Thoughts on Lost Sanctum

[essen]

I've never played the Chrono Trigger DS version so I was looking forward to the extra content. But man, Lost Sanctum sucks. Up and down and up and down and up and down the stupid mountain. Ugh. It's so bad compared to the main game. Worse than some RPG Maker games I played.

It wouldn't be nearly as bad without the unskippable encounter on each screen leading to the mountaintop, though navigating the mountain with slow ropes is still a pain.

Oh well. Here's hoping the Dimensional Vortex will be better.

[Cinnamon Tee]

Yeah, the repeated trips up and down the mountain definitely took away from the fun of the Lost Sanctum. Aside from that, I actually enjoyed it and thought it was a fun little questline. I enjoyed the actual dungeon part of the dimensional Vortexes(One segment features Singing Mountain!), but aside from Dalton and Dream Devourer the bosses were pretty boring.

[WesleyB]

The bonus content was the only time in this game I had to grind to beat the boss (Eggsterminator).

The new final boss is pretty cool, but the dungeons themselves were pretty boring.

[essen]

The Dimensional Vortex areas were much better than Lost Sanctum. Not as good as the main game, but pretty good nevertheless. Not a big fan of reusing existing areas though, that felt cheap. The new areas were interesting.

The new final boss was great, I was unlucky enough to die on first try because of status ailments
after my immunity was removed (doh!).

[Turbo Nozomix]

That's one of the many reasons why the SNES version of Chrono Trigger is better than the NDS version: Because it doesn't have the low-grade NDS bonus filler which brings down the quality of the overall game, and instead is of a consistent very-high quality.

The SNES version is still the definitive version of Chrono Trigger. Meanwhile, this PC version is the definitively-worst version of Chrono Trigger.

[J3]

The Lost Sanctum quests are absolute slogs. I'm on my first play through of the bonus content and while the Dimensional Vortices were a grind, it wasn't as painstaking as going through the same screens and fighting the same enemies seemingly countless times. The constant back and forth is a chore and the unavoidable enemy encounters just drag out the process.

If the Devs cared about the game, they could have had Lucca upgrade the gate key at the conclusion of the main quest allowing it to set various gate points on demand. That way the group could set a point in the Reptite Village then at the top of the Mount Emerald, Millenia Woods, or wherever. The repetitive travel is the absolute worst aspect of this bonus content.

This will be my first and only venture into the Lost Sanctum content. I'm going to avoid in future play throughs.