{"id":535,"date":"2009-03-31T21:53:58","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T02:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/535"},"modified":"2016-10-18T13:27:26","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T20:27:26","slug":"chrono-trigger-special-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/535","title":{"rendered":"Chrono Trigger: Special Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chrono Trigger<\/em>‘s combat system is essentially the ATB system from Final Fantasy<\/em>: each character has a gauge that fills up (at a rate determined by their Speed stat), and when it’s full, they can take an action, such as attacking an enemy or drinking a healing potion. When you use special “technique” attacks, however, things get a little different.<\/p>\n

I talked recently about special attacks in Final Fantasy VI<\/em>, including Cyan’s “sword techniques”. I mention this to avoid confusion: “Techniques” in CT<\/em> have nothing to do with that. Instead, they take the place of spells. All Techniques require “Magic Points” to use, even the ones that clearly involve nothing more than swinging a sword around in a fancy way. Every character has their own unique set of Techniques. Some simply do more damage than a standard attack, while some have more spell-like effects, such as healing damage or putting enemies to sleep. But the special thing about them, the thing that makes Chrono Trigger<\/em> combat different from standard ATB, is that many of them are affected by the geometry of the battlefield. There are basically two variants of this: those with ray effects, and those with burst effects. In either case, you target a specific enemy. Rays will effect anything in a straight line between your character and the target, while bursts affect everything within a certain distance of the target.<\/p>\n

It’s not really a very advanced concept. Plenty of games before and since have had similar area-of-effect rules. But it combines oddly with the ATB system, particularly when you take into account two things: (1) You can’t move during combat, and (2) the enemy can. (Please understand that the player has absolutely no control over where the player characters put themselves when battle starts: even if you approach the monster from a different direction, the team will dutifully run to their assigned spots for that encounter when combat mode begins). The ultimate effect on gameplay is that you can wind up spending a little time waiting for the randomly-wandering foes to line up or cluster together in order to get the most out of your mana. Now, I complained about how Cyan’s sword techniques in FF6<\/em> forced the player to sit there and wait to use them, and considered that particular UI experiment to be a failure. But the CT<\/em> system doesn’t force you to wait: it simply gives you an incentive<\/em> to wait voluntarily<\/em>. And I don’t often do so, but occasionally it’s worth it.<\/p>\n

Voluntary waiting is also the effect of the other new feature of the Techniques: combinations. Specific pairs of characters — or even trios, supposedly, although I have yet to see this in action — can perform their Techniques together for synergetic effects. For example, Crono, the main character, has a “cyclone” Technique that lets him do burst damage by leaping into the middle of the enemies and swirling his sword around. Lucca, the tech girl, has a Technique that does a ray of fire damage. Do them together and Crono uses his swirling sword to deflect Lucca’s fire ray in all directions, doing a large amount of fire damage to all foes. (Weirdly, there’s another Technique where Crono does the same thing to Marle’s healing-aura Technique, in which case the deflected magic misses the monsters and hits all the PCs.) But in order to do a combo attack, all of the characters involved must be ready to act. Since everyone’s action gauge fills up at a different rate, this means sitting and waiting sometimes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chrono Trigger‘s combat system is essentially the ATB system from Final Fantasy: each character has a gauge that fills up (at a rate determined by their Speed stat), and when it’s full, they can take an action, such as attacking an enemy or drinking a healing potion. When you use special “technique” attacks, however, things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[269,144,240],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rpg","tag-chrono-trigger","tag-final-fantasy","tag-final-fantasy-vi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4112,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/4112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}