Chrono Trigger

Borrowed from Alexei in trade for DQ4 - around 2/18/09
BART-first: (my description of the first hour or so, on BART ride, going home):
I never played this game back in the day (1995) when it came out on the SNES.
So this is my first time playing.
Opens with the traditional - just woke up, mom tells me to go to a festival, etc etc.
At the festival - lots to do, I find out the next day that I should NOT have eaten the old guy's lunch and I should have helped the little girl find her kitty (I restarted the save file)...
Some spoilers below - but not many:
Surprised to be time-traveling very quickly in the first hour. If this were a download game with an hour trial, I would have been hooked quite quickly, because I time travel and I get clear explanation of what the goal is (and it's interesting!)

I am always fascinated by any story where you are changing the "Might Have Beens" in the past to influence the future (in this case, to save your friend who all of a sudden disappeared in the present).
I think this began with A Swiftly Tilting Planet. And of course the fascination continued with Back to the Future, Quantum Leap, and so on.

Anyway -this sucked me in. Plus you get a frog in your party. Which I named Dave in honor of my husband...but then he left and I was sad.
There's some long thread on gamespot about how they thought this game was hard to follow, but I think it's done a good job of pulling you along in the story without a big need to check faqs.
My main faq dependence has been for boss strategies - although i was proud to correctly get that if the boss monster says "just attack! see what happens!" it probably means that he has a big counter-attack waiting and I should wait.

And the battle system is fun - active turn-based battle, so things are always happening and I never know if I'm moving fast enough. The combo tech attacks create some good strategy options, if one remembers to wait for 2 character's meters to fill up....

It's still sucking me in now, which can be a problem since I should either be reading or writing on the train. But I'm happy I got a chance to play this since it's a famous rpg that everyone makes a big deal about. Glad to see the hoopla is actually deserved!

Almost finished in early March. Still need to fight the final boss. Got distracted by work, also GTA DS, and Steambot Chronicles.

Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen

I got this game in late Dec 2008, after returning from Mpls. I'd reserved it at Play and Trade to see if I was going to buy this or Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger wasn't there to try, and I was sad for a little bit after I bought this, thinking I should have got CT instead. However I did love this also in the end and actually finished it! (And was able to trade it to a friend and also get Chrono Trigger...woohoo!)
This game joins the ranks of the few that I've actually finished - to see the long final credits of a Square Enix game, quite an accomplishment. I did not play the bonus Chapter 6 which is on this DS version, I got maybe halfway through that bonus dungeon before trading the cartridge with Alexei to get Chrono Trigger.

What I love about this game:
* the variety of the characters as the story moves forward. The game is split into 4 chapters, where you control a different character or group in each. Then in the 5th chapter, you are the Hero, and go around meeting/collecting all the people - "the chosen" - that you, the player, met in the previous 4 chapters.
People online have said the early chapters are too easy but I really enjoyed them being short and fun in what they were.
In one chapter, you are Torneko the merchant, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that he actually sells weapons behind a counter to other chars to make money.
I hadn't read ahead in the walkthrough for this game so this was some fun variety.
* the monster variety is also fun and familiar from playing Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker - which I started but haven't yet finished.
* the ending sequence was fun to tie everything up and see the stories of the characters to an end - since it visited each character's homeland.

What I liked less:
* I tend to fall asleep playing dragon quest games a little more than others. I think my favorite turn based option is active battle like FFIV and Chrono Trigger, or just straight action (non turn-based). If I played this before bed I found myself getting sleepy a little too often.

Overall though I did love this game and looking forward to playing Dragon Quest V, which focuses on the life of 1 hero, through marriage, child-raising, and the career of the child also. But Chrono Trigger will come first.