Chrono Cross Day 3

I think the highlight of this play session is that I think I actually figured the battle system out. EVERYONE ON THE BATTLEFIELD has the stamina gauge from -7 to 7. Whenever the enemies use an element, it takes them just as long to recover, giving me ample time to take them down. I still haven't figured out exactly why the enemies can break my combos, but I assume I'll probably be able to do the same shortly.

I've also pin-pointed exactly how the spell charges build up. As your character attacks, depending on how many hits, their little gauge will move up a bracket giving you access to higher and higher levels of elements. You can only use one of each element per battle with the exception of consumables, which themselves are limited to only five uses. Using a bracket 3 element will drain your spell charges all the way down while using a bracket 1 will still leave you with atleast some elements. Interestingly enough, it seems you can put low level elements in the higher brackets to gain some added power.

So far the only major thing in battle that I haven't been able to figure out is what exactly the element gauge in the upper left corner does. Depending on the last three elemental affinities used, the gauge will change colors showing what was used. I'm guessing that's just there to remind you, but then again, I think they're going to come into play later as I've noticed that each battle in the areas will start with the same elements everytime.

As far as storyline events go, Kid, Poshul and myself went on our merry way through the Bone Canyon and found a talking skull. Judging by the character portrait in his text boxes, I'm assuming this macabre artifact is going to at some point be a party member, but I really don't have any need for undead clowns in my party -- I think I'll stick to mutant dogs and scarecrows thank you. We also met up with Solt and Peppor of the Acacia Dragoons; wanting a rematch, we fought valiantly and gave them a reason to fear "ghosts".

We made our way through to Termina where we met the swordsman Glenn, blacksmiths Zippa and Zappa, a rambunctious youth with the bizarre need to put emphasis on the 'CHA' suffix in whatever crazy accent he's speaking in, and finally, we added a magician named Guile to the party.


I've heard that Guile himself was supposed to Magus from Chrono Trigger originally, but due to complications in the plot, the concept was never quite fluffed out. The connection truly is there from his long, flowing, silver hair to his floating prowess to his adept skills in magic. I'm curious to see if he's going to be important to the plot later on as I've gathered that most of the characters bear little to no weight on the plot itself.

Kid had decided that we needed to break into someone by the name of Lord Viper's mansion, which itself seems to be almost a parallel to going into Magus' castle in Trigger. The Acacia Dragoons seem to be working under Viper, so I suppose it makes some sense for Serge to want to find some answers. Despite that, I'm kind of gathering that Kid is mostly looking for treasure, but I suppose it's too early to tell