Technically he’s not a ghost but… close enough, apparently!:-P

… exercise? :-P

This is why I worry that Republicans will win: bc they have mastered the “truth” that facts don’t matter so much as campaign commercials.

And apparently journalists also, e.g. that line "They can’t buy groceries anymore. They can’t.” - I mean… there are cheaper options that don’t involve going into debt to purchase goods on a literally weekly basis.

Even here in the Fediverse, we send them clicks and spread the message for them. E.g. when the woman says:

“I know he’s a big fat mouth,” she says of Mr Trump. “But he at least knows how to run the economy.”

Whereas in response the reporter tried to be “fair & balanced” by saying that:

Mr Biden has claimed, incorrectly, that inflation was already at 9% when he entered office. It was 1.4%.

There is no reason to give either of these statements the time or day, but instead they spread them as “newsworthy”.

I guess it’s my own fault for remaining subscribed to this community, if this is the content that regularly appears here.

I think the idea was that they were so rare that most people had never met one in their entire lives or even heard of one being active. Then too they didn’t take credit for stuff they did, and while people like Padme knew, yet they were also the ones most likely to be killed during the transition to the new order).

But the big one is that the Emperor did a strong active disinformation campaign - e.g. COVID is fake so don’t worry about it, just get back to work in the sun and that’ll protect you - altogether leading people to believe, or at least say, that the Jedi were “fake news”. As in not really, but in an authoritian world, it had better be, or else, capiche? That’s the part that I worry we all need to learn, as in soon, to deal with our new reality: that Truth no longer matters, so much as adherence to authority/compliance.

The Steam version may have been rebalanced, but with the SNES one early on you pretty much just have to hit things. Your two girls use Strike - so Hit ring rather than Power - and the men use swords and such. Ayla uses Power though:-). It isn’t so wrong to just hit something as soon as possible, like whenever the timer comes up then quickly hit… whatever you can. As you get better weapons, and especially when you get magic, you’ll want to hold off and think a bit more, especially at the configurations like if Lucca drops a bomb over here, then Chrono should not hit here too but rather over there, etc.

One thing that might have thrown you off is that Sewer area. You aren’t meant to go there just yet! It can be done, but man is it tough! One way is to go forward, get Robo, and use him for extra power. Plus that next area has weapons for everyone. Another is to wait until you have magic. Or you can grind before and just tough it out, but anyway there’s nothing really at the end of it, it’s just EXP and treasure and fun and adventure - but best saved for later.:-)

One trick: when you gain the ability to travel through time at will, you can bring in a healer, heal everyone, then ditch them again. I usually use Robo for that bc he’s so damn slow (agility) that I don’t like using him in battles. This saves MP. Early on that very first forest area has a secret spot where the bushes wiggle and when you click a monster pops out and runs away - no battle necessary - and it gives you a tent. You can get basically unlimited of those by leaving and coming back:-).

You need very limited grinding in this game. It’s possible to use none, but then there would indeed be certain battles that would be much tougher. Maybe do every area twice or something. If you decide early on who you want to use, you can focus on them to get the highest levels. But you don’t know all the combo attacks yet - like Chrono + Lucca + Princess can do several spectacular magic attacks together, they are quite a versatile team. Frog is great too especially if you get his secret items but that would be better as another playthrough with a guide. Ayla is great and doesn’t even need items, just lots levels. At some point you’ll lose access to all your items you’ll want her to be not totally neglected. So basically: rotate them all in occasionally, until you know what you are doing. Did you know they get ~75% of EXP even when left behind? But they don’t get AP. There is a particular enemy that locks down your skills that gives you 100 AP for beating it, and there are only a few in the game, all in pretty much one area (looks like a rock that woke up) - that’s what you want to be strategic about.

But you discovered the caveat to the above: early on is when Chrono needs his slash skill the most, to hit those things that are immune to a physical bonk attack. The way I always did it was to take him through the forest area at the start of the game, or flight the carnival robot, but those were optional and if you didn’t, a few levels could really help. Or try to avoid those battles except they spring up on you so that’s not something you’ll know about in the first playthrough. One thought: that sewer area can get hairy fast, but if you go in, flight a few battles, go back out and save, repeat and go a bit deeper, etc. it would give you a ton of EXP, plus neat items like Rage belt that auto-counterattacks. That’s my favorite pick for Chrono bc he’ll get so strong that he’ll kill things outright just by letting them hit him!:-P

Yeah just before where you are, that was the boring part - though you are close to leaving the future and that’s exactly when it picks up! Like, literal magic isn’t far away now!:-) I’d put a berserker onto the Princess, for now until she gets magic, which will also help with deciding what to do bc she’ll auto-attack then, with greatly increased ability, and go through the last dome with first her to the right and then Lucca to the left (bc of fire). Then almost never use the robot again, except for healing outside of battle, and a few other times it makes sense as well, and he can be fun then:-).

The final boss can be as difficult or easy as you want. In-game tips on a few secret areas are given but extremely cryptic. Worth figuring out though bc e.g. getting hit with confusion can wreck any strategy, while being outright immune to that makes it so much easier:-). You can also decide which characters to bring, or not bring, and that affects the ending sequence that you’ll see.:-)

Oh wow you have so much awesomeness ahead of you - enjoy it!:-)

Oh wow, that is quite literally the best game of all time. I dunno about the Steam version, how it changes things, but on the SNES the gfx suck, yet the story is so fantastic.

There should be a way to change the battle mode to “Wait!”, which will make them more trivially easy. Take a moment to go through one of the areas 2-3 times and you should be leveled up sufficiently to handle everything. But definitely pay attention to saves bc those boss patterns will need discovery if you aren’t using guides.

The early part is slow yeah, but once you see Lavos in the future iirc it perks quite a bit up. You will miss a LOT without a guide, but no need to even worry bc there’s like 13+ different endings and you can make use of a previous one to jumpstart the next game in the New Game+ feature.

Some doors cannot be opened earlier on. Either keep a record of them or consult a guide and much, MUCH later on they’ll hold cool stuff.

This one can be really short, and even if you level up your characters (which you don’t really need to, especially if you limit yourself to only use the ones that you think you’ll want to keep and set the others aside, only using as carriers of medical herbs and perhaps to take a bit) it still is short. Plus each battle is short, so it’s a good candidate if you don’t have so much time right now, very unlike the vast majority of RPGs.

I mean, it’s happening worldwide. As each next one falls, and worse perhaps joins with the others, it will spread even further. Like a pandemic of an idea. Although perhaps there’s hope on the other side, since it seems too late to stop it now but after the afterwards there will be ways to build anew. Anyway the important thing, in my mind at least, is to learn and grow from it all.

Okay, just checking, cause you know if you wanted… no? it’s cul, it’s all cul:-)

/s 😜

Shining Force is putting me to sleep. But… that’s why I wanted it, so it’s good? (-ish:-D)

Before that I played Shining in the Darkness (I made a post about it to help that community get started, although it is too highly specific so I don’t expect it will survive).

I wonder if I should follow up with Shining Force II, but I tend to not want to finish it. All the extra stuff you want to do to level up your characters just leads to really long battles and then you Egress and do it all again and again - it feels too gimmicky, rather than natural.

But Shining Force is so simple and easy and short and fun so that one I enjoy:-).

What the human race has done to dogs, now we will do to ourselves, with just as little thought to the repercussions this time around as well. In any case, it will be an interesting affair:-).

The… shorts, right? 👍

Okay then a different one:

Jim from the office, watching and smiling as people argue over vim vs. emacs.

He knows the truth - that you should use whatever you want and enjoy the most:-).

He got bitten by a radioactive spider and now he’s… in pain. Get some medical care little guy:-).

That could be a good thing, if they aren’t a good fit for you, but I hope that you find somewhere that you fit in:-). Until then, read books, bc they make you better at handling whatever life decides to throw at you:-).

You… can’t be in two places at the same time!? What’s that, we really can’t? Oh well, carry on then:-D.

Oh so you want to play it like that then!? (/s)