Chrono Trigger is a game that lives up to its own hype. For almost 30 years now, it's been held up as the crowning jewel of the RPG genre and that status hasn't wavered in the slightest. It's a nearly perfect game, ironically timeless, to the point where I've seen so many video essays and articles from people who never grew up with the SNES still managing to fall completely in love with it. There are a lot of legendary games that didn't quite have the same impact on me that they did on the people who grew up with them, but Chrono Trigger isn't one of those games. It's still great, and it will probably always be great. There's nothing I can say here that hasn't already been said a million times over, but I will throw in a twist and say that its controversial sequel Chrono Cross deserves the same level of legendry.
But let's start with that first game, and I promise I'll be quick. As everyone knows by now, Chrono Trigger was infamously developed by a dream team of RPG developers including Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame, Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama of Dragon Quest fame, Takashi Tokita of Live A Live and Parasite Eve fame, Kazuhiko Aoki who would go on to direct Crystal Chronicles, Masato Kato who would proceed to write for both Chrono Cross and Xenogears, and of course, an at the time novice composer named Yasunori Mitsuda who would go on to make some of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time. This is an absolutely stacked roster, not only was it essentially a crossover between the two biggest RPG rivals at the time, but almost every single one of these people played a big part in making at least one of my Top 100 games. It's an unprecedented collaboration, the likes of which we'll probably never see again.
Chrono Trigger doesn't really have the most serious or complex plot in the world, it's not even close to the sheer melodrama and angst that populated the Final Fantasy games at the time, but it absolutely nails what it's trying to do. At its core, Chrono Trigger is a fun, rip-roaring adventure through time driven primarily by its rich and lovable cast of characters. Befitting the time travel narrative, Chrono Trigger's party is incredibly diverse and varied. The core trio Crono, Lucca, and Marle are all current day humans and they're fun and colorful on their own, but they eventually ally with a robot from the future, a cavewoman from the distant past, and my favorite character in the game, a noble sword-fighting frog named Frog. Each character has their own unique arc and memorable personality, with Lucca's and Frog's in particular being the most emotionally compelling, in my opinion. But I think what ultimately really enriches Chrono Trigger's story is the fact that it's also player-driven to a degree. Early on in the game, Crono gets put on trial for some of the actions he did in the prologue, and it's one of my favorite moments in the game because it hammers you on the head with the fact that your actions have consequences in this game. Of course, how well you do in this trial specifically doesn't really change much in the long run, but it serves as an effective warning shot. From then on, your decisions and actions will absolutely cause Chrono Trigger to swerve in a bunch of different directions leading to an impressive twelve different endings, which range from satisfying to depressing to kinda goofy. Thankfully, the developers also had the foresight to add in a New Game Plus mode (a rarity for the time) to make sure getting all the endings in this 20 hour RPG doesn't take like 200 hours in total. It's easy to overlook just how much of this game was revolutionary at the time. New Game Plus wasn't really a thing, neither was multiple endings in an RPG, and neither was emergent gameplay where your actions had impact on the world.
Speaking of gameplay, Chrono Trigger has one of my favorite battle systems in all of gaming. It's essentially a translation of the ATB system from the Final Fantasy games but with a few tweaks, additions, and innovations to elevate it into something truly special. First off, there are no random encounters. Each area has a set amount of enemies that walk around on the overworld, meaning that grinding isn't really a thing here. This allows Chrono Trigger to have really brisk pacing where it feels like not a moment is wasted. Second, once you run into an enemy, battles will take place on the overworld. This means that there's no load times or waiting for battles to start, the characters quickly hop into position and the battle immediately starts. And since battles take place on the overworld, there's now a big emphasis on movement and positioning. Your magic spells (aka techs) have areas of effect that force you to think about where you are in relation to your enemies, and multiple party members can even combine these techs in a variety of ways to do Double or even Triple Moves, allowing for a lot more to think about when picking your party. Chrono Trigger's battle system is both incredibly fast-paced and breezy, and it has a lot of depth and customization. It's the best of both worlds.
On top of the strong story and gameplay elements, Chrono Trigger's presentation is incredibly polished, boasting some of the most detailed spritework on the SNES. The game boasts a lot of iconic and striking bits of imagery like the gorgeous floating islands of Zeal or the comforting aura of the campfire scene, and it plays around with perspective in some incredibly creative and impressive ways like the fisheye look of the trial room or the skewed isometric look of the End Of Time. And of course, the soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda is absolutely incredible, especially for someone's first major video game soundtrack. Chrono Trigger boasts easily one of the best OSTs on the SNES, and one of the best scores in the entire RPG genre, immediately showing off Mitsuda's mature, thoughtful, and emotional composing style. There are a lot of iconic highlights, but special mention definitely goes to Chrono Trigger, Wind Scene, Secret Of The Forest, Frog's Theme, Battle With Magus, Corridors Of Time, Schala's Theme, Undersea Palace, and World Revolution.
Chrono Trigger has pretty much everything I look for in an RPG. It's ambitious but confident and assured in its design, it really is a near perfect experience. And yet, in a lot of ways, I find Chrono Cross to be a bit more interesting. Chrono Cross is one of the most controversial releases in all of gaming, a title that I've seen people call both a masterpiece and an absolute disaster. There are a lot of reasons to be polarized by Chrono Cross, but I think it ultimately boils down to something really simple. Chrono Cross made one of the boldest decisions a sequel could make, and that's to not be a sequel at all.
Chrono Cross isn't trying to be more of Trigger, and I think that's a good call because you can't just do more of Trigger. That game was a perfect storm in so many ways, and I think no matter what Squaresoft tried to do, a Chrono Trigger 2 probably would've been a let-down. So instead, the team decided to make a game about following up Chrono Trigger. It's a game that tries to be its own experience, but it also attempts to tackle the consequences of Crono's gang messing with time. Some of those consequences are messy, most of those characters you've come to life ended up getting a pretty unflattering sendoff and that's a hard pill to swallow. At times it may feel like writer Masato Kato hates Trigger, but that's absolutely not the case. Cross is just him grappling with the gargantuan success of Trigger and I think that's an interesting story to follow, at least thematically. Of course, prioritizing conveying themes in your story means that the actual plot and character work can feel a bit... messier. Cross's story isn't the simple and fun adventure of Trigger, it's a complex web of murder mysteries, parallel dimensions, and time paradoxes, with rarely any of its 45 party members getting as much development than anyone from Trigger (Kid is great though). I love what Chrono Cross is saying, but I can't exactly make the argument that it's an especially well-constructed story.
And yet, I still love Chrono Cross, and it's partly because of all its messiness. As I've said, Chrono Trigger is a perfect game, to the point of maybe even being too perfect. What even is there to say about it anymore? It does everything well, we all know that by now, it's almost boring to talk about. But Chrono Cross is a game that I still think about on the daily. I think about its thematic connections to its predecessor, I think about whether or not its gameplay changes were for the better, I think about its gripping atmosphere, I think about the bizarrely thoughtful and introspective NPC dialogue, and I think about how bold it was. In that sense, it's almost a perfect compliment to Trigger. Chrono Trigger is a flawlessly executed action-adventure that hits every beat perfectly, and Chrono Cross is a bold, experimental, imperfect deconstruction of that action-adventure. It's Square's The Last Jedi and I mean that with as much praise as possible. And while the plot may not be as masterfully-crafted and well-developed as its predecessor, it's never not interesting, and it's never not thought-provoking. Right from the first village, the characters are immediately ruminating on their past and future, and it's hard not to join in.
And that's not to say that Chrono Cross doesn't knock stuff out of the park because it absolutely does. I love so much of the gameplay ideas it has. Despite most of the characters not being particularly fleshed out, I love the concept of having a whopping 45 party members to find across the world. It almost turns Chrono Cross into a collectathon of sorts, and it's addicting to keep adding onto that roster. The battle system, while not as fast and tight as the one in Trigger, is also a ton of fun to mess around with thanks to its unique fighting game-inspired combo system that rewards experimentation. And if there's one thing I can say Cross does definitively better than its predecessor, it's the overworld traversal. I always love navigating a massive sea filled with islands to explore (as you'll see when I talk about Wind Waker), and Chrono Cross definitely scratches that itch, especially when you have two parallel worlds to deal with. And the dungeons in this game are often these surreal MC Escher-esque mazes filled with complex navigation puzzles and weird environments, they're far more fresh and original than the ones in Trigger and I absolutely adore working my way through them.
But ultimately, I think what really ties Chrono Cross together is the atmosphere. The visuals in Chrono Cross are utterly gorgeous, utilizing some of the best pre-rendered backgrounds I've ever seen in a videogame. Yasuyuki Honne is known for his handpainted backgrounds which he also proceeded to use in the Baten Kaitos games, and they look drop-dead stunning, with bold colors, surreal imagery, and a lot of texture and detail. The water is so blue, and I love it. And Yasunori Mitsuda's soundtrack isn't just better than his work on Trigger, it's an easy Top 3 video game soundtrack of all time, closely rivaling Super Mario Galaxy for the #1 spot. I've raved about Cross's OST before but it really is just that good, a beautifully orchestrated soundscape that sounds hits pretty much every single emotional note perfectly. It's subtle, it's elegant, it's transcendant, it's ethereal, it's calming, it's haunting, it's absolutely worth a listen if you've never heard it before. The entire soundtrack is constantly high points, but if I really had to single out a few tracks, they would be Arni - Home World, Shore Of Dreams - Another World, Fossil Valley, Dragoons, Marbule - Another World, The Girl Who Stole The Stars, Dream Of The Ages, Dragon God, and the best opening theme in all of gaming, Time's Scar.
Overall, I think the Chrono duology are both masterpieces in their own opposing ways. Chrono Trigger is the perfect RPG, with a satisfying and engaging narrative, perfectly-paced gameplay, and an impressive presentation. Chrono Cross is the bold imperfect experiment, boasting a less refined story and less tight gameplay, along with more thought-provoking themes, fascinating meta commentary, more complex gameplay systems, and one of the best audiovisual presentations in the entire genre. I may still prefer Trigger overall as a game by quite a wide margin, but Cross is the more fascinating of the two, and they both shine as showcases of Squaresoft at their peak across two separate console generations.
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