Shamefully, it has been well over a year since I last recapped this horribly confusing game. As we all know, it’s difficult enough to understand while playing it continuously. Taking a break and coming back to it is akin to dropping acid and then having your brain scooped out with a serving spoon. To minimize the impact of this break, I went back and read all four previous recaps. I also consulted some walkthroughs on GameFAQs, because lord knows, this game is so non-linear, it makes Final Fantasy X-2 look like Final Fantasy X. So I feel as equipped as ever to write this recap — that is to say, not very. Will you join me on this fantastical ride?
The end of the last recap made a few things clear — an anthropomorphic cat-man creatively named Lynx is behind a lot of the shit going down, Steve has had some sort of bad run-in with this guy before, and Cronabe is important to the plot in ways that no one could have possibly imagined. Unfortunately, nothing else makes sense. There’s shit about fate and time and dimensions and other stuff that tries extremely hard to sound profound and life-altering. It’s like Kingdom Hearts mated with Xenosaga. Also, no one has anything remotely resembling a personality, and I simply don’t give a shit about anyone. But I’ll try to fake it for your amusement.
I ended the last recap as Steve got stabbed and everyone jumped into the ocean. Since you have been patiently waiting for over a year to see how this riveting cliffhanger turned out…well, Cronabe survived. WHEW. He wakes up in a small hut, watched over by a rather large-boned woman with purple hair and bright pink lipstick. Also, a muumuu. Big Momma tells Cronabe that his friends are outside. She checks out his hot young bod in a disturbing manner, so Cronabe gets the hell out of there.
Sure enough, Biotch, Gandy, and Steve are waiting right outside the door. Along with our old “friend” Speedo and his enormous wang. We can now see that the hut looks thrown together from various boards and colorful stuff, and is located on the ocean. This is so we know we’re in a small rustic town instead of someplace large and modern and cool. “Oi, [Cronabe]! Ya finally woke up, eh?” Steve states the obvious, looking completely recovered from her ordeal with the stabbity. Steve badly exposits that Speedo saved their sorry asses, as he just happened to be sailing along right under the manor at the exact moment they all fell. Speedo’s obligatory bizarre speech impediment takes the form of replacing “[word that ends in t] you” with “CHA.” So he tells them, “You’re lucky that it was the sea thatCHA fell into and not the rocks!” Yes, that was quite convenient.
Steve takes this opportunity to call Cronabe a “wuss” because the fall knocked him out. As opposed to Steve herself, who is so completely strong that she collapses right then and there from, as she calls it, “a little graze.” As tough as she talks, she’s still a Mary Sue at heart. It’s so comforting. Speedo tells Cronabe that there’s a clinic nearby in this tiny village. The two men rush Steve over there right away as Biotch and Gandy try to look like they give a shit. I don’t even bother.
Cut to the “clinic.” Steve rests fitfully in a bed as the doctor examines her. Whoa, this just took a turn for the wrong. The doctor himself looks like he specializes in…alternative medicines. He wears a blue stocking cap over his long blond hair, along with a vest and bellbottoms. Grooooovy. From his examination, he determines that Steve has been poisoned with the most poisonous of poisons — Hydra venom. According to him, it will be her undoing. Not only does she have two days to live, but the only thing that can save her is the Hydra Humour. The doctor’s demi-human assistant, which as best as I can tell resembles a squirrel with boobs and a purple ponytail, informs everyone that since the Hydra has been rendered extinct (most likely by someone with Cronabe’s tendencies), finding this item is impossible. Doc — the doctor, for you slow folks — gives us a totally hippie granola lecture on the importance of leaving our wildlife alone. This falls on deaf ears, obviously.
So Steve will die a horrible death unless someone just so happens to…let’s say…come up with an item that will allow Cronabe to enter a different dimension where the Hydra is no longer extinct. Doc, having worked himself into a fine froth of self-pity, stalks off to be alone with his bong for a while. No one can understand his pain. Everyone kind of stands around awkwardly, since the one guy they’re depending on to save Steve turned out to be a huge wussy wankst machine. Biotch, needing a big strong mayun to make all her decisions, asks Cronabe what they should do. He stands there, fantasizing about being the one to kill off all the Hydras, basically ignoring her.
Speedo decides to take action into his own hands and wang. As he heads out the door to find the whiny asshole doctor, a smacking sound sends him back into the room. “Who the hell are you!?” Speedo screeches to someone offscreen. A bad French accent lectures him for not apologizing. Yippee, it’s that slutty harlequin, Harle. She stalks into the room, gloating over the unconscious Steve. “[Cronabe], mon ami, why don’t we just leave her be?” Harle propositions, because she wants to do it with Cronabe. “Who are you, and what’s with that strange costume!?” Speedo demands, in the most hilarious pot-kettle sequence thus far.
Harle tells Speedo to shut the fuck up, and keep his opinions and his wang to himself. In a Seiferish turn of events, she calls him a “chicken-hawk.” Speedo, despite the fact that he does not need to compensate for anything, nonetheless gets all pissy and threatens Harle. Unfortunately for him (but funny for the rest of us), when he charges her, she simply disappears and reappears next to Steve’s bedside. This talent is a lot more useful than the similar talent demonstrated by Lynx at the end of the last recap. After verbally giving the finger to Speedo, Harle announces that her plans all along were simply to check on Steve’s state. Despite this obvious lesbian subtext, Harle still insists that she loves Serge oh-so-much. This subtle bit of characterization is easy to forget, but luckily for you, I’m here to help you out. Blowing Cronabe a heart-shaped kiss, Harle turns a flip and disappears.
“…Tsk, she’s a loon,” Speedo states the obvious. “What’s her deal? I just don’t get it.” Welcome to Chrono Cross. Then he asks Cronabe — in front of everyone — if all of his friends are “like that.” It depends on what you mean “like that.” Because it’s not like any of his friends are exactly normal. Strangely — or not, since no one really ever talks — none of Cronabe’s other friends take offense to this assholish question.
Just then, Steve moans Cronabe’s name. Um. Cronabe obviously stays right where he is, since he continues to have no interest in Steve whatsoever. Only with Speedo’s urging does he reluctantly approach her. Steve conveniently regains consciousness long enough to bestow upon Cronabe her “favorite amulet,” the magical-sounding Astral Amulet. Gosh, a mystical amulet. Not only is that Mary Sue Necessity #256, but it’s also totally a Chrono Trigger reference! I am so excited and proud of myself for catching that! I think I will go onto fifty different message boards and type up a comprehensive Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross reference sheet to prove my 1337ness so that all the chix will love me and I can get some tail! Her plot point finished for now, Steve conveniently slips back into her TurtleNinja-style coma.
According to the walkthroughs on GameFAQs, the Astral Amulet will allow Cronabe to travel to his Home World, where the Hydra is still alive and well. Ironic, since Cronabe exists in that world. In addition to saving this mysterious Mary Sue from the brink of death, Cronabe will also be able to hunt endangered creatures. Only the latter situation is of interest to him.
Unfortunately for Cronabe, things aren’t going to happen exactly that way. You see, I get a choice here. A real choice, not a Final Fantasy VIII-style choice. Speedo points out all the reasons why a search for the Hydra Humour is bound to fail. “Are you gonna take a one-in-a-million chance to search for this thing, just to save a girl you barely even know?” he wonders. Since Speedo has made this course of action sound so very appealing, Cronabe suddenly balks. “…I don’t know,” I make Cronabe respond when Speedo asks him point blank what he’s going to do. Speedo gets all up in Cronabe’s shiznit over this, despite the fact that he all but told Cronabe that helping Steve was pointless. Whatever, you speedoed freak. Cronabe again tells him that “there’s nothing [they] can do.”
Bad boys, bad boys, whatCHA gonna do?
Even though helping Steve would lead to all sorts of jokes about Cronabe’s decimation of wildlife, I simply cannot pass up on the chance to ignore the female lead’s latest drama. That’s right, I actually have the choice to not save the Mary Sue. Sure, they won’t kill her off, but that doesn’t mean I have to waste my time helping her. This is like a landmark in video gaming history. And I’m not saying that sarcastically for once.
Speedo isn’t as thrilled as I am, though. He waddles over to the uncaring Cronabe, causing Biotch to quickly scoot out of the way of his oversized unit. “You’ve got no right to keep that girl’s amulet. Leave that thing here,” he bitches, ripping the Astral Amulet out of Cronabe’s sweaty hands. This is the game designers’ way of ensuring that I can’t get back to the Home World now. Assholes. Speedo puts the amulet in a dish near Steve’s bedside, like Cronabe totally couldn’t grab it from there. Also, it’s nice that he’s being such a dickhead over Cronabe’s lukewarm attitude toward helping Steve, but it’s not like he’s going to use the amulet to help her. Ass. “Tsk, this is disgustin’. …It’s turnin’ out to be a baaad day,” Speedo whines. With that, he struts out of the room.
Whoa, buddy, that’s between you and the trader.
I get control of the party and go off exploring the Podunk village. Obviously, they’re in Guldove, Speedo’s aforementioned home. Just outside the infirmary, I find the element trader, who will trade materials for my extra elements. But he’s got more than just fur and eyeballs lying around. He managed to receive one of Skelly’s body parts from some random trader. It’s the pelvic bone, of all things. Skelly waxes philosophical about his gut and his love for squid gut pasta, but I think it would be hilarious if he reminisced about his wang. Or maybe “disturbing” is the word I’m looking for.
The group stocks up on as many weapons and armor as they can afford, thanks to the fact that the blacksmith in this shitty Podunk is better than the smith in the big city. Yay, RPGs! Heh, Cronabe’s weapon is called a “swallow.” Since Cronabe has neither a personality nor an obvious homosexual leaning a la the silent Link, I haven’t speculated on his sexuality thus far. I think that, more than anything else, shows just how bland the characters are in this game. But once in a while, I get little hints, such as his weapon name, that make me wonder. But not all that much.
Loading ...A demi-human who has a freaking grasshopper head exposits to Cronabe about the Happy Happy Peace and Love village of Guldove and how humans and furries demi-humans totally get along, man. All the bitter, whiny demi-humans moved to their own town, Marbule, to get away from the mundanes. Good riddance.