Multi Chrono Trigger (My thoughts as I play) [spoilers]

[GwJumpman]

I started playing this with my friend last night and it ended up being way more dense with interesting things so I kind of want to talk about things as I think of them and not all at once at the end forgetting a lot of stuff from earlier on.

So going into this, I had zero knowledge of Chrono Trigger (or Cross), hadn't heard any of the soundtrack, or really played a "turn based" game that controls like this.

Something I immediately noticed when I started was first that they're doing that cool thing Donkey Kong Country does to make its sprites look realistic with the title screen. But getting into the game I saw the graphical style and thought things would look kind of like old Final Fantasy games, but everything is so much smoother it was reminding me of Paper Mario TTYD. The animations of characters themselves have lots of frames and movements are dramatic (full running vs just tippy tappy feet) and it made everything just feel a lot of rich. Something that also kind of blew my mind was being able to run around during dialogue text sometimes and that's what reminded me of TTYD. It's a small detail but it adds a lot of fun.

As for the soundtrack itself, it's really quite good. I didn't really know what to expect going in as I wasn't really a SNES gamer and have only really played SMRPG, ALTTP, and SMW and that's it on SNES. But the music ended up being pretty creative and they really did well with the battle music really giving you energy.

And speaking of the battle music, just the whole battle system itself is kind of crazy. The battles happening on the map itself and not in a separate screen is awesome and I love how positioning matters too so there's a bit of strategy to choosing your actions (Like Chrono's awesome Cyclone move; doesn't hit the whole screen but you can get like 4 guys in one go sometimes). And the way the map music transitions into the battle music is really seamless and wakes you up for the battle if you were snoozin. And as soon as it's done, we're just immediately back running around.

And for the plot so far: Where I ended off was just after defeating Heckran after dealing with the End of Time thing and whatnot. What I can say is the whole plot with the Queen was super interesting. When the princess vanished (I'm sorry I forgot her name I named her Mario so she's just Mario in my head) I didn't get what happened and thought she was teleported again but it totally clicked at the end what happened and that was a really impressive little segment there. All the Mystics (why are they called Mystics???) are hilarious and I love the personality they have. The gargoyle dude just acting all slick with his movements is super funny.

Heckran himself was a super satisfying fight too. I got it first try but I was super close to wiping a few times and it really demanded a LOT of focus to make sure I revive quickly, preemptively queuing up a heal, and just being very careful about HP management.

Also the graphics when you're time traveling are so trippy it's amazing. It felt like something out of Star Trek.

Also I'm very carefully keeping in mind the narrative of the frog paladin guy we had for a bit. There was a mention of some guy named Cyrus I think and I'm pretty sure that's who Mr. Frog is here. And given what I just went through with the queen, I'm now also wondering if the reason Cyrus became disgraced will be because of Chrono in the first place sometime in the past.

I'm sure there's more but I wanted to talk about some stuff before I forgot them.

 

[shortkut]

Keep playing, it only gets better

Also, if you like the soundtrack for CT, as you should, the soundtrack for chrono cross is even better

 

[TD]

I loved reading this.

It's one of my favourite games ever so it's really cool reading a first time perspective.

 

[Smacktard]

Love reading this, too. One of my favorite RPGs, and playing it for the first time was a magical experience for me too. Glad you're enjoying it so much. It's a wonderful, wonderful game. And man, I don't even really like RPGs, but this is one of my top games.

 

[Quagmire]

Enjoy the ride! One of the best

 

[GwJumpman]

Ok played through a second session yesterday, here's my thoughts again:

Here's what we did plotwise from what I recall: We went back to that bridge that was blocked going to the south and a bunch of soldiers were super hungry, so we went back to the castle and got them some jerky. Returning to them with the jerkey, we were a bit too late and many soldiers were sadly keeled over with hunger. Regardless, they all get disintegrated by goofy skeletons with shoes commanded by some Namek looking idiot named Ozzie.

We fought the Summoned Skull that Ozzie summoned and beat him (two part boss with different resistances is pretty interesting) which gave us access to the southern area. We pulled up on Porre(?) and found the house where some punk kid who's apparently the legendary hero lives.

Around this time I think we got a little lost and wound up in 65,000,000 B.C. early. What WAS super interesting though is despite not being here at the right time, we did notice fucking LAVOS in the skybox hurtling towards earth. I figured this guy was going to be like a demon that someone like Magus summoned or whatever. I DIDN'T think Lavos was actually just the meteor that killed all the dinosaurs instead.

It not being pointed out or specified (although it might become more explicit later in the game) but being pretty recognizable is super cool and it's incredibly ominous seeing it.

After we got back on track though, we went to some mountain where the punk kid was hanging out (Tata? Who names their kid Tata?) and we climbed the mountain up to the top. At the top of the mountain was a cave where the shattered remains of that Masamune blade were and they were guarded by like a pair of spirits Masa and Mune who did a fusion dance in their fight to test us. Super cool fight and the combined version looked ridiculously goofy.



Something we ALSO ALSO did around this time was attempt to defeat Lavos himself. We noticed we could travel to the future on the day of Lavos early last time but were a little intimidated but we figured screw it. So we saved and went in and I actually thought Lavos was like a humanoid with a spiky head or something initially. But apparently he's like a... Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind skittering bug kaiju-like thing and the SCREECHES are simply ghastly. I can visualize the saliva and other fluids coming out of this thing's mouth as it screeches at max volume.

We got further than our current progression of bosses (it mimicks the main bosses of the game sequentially. On our first attempt the furthest we got was I think the Summoned Skull Ozzie summoned.) and got like 3 bosses deep past a buff dinosaur fight, Magus himself, and some gigantic dragon with a smaller dragon on its shoulder. Eventually though I got wiped by an AOE I wasn't properly healed up for. That was like a thirty minute boss fight and not what I anticipated going in. I noticed while checking the guide in one spot we were stuck at that there is timing for getting different endings if we beat Lavos at certain points in the game so we tried to create save points at the latest possible moments for each.

Unfortunately even after getting maxed gear at the time for the earliest early-Lavos defeat, I wasn't able to win. I got even further than the double dragon boss and got to one where it was like a main guy with two things flanking him that both did AOEs back to back. I didn't have the defensive resistances/healing to outheal the AOEs so I went down. I dunno if this is the kind of thing where I just have to grind or if I could've equipped different gear before the fight, but it was still a good challenge. I'll probably have to just look up these endings though because there's only 3 save files and we already have both extra slots saved at the last moments for their particular endings. If they're doable maybe I'll do them on my own before next time just to say I did them. (I will take advice on these fights if anyone has them).

The strategy I ended up going with for the fight was using Chrono/Mario (the princess)/Robo. Chrono holds the keys to Lightning as well as having the best DPS. Mario has the good healing options PLUS haste (which we found out is super good and made my last run doable). And Robo is just a monster. He has a great heal beam, his robo tackle is super strong, he has tons of HP, and he's just great to have around. After Hasting everyone up, we just get so many turns compared to the boss that I'm able to do HP-upkeep really efficiently and I wasn't in much danger until I got out-damaged by the last phase I got to.

The bad ending when Lavos beats you is super brutal though. Watching the world just end and earth turn grey as all the life on it dies is super sad and then Lavos just screeches and the screen just said something like "But the future refused to change" or something like that. Super ominous.


But anyway, we got back to Porre and found the punk kid and got his Hero Medal to give to Frog. We go back to Frog and he's all like "wahhhh I can't be the hero without the Masamune i'm so weak uwu" and he moves away from a chest he was blocking that has Masamune's hilt in it. So we go from there over to Melchior again and he's like "bro to fix this you need some dreamstone thing but they aren't really found anymore" so we go back to Jurassic Park and we meet this super hot cat girl who is also the chief of the village. We party hard all night then some stupid lizard people robbed us of our warp key thing which I guess prevents us from turning into spaghetti when we time travel. We make our way down to some maze thing where some jealous loser named KINO is and he worked with these sorry sonsofabitches reptites. He runs away like a baby and we go through the Reptite lair until we get to the Reptite king. I might have forgetten which boss fight this was but I think it was the buff dinosaur with the lightning defense gimmick. I beat him because I already knew what to do from fighting Lavos and we get back our warp thing. We also get the Dreamstone but the hot cat lady left our party so I cried a little and went back to Melchior.

Melchior repairs the blade then we go back to Frog and give him the blade and he starts recollecting his past. Apparently this dude isn't even Cyrus and he's just his squire or something. Cyrus himself got bodied by Magus and Frog is only a Frog because they saw him as so unthreatening that it was more worth it to just mess with him. (Side Note: I played Lies of P recently (that pinocchio-like Souls-like game) and there's a character that does exactly this where some famous hunter was defeated and his underling secretly took his identity)

So we finally got Frog back (although his gear is shit now because of how much time passed so we have to go gear him up another time) and we saved again to catch another chance at an alternate ending. I didn't even attempt this one because we're locked in to having Frog on the team and he has bad gear currently.

This is basically where we left off. We're also gonna have to make a decision about stopping to get each ending or moving forward and just rolling with it. If anyone's got advice on what to do here, I'd be interested.


So some cool things out of this play session included finally seeing Magus up close during the flashback with Frog. I love how he looks like some kind of Dracula or something with the cape. Ozzie meanwhile just looks like some Dragonball villain.

Coolest boss so far is Masa & Mune for sure (minus Lavos for me).

I LOVED the Lavos fight but I think my friend kind of hates it lmao. He's a little less pro gamer than me so he got kind of overwhelmed keeping everyone's HP up and everything and because the fight lasts like a half hour and the music never changes, he finds it kind of boring.

But on the other hand, I think the Lavos fight is super engaging and the pressure never lets up so I never got bored during any of the attempts. I think it's an incredibly well-done boss fight.

Also given the context under which these alternate endings are becoming available, it seems like there's some critical actions that are going to be changing what happens on the day of Lavos. Without any interference, he just pops up and destroys the world. But it seems like perhaps mending Masamune will have some effect on the timeline (because it seemed like the trigger to move on to the next ending was around when we mend it.

Further, I think we're also about to go tackle Magus. So I think defeating Magus (I'm guessing he joins our party from what I saw of ingame title stuff) is also going to be some critical point where him no longer winning in that one fight will change SOMETHING about the day of Lavos. Presumably this will keep happening and we're going to keep doing shit in the past to try to mould the future to what we want.

Something I'm also now wondering is what exactly Lavos is. He's clearly not just some monster that Magus summoned in the recent history of the world. This dude came from outer space far before anything in modern history. So what does this mean about Lavos's alignment, motivations (if any), and purpose?

I'm drawn to comparisons between this an Neon Genesis Evangelion and the appearance of the Angels taking the form of dinosaurs in Earth's ancient history before the offspring of Lillith took over the world. I think it's logical to say that someone or something SENT Lavos to Earth in an age before 65,000,000 million years before the game. Whoever this was, they either put a clock on Earth's lifespan or they put a kind of antivirus in place that would activate when some specific action happened. (This latter purpose reminds me of the anime Gurren Lagann how the Anti-Spirals put in defense mechanisms on life-bearing planets to prevent them from advancing and destroying the cosmos)

It could be that in 1999, SOMETHING happens that meets some condition anticipated millions of years ago by an alien species (a big stretch but perhaps determined by humanity reaching out to the cosmos). Whatever it is Lavos was "waiting" for happened and it made him wake up to stop whatever it was from happening.


My guess (remember I'm in this blind so I might be super far off)? An advanced alien race sends Lavoses (there will be many in total) to planets they detect life on. The purpose of this is to prevent any of those planets becoming sufficiently advanced enough to challenge their position in the cosmos. If we can't defeat Lavos, we will achieve a specified level of scientific advancement then be annihilated by their genocide machine. If we CAN defeat Lavos, I think that's going to end up changing that future era we were in (I forget the year but it's where we picked up Robo). I'm guessing that's gonna completely change and we'll maybe even unlock a new super-future portal. But I think if we do defeat Lavos, it's going to introduce a new final boss that will essentially be a representative of that advanced alien race sent to Earth to finish what Lavos didn't (essentially they're sending Raditz to check on Kakarot).

Can't wait for more

 

[Smacktard]

Just a tip -- don't worry about saving before potential Lavos battles. Save it for a new game+ -- you'll want to do one for sure -- and then just go through them sequentially (for the most part)

 

[GwJumpman]

Just a tip -- don't worry about saving before potential Lavos battles. Save it for a new game+ -- you'll want to do one for sure -- and then just go through them sequentially (for the most part)

Thanks so much for this. Not going to worry about it at all then and we're just gonna go with the flow

 

[GwJumpman]

Got through another session yesterday. I started with taking on Magus who I actually had to retry because my party had no magic access besides Chrono and I got bodied.

Once I beat him though something super weird happened that I still haven't figured out. For some reason after we beat Magus and Lavos started screaming the party got warped back to 65,000,000 BC. What's strange too is Magus vanished along with the event and is still missing currently. After dealing with that though I had to defeat the Reptites for good at the Tyranno Lair or something. The Reptite king talked as if he knew the future strangely and seemed to have knowledge of Lavos ahead of time.

After these events I ended up in 12,000 BC which was all kinds of crazy. Floating islands and oppression of the muggles. Looks like somehow people discovered how to extract energy from Lavos and from that energy they created all kinds of magical artifacts and may also be responsible for the general ability of people to use magic. An offhand remark from the guy that teaches you magic in regard to the girl from 65,000,000 BC is that she's from before when magic was invented. This almost makes me think Lavos's energy became married with the DNA/bloodlines of humans and she can't learn magic because she doesn't have the magic gene essentially.

Magus has also be recontextualized a little bit. No longer does it seem like Magus is trying to bring about Earth's destruction and now it seems like Magus is trying to subdue or control Lavos. At the end of our fight with him and says it's too soon for Lavos and considering what I saw in 12,000,000 BC, I'm thinking Magus is literally from that era and is trying to prevent Lavos from destroying the world. I also recall seeing Masa and Mune back then so they're old as shit. I also wonder if this monster race comes from Lavos and is who led the humans to the magic.

In terms of what I think about Lavos, I feel like I'm still on the right track about there being more than one Lavos and them being sent to different planets, although I'm not so sure anymore about them being sent here by an intelligent civilization. "Lavos" might just be a galactic-threat scale planetary parasite that just feeds off of planets until it's destroyed, then picks a new target and jettisons itself off to it potentially leaving behind other Lavoses to go elsewhere.

 

[GwJumpman]

chrono died..

 

[TD]

Ah you're at that part.

 

[Smacktard]

chrono died..

This is the moment I've been waiting for, and THIS is all you give us?

Damn man

 

[TD]

I'm with Kelly.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS!?!?

 

[GwJumpman]

I'm just wondering if I'm going to replace Chrono with an unholy homunculus made with the Chrono Doll. I don't know where it's going but I'm at the point where I retrieved the doll and need to go to Death Mountain or something. From what the Guru of Time said it sounds like we're going to use that doll to subvert Chronos destiny but I can see it going two ways:

1. We got back in time and replace Chrono with the Homunculus doll so that Chrono doesn't die

2. We just create a new Chrono by implanting his soul into the Chrono Doll

Im sort of hoping it's the latter.

I'll say for the whole thing happening though it was kind of insane. When we triggered Lavos and the party got wiped I didn't know what to expect but I really didn't expect Chrono to become Jesus and die for my sins. He just disintegrated and I had to go to my friend "dude he just died" and we were pretty speechless. I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of the MC dying but I feel like that's more of an anime thing and in video games they don't do it often. It's honestly very ballsy and I think it was pretty masterful. There's lots of ways one could go out by Chrono did some messiah shit and is like basically a god.

What was just as impressive though was the segment following immediately after. The Dalton guy is pretty funny but right after that where all of our shit gets taken was super good. It really made you feel like "wow Chrono was so good that we suck now without him" like Goku died or something. It was pretty heavy

 

[TD]

That's the breakdown I was looking for!

I basically had the same reaction the first time I ever played.

Spoiler: Missable in-game question

Did you get another character after losing him?

 

[Smacktard]

I'm just wondering if I'm going to replace Chrono with an unholy homunculus made with the Chrono Doll. I don't know where it's going but I'm at the point where I retrieved the doll and need to go to Death Mountain or something. From what the Guru of Time said it sounds like we're going to use that doll to subvert Chronos destiny but I can see it going two ways:

1. We got back in time and replace Chrono with the Homunculus doll so that Chrono doesn't die

2. We just create a new Chrono by implanting his soul into the Chrono Doll

Im sort of hoping it's the latter.

I'll say for the whole thing happening though it was kind of insane. When we triggered Lavos and the party got wiped I didn't know what to expect but I really didn't expect Chrono to become Jesus and die for my sins. He just disintegrated and I had to go to my friend "dude he just died" and we were pretty speechless. I'm not unfamiliar with the idea of the MC dying but I feel like that's more of an anime thing and in video games they don't do it often. It's honestly very ballsy and I think it was pretty masterful. There's lots of ways one could go out by Chrono did some messiah shit and is like basically a god.

What was just as impressive though was the segment following immediately after. The Dalton guy is pretty funny but right after that where all of our shit gets taken was super good. It really made you feel like "wow Chrono was so good that we suck now without him" like Goku died or something. It was pretty heavy

Nice, this is what I wanted to hear. I was really unfamiliar with MCs dying. Up until GoT S1 I had never seen it before unless it's like the end of a movie or something. I've never even seen it in any other video games. Totally ballsy move and one of the reasons CT is still one of the GOATs. There aren't many video games with an actual engaging story -- even today, despite how hard AAA games keep trying

 

[GwJumpman]

That's the breakdown I was looking for!

I basically had the same reaction the first time I ever played.

Spoiler: Missable in-game question

Did you get another character after losing him?

I sure did, he's the NEW protagonist in the party

 

[TD]

I sure did, he's the NEW protagonist in the party

Fucking love that twist.

 

[Smacktard]

Fucking love that twist.

I didn't get it the first time I played the game. I remember reading that he could be a party member and being totally shocked

Fuck what a good game

 

[TD]

If they ever remade it with staying true to the original game I'd lose it.

 

[GwJumpman]

Honestly i felt like it was gonna happen for a bit. He was giving off major Vegeta vibes when he revealed he tried to summon Lavos so he could get a chance to beat him

 

[GwJumpman]

I was very high at the time but I took a picture of this screen for some reason



Frogs face and being at 1hp is just pain

 

[shortkut]

I sure did, he's the NEW protagonist in the party

There’s a way to not get him. New game + is an awesome feature

 

[GwJumpman]

Went in to the black egg!

Mashed A on baby Lavos


Got to Zeal in space and wasted time attacking her hands


Went back and beat her plus Lavos. Got to a chance to use a portal going inside its shell so I took it. But I had no idea how to go back and I saved on the other side so I decided to go try and get Chronos back.

REVIVED CHRONOS

then went to the Sun Temple and got destroyed and I forgot to save so now I have to revive Chronos again

 

[Zell 17]

(why are they called Mystics???)

This is from Nintendo's censoring days. But, the newer retranslations are worse (they are called Fiends). And Magus is called "The Fiendlord" which I detest.

 

[GwJumpman]

This is from Nintendo's censoring days. But, the newer retranslations are worse (they are called Fiends). And Magus is called "The Fiendlord" which I detest.

I actually learned a cool tidbit about Magus when I saw his Japanese name and it's just Mao which is Demon King.

 

[GwJumpman]

I actually learned a cool tidbit about Magus when I saw his Japanese name and it's just Mao which is Demon King.

Which is also funny because that's not his REAL name. So this guy experiences his childhood in 12,000 BC and grows up into an edgelord out for vengeance and he decides to call himself "Demon King" instead of like "Carl" or whatever his name was

 

[GwJumpman]

So I'm just replaying the bit where I have to revive Crono because I forgot to save last time apparently, and it really is wild just the whole ordeal of it all.

Main character dies so we talk to a time master. Time master tells us to go talk to the other master who's turned into a blueberry. Go to blueberry man and he tells us the person we want to revive needs to be important and we need a clone.

So we go back to the millennial festival and this dude has a CRONO CLONE doll just lying around?? I dunno who this guy is:



But there's something funky about this guy for him to have a doll that is sufficient to replace a person who was about to die in time. If it was trivial to save someone from their death with time travel, we wouldn't need to replace Crono with the doll in the first place. So the very fact that this scheme needs to be done right and we need to have a "believable" replacement for Crono makes me wonder about who this Norstein Bekkler guy could be.

If I had to GUESS who this guy is, I'd say he's somebody from the era of 12,000 BC who would've been contemporary with Magus during his Janus days, the shit with the queen and the Mammon Machine, and the Gurus being launched through time.

Maybe somehow he was warned ahead of time about the need to create the Crono doll, without knowing exactly what it would be needed for, so that when Crono did die we had the macguffin needed to bring him back. Maybe later in the game I'll encounter someone in the past that is either Bekkler himself or someone who will know him, and we tell them what's gonna happen, and that person is responsible for making sure Bekkler makes the doll.


Also as a side note, I really wish Zelda was more like this. Zelda likes to goof around with time travel and mixing in elements of time travel paradoxes as well as playing with the ideas of fate/destiny and loss. But compared to the segment when Crono dies, anything else I've experienced in Zelda (minus maybe the mood of like Majora's Mask or Twilight Princess) feels trivial compared to what Chrono Trigger put forth. Even though Crono comes back, you can BEAT the game with him still dead. There's some version of events where Crono dies to Lavos and literally that's it. Zelda would never let that happen with Link and it's kind of a shame.

And even though Crono comes back, and even though you can kind of imagine (as a player in 2023) that we're gonna bring him back, it was so huge when the part was just left without him. You have a hole in the party composition that NOBODY fills (Nobody's got that raw DPS and offensive capabilities) so until you pick up Magus (optionally) your party feels like it's genuinely missing something because it is missing something.

 

[GwJumpman]

And I forgot to even talk about why I made this post. When we go to resurrect Crono, there's an ECLIPSE that happens? I don't know why the revival of Crono almost seems so ominous somehow, almost like we did something we were supposed to do. I feel like somehow by reviving Crono we did something bad that is gonna have some consequence.

Either way though, hard read that has no chance to be true: By saving Crono, we are dooming him to a FUTURE fate that will end up making him become Lavos. After this is all said and done, something will happen that will maybe bring us back to the past but ultimately something will happen that will make Crono become a monster.

Here's my evidence:

1. Lavos is spiky and red like Crono's head
2. Lavos mimicks the bosses Crono fought

Lavos mimicking other bosses (to the point where we see a brief visual of the boss even, almost like we're recollecting things), ones where he wasn't even present, makes me think the memories of the party's adventure might somehow be inside Lavos's mind as well.

When Lavos screams, I've been interpreting it as a wild monster screaming in a bloodthirsty way. But maybe that wail is the desperate plea of a desperate soul trapped within the shell of a monster...

 

[GwJumpman]

ONE LAST READ: When we revived Crono, we accidentally sort of implanted a part of Lavos deep within Crono and this is what will prompt the later shit

 

[VashTheStampede]

This is such a freaking awesome read. Thanks for this.

 

[GwJumpman]

 

[GwJumpman]

Okay I finished Chrono Trigger. I got the ending where Crono's mom chases after a cat into a portal and we got adventuring in the credits. I laid out my thoughts on the game as I played so I don't actually have a whole lot to say.

I will say I'm a LITTLE disappointed there wasn't more to the Lavos lore. It seemed like at the end of the day Lavos ended up just being some crazy space alien parasite thing that goes from planet to planet and that's it. I was kind of feeling there was a bit more to it or that something on Earth impacted Lavos's origin, but I guess I was wrong on that one.

I did also check out the alternate endings and the one where you beat the game with Crono still dead is pretty dark. I dunno about the imagery of that credits there but it almost seems like Marle dies after seeing a hallucination of Crono and running off that cliff.


There is one bit of the game that's unexplained though that I'm wondering about: The "Entity"

This was something mentioned offhand a few times in the game, primarily by Lucca. I didn't think about it too much when it came up because there was still a game to finish so I was thinking we'd get an answer, but we don't.

Here's my guess on who the "Entity" is: It's the Earth's consciousness itself. In addition to these sporadic mentions of the "Entity", something I also picked up on was this recurring theme of your life flashing before your eyes when you're about to die or something. And when speaking about the Entity, Lucca remarks that it's as if something/someone is trying to relive pivotal moments in history to see what could've been done different or whatever.

What I THINK is that as Lavos literally sucks the Earth dry of its energy, the Earth's life is flashing before its own metaphorical eyes. When that happened, the "memory" of all the Lavos-centric events flashed before its eyes and caused them all to be connected via time portals. It's not that anybody was specifically directed to do anything different, but the conditions for the future to change opened because of the future dying Earth.


Another thought on who the "Entity" could be: Future Lavos. Something the game made pretty clear, I feel like, is that time travel is a Lavos thing. There's several instances where we wind up forcefully time traveled away from Lavos. You could say that someone else is sort of "saving" us from some scenarios, but it does also happen to Magus before he's aligned with us. So I sort of feel like everyone being sent away during that 12,000 BC supposed-to-lose fight was caused by Lavos himself. I would guess that Lavos does it as a defense mechanism or something; maybe he hasn't hibernated long enough so he wants to avoid risk or something.

Either way though, the Future Lavos idea I think would be some Lavos far in the future of 2300 AD after he developed even further. Maybe in the future, Lavos is like "dude i've been here for millions of years, i'm so BORED. If I had known Earth would be this shitty in the future I wouldn't have done all this" so he uses the portals to ensure people could stop himself to save himself from a shitty and boring future on stupid broken Earth.




So there's my thoughts; wish I got a bit more on Lavos and the Entity but ultimately satisfied with the story. This is easily the most impressive 16-bit game I've ever played.

Funnily enough we tried transitioning right into Chrono Cross but my friend was not into it so that got put on the backburner. I googled a little bit how Chrono Cross connects to Chrono Trigger and it seems Cross takes place in the "new" future that happens after Lavos is defeated so that's cool. There probably isn't a whole lot that ties back to Trigger behind some references and that one Guru who was in the future, but I am still a bit curious. I may give that one a go on my own time.