Monthly Archives: January 2017

Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 4: Colors

      Comments Off on Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 4: Colors

“Elemental” damage is a fundamental concept in RPGs: it gets pretty boring pretty quickly if your one attack is equally effective against all targets, so games will typically have several different categories of attack that are differently effective, giving you a slightly more interesting choice to make. In Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei franchise, exploiting elemental weaknesses… Read more »

Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 3: Elements

      Comments Off on Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 3: Elements

Elements are all the abilities a Chrono Cross character has other than basic attacks and defending. They include everything an RPG usually categorizes as “magic” – attacks, healing, buffs/debuffs, status effects, summons – as well as consumable items and special mechanics like stealing items. In a game full of weird, unique… Read more »

Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 2: Hit%

      Comments Off on Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 2: Hit%

Almost every RPG is concerned, at some level, with random probabilities. Aside from edge cases like The Legend of Zelda (and people debate ad nauseam whether Zelda should be considered an RPG anyway), somewhere in the code of an RPG you will find formulas descended from the dice rolls of Dungeons & Dragons,… Read more »

Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 1: Stamina

      Comments Off on Chrono Cross Mechanics Pt. 1: Stamina

It’s 2017 and it’s time to start our deep dive into the combat mechanics of Chrono Cross. I plan to put up more frequent and shorter posts on this topic for the next couple of months, and then move on to discussing my own game’s combat. Although it’s heavily inspired… Read more »