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Intro

As fellow gamers, the Selective Hearing team has been immersed in various games this month. The summer season is starting. Did the team beat the heat by enjoying a few games?

Allen

What Have You Been Playing in June?

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition
Mario Kart World
Pikmin Bloom
Persona 5: The Phantom X

What Are Your Thoughts?

SPOILERS AHEAD

Chrono Cross was one of those games I remember playing back on the PSX, but I have no fond memories of it. As I’ve been playing through the remaster, I’ve come to remember why it didn’t click with me initially.

It’s been fun getting used to the battle system; I particularly like the 7-point stamina system, in addition to the Element Grid.

It makes you think and plan your next steps when using physical attacks to inflict more damage or steal items. Using the correct coloured elements to inflict more magic damage creates a nice chess match, but the enemies can also counteract this. However, only the high-level elements are helpful, and you can brute-force physical attacks to get past most fights.

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I wasn’t familiar with the levelling system, so I had to look it up and learn how to take advantage of it. You only gain levels after boss fights, but you only gain stat increases from fights against common enemies afterwards. You have a few fights until it caps off, until you battle another boss, and the stat boosts seem random. I should have rotated my characters around to gain stat boosts, but I was not going to waste time doing all that.

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Another thing that didn’t click with me was the number of playable characters in the game. They looked at Chrono Trigger and probably said, “Okay, you like all of those great characters, let’s give you 6.5x more characters to play!” The problem is that, outside of a handful of characters, most are uninteresting and disposable, as there’s usually a better version of a particular character.

The only real defining trait they share is the element colour they are aligned with. But even then, there are usually better options if you are concerned about having a native element player on your battle party. You can brute force through the game with anyone. However, in the end, it doesn’t make any of the playable characters super special, other than their weird accents.

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I did like the slow build of the story through the main two-thirds of the game. It was great to see how they tried tying things back to Chrono Trigger. However, like many Square RPGs at the time, the last third falls apart as they inundate you with reveal after reveal (some in a passive sentence that you hopefully didn’t miss), where I didn’t know what my objective was at the end.

I just went along with it, thinking, “I think this is what we should be doing.” The exposition dump at the end was just a mountain. It was like going to the Word Salad restaurant and having word salad for an appetizer, another salad for lunch, another for dinner, then dessert, and more to take home. Just too much.

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I did have fun going through some of the endings. I like how some of them can be canon, but my favourite is the Developer’s Room ending. I needed a guide to help me get them all; otherwise, I would not have been able to see them.

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One thing I was absolutely in love with was the music. There were times when I’d let the game idle while vibing to the background music on the Home World or Another World map. I accounted for a lot of playtime just wandering around with the music playing.

I’m glad to have played Chrono Cross again as an adult. I remembered why it didn’t fully click for me when I was younger and I felt like I was reliving some of those feelings again. However I can understand why some people have so much affection for the game.

We have a new system launch, the Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart World took over for about two weeks. This might be my favourite Mario Kart game. I’ve played all of them since the SNES original, with Double Dash and Mario Kart DS being my favourites. I was a snaking master!

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Online held up pretty well; I saw some herky-jerky rubber banding in front of me a few times that made me laugh. 24-player matches are insane; playing knockout with 24 has probably been the sweatiest Mario Kart matches I’ve played in my life. I was mad, evil, frustrated, and elated all in the same race, the average MK experience.

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A perfect come down from all that madness is Free Roam mode. Some have said Free Roam feels empty, but I found it perfectly fine for a chill drive and exploring the different areas. I enjoy going on drives to relax in real life, which is why this is my style. There’s a nice balance of activities, including collecting fast food for costumes, coins, and coin blocks to upgrade your karts and earn stickers, as well as tackling the P Switch challenges.

These have the right amount of difficulty; some are hard enough that you have to work on your timing, but others are easy enough that you can easily try again. This is where I got to see how expressive the karts are in terms of their movement and bouncing—also spent way too much time in Photo Mode taking pictures and getting people together for the right shot.

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I got to show off the new Switch 2 to some friends and their neighbours’ kids. It was great seeing how much fun they were having. Kids have fun with Mario Kart, not caring about the meta, laughing and yelling at the screen. Nintendo still has that magic that I haven’t seen in a while. I can see Nintendo adding new events for new games that come out, possibly new costumes as well (Pauline and Donkey Kong with only one costume? Come on, Nintendo.) Bee Wario in the Bumble V kart is the best.

Pikmin Bloom is the only mobile game I play on a semi-regular basis. I recall playing the game on its launch years ago, but then I gave up on it. I was convinced by a few friends to get back in, and there have been numerous changes, including the introduction of Nintendo consoles and playing cards. This is the only Pikmin game I’ve ever played, so I’ll be in it for a bit longer.

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Persona 5: The Phantom X also came out and was loaded onto my iPad. I usually can’t get into gacha-style games like Genshin Impact. I played Zenless Zone Zero for about a week before dropping it. I do miss Persona 5, the music, and the world; however, Phantom X will not keep me around. I’ll give it a week, and we shall see what changes.

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What Are You Looking Forward to in July?

Donkey Kong Bananza looks very good indeed. It’s made by the same team behind Super Mario Odyssey, which makes me excited. The game will be super charming and fun to bash and smash the environment.

Ninja Gaiden: Rage of the Dragons also looks super sick. This might be my favourite 2D Metroidvania-style game of the year.