Game Journal: Which Way is the Right Way?

I've been playing a lot of Chrono Trigger lately, it’s a nifty little game that I've overlooked up to this point. My biggest pet peeve about it? In many (way too many) areas it gives you little to no clue as to what to do or where to go next. At one point I wandered around for at least an hour of game time total looking for the next story trigger, I finally gave up and looked online and it was something I was completely not expecting, nor had been given from any NPC in the game besides the ones I was supposed to talk to to progress.

This, my friends, is yet another reason I enjoy using strategy guides. That hour I spent looking for where to go next is one hour of my life wasted, which I'll never get back. A strategy guide would have solved all my problems. For the most part, Chrono Trigger is an extremely simple game, with simple cut scenes that manage to tell the story amazingly well. But, perhaps its too simple. So simple that, in fact, the developers (either when the original game was made, or when they were porting it and cleaning up the dialog for the DS version) for some reason decided not to bother telling you where to go to get from point A to point B.

It’s a habit I'm glad most recent (as in, the last 10 years) RPGs have given up, thankfully. Let's hope Star Ocean: Second Evolution doesn't have the same in store for me.