Chrono Trigger – Part 34: I, Robo

Summary: Puzzle of the Sun Orb. Geno Dome. Robo makes his stand.


2,300 AD – Sun Palace

-First stop in the future is the Sun Palace.

-Going with Lucca, Marle, and Robo.

-It looks like the Ocean Palace in here. That hellish brown.

-A giant eyeball boss popped out of the fire, surrounded by fire. Son of the Sun. It obliterated me lol.

-My mistake was not clearing out the fire surrounding it. Tried Antipode 2, the dual tech between Marle and Lucca, but since it had fire in it it just healed the flames and provoked a counterattack of Flare and other brutal fire spells.

-Take two. Huh. Ice2 doesn’t work. Ice2 also healed up the guarding flames. Maybe it has to be physical attacks?

-Physical attacks get through. Very weakly, but at least a bit. Let me try replacing my party with, say, Frog, Robo, and Ayla. All of them with Ruby Armor.

-I had hoped that Water2 might be the answer, but no.

-It seems to be working. The Son of the Sun keeps shuffling the fire in place around itself so I can’t keep hitting the same one too much, but eventually damaging the fire damaged the eye. Hm.

-I think I may now understand the pattern. When I “kill” a fire, it doesn’t look any different, but it stops counterattacking. Gotta only hit the fires that counterattack until all are “dead.”

-AHA! (again.) NOW I think I get it. One of the flames around the Son of the Sun is the one to hit. I hit that, and damage goes to the boss. The rest are decoys.

-VICTORY!!!! Past the boss lies the drained Sun Stone.

Time to charge this puppy up.

-Went back to 65,000,000 BC, dropped it in the Sun Keep, and returned to the Sun Keep in 2,300 AD.

-…well crap. Wasn’t expecting that. The stone is gone, taken in an earlier timeline.

-It’s not in 1,000 AD. But it is in 600 AD. Let’s see who in 1,000 stole it.

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1,000 AD

-Nothing in Medina.

-Melchior’s home is still empty.

-Found Toma XIII (lol) in Choras. Said that a Sun Stone plus Rainbow Shell makes a powerful weapon. To Guardia Castle we go!

-No luck. Huh. Melchior’s still just hanging out at the Rainbow Shell.

-Nothing again in Medina, nothing in Choras…

-Yes! The mayor’s house in Porre has a mysterious sparkle coming out of it.

-That’s strange. The mayor has it, gives it to us, and says that someone just dropped it off there. Dunno who.

-Anyway! Brought it back to the Sun Keep in 1,000 AD, picked it back up in 2,300 AD, and got a fully charged Sun Stone.

-Lucca offers to bring it back to her house to make something awesome.

-She gets to sciencing, and makes a powerful gun that more than doubles her attack power: WonderShot. Taban chips in some “SunShades,” an accessory that increases attack power.

-Still not sure who took the Sun Stone. Maybe it was Melchior – like, he could’ve taken it to see if he could combine it with the Rainbow Shell before finding that it wasn’t powerful enough, right?

-Looks like it. I now go back to Melchior and he’s psyched to have the Sun Stone.

-He creates PrismSpecs and Rainbow for us. The specs “ups attack power to the max.” Woohoo!! Rainbow is a sword with a massive attack power bonus for Crono that also has a 70% crit rate.

Really charging up now!

-I’d saved up 50,000 gold, so bought a Vigil Hat from Fiona’s Shrine.

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600 AD – Sandorino Village

-Traveled back here to see if I could give an item from the Rainbow Shell to the elder here who wanted it.

-!!! Are you serious? No mention of the Rainbow Shell, but they want to trade my Naga-ette Bromide. It took me a second to remember what he was talking about, but then it hit me that this is something I found in Yakra’s cathedral the first time I went to 600 AD.

-It’s a Magic Tab. What’s a Naga-ette Bromide anyway?

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2,300 AD – Geno Dome

-One last pre-Lavos task to go. Something about the origin of machinery. Sticking with Frog, Lucca, and Robo.

-Robo has to be in the lead of this party.

-R-66Y? Prometheus?

-The voice that speaks to Robo sounds a bit GLaDOS-esque. Definitely wants to kill the humans in this group.

-We enter the dome proper, and are put onto a conveyor belt of death. A gauntlet of mechs to fight.

-The Line Bomb dual tech between Frog and Robo is an all-star, given how many robots line up here.

-I LOVE Lucca’s WonderShot. It hits for a variable amount of damage, which can be low, but can be ridiculously high. Reminds me a bit of Setzer’s attacks, or Cait Sith’s. She’s a legitimate attack threat for the first time in the game.

-After the conveyor belt, the Dome is labyrinthine.

-OH THAT’S CREEPY BUSINESS – deeper in, one of the conveyor belts is carrying humans aboard. We can’t save them from whatever’s happening to them because the computer is protecting the belts.

-Robo picked up their ultimate tech, Shock.

-The computer talks to us at various points in the dungeon. Says that without humans, the world would be peaceful.

-Found a computer that provides info about the puzzles here:

1)To enter a locked door, Robo has to charge up at an energy pod.
2)The conveyor belt’s directions can be swapped.
3)A robot guarding a doll will short-circuit if two guards are placed on a thing. (I’ll probably get this once I see the context.)
4)I need figurines to access the “Mother Brain.” That must be the thing talking to Robo. “Return the broken guard to the room upstairs.”

-Found a robot guard and got them to follow me, using it to disable the other guard and get the doll.

Short circuit.

-10 minutes of trial and error later, reached the other doll. Really enjoying this dungeon! Especially the fact that enemies don’t respawn.

-Exploring the dust chute next.

-…ah dangit. It took me back to the beginning, making me fight the conveyor belt gauntlet again. The monsters here aren’t too tough, and it doesn’t crush my soul the way that having to go through the Black Omen elevator gauntlet again did, but still.

-Back to the second floor, dolls in hand.

-Another Robo! And Robo knows them.

Atropos.

-Atropos claims that Robo was a double agent, asking Robo/Prometheus to confirm that Robo was designed to study the humans and report back.

THE LONGEST SILENCE IN HISTORY AS PROMETHEUS DOES NOT DENY THIS, DESPITE CLEARLY WANTING TO NOT BETRAY LUCCA.

-Come on, Prometheus! You have choice now! Friendship! Lucca!

HELL YES

Atropos starts moving towards Lucca, and Robo SMACKS them out of the way.

-Atropos asks Prometheus to step back, to allow them to get to the humans and eliminate them. Prometheus’s response?

“My name is Robo.”

Time for a one-on-one fight. Robo versus Atropos.

-Robo beats the living crap out of Atropos with Uzzi Punch. It feels glorious. Until it doesn’t.

-Atropos snaps out of it. This reminds me of having to defeat the mind-controlled/mutated version of Edge’s parents in FFIV. The hollowest victory.

-Lucca tries to save Atropos, who was used by Mother Brain, but it may not be enough.

Atropos upgrades Robo as best they can, then blinks out of existence.

-Mother Brain, you’re fucked. You’re so fucked.

-Moving on. Mother speaks to us, saying that Lavos’s children will one day leave to prey on other planets. Unless the humans die out. If the humans die out, Mother believes she can create a world that would sustain the spawn of Lavos.

-That’s... wow. If she speaks truly, then there’s something legitimately and cosmically altruistic about Mother Brain’s “kill all humans’ behavior.

-I mean, the answer’s still no, we won’t “succumb to the sleep of eternity,” but I can see how she justifies her actions to herself.

-Boss room. Here we go.

-The Mother appears. Her model is freaking amazing.

-She plans to reset Robo, erase his memory, rewire him for her purposes. Robo continues to be the literal best in his reply. He doesn’t want to lose anything he’s gained.

-Fight time.

-There are three panels around the mother. All of them seem to heal her heavily, so gotta deal with them first.

-Let’s try out an ultimate dual tech between Lucca and Frog that I haven’t yet seen, Frog Flare.

LOLOLOL IT SUMMONS A GIANT EXPLODING GOOFY FROG

-Frog Flare destroys all the panels. We finish Mother Brain off with Bubble Snap. That was quick.

-Still must hurt for Robo. He betrayed his family. He had to, for his found family and for the planet.

Probably doesn’t make having to do it hurt any less. Robo

-Well. That’s all she wrote. Only one thing I can think of left to take care of: Satan the Hedgehog. Lavos.

-Though a quick note that makes me feel like I’m missing something: Gaspar still says that someone close to me is in trouble. I don’t know what this could mean. Thought this referred to Marle needing to help her father, but maybe it’s something else?

-There’s one more place I can think to look, and I’ll check next time. Maybe the Cursed Forest, Frog’s home. But that’s all I can think of.

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Next time: I think I’ll try the Black Omen again. Because why not. If I fail a few times or feel stuck or frustrated, I’ll just fly to 1,999 AD.