals and 3 Horns
- Stone Arm = 3 Petals and 3 Feathers
- Flint Edge = 3 Fangs and 3 Horns
- Ruby Vest = 3 Fangs and 3 Feathers
- Rock Helm = 3 Horns and 3 Feathers
All of these items are upgrades to what I have currently, but I don't really feel like farming up a pile of items to upgrade my crew. I figure what I have will be fine (and it is), so I simply go about my business.
After making it through all the battles and collecting the various chests around, I come out of the forest and find myself near the Reptite's cave. We head inside and start fighting a big pile of dinosaurs here. As it turns out, their key weakness seems to be Lightning. Crono has Lightning, so most of these battles can be made pretty simple. Lightning doesn't really do more damage here. Instead, it tends to lower their defense and stun them, so it's actually better than extra damage!
Now, travelling through this cave takes a bit of a different direction once you enter this large central chamber. There's a bunch of large bug-style monsters that are walking around. One is nearby a hole, but if you stick around, they will start digging alternate holes. This is how you get around in this cave system and locate other various paths and rooms. I only explored a couple of the paths here though, and most of the items didn't seem worth it.
Along the way, you've got a (generally) unavoidable fight in every room, so there was quite a few fights along the way. After many many dinosaurs, ancient plants, monkeys with wings, and giant insects, I finally make it to the end chamber with the Reptite leader. He's got the Gate Key in his hands, and it turns out he can talk too! He wonders how us "Apes" could have possibly made an object so advanced. He demands we tell him about the item, and I actually offer to. However, he feels I'm being too forward with answer and calls us liars for it. Then he calls out for a Nizbel... cause it's BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Nizbel is a giant muscle-y triceratops that walks around on its hind legs. Of course, it's a dinosaur so I figure Lightning magic is still the best method here. It works pretty well, but Nizbel offers a twist to the usual weakness here. It does lower its defense and stuns it briefly, but then it breaks out of the paralyzation and counters with the built up electricity from the attack! It's a pretty rough hit, so you gotta keep your group up on health. Beyond that big counter, Nizbel only has a single strike and ground pound for minimal damage.
With Nizbel's defeat, Azala says the apes will rue this day! Soon we shall all fall to the Reptites and all sorts of things like that. He throws us the Gate Key but then runs off. With the Gate Key returned to us, the group is whisked back to the village. Ayla thanks us for what we've done and welcomes us to return whenever we want. Kino apologizes to the group again and says he will become strong like Crono. With our goodbyes said, I head back to the Mystic Mountains to leap back through time and get the Masamune repaired!
Woop woop woop~ A couple jumps later, and I'm back in 1000 AD at Medina Village. I head over to Melchior to give him the sword and Dreamstone. He takes the Dreamstone and sword and heads downstairs to start fixing it. Lucca goes with him to help process the Dreamstone. This is a kinda cool little scene that takes place here. The two of them move around the room and perform various actions to get the repair job done. After a few moments, the sword glows brightly and is fully reborn! With Melchior's job done, it's up to us to deliver the Masamune to its rightful wielder, Frog.
One time jump later, and I'm back to the Cursed Forest to speak with Frog. Seeing the Masamune fully repaired, Frog is quite surprised and unsure what to do. He asks that we stay overnight so he can think upon these new events. This cues up a time pass and leads into a cutscene.
It shows a knight named Cyrus and his aide Glenn. The duo are off to retrieve the Hero's Medal from some Frog King. Then it shows Cyrus making use of the Masamune as well, and finally a confrontation between Cyrus and Magus himself. Unfortunately, this is when Cyrus seems to have met his end. He realizes that he can't defeat Magus and dies trying to defend Glenn. When Cyrus dies, Magus decides to curse Glenn instead of killing him. And thus... Glenn is Frog. (It doesn't directly show it, but it's highly suggested now and revealed more directly later.) With the sad scene concluded, we're finally returned to the present.
Frog has made his final decision... He's going to join us and take on Magus! Huzzah! Of course now I'm wondering... Where do I even go from here? I head back to the End of Time really quick to get Frog magic (Water), but now I'm not really sure where to go. One part "I think this is right" mixed with one part luck, I head towards this mysterious closed area called the Magic Cave. Turns out, that's EXACTLY where I need to go. It even comes with a fancy animated cutscene! Frog fully wields the Masamune and uses its power to cut open the sealed Magic Cave. Then I get the in-game cutscene of him doing the exact same process. Honestly, I liked the in-game one a bit better here since it was done pretty well with in-game mechanics and visuals. Either way... INTO THE CAVE!
I fight a few groups of monsters while travelling through the cave, but turns out this cave is mostly just a warm-up for what is to come. Near the end of the cave, there's a dead soldier with a note on his body. Mentions something about it strengthening its guard against attacks when attacked. I'll just keep that mentally noted and head on out. When I leave the cave, I'm placed right next to a very, very ominous castle. The castle is MAGUS'S LAIR!
When I enter the castle, my first thought is that something clearly isn't right here. There's a staircase that leads up and branches off into two paths. However, neither path seems to have anything. I go completely up and down both sides. Just when I'm about to give up here, I come back to the front to find a little shimmering spot. This reveals a little surprise for me. Ozzie appears! He tells us that Magus is a bit busy right now, so the monsters here will just have to keep us busy. He makes mention of two leaders named Flea and Slash as well before taking off.
Now I get to re-explore those paths from before, but there's been a change. Monsters are all about in each path, and they're raring for a fight! For the first round, I head down the right path first. Everything here seems to be based on illusions and trickery. There's all kinds of random characters here that know all our main guys. (Like Crono's mom or Marle's father), and they're clearly not the real deal. Approaching any of them reveals them to be monsters in disguise. I fight through a few of these before entering the final room for... BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Or so I thought. There's an enemy on the throne, and it looks like a Flea-like person would look. (Based on the name and all) However, the enemy is defeated in a single hit, and it turns out to be a fake who drains one of my character's MP! After that, the real Flea shows up, and as it turns out, he was actually following us for quite some time as a bat. When Flea finally makes his appearance, he looks kinda like a lady, but he claims he is a man. (There's a lot of fun and jokes made here of course, but now it's serious time.) BOSS BATTLE TIME! (FOR REAL THIS TIME)
With the fake Flea out of the way, the real Flea... is pretty dang tough. For this battle, I've got my team of Crono, Frog, and Marle. Thankfully, Frog and Marle have a good assortment of healing abilities, so I was never truly suffering from damage. However, Flea was a pretty long battle to face. He had a high resistance to magic-type attacks, and a lot of his attacks caused status effects like confusion, sleep, and poison. Alongside the wide variety of attacks, Flea even has a group counter for medium damage. On top of all that, he seemed to have quite a bit of HP, and the lack of my magic abilities definitely lengthened this battle. I won't go into full details this time, but suffice it to say that the battle took quite some time to complete. (Not much details to go into here I'm afraid.) With Flea's defeat, I'm down one General with two more to go. Flea also dropped a Magic Tab, so that's a nice plus.
Now it's time to go down the left side! Unlike the right side, there's no tricks or illusions here. It's just plain old enemies. I fight a few groups and find myself at the end of the path with... Slash. (Frog jokingly refers to him as Slush.) However, now it's BOSS BATTLE TIME! Slash has two basic modes going on. The initial portion of the fight isn't too impressive. He's got a couple different attacks, but nothing is worth mentioning. He's just punching people here and there, but then things take a drastic change. Slash leaps backwards, grabs his sword off of the wall, and comes right back at us. With his sword in hand, his power rises exponentially! Even singular strikes at this point were doing moderate damage (around 100ish). He also gained an "all out" counter where he'd do massive damage to a single person.
Inbetween battles though, I swapped out Marle for Robo. (Thus Crono, Frog, and Robo). Although I lost the larger healing element from Marle, I gained a more powerful offensive and the awesome Triple Tech "Triple Raid." I'd like to say... Triple Raid is awesomely powerful. I was doing over 1,000 damage every time I used it on Slash! It was my main choice for attacks this battle. In general, I didn't feel nearly as challenged here as I did with Flea. I only had to heal up a bit inbetween attacks, and the lack of status effects made Slash quite a bit easier. After really no time at all, I defeat Slash and even obtain his sword, the Slasher.
With these two Generals defeated, the middle path through the castle is finally open. I head through it and are warped to a long hallway of enemies. I fight my way through quite a few battles before finally coming face-to-face with the final General, Ozzie!... or so I thought. As we get close to him, he makes a break for it and runs away. This continues for several rooms behind multiple enemies and various kinds of traps. Going to be honest, it started to get annoying. After more rooms than I cared to count of this process, we finally corner Ozzie near the top in a throne room. Thus... It's BOSS BATTLE TIME!
I say that, but it turned into more of an event battle than a Boss. Ozzie immediately freezes himself in a giant block of ice at the beginning. We can't really attack him, and he can constantly heal while inside of it. So... you can't really attack him head on (or not without making it overly long). However, there are switches you can attack instead around the room. Each one opens up a trap door in the room, until the final switch is hit and opens up below Ozzie in his block. He falls through, and we're finally free of that menace. Time to go get Magus!
We head down the final staircase and into a dark, creepy room where it lights up as we walk. Then we get a fully animated cutscene that shows Frog walking through this room and blue torches lighting up as he walks. He makes it to the back of the room, and we get our first true in-person view of Magus. Mwahaha! Back to the game, and the same turn of events happen. Torches light up, and Magus is seen. He exchanges a few words with Frog, and now it be BOSS BATTLE TIME!
That's right. It's finally time to face off against Magus and stop him from bringing forth Lavos! Now, Magus is a pretty powerful boss. Everything he throws at us is just giant powerful magic attack! On top of that, he's constantly shifting his elemental strengths to make our previous attacks useless. Of course, his biggest weakness is the Masamune. Striking him with it lowers his magical defense regardless of what it previously was. Anything thrown at him that isn't his current weakness simply heals him. (It announces what his current weakness is... for some reason.)
Best way to attack him seems to be just keeping after the magical weakness. That and constantly striking with the Masamune. His attacks are pretty powerful though, so I have to keep stopping to heal up. Now he continues this for some time, but then we hit a breaking point, and he starts up his secondary mode of attack. He decides to say screw everything and just constantly cast his "greatest spell, Dark Matter." What does that mean? It's pretty much just that. He constantly casts it over and over in order to try and end us here. However, he can't cast it without a pretty long charge time. Thus it's just back to the regular old schedule of going all out with attacks and then following up Dark Matter with healing.
I brought Marle back into the fold for this battle, so the healing went pretty well in general. This was a pretty straightforward battle really. Nothing too ridiculous to challenge me, but you can be unexpectedly killed if you aren't careful. Your characters are constantly losing HP because... of evil or something. It's not explained, but it does happen. Took quite some time, but I defeat the evil Magus and put an end to Lavos!... or so I would have thought.
Upon defeat, he says something about a Gate and how we messed up his summoning of Lavos. The group is all "Whaaaat?" because we thought he created him. However, Magus says he wasn't involved in the creation of Lavos and was only bringing him forth to this time. Lavos lives in the middle of the planet and is consuming it for energy and strength. Suddenly, a Time Gate pops up around us and sucks everybody into it.
We're flung through time and wake up in 65 million B.C. Ayla shows up and says she had a strange dream about the group. This lead her to Mystic Mountain where she found us at. Then she brought us back to her home. After telling us this though, she says she's going to head out now to find some hidden village that's around here. The group goes back to sleep then.
When we wake up next, Kino greets us and says we need to find the village Ayla was hunting for. They're planning on teaming up with this hidden village to defeat the Reptites. If they don't, it seems that the Reptites will win this war. Suddenly a villager comes in and tells the group that the forest north of here is burning. Looks like we should go and investigate! The group gathers up, and we head for the north of the village.
There are a couple areas up here to explore, but I finally wind around to a small village that's north, northeast of Ayla's village. When I arrive, it seems we're too late. The fire that was spotted was this village being burnt down. Who did it? Reptites of course. As we're exploring the remains, we spot Ayla here with what seems to be the village elder. He blames Ayla for what has happened here and says they followed her into the village. Ayla feels bad about that happening, but she still wants to fight them. Says that fighting is living, and if they don't fight them, it will only lead to death. With all that said, she requests use of the Dactyls to get to the Reptite's lair. The village chief seems reluctant at first, but then he gives her permission. She runs off, and I guess we're going to follow her.
We head back to the World Map and... There's a couple different places to explore. One's a large area that resembles the forest maze. I didn't find anything there though, but then there's also this large mountain. Trying to enter it reveals that it's the Dactyl Nest. So... that first place sort of just wasted my time. We quickly climb up the mountain and stop Ayla from taking off by herself. We only discuss things briefly before deciding to join her. With thing said, a group of Dactyls (pteradactyls) appear, and then an animated cutscene! There's a group of Dactyls on a cliff. Ayla leaps on the back of one of them and takes off. Crono follows after her. That's it. Aaand the same thing happens outside of the cutscene.
With the Dactyls, I've obtained my very first airship!... for this time period. We're able to fly all around the 65 million B.C. time period. There's not very many places left to explore in this period though. There's the Reptite's base that we are heading towards and a random cave off to the side. I went in there, but there didn't seem to be anything for me now. So... I guess we're off to the Reptite's Lair!
I enter inside and... there's two paths again. I dunno if I should be cool with this or wonder if any dungeon is just a single path and/or more paths than two... Glossing past that, the left path is closed here, so I have to go down the right one. There's a few Reptites in here to battle, and a jail cell to free cavemen from. I continue down to the next floor and turns out Kino is here! We have to fight more Reptites to save him, but they go down pretty quickly. Kino thanks us for saving him, and he wants to come along to help us. Ayla tells him once again that he needs to return to the village in case she should fall.
Kino reluctantly agrees but does one more thing before going. He leads us upstairs and opens up the left path before leaving the lair. Now it's just up to us to climb this path and deal with the Reptite leader, Azala. This next bit is... pretty extended. I have to climb several floors, traverse a few traps, and fight off a whole lot of enemies. It's pretty much all dinosaurs here (duh), and they all remain to be weak to lightning. A few different enemies are here as well, but they're nothing special to mention I'm afraid. I find a few chests as I go through here, but most of them are just simple items. All-in-all, this dungeon is kinda a bust in the loot category.
I finally reach a room with... NIZBEL!?! It's standing near the entrance and tells me that Azala is waiting for me in the back. It lets us pass by for some reason... but as we go to the very back of the room, Nizbel comes at us for MINI-BOSS BATTLE TIME! NIZBELL II! ROUND TWO! This battle proceeds in about the same vein as Nizbel I. It's an upgraded version though and has a few improvements. Any form of attack on Nizbel causes it to increase its defense. Lightning still decreases its defense, but now Nizbel gathers up the lightning charges rather than immediately discharging it. After a few attacks, it releases the charge for a pretty potent counter.
For this battle, I'm using Crono, Robo, and Ayla. This crew isn't really set up for healing, but they can deal out some major damage! Of everything I had at this time, the most used attack was the Dual Tech, Volt Bite which crossed Crono's Lightning with Ayla's Cat Attack. It does a lot of damage, and it lowers defense via the lightning. Pretty much perfect for big dino targets. Robo does have Heal Beam now (which heals everybody), but it doesn't feel as powerful or effective as some of my other healing methods. Regardless, this battle was a constant change between smacking out all the damage and following up with the curative Heal Beam.
With very little pause or worries, I quickly defeated Nizbel II and prepare myself for an even larger confrontation with the final target. I save up here and head up the stairs. It's a small path around to a switch, open a door, and we're face-to-face with Azala! He claims that this battle will be the final deciding factor here. Will the Reptites win and rule the ages? OR will the apes succeed and conquer the world? LET'S FIND OUT!
Before the battle gets started, we hear a loud screeching sound. Azala informs us that we're about to make friends with his pet. He walks back into the building behind him and returns with A GIANT T-REX! Just before the battle starts, he mentions something about the Red Star falling and how will perish because of it. Also that the big guy he's on right now is a Black Tyrano (awesome name). Let's get right to... BOSS BATTLE TIME!
So, surprise surprise, this battle is us versus Azala and his kick-ass Black Tyrano. Between the two, Azala seems the weaker target of course, so I am for him first. (That and any attacks on the Black Tyrano seem pointless right now.) Azala seems to have a few psychic tricks up his sleeve (lifting us up and slamming us down, throwing rocks at us, and etc). Unfortunately, that's really all he has here. I quickly finish off Azala and am left with his giant pet.
The Black Tyrano seems to only have a few attacks at its disposal. The main one of these, which activates quite often with Azala gone, is to charge up for several rounds and then blast everybody for a huge amount of damage. (Nearly 350 per character with their average HP being around 500-600.) I'm still using Robo and Ayla here, so I am just dealing out all the damage I can. I've got decent healing with Cure Beam, but it's not always enough here. I had to supplement it a few times with Mid Tonics. (Each one heals 200 HP.) I was never in any true danger of being defeated, but it's still not a battle to take lightly.
When the Black Tyrano finally falls, Azala comes back around and seems incredibly saddened and surprised at the ape's victory. He tells us to remember the Reptites didn't go down without a fight. Then suddenly the sky glows... and we get to learn what this Red Star business is about. The word Lavos is brought up suddenly, and Ayla translates the word for us. Turns out La means Big and Vos means Fire. Thus, the term Lavos came from Big Fire and is called such because it dropped from the sky as a small meteor.
There's an in-game cutscene of the vision from space as a giant red rock is hurled through space and then collides with to destroy the Tyrano's Lair. Just moments before that though, Kino shows up with the Dactyls to help us escape. Ayla tries to bring Azala with us, but he refuses. She promises to remember him. With the impact of the "Red Star", the Reptite's Lair is completely destroyed.
As we're standing away from the destruction, Ayla says we should go and fight Lavos now! She runs off, and Robo comments that he might actually be weaker in his current status of just now landing here. As we approach the impact site though, it seems that Lavos has already submerged itself underground. Strangely enough though, he left behind a Gate. Robo throws out an idea that Lavos's collision with the planet must have generated the Gate here. It seems we're going to make another random Gate jump!... on the next post.
Good lord, this took me super longer than I should have let it. That's the only reason I'm ending it here. I've spent waaaay longer on this specific post than I should have. Sorry for the delay, and promise I'm going to do better on the next one. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next time when I leap into the unknown!
Ending Point - 65,000,000 BC
Current Party -
- Crono - Level 27
- Ayla - Level 27
- Robo - Level 26
- Lucca - Level 25
- Marle - Level 26
- Frog - Level 26
Goals Accomplished - Retrieved the Gate Key. Repaired the Masamune. Ventured to Magus's Castle and defeated Magus. Learned more about the truth behind Lavos and thrown into the past. Helped Ayla defeat the Reptites. Defeated Azala and more Lavos truths.
Next Goals - Jump into the new Gate and find out where it leads us. Defeat Lavos and save the world!
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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