How long is radical dreamers

The text is delivered in short clumps usually, with an A button press required to advance. Even though this is a small detail, I felt like it actually underscored dramatic moments better, and made the story more engaging than if text were delivered page by page and you waited until the end of each one to advance. Also enhancing the engagement are images which accompany the text, with some animation in many of them in fact.

Surprisingly, even though RD is short and production was hurried, the inter-relationships between Serge, Kid, and Magil all come across as deeper than the character inter-relationships in Chrono Cross.

Serge is not a silent protagonist, and all of the characters talk amongst each other for the entire game. You get to hear Serge's thoughts, choose his words and actions most of the time, and get responses back. So in spite of the text adventure format, interactions with your party seem more meaningful. The actual events connecting you from A to B are somewhat unremarkable, though the major plot turning points and origin stories of the Frozen Flame, Kid, and Magil are all interesting. Combat wasn't too frequent, but worked OK in the text format.

I never felt any of the fights were cheap and didn't end up ever dying. Also, amusingly, the fight descriptions were surprisingly graphic. Serge's health is tracked by an invisible point count, restored by various events such as finding a potion.

The game also tracks Kid's affection for Serge, influenced by battles and scripted events. Her feelings determine whether Serge survives the story's climactic fight. The game features minimal graphics and animation; most areas are rendered with dim, static backgrounds. The game also uses atmospheric music and sounds. Only one scenario is available on the first play-through; after finishing it and obtaining one of three possible endings, players can explore six others.

These later stories often feature situations or allusions to Chrono Trigger. Radical Dreamers features three protagonists, Serge , Kid , and Gil , who seek out treasure as venturesome, reputable thieves.

The young adult narrator, Serge, is a drifting musician who met Kid by chance three years ago in a remote town. Serge enjoys the adventure with a carefree attitude. Kid, only sixteen years old, is a renowned professional thief with a reputation for boisterous behavior. Possessing a turbulent history, Kid dubiously fancies herself as a kind of Robin Hood. Gil is an enigmatic, handsome masked man skilled in magic who rarely speaks and can fade into shadow at will.

Crowned by flowing, blue hair, Gil accompanied Kid well before Serge joined the group. They seek the Frozen Flame , a mythic artifact capable of granting any wish. It is hidden in Viper Manor , the home of a terrible and powerful aristocrat named Lynx , who gained control of the estate after usurping power from and killing the Acacia Dragoons , a familial unit of warriors.

Following Kid, the group infiltrates Viper Manor on the night of a full moon. While sneaking through the corridors, they battle goblins and other creatures of legend while unraveling the history of the manor and its occupants. Gil explains that the Frozen Flame is a fragment of the massive, extraterrestrial creature known as Lavos , splintered off when Lavos impacted the planet in prehistory and burrowed to its core.

The thieves locate Lynx and the Frozen Flame deep within an underground ruin of the Kingdom of Zeal , an ancient, airborne civilization destroyed after it awakened Lavos in search of immortality.

Serge discovers that Kid is an orphan, hoping to exact revenge upon Lynx for killing her caretaker, Lucca. Kid attempted to find Lynx in her childhood after Lucca's death but was stopped and saved from certain defeat by Gil, who accompanied her thereafter. The trio battle Lynx for the Frozen Flame and Lynx gains the upper hand after trapping Gil with a powerful spell. Kid lunges at him, but Lynx easily parries her attack and wounds her. She desperately removes the Chrono Trigger from her back pocket.

The Trigger shatters and causes a localized temporal distortion, leading Serge to see various scenes in history. A steady community developed around the game before this date, eagerly anticipating the release of an English patch.

When Demiforce presented the patch at last, many fans played it, and a few outside this core community came to scoff at the game -- criticizing the game for being boring, uninteresting, and unimportant to the Chrono series mythos. The majority of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross fans have still never played Radical Dreamers due to its only being available through emulation, but those who consider it are sometimes turned off by the bad rap the game takes from these discontent fans.

It is easy to see why the game can be dismissed -- it is a text adventure with minimal illustration, it is nowhere near as long as other Chrono games, and some of the scenarios are purposely silly.

However, in addition to being an important glimpse into the development of Chrono Cross, Radical Dreamers is an excellent and imaginative game on its own; the scenarios are written with expertise, and the direction of the game by Masato Kato maximizes its potential by creating a suspenseful adventure.

Lord J Esq elaborates:. First and foremost -- this is always the crucial starting point when judging a game -- you have to look at how RD was directed, and I'd say it was directed spectacularly. The direction is what brought this game together into a coherent whole.

If you dissect RD into its individual pieces you'll find much less than you were expecting. Truly, this is a tiny game. But these tiny elements are brought together for a much larger holistic effect. All it requires is some call and answer between game and player. You, as the player, must commit yourself.