I have recently finished Chrono Trigger for the first time. It was absolutely amazing
I loved the battle system, the characters, the story, and the music... I LOVED the music!
I also decided to try out a new Ocarina of Time ROM hack called "Master of Time". It's one heck of an ambitions Ocarina of Time ROM hack, going as far as to make a full blown game that is just as long as the original Ocarina of Time more or less. I have more detailed thoughts about his one written below
Let's start with what I consider to be the biggest negative of this ROM hack: the story. It sucks, and there's no nicer way for me to put it. I think one of the main reasons why it sucks so much is because it had the potential to be something truly amazing, but any potential it had gets thrown away and lit on fire towards the end.
Prior to the events of the game, from what I can understand, the people of a country named Apello were terrorized by monsters that would only come out at night. Eventually, a mysterious and unnamed person nicknamed the Master of Time appeared and using the power of six medallions created an endless day to protect the people of Apello from those monsters. No longer under constant siege from monsters, the kingdom of Apello was formed where people were able to finally live in peace. Alright, so far so good. Our Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask arrives at Apello and meets a fairy named Nite, who tells him about a prophecy in which Link collects these six medallions, uses them to break the curse of the endless day, and becomes the new Master of Time. Why though? I mean, you have to because it's the game, yet everyone seems to be pretty happy with this endless day and no one seems to be even bothered by it in the slightest. Why break the curse? First of all, this just takes out any type of urgency or stakes in trying to break the curse. Take a game like Majora's Mask where the stakes were extremely high in that game not only because of the literal countdown, but because even the NPCs helped to sell this urgency with the way each one acted individually as doomsday got closer. Even if the NPCs in Master of Time weren't bothered by the endless day, there seems to be a lot of missed opportunities to play around with the lore and further develop the world. For example, children NPCs that start talking about a myth they heard about something called a "nighttime" that also has a sun (moon) and many lights in the sky (stars). The dialogue doesn't do it any more justice. It went for a more dark and edgy tone to it and while normally there isn't anything wrong with that as long as it is done well, and I feel like it wasn't always done well in this game. It kind of made some interactions seem almost like a parody and it really takes you out of the immersion of the world and story.
Okay so you go off and collect the medallions in different temples. After collecting five of them you suddenly learn about this plot twist where the Zoras were using special milk to turn everyone in Apello into Zoras. It's never explained why they wanted to do this, but to be fair this plot twist was hinted at in the background throughout the game so I do give the creator credit for that. However, after learning this piece of information you are allowed to continue only to be suddenly captured. Your fairy helps in this and then mocks you later on as you are in a cell waiting to be executed. You don't get a chance to escape, you just get executed in the next scene and the game gives you the bad ending. The good ending is basically leaving Apello entirely, and a message telling you that sometimes it's better to just flee from crazy places. This just comes out of nowhere and anything related to the Master of Time and the endless day are just thrown out the window. What was the point of it all? You are just left completely unsatisfied. All I wanted to do was learn more about the Master of Time and how it all connected with the events of the game. If I did collect all the medallions and break the curse of the endless day, would I have had a final encounter with the monsters that come out at night in order to finally and fully free the people of Apello?
Not happy with that personally.
On the other hand, the dungeon design, music, and overworld were all on point. Dungeons were fairly creative with interesting puzzles. I do wish that some of them were themed a little bit better. For example, we had two dungeons that were called Fire Temple and Water Temple, but that's literally the same name as dungeons in Ocarina of Time. There were also some bits that were largely unpolished, but they were mostly nitpicky things and nothing too overly serious like softlocks and the like. The overworld was also designed well with different parts of it connecting via shortcuts if you had the right items, which is always a nice touch.
Despite having interesting dungeons, great music, and a decent overworld, Master of Time did not reach its full potential imo as it is greatly held back with a promising story that ends up crashing, burning, and going nowhere.