@bassboi: Then you have far more patience then I ever could. Admittedly, Chrono Cross' battles were usually pretty fast-paced, the battle part anyway. The fancy screen splash, spin around, long-ass animations blah-blah-blah really dragged it out necessarily.

I honestly never got far enough to say much about the characters. I think the farthest I got was when you get body-swapped, back when I was in middle school and had more patience for such things.

@aka Here's a peek at the part of the Chrono Cross strategy guide I was referring to. I snapped the pic just for you! http://i.imgur.com/x9oAQxE.jpg

I've played games with far more boring and tedious game play than Chrono Cross. To me that game's fatal flaw was that there were too many characters, and none of them were fleshed out or developed nearly enough. Most of them I only got the chance to use once, and then it was on to the next part where they leave the party with someone else stepping in. Many of them seem to peek early on in the game and become virtually useless later on. (I want to say I remember Marcy being an example of this, however spankable she may be!)

@bassboi: I've never actually seen the strategy guide, no. Though can you imagine how awesome it would have been if
a) Leena's bitch slap and scold attack were actually a spank and scold attack and
b) it was an instant KO when fighting Marcy (assuming you fight Marcy in the path where you get Leena. I don't remember.)

I have to say, I was so disappointed with that game. It's one of the few games I've seen where your choices actually had a significant impact on the course of the game (rather than just the ending), but the gameplay was so slow and easy just boring. I don't really mind crazy confusing plots, I've been reading science-fiction and fantasy since I was six, but tedious gameplay? That I cannot abide.

I noticed your comment on the Chrono Cross pic I commissioned, and I'll say that caption on Leena's first weapon is one of the things that inspired it. Did you have the strategy guide? On the page listing the steps leading up to the boss fight with Marcy it refers to that objective as "spank a bratty child." Ever since then I've wanted to see her spanked and who better to do it besides another character with spanking references attached to her?