Part 15: Unending Hatred

Silent Light





hi





get it

Do you get the joke. Because you better...



There's an odd man who lives near the cave in the mountains to the west. You might enjoy a chat with him.



Humans fought the Mystics over 400 years ago. My motto is "forgive and forget" but not many seem to agree with me.

Remember back in 600AD all those imps and the weird human-hating creatures in the Cathedral? They survived in the four hundred years since and ended up founding a village on the continent east of Guardia and Poore. They're...still a bit bitter all these years later.



Apparently modern-day people wielding magic powers is weird. Go figure!



Most Mystics hold a grudge against humans. Be careful...

Also fantasy racism.





Crono hasn't eaten in like a week. Of course I'm gonna let the poor guy get some grub.



Medina's like any other town we've been to, except with Mystics instead of humans.





There's a shop, though they're not very accommodating to us.





You know, at least until we beat them up.



All right. I'll sell something to you.

On the bright side, winning this easy battle lets us buy some supplies.



You, uh, may not want to, though.



There's actually some solid late-game gear here. That Demon Edge, for instance, gives +90 attack (Crono's current blade, the Bolt Sword, gives +25), and the armor's basically double what the Titan Vest gives you. But, you know, good luck actually affording it.







Pleading leads to another easy battle. Which gives us a chance to look at a new Dual Tech!



Marle and Lucca learned this last update. Antipode, of course, attacks enemies with Antipode.

To be fair, Woolsey was accurate with this description.



Anyway, this spell simply adds the damage from Marle's Ice and Lucca's Fire spells together. However, it deals Shadow damage and affects a small area, so it's still a pretty solid spell in most situations. It's just that, if you're fighting an enemy where elements don't matter, there's no reason to go Antipode over Fire and Ice.



This is a bit expensive for an inn, but not so much so that you'd turn it down if there weren't numerous free alternatives for healing.



The last area is the Elder's House.



It houses a Magic Tab and our first Speed Tab. Speed Tabs are especially great since characters don't gain Speed with levels and one tab can make a noticeable difference. It's a good idea to focus on getting the slower characters up to at least 12. Or don't, this game is easy, do whatever the hell you want, I won't judge.



Oh, great Magus...why didn't you simply exterminate the human race 400 years ago?







Those who do not possess magic will find it difficult sneak by. [sic] Well, I better get back to work and tidy up before Ozzie VIII finds me.

Ozzie's a jerk. Go figure.

The boss for the next dungeon has high physical defense, so our ideal party to fight it is Crono/Marle/Lucca.



Finally, there's the square.

SILENCE





Probably from those guys...?

If you talk to the circling Mystics, they'll rotate through three conversations.

400 years have passed since Magus commanded the Mystics, and waged war against the humans. When Lavos is awakened, all humans are DOOMED! Mwa ha!

As soon as Magus's creation, the mighty Lavos, awakens from his long sleep, the human race is doomed.

Long ago, the all mighty Magus brought forth the all-powerful Lavos.

These guys flat-out tell us that Lavos is the creation of Magus. The same Magus that the people of 600AD are currently at war with.

However, we can't actually visit 600AD yet. Even if we go back to the End of Time and go backwards in 2300AD back to Bangor/Bongor Dome where we first entered the era, we'd still be stuck in that open field. No sequence breaking (other than early endings of course).





Also this thing we can't do anything about.

Memories of Green



Nothing to do but head west. There's a place to stop by on the way.





If you missed any gear from the Factory, you can grab it here. Otherwise, the only new weapon is the Red Katana for Crono. A few more attack points, and also +2 Magic to further boost Lightning's damage.



What a sad state of affairs...

Who needs weapons when you have magic?





Melchoir gives us some new directions to get back home.



This entire dungeon has no music, just running water. Have the battle theme instead.

Battle 1





These Henches are nothing to note (with magic, their high defense is suddenly irrelevant), so here's Provoke, which has a chance to inflict Chaos. Unfortunately, Chaos is kinda garbage as a status (at least on the enemy, Chaos being garbage in general means it's a mere nuisance on your party) so Provoke is essentially useless, even more so than Hypno Wave, which at least affects multiple enemies and inflicts a more useful status effect.

Chrono Trigger is not a game built around status effects.



I do a lot of switching back and forth for this dungeon. While you want Lucca and Marle for the boss, Robo's very useful for the random encounters since he can do magic damage to all enemies. Crono and Robo's Rocket Roll DT in particular will pretty much end any encounter instantly.







The Jinn Bottle absorbs MP, while the Octoblush breathe fire and can ink you, inflicting Blind. Blind would be bad if physical attacks were useful in this dungeon, but all enemies here have higher-than-usual physical defense.

This dungeon's whole gimmick is "Use those magic spells you just learned, you twit." The high physical defense is obvious, but having an enemy inflict Blind further enforces this (even if, as I just said, Chrono Trigger is not a game built around status effects since they're so trivial to heal).





As I said, Rocket Roll ends every encounter here besides the boss. Learn it. Love it.



Fire + Rocket Punch = Fire Punch.



Tempurites are unremarkable other than, of course, their sky-high physical defense.



That and their awesome animations, of course.

Lucca's is also pretty good. This game has great animations in general.



Fire Punch is just adding together the damage of the two techs. The incentive for using it is the added area of effect around the targeted monster, though it's a bit small.

The theme of the early Dual Techs is adding an area of effect, rather than more damage.



Unremarkable other than, shocker, their high physical defense!



I have magic so



Drain HP, high physical defense, can inflict Sleep, still not as obnoxious as their FF4 brethren.



+2 Magic, which translates to another 8-10 points of damage per spell at this stage of the game. It's alright for now since we still have limited accessories, but it's not going to be useful for very long.



This is the last interesting thing before the boss.



After Rock and Rocket Rolling the rest of the encounters, we get to the save point before the boss. Time to swap Marle back in and get ready...



Boss Battle 1



This is Heckran.



If you've been paying any sort of attention this update, you'll have predicted him to have high physical defense. You'll want magic for him, obviously.



Robo's not as useful here since you're fighting one enemy, so use the others and spam single attacks.



Heckran, of course, has attacks. Mostly water-themed, but also a few physicals.



This guy isn't just another Spekkio fight, however. This is also a "Counter Attack phase" boss, much like the first bosses of FF4-7.





In this case, Heckran counters with a nasty water attack that hits everyone and deals large damage.



Otherwise, wait for him to end this phase (heal during this phase if you gotta) before throwing more spells at his ugly face.



And of course he has this attack, forever punishing the ticklish.



If you can juggle two different gameplay gimmicks (Magic Only, Counter Phase), you'll breeze through this fight.



The world would've belonged to us Mystics!





We learned about this back in Medina with optional conversations, but the dots don't connect for our party until we defeat a mandatory boss who says it in a rather forced manner.

Ah, the challenges of game design...



If we go to the Middle Ages and take out Magus, can we change history?
We could use the Gate at the Fairgrounds!

Never mind the fact that Magus actually was defeated back in 600AD...


However, even though Magus was defeated, Lavos clearly wasn't. It's up to us to finish the job.





Peaceful Days



And we conveniently end up back home!

First, while we're in the area...





It's my finest work! The ultimate in defense for my, daughter! [sic]



Slightly better defense-wise than the Titan Vest, it has two very useful perks. The +2 Speed is invaluable of course, and this is also the first equipment with elemental resistance, halving fire damage. Not too shabby!



Surprise, this isn't the last we've seen of Taban's gear.



Next up, let's visit home and-





Stop scaring me like that!

Oh yeah, that happened. Uh, sorry you thought we were dead.

Anyway, if we leave and re-enter, we can introduce Crono's Mom to our other friends.



Lucca! We hardly see you these days!
I've been kinda busy...
Don't let life pass you by, dear! And say "Hi" to your parents!

Lucca's too busy with genius to deal with common folk.

Also we've got a robot



Greetings. I am Robo. Crono is my friend.
My, how polite! Strange looking, but well behaved! Crono, you could learn a thing or two.

Crono's very well-behaved, thank you! Who do you think he is, JERK?

Let's go shopping or something.



It's that guy we rescued from the prison.



Man, was I up the creek! I went off on a buying trip, and ended up getting jailed with a bunch of thieves! The officials planned to execute me without a trial! What has gotten into them?

Oh, uh, we may have accidentally caused that. Sorry.

(Even though he was clearly missing before we messed with time... Fritz is probably a criminal pretending not to be, now that I think about it)



Hope my Dad never hears about this.



Altruism always pays (in the form of items I'll never use).





Working hard?
But, of course! R, right?
Y, yes.
Well, all right...





I guess you can't keep every secret a secret.





Same inventory as Melchoir. I pity buy some Mid Tonics because I have compassion for 16-bit digital representations of people (8-bit people can rot for all I care though).



Hey let's visit the place where we almost got executed.

Courage and Pride



Come on, Crono! I don't wanna see that bullheaded fool!

Marle's not interested. So what if we enter without her...?



This is NOT good.
What is going on?!

So yeah, no getting into Guardia Castle right now. At least in this time period.







Revisiting a time portal adds it to the End of Time. These two are optional and not really needed at all, but might as well, right?





If we really want to, we can re-enter that last dungeon.

We really don't want to.





Anyway, we're done with our home period. 1000AD is boring, the people in it are boring, and life in general is boring unless you have the power to control time itself.



Next time we evade boredom, and I guess try to fight against the inevitable destruction of humanity too. I mean, why not?