Patterns of Evolution and Expansion in Chrono Trigger
The central principle of videogame design is that games should slowly get more difficult as the player gets deeper into them. The difficulty should also not rise uniformly, but should ebb and flow a little bit on its way up. This principle is called Nishikado Motion, after Tomohiro Nishikado, who first demonstrated the concept in Space Invaders. (You can read about this concept in more detail in the Reverse Designs of Super Mario World, Half-Life, and Diablo II.) Because RPGs preceded videogames as we know them today, they don’t always operate by Nishikado motion. Mainstream console RPGs like Chrono Trigger usually do, however. In this section, I’m going to look at how Chrono Trigger implements many of the core principles of videogame design in its systems, especially in enemy design.
The gradual development of non-boss enemies (commonly called mobs) in Chrono Trigger is generally uninteresting; most of the interesting design ideas appear in the boss fights. As stated earlier in the book, enemies break down into two groups: enemies that can be defeated by basic physical attacks and enemies that must be defeated by tech attacks. There are three methods that the designers use to make this distinction. The first method is the simplest: many enemies have physical defense stats so high that using basic attacks against them is either impossible or very inefficient, and thus tech/magic attacks are clearly a superior choice. Roughly one-third of all mobs fall into this category, and most of those enemies appear in the Tragedy of the Entity. The point of these enemies is to force players into using their tech attacks so that they learn what those tech attacks do and how they function on the battlefield. Sometimes the designers do something a little more interesting, in that certain enemies can have their physical defense reduced by the right spell. This phenomenon, called triggered vulnerability, is one we’ve examined throughout this book. We’ll circle back to it a little bit later in this chapter, when we get to boss design. The second way that the designers create enemies that must be fought using tech attacks is by simply raising the monster’s HP so high that standard attacks aren’t an efficient use of player-character turns. This is widely considered the most boring and odious form of difficulty, but in limited use, it has its place in RPG design. Chrono Trigger has enemies with more HP than basic attacks can defeat conveniently, but these are generally confined to two dungeons, Giant’s Claw and the Black Omen. Moreover, because these quests come at the end of the game, the increased difficulty is in line with RPG orthodoxy.
The third method of forcing the player to defeat enemies with tech attacks is a little more interesting. Sometimes, the player needs to defeat monsters with techs not because the monster has high stats or HP, but because of the context of that enemy in a battle. Usually, this means that there are so many enemies in a battle that the player must use techs to eliminate some of them before his or her party is depleted by a barrage of enemy attacks.
This kind of battle appears in the Factory Ruins, Magus’s Castle, the Ocean Palace, the Geno Dome, and the Black Omen. We can tell that the designers wanted the player to exploit multi-target techs in these battles because monsters in those battles often have unusually low magic defenses, elemental weaknesses to exploit, or both. For example, the enemies in the Factory have a weakness to shadow damage, which is the exact kind that Robo and Crono deal with their multi-target dual tech. Similarly, the large groups of enemies in the Geno Dome are weak to Lightning techs, which the party has in abundance (thanks to Crono) later in the game. Two of the higher-HP enemies in the gauntlets in Magus’s Castle, meanwhile, have magic defense stats 40% below the median and are also weak to elemental damage. That low defense makes it seem like player is doing far more damage to them than should ordinarily be possible. That is a psychological trick that the designers use on the player to make him or her feel more powerful.
Evolution Across the Course of the Game
Mobs in Chrono Trigger see very little increase in complexity across the course of the game. Although there are two types of enemies (and the subtype of enemies with triggered vulnerability), that division is mostly the same at the end of the game as it was at the beginning. Some enemies must be defeated by tech attacks. The percentage of enemies that must be defeated by tech attacks (per quest) rises moderately in the Comedy of the Sages, although the majority of those gains are in just one dungeon, the Black Omen. Enemies also gradually start to inflict more debuffs across the course of the game. This is also mostly limited to the final dungeon. What’s more, the number of debuffs used by mobs is quite low relative to other RPGs of the 90s, and is not a major factor in non-boss battles at any point in the game. Similarly, the prevalence of elemental resistance rises slightly across the course of the game. Roughly one in seven enemies has an elemental resistance in the Tragedy, while roughly one in three has an elemental resistance in the Comedy. That rise seems more significant than it actually is. More than half the resistances acquired in the Tragedy are to the shadow element. Shadow elemental attacks are the least common type available to the player, and both characters who use them (Magus and Robo) can use other elements as well.
Evolution in Bosses
Boss fights, by contrast, see a much more significant increase in complexity across the course of the game. Boss fights also come in several different varieties, which we’ll examine first because those types combine as part of the evolutionary process.
Attrition/Spike: This boss behavior consists of a series of small attacks that deal damage equal to about 15% of a character’s max HP, followed periodically (every three rounds or so) by one larger “spike” attack that deals damage equal to about 25%–40% of a character’s max HP. This spike can hit one character or multiple characters, but multi-target spikes are usually on the lower end of the damage range. Yakra, Zombor, MasaMune, Nizbel, Slash, Dalton, the Golems, and the Lavos Spawn all use this behavior type.
Three Parts: This isn’t a behavior as much as it is a boss structure. Players should take the presence of three parts in a boss as a signal to identify and destroy one of those parts first. Three-part bosses include the Dragon Tank, Guardian, Giga Gaia, Retinite, Zeal’s second form, and the last two forms of Lavos.
Want to read more? The rest of this section can be found in the print and eBook versions. In fact, the print version of this book has been significantly expanded and revised.