Third Disc's The Charm

Heh.

The Blue Dragon campaign is finally starting to wind down somewhat.  I'm on the third and final disc, where the plot has decided to thicken a bit.  Some of the usual RPG cliches have been played straight and then tossed on their ear a bit.

I won't go into details until the campaign itself is done, but suffice to say the usual "hero winds up helping the bad guy" happens, with a dash of "the cool character vanishes --nope not a spy" and now we're at the lowest point of morale for the good guys.  The big epiphany is forthcoming, willpower will be raised to the max, yadda yadda.

But hell, it's not the story itself so much as how it's put together.  This is still a fun little ride.  The battle system is well put together; you can break it with traditional RPG munchkining, but it doesn't get too broken until you're ready to strut your stuff against the local forces of ultimate badness (which is the best time to do so in any case).  The enemies are actually somewhat refreshing; they've just enough whimsy and have just enough variety of forms and skillsets to keep you on your toes.  The "Monster Fight" gimmick is solid, but can be tricky to pull off if you're not using and abusing the field skill mechanics.

It's helped some by keeping away from the numerical escalation of many modern JRPGs.  It's very clear that some the brains behind the wonders of Chrono Trigger decided to have something of a spiritual successor with this game.  You only have 5 characters tops, the enemies use all sorts of techniques but are meant to be outwitted instead of outgunned, there's an emphasis on special accessories and rewarding the use of basic attacks instead of constant spells/techniques.  A good example comes from my previous post.  Using passive skills and gear effects, a basic attack can be charged, have an elemental property, generate gold, have a chance to steal an item, and drain health or magic, all at the same time.  It's not hard to figure out; it doesn't require a counter-intuitive build or crazy amount of grinding.  The game just gives you the tool box and tells you to go nuts, essentially.

The game takes advantage of it's relative small scale (of the combat system), and divvies out plenty of goodies for the magically-inclined as well.  We've got stuff like specialized area effect spells, traditional elemental rock-paper-scissors nastiness, multi-target heals and buffs, and extra effects attached to direct damage dealers.  This is stuff most games will either not bother with (for fear of trivializing combat), refuse to hand out until it's almost too late to matter or without excessive grinding (ditto), or force you to use and abuse just for survival (hard game is hard).  Instead, we are expected to find our preferred flavor of flashy death and go nuts.  You have to use some variety--there's plenty of critters that will punish you if stick to just one or two tactics all the time--and you'd better understand how the turn queue works.  But other than that, we are good to go on unleashing the Harvest at any time.

The only way this would be any better is if we got Combo Techs.