This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round of 16!

Each game is seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools. Every game in the Upper Bracket has defeated multiple other games in 1-on-1 polls to get to this point. These are still the best of the best.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

Celeste is a more powerful (and cooler) game in my imho.

Celeste easily. Have struggled to get through Chrono Trigger multiple times while Celeste is the GOAT of 2d platformers.

Not to say Chrono Trigger is bad just something seems to always pull me away from it.

Have to abstain here - haven't played Celeste yet.

Celeste is indeed a good platformer, but for all its snappy handling, it's oddly bogged down by certain set-pieces (for example, the "boss" sequence of the haunted house goes on about 50% longer than it needs to make its point). I don't put it on the same level as more consistent, better-tuned leaders in similar categories, like Super Meat Boy or Spelunky.

As for how it stands up to one of the great narrative innovators of all time: it doesn't hold a candle. Chrono Trigger's mastery of the "basics" of SNES-era JRPG mechanics (combat, non-random encounters, player party choice, multi-techs) is merely scratching the surface. But what people take for granted among all that is the power of the story.

No, the strength of the narrative design is not just that you can beat the game at several points in its time-traveling plot, although that is neat. The strength is that they make the silent protagonist's sacrifice of his own life actually feel powerful (a deliberate commentary on and dismantling of the "silent protagonist as an empty void for the player to fill with themselves" trope). They somehow make a little frog into a stirring valiant hero. They somehow make the villain's "heroic quest" into a huge emotional plot arc. Magus isn't just a "bad guy" who you eventually learn has his own motivations in some cheap kind of "ah we are all the central characters of our own stories" hackneyed way (that Magus no doubt inspired)—in fact, he's arguably the story's prime mover. This is all revolutionary in videogame narrative design.

Besides being objectively a well-made video game mechanically, and well-made art, it's also fun to play and has great music. Nice bonuses.

The thing about Chrono Trigger that I love most w/o having already written about it in the earlier rounds, is that the time travel mechanic creates wonderful opportunities for moments of humor, pathos and triumph. That you get to see the outcome of your actions, or what happened to people and places you've visited in earlier eras, makes for some dramatic storytelling that is at the same time economical in its execution, relying mostly on the contrast between the different eras in the player's mind, when it easily could have been heavy-handed (and probably would be in a more modern RPG). Sometimes 16-bit graphics and no 3D cutscenes are a storytelling advantage.