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this sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 57
Date: July 07, 2001
Author: Amazon User

aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dont get this

Final Fantasy Fails the Grade.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 53
Date: August 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is for all you unfortunate game players who think the Final Fantasy series is best series since the invention of Pong.....sorry, not in my book, it fact, I rate it the worst RPG ever created. For the record, the first FF game was Cosmic Fantasy for the Turbo Duo system (a system that was years ahead of the others; first with 16-bits, first with CD drive) and compared to other RPGs, it stunk on ice. The boring tedium of the fight scenes was intolerable, and that is the heart of any game. The fact that the heroes just stand there and do not even interact with the monsters your fighting made me question the sanity of its creators. I found it as much fun as reading Beowulf in High School. Cosmic Fantasy was the first CD RPG I bought and after the great games I played in the past on 16-bit like, Neutopia I & II, Dragon's Curse and even Order of the Griffon, I expected a big rush from the CD driven Cosmic Fantasy but found myself instead, appalled at the total lack of interaction. I had even questioned the validity of CD drive over 16-bit entirely until I played CD RPGs like Dynastic Hero and Might and Magic III. To sum it up, if I had known that the Final Fantasy series was created by the same people that did Cosmic Fantasy, I would have never bought it in the first place. And to all of you RPG fans who think otherwise, all I can think is that you've never played a really good one.

No FF7...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 61
Date: March 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Now, I'm just about the biggest Final Fantasy fan around, but FF4 is just nothing compared to FF7. FF4 doesn't have anything in it that can match the horror of when AERIS DIES!!!!!!!!

And man, that Chrono Trigger game. What's the deal with that? That isn't even Final Fantasy at all, just like the FF Movie. Chrono Trigger was incredibly boring, and I was displeased with its lack of random encounters. And it should have had cool characters, like Cloud, and Aeris, and Barret, and Wedge, and Tifa. They were great.

Worse than their SNES counterparts

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 12
Date: December 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Normally I do not review on Amazon, but I am deeply surprised that no one else seemed to notice any of the flaws in the game that I did, considering how obvious they were: hmm... how many reviewers actually played this re-make...? :)

So, before I begin this review, I would like to qualify that I'm a huge Squaresoft fan: I have played thirteen different final fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, and Xenogears. When I played FF4 and CT, I greatly enjoyed both.

After purchasing the re-makes (since I do not have an SNES anymore) and playing them, I must say I was disappointed.

First of all, the 'improvements' that you'll actually care about:

1.)You can hold down the 'O' button to run.
2.) The cut scenes from Chrono Trigger are well done and enjoyable to watch.

Next, all the 'downgrades'.

1.) The cut scenes for FF4 are a slap in the face. It's about 2 minutes of random, poor quality CG.
2.) The game now has loading times between different places (towns, for example); even with the loading times....
3.) THE GAME RUNS SLOWER THAN IT DID ON THE SNES!!! It's due to the fact that the PS has to read the data off the CD, while the SNES already had the whole game loaded into memory. It ran, on average, 1.2x slower than the original, but sometimes as high as 2.0x!!!
4.) The battle timing mechanism for FF4 feels different from the SNES version, and IMHO, is worse. This may be a result of the slowdown discussed above.

So in conclusion, these two games are both great classics (5 stars). However, if you've previously played them on the SNES or an emulator, you're going to be disappointed by how slowly they run (-3 stars).

The old ones were better

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: February 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Here's what I think. I loved the ones for SNES (although Chrnono Trigger was a little too easy). However, gamers who have already played FF2 American (or better, 4 Japanese, the "hard" version) and Chrono Trigger, don't get this game. It takes a lot longer to save, it's slower, and the add-in animation scenes and movie clips are very few and short. About the only good difference was in FF4, but if you really want to play the original FF4 instead of the American FF2, "simplified" version, then just go to Japan and get that game. Because, honestly, I don't think the new features are worth it. All the abilities and items aren't new, jsut restored, and it is all in the Japanese version.

Chrono Trigger remake not quite everything I had hoped for.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 10
Date: September 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to admit that I mostly bought this collection for Chrono Trigger, and as such I'll have to remain silent about Final Fantasy IV. As far as the latter is concerned, I've only played through about five minutes, and while I liked what I saw, I don't feel confident that I can review it well at this time. My score for this product is limited to CT.

The game itself is almost legendary among gamers, and so I will have to assume that you are already familiar with its good points (found in many, many other reviews on this site) and delve straight into the reasons why I was disappointed with this release. Bear in mind that the game itself is NOT one of my main criticisms, and the two-star rating is not indicative of my dissatisfaction with the storyline, graphics, characterizations, and so forth. Rather, my griping deals with its delivery on the PSX.

The loading times are terrible. I've heard a lot of explanations for WHY these loading times exist, such as cartridges (e.g. the original SNES cartridge for CT) don't take as long to load as CDs, and that this PSX version actually runs an emulator that converts the original SNES data into something the PSX can load, hence creating delays that weren't present in the original. I don't entirely understand these explanations since I'm not familiar with the technical or hardware end of things: what I do know is that this game runs ridiculously, embarrassingly slow.

Every time you engage in a battle, everything freezes and you're stuck there waiting for the battle to begin. Since I bought a PS2 these load times have gone down substantially and so now they're maybe only ten seconds or so, but I remember on my original PSX the load time before a battle would oftentimes be as long as two or three minutes. And I'm not just talking about boss battles, I'm talking about run-of-the-mill ordinary battles that you run into ALL THE TIME. Even on a PS2, those ten-second delays would add up very quickly. I also dreaded every time I had to open the menu because then I'd have to wait a long time for it to pop up.

This is especially annoying when you're doing battle on a "moving" area, like an elevator or conveyor belt, because the otherwise beautiful flowing backgrounds become halting and jerky. The most embarrassing example of this is the final battle against Lavos. During the battle, he'll frequently shift the time period of the battle, and this involves changing the floating background image. On the original SNES this was a really cool, if not totally useless design feature. On the PSX, this makes an already long battle even longer because the game hangs up for a little while before each scene change. And at the end, when you finally kill him for good, his death sequence involves rapidly flashing through different time periods. On the SNES this was awesome; on the PSX this is totally lame, because each scene change is preceded by a delay. Unlike the SNES game, it didn't leave you feeling satisfied that you had just beaten the hardest boss in the game, it leaves you feeling frustrated that the designers for the PSX port couldn't fix this.

I'm a big fan of Akira Toriyama's work, and thus I was very pleased with the inclusion of anime cut scenes. However, I have a VERY large gripe: the US release does not translate the Japanese subtitles. Normally it's not a problem because most of the cut scenes don't have any dialogue at all, but I can think of two off the top of my head that do. (SPOILER WARNING FOR THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH) When Chrono is killed, there is a brief flashback to Janus (as a kid) telling the party that one of them will die soon. That one's not too bad, since you can kind of figure out for yourself what's going on in this scene (especially since it's a flashback of something that happened in-game). However, the second scene, which you can see when you beat any of the game's endings, involves the downfall of Guardia and the rise of Porre. This is a pretty crucial bit of information that should've been translated since 1) you can't figure that stuff out just by playing the game itself, 2) it sets up the story for Chrono Cross, and 3) the scene itself is just impossible to understand unless you can read the Japanese subtitles. I can't imagine why they didn't bother to translate this stuff, especially since they translated the PSX team credits (which appear to also be in FMV format).

Speaking of translation, I'm a little disappointed that this game did not receive a retranslation, as FF4 did. Don't get me wrong, I think Ted Woolsey did a decent job with CT. However, it's undeniable that a lot of changes had to be made when they brought it over to the West, whether it was in shortening text to fit into the SNES's format, localizing dialogue to be more "accessible" to young American children, or in censoring references to religion, alcohol, sexuality, and so forth. Furthermore, Woolsey's translation sometimes hiccuped, leaving behind either plot holes that didn't previously exist or ambiguous lines that were actually intended to be much stronger in the original Japanese. I realize that it would've been a lot of trouble for Square to give a retranslation for something that they thought already had a solid translation, so this aspect was not factored too heavily into my scoring of the game; it just would've been really nice, especially since, as I said, FF4 received a retranslation.

I hesitate to recommend this version of the game to first-time players. I think CT is a game that all RPG fans should at least be familiar with, but I'm not sure this PSX version is the one they should cut their teeth on. If you're like me and you've already played this game dozens of times on the SNES, skip this one. (Unless of course you're buying it for FF4.) Stick with the original SNES cartridge, and hope for a GBA/DS/Wii VC conversion at some point in the future. The load times are simply unbearable, especially if you're used to the quick pace of the original.

Chrono Trigger reviewed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: September 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I grew up playing Chrono Trigger and actually have written a review of Yasunori's part of the OST. Over time I've developed higher standards in video game plot and more specifically in character developement. If you're looking for character developement here, you'll have to use your imagination because our hero is a "silent protagonist".

I guess my main difficulty with both titles in the collection is load times. It might be worth it to spend that $60 or $80 on Chrono Trigger for SNES and then play it with an emulator.

Excellent package, but serious flaws in code

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: August 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Both Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger are excellent games (CT could be my favorite game of all time). Final Fantasy IV has been excellently restored to its original "hardtype" version. Story elements and dialog have been restored, which is extremely exciting.

However, I have a complaint about the port. Somewhere in the port, the code for saving a game was not optimized for the playstation but instead uses a version that works fine on solid-state memory (like a cartridge, which these games were originally on) but horribly when going from CD to solid-state. This is a serious flaw, as saves can take up to half a minute to complete. That is why this game gets 3 stars on overall.

If only...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: August 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

There is a demand for Chrono Trigger. That is evident; just do a quick eBay search and you'll see [money amount]price tags popping up, multiple bids on every auction for just the game cartridge for an out-of-production game system. It was an interesting and fun game.

I used to play Final Fantasy series games. My favorite, after I'd played them through seven, was Final Fantasy II (IV) for the SNES. I don't really know what strikes me about this game, I just know that if I have to pick a favorite Final Fantasy, this one is it.

So when I rented FFChronicles I was thrilled to play FF4, the original Hardtype version never released in America. I was also excited about Chrono Trigger..

..but the truth is that these are two different games on two separate disks. Final Fantasy IV plays well from its disk. Apparently much of the game fits into Playstation's memory, so load times are refreshingly short and unnoticeable. It's not like playing on a blazing cartridge-based SNES, but it's not that bad.

Chrono Trigger is that bad. It came out a few years later than FF4 did, closer to the end of the SNES's lifespan (and during a time when developers were finding ways to pump better and better graphics, sound, effects, etc. from the machine). One way I imagine that Squaresoft was able to achieve the graphics and sound of Chrono Trigger was to take advantage of the load times of the SNES cartridge. Unfortunately, when translated to a system that has much more of a problem loading new information from the game medium (like Playstation), you see _evil things_.

How bad could it be? While playing the game, hit Triangle. Then count _several seconds_ while the menu loads. I promise.

This wouldn't bother me that badly, but it's such a frequently-used feature, such an inherent piece of the game that it seems rediculous to force a multiple-second load time every time you want to use it.

To me, the true measure of how 'good' a game is is the fun factor. Is it fun? While Chrono Trigger SNES was, I'm sorry to say that the load times.. and, I'm not easily swayed, mind you.. but the LOAD TIMES actually reduce the fun I have with this game, and worse, make me yearn badly for the SNES version.

So, if you've never played this game before Playstation, find someone you know, a wierd kind of person, into perhaps really strange and unkown bands, with plenty of posters on his walls, who actually has a Super Nintendo and Chrono Trigger.. and play it at his house.

Classic games...not so classic load times...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Both of these games are some of the greatest RPGs ever released. But unfortunately Square/Enix released this game with the same horrendous loading times that killed the psx release of Final Fantasy 6. I know it sounds ridiculous that I'm complaining about petty loading times, but BELIEVE ME, once you play the ps1 version of Chrono Trigger you will be going nuts from impatience with these load times. If you're fast, you might be able to prepare dinner, or even take a shower while the menu loads up. And when you enter the next screen you might as well leave to use the bathroom. Okay maybe I am overemphasizing it a bit. I found myself looking for the SNES version after i got this just so I could take advantage of quick loading time. Which to me was a collosul waste of money since I paid for the Chronicles already. But now that the game is on Greatest Hits, it is worth it just for the ff4 disk alone. This version of FF4 is just as good (probably even better) than the SNES version. As far as I know it has more monsters and items too, since this version is the japanese one translated into American and not the watered down American version. And since it's only 20 bucks now, it's a great deal for these classic games. Final Fantasy 4 has very fast loading time on this and it really makes me wonder why Square couldn't have made Chrono Trigger faster. It seems as though every time Square releases a double-RPG set one of the games always has horrible loading. But truth be told, the loading times on Chrono Trigger are not as horrible as Final Fantasy 6's, which were by all means the worst loading times Ive ever experienced, and I'd rather pay for a Super Nintendo and the game itself so I could avoid them (and the SNES version is much better for that game anyway). I guess after all it is worth it to pay $20 for these two classic games despite the horrendous patience problems you will endure. Unless you can find it on Greatest Hits, I wouldn't buy it though.

overall....about 3.5...but 4 was too good so i rounded down to 3

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