nrc2223
3 reviews liked by nrc2223
the ps3 wasn't a great console, but it's an excellent prison
Disco Elysium
2019
The great strength of Disco Elysium is this critical distance between the character and the player. In particular, it's the innovative mechanics of the inner monologues that force you to react according to the skills you have chosen. This is particularly subtle, but special mention must be made of the discussions with Klaasje, during which we know that our 'sensors' are being manipulated and giving incorrect information, if not for Volition managing to keep us on track. With this preliminary mention, it appears that Disco Elysium is a title that allows for almost infinite narrative creativity, since – as with the ideal role-playing game – the perception of the world is modified by our mental inclinations. The sense of detail is exceptional, so that the world reacts to our posture: eradicating The Expression and shaving will have effects on dialogue and how people view us, as will the use (or not) of illicit substances and the persona we choose to assume. While the title shines in its moments of absurdity, allowing for some particularly hillarious humour, it also has some very charming moments with a very pleasing metaphysical depth. Whether it's Pale's existential angst or Dora's acceptance of her choices, questions are posed across the screen about how one should live their life. As such, it is the whole political purpose of the game that attempts to answer this question. Disco Elysium doesn't hold back its blows against centrism, but the left-wing tones are greyed out. The Revolution failed, creating human wrecks, but yet the ideal was noble. More than ever, the title conjures up the unpleasant impression of an invisible hand – the Capital – coldly slaughtering individuals, without realising it. The rough and sublime prose is truly at the heart of this experience, a mark of the great CRPGs. Some would regret the ending, which contradicts the game's efforts to be a Golden Age whodunit, but this coincides with the metaphysical point it seeks to make. Disco Elysium comes across as an extraordinary experience, following in the footsteps of its illustrious predecessor, Planescape: Torment, with the twist of modernity and a political emphasis. It is, without doubt, a success.
As a prelude, Chrono Cross is my favorite game of all time and I think that it's functionally a perfectly-realized work of art. You can read an abstraction of my thoughts on the game proper here.
As for the remaster itself, looking at it purely as a repackaged and enhanced version of my favorite game... I've got some mixed feelings about it! As a rule of thumb I think that there's never anything wrong with an underappreciated work of art getting more accessibility and reaching a wider audience, but at the same time I kind of wish that this port was undertaken with more care, love and tact than it actually was. The big elephant in the room is the framerate: as beautiful as Chrono Cross is the game simply does not run well, often bottoming out at around 10 FPS during more cinematic and graphically intensive visuals. I'm used to this and so nominally it doesn't bother me, except that it's much, much worse when playing with the remastered graphics enabled. During summon animations or late-game element animations the game would crawl to less than 5 FPS, and some of the final dungeons were only barely playable because of how clunky and slow the maneuverability of the characters were.
I don't really think I like the new art, either - a lot of the original art has lost some of its trademark ambiguity (for example Serge's somewhat uncertain, hesitant expression and empty eyes are gone in favor of a more all-loving smile, complete with direct eye contact) and there are a few design revisions I'm not fond of like color schemes or detail work... but the one that really bothers me is that there's a criminal case of whitewashing going on for a lot of the characters. Chrono Cross's setting of El Nido is based on a mish-mash of different Central American and Southeast Asian countries (which one might be able to describe as a bit questionable in and of itself, admittedly) and so it makes sense that a large portion of the characters have darker skin tones, including major characters (Serge himself is even a bit on the tanner side, in spite of being a Square Enix protagonist)... and so naturally it makes sense that they're pretty much all made bone-white in the remaster's sprites, often and even at the expense of color schemes or what actually looks good. Furthermore a lot of the new sprites just look bad, and the horror of a certain character's appearance in the original is now just comedic as if they were deliberately trying to sanitize the game's undercurrent of darkness. In general there's something to say about valuing a unique and cohesive visual direction over what just looks "good," with regards to the original pixel-art portraits and low-polygon models...
...whose HD replacements do look quite good, I'll admit. Serge's model having an ever-present scowl is a particularly nice touch that I think befits his character, for example. I also think that the upscale-filtered backgrounds look remarkably good on a Switch's handheld screen, even if they don't look nearly as nice on a TV.
As for the quality-of-life changes, like the superpowers and encounter toggle... I don't know, they all seem a bit unnecessary to me. Chrono Cross isn't a particularly hard game save for the end stretch, and it's even less difficult if you sit down and learn how to use its unique deck-building battle system (and it's a good battle system! This game might have a strong anti-violence message and be unafraid of portraying the horrors that armed conflict brings unto innocent bystanders, but damn, brutality sure is fun when you card-gamify it!), and the game also already has so much quality-of-life features built into it that a lot of JRPGs still haven't caught up with! Being able to run away from any battle at any time to heal and switch up your equipment, enemies mostly being completely avoidable on the map, leveling being handled by leveling up your entire party when you beat a boss as opposed to anything resembling EXP or grinding, the Smith Spirit letting you forge weapons anywhere in the world as opposed to having to go to a store to do it... Chrono Cross really does everything it can to make you have as pleasant of an experience as possible, and adding even more on top of that just feels... unnecessary. (Especially because the power boost option seems to just max out your Elements charge? I don't know, I didn't mess around with it much). I also think the ability to disable encounters in a game about the inevitability of conflict is a bit puzzling, especially since encounters aren't hard to avoid if you want to, and sticking the time shifter in your inventory at the beginning not only feels lazy but de-incentivizes a New Game Plus replay.
Still though, this is Chrono Cross! It's my favorite game and I won't pretend like any of these issues kept me from being drawn into it even more intensely than my first playthrough, with every single allusion to the themes, ideas and messages I’d understood it to be about on my first playthrough further cementing the fact that this is indeed my single favorite game. I didn’t care about the poor FPS or questionable gameplay additions when I was standing up in front of my TV maneuvering my way through the game’s hardest boss, or getting chills when I found something I didn’t notice in a previous playthrough that further proved how tight-knit its storytelling and beliefs are. It certainly didn’t stop me from sniffling and wiping a few teardrops out of my eyes at the ending.
Do I think there are better ways to experience Chrono Cross? Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Preferable method is on a good, overclocked emulator running at native resolution with CRT Royale. But is it ever a bad thing to have my favorite game available to just pick-up-and-play if my endless rambling has gotten a friend into it who doesn’t care about any of that shit and just wants to see what all the fuss is about?
No, I don’t think it is. And even then, it made me so happy to see my favorite game get what felt like the recognition and love it deserved. Call me a sap but I teared up like a little baby booting this up for the first time and seeing the new art of all the party members set against Dreams of the Past, Memories of My Soul (a fantastic piece that perfectly captures the game’s feel and is a welcome late addition to its soundtrack).
It's a bit hard to go wrong with Radical Dreamers (the adventure game that acts as a sort-of-interquel-sort-of-prequel-sort-of-side-story to Chrono Cross), since it's an absolute miracle that it's available in any capacity, much less officially! I think I do prefer the original fan translation a bit more, but it's ultimately just a matter of taste... and how about that new ending, huh!?
As for the remaster itself, looking at it purely as a repackaged and enhanced version of my favorite game... I've got some mixed feelings about it! As a rule of thumb I think that there's never anything wrong with an underappreciated work of art getting more accessibility and reaching a wider audience, but at the same time I kind of wish that this port was undertaken with more care, love and tact than it actually was. The big elephant in the room is the framerate: as beautiful as Chrono Cross is the game simply does not run well, often bottoming out at around 10 FPS during more cinematic and graphically intensive visuals. I'm used to this and so nominally it doesn't bother me, except that it's much, much worse when playing with the remastered graphics enabled. During summon animations or late-game element animations the game would crawl to less than 5 FPS, and some of the final dungeons were only barely playable because of how clunky and slow the maneuverability of the characters were.
I don't really think I like the new art, either - a lot of the original art has lost some of its trademark ambiguity (for example Serge's somewhat uncertain, hesitant expression and empty eyes are gone in favor of a more all-loving smile, complete with direct eye contact) and there are a few design revisions I'm not fond of like color schemes or detail work... but the one that really bothers me is that there's a criminal case of whitewashing going on for a lot of the characters. Chrono Cross's setting of El Nido is based on a mish-mash of different Central American and Southeast Asian countries (which one might be able to describe as a bit questionable in and of itself, admittedly) and so it makes sense that a large portion of the characters have darker skin tones, including major characters (Serge himself is even a bit on the tanner side, in spite of being a Square Enix protagonist)... and so naturally it makes sense that they're pretty much all made bone-white in the remaster's sprites, often and even at the expense of color schemes or what actually looks good. Furthermore a lot of the new sprites just look bad, and the horror of a certain character's appearance in the original is now just comedic as if they were deliberately trying to sanitize the game's undercurrent of darkness. In general there's something to say about valuing a unique and cohesive visual direction over what just looks "good," with regards to the original pixel-art portraits and low-polygon models...
...whose HD replacements do look quite good, I'll admit. Serge's model having an ever-present scowl is a particularly nice touch that I think befits his character, for example. I also think that the upscale-filtered backgrounds look remarkably good on a Switch's handheld screen, even if they don't look nearly as nice on a TV.
As for the quality-of-life changes, like the superpowers and encounter toggle... I don't know, they all seem a bit unnecessary to me. Chrono Cross isn't a particularly hard game save for the end stretch, and it's even less difficult if you sit down and learn how to use its unique deck-building battle system (and it's a good battle system! This game might have a strong anti-violence message and be unafraid of portraying the horrors that armed conflict brings unto innocent bystanders, but damn, brutality sure is fun when you card-gamify it!), and the game also already has so much quality-of-life features built into it that a lot of JRPGs still haven't caught up with! Being able to run away from any battle at any time to heal and switch up your equipment, enemies mostly being completely avoidable on the map, leveling being handled by leveling up your entire party when you beat a boss as opposed to anything resembling EXP or grinding, the Smith Spirit letting you forge weapons anywhere in the world as opposed to having to go to a store to do it... Chrono Cross really does everything it can to make you have as pleasant of an experience as possible, and adding even more on top of that just feels... unnecessary. (Especially because the power boost option seems to just max out your Elements charge? I don't know, I didn't mess around with it much). I also think the ability to disable encounters in a game about the inevitability of conflict is a bit puzzling, especially since encounters aren't hard to avoid if you want to, and sticking the time shifter in your inventory at the beginning not only feels lazy but de-incentivizes a New Game Plus replay.
Still though, this is Chrono Cross! It's my favorite game and I won't pretend like any of these issues kept me from being drawn into it even more intensely than my first playthrough, with every single allusion to the themes, ideas and messages I’d understood it to be about on my first playthrough further cementing the fact that this is indeed my single favorite game. I didn’t care about the poor FPS or questionable gameplay additions when I was standing up in front of my TV maneuvering my way through the game’s hardest boss, or getting chills when I found something I didn’t notice in a previous playthrough that further proved how tight-knit its storytelling and beliefs are. It certainly didn’t stop me from sniffling and wiping a few teardrops out of my eyes at the ending.
Do I think there are better ways to experience Chrono Cross? Yeah, for sure, absolutely. Preferable method is on a good, overclocked emulator running at native resolution with CRT Royale. But is it ever a bad thing to have my favorite game available to just pick-up-and-play if my endless rambling has gotten a friend into it who doesn’t care about any of that shit and just wants to see what all the fuss is about?
No, I don’t think it is. And even then, it made me so happy to see my favorite game get what felt like the recognition and love it deserved. Call me a sap but I teared up like a little baby booting this up for the first time and seeing the new art of all the party members set against Dreams of the Past, Memories of My Soul (a fantastic piece that perfectly captures the game’s feel and is a welcome late addition to its soundtrack).
It's a bit hard to go wrong with Radical Dreamers (the adventure game that acts as a sort-of-interquel-sort-of-prequel-sort-of-side-story to Chrono Cross), since it's an absolute miracle that it's available in any capacity, much less officially! I think I do prefer the original fan translation a bit more, but it's ultimately just a matter of taste... and how about that new ending, huh!?