It’s no secret that Chrono Trigger is my
favorite video game of all time. There’s really not enough praise I can pour
onto it. It’s without question one of the most perfectly
executed, laser focused, and cohesive works I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. However, for all of its brilliance, its cleverness,
and its timelessness (see what I did there?), it also has some slightly troubling behind
the scenes stories regarding the workload and stress that were endured by the development
team to make it happen. In other words, brilliance of this kind comes
at a price, and in Chrono Trigger’s case that price was paid heavily by young developers seeking to prove themselves to legendary figures at Squaresoft. In my Chrono Trigger review I talked about
Yasunori Mitsuda’s experience, how he worked himself nearly to death and ended up in the
hospital, but I didn’t have a chance to talk much about Masato Kato—the story planner
and script writer. If you don’t know who this guy is, he’s
the one responsible for some of the most badass cutscenes of the NES era with the Ninja Gaiden
titles, but in his interviews for Chrono Cross, he expresses a level of candid bitterness
that I’m finding more and more common among these poor developers who worked at Squaresoft during their golden years, and honestly who can blame them? This seems to be the attitude of Kato toward
Chrono Trigger when you look at his responses, and the most interesting thing about this
sort of subdued resentment is that it seemed to be a driving force for him creatively in
how he approached both of its follow up projects, Radical Dreamers, and Chrono Cross. It’s also likely the best explanation for
the change in tone that so many Trigger fans make a point to address in their criticism
of Cross, but I’ll get to that a little later. Many people who played Chrono Trigger before
Cross, and saw the way the game ended, might have wondered why there was any need for a
follow up to it at all. Well, for Kato at least the motivation was
derived primarily from Schala, whose story he felt was left unresolved. Radical Dreamers—a text-based visual novel
released in 1996 on the satellaview add-on for the super famicom—was the result, and
in Kato’s mind was initially more like an indie film project where a small, tight-knit
group came together to create something fun. Over the course of its three month development
though, it sort of evolved into something larger than it was ever intended to be, and
the final product left Kato feeling embarrassed, claiming that development halted when it was
only half-finished. He felt so strongly about this in fact, that
when Square wanted to include Radical Dreamers in the Playstation release of Chrono Trigger,
Kato simply refused. Instead, after production wrapped on Xenogears,
Kato decided to take the ideas introduced in Radical Dreamers and turn them into a full-fledged
game in their own right, claiming that he heard Kid’s voice echoing from within him,
calling him to finish her story. And so began the development of Chrono Cross
in mid 1998. Right from the beginning though, Kato was
firmly against taking the ideas and design philosophies of Trigger and simply building
upon them in Cross. He wanted in as many ways as possible to start
from scratch and try to create something that had never been seen in the genre before. This meant he axed any discussion on bringing
time travel back, deciding instead to explore the idea of parallel worlds that the player
would travel between. It also meant starting fresh with the art
direction, meaning that Akira Toriyama’s style—which served as the basis for the
look and feel of the first game—was replaced by Nobuteru Yuki’s designs, with Yasuyuki
Honne providing overall art direction. The difference between each game’s art style
is stark to say the least, but in addition to this, the battle system from Trigger was
completely scrapped, effectively abandoning the ATB system that Final Fantasy had made
popular, and replacing it with what is probably the most unique battle system I’ve ever
seen in an rpg. The result is a game that feels very different
from its predecessor in almost every respect, and while this was the intention of the game’s
director from the beginning, it was clear that the dev team, alongside Squaresoft as
a whole, felt concerned about living up to the lofty achievements of the “dream project”, and had some fears about how Cross would be received. This is seen clearly in interviews with the
game’s producer, Hiromichi Tanaka, who claimed over and over again that Chrono Cross is not
a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Like seriously... he really, really wanted
to make that clear; which is odd to me when considering how important the events of Trigger
are to Cross’s story. The two stories are very much entwined and
Cross especially feels interdependent, so to me this seems a lot more like a PR move. However, it proved to be a justified one,
considering the harsh feedback the game received from many of the die-hard Trigger fans. Despite the disgruntlement of some fans over
directorial shifts though, Chrono Cross is an incredibly unique and polished experience. It’s often difficult when dealing with a
revered classic to separate the successor from it and judge a sequel purely on its own
merits, but I felt for myself that it was important to really make a strong attempt
to do so—especially since that’s exactly what the developers wanted the audience to
do anyway. Having played the game with that mindset,
I can say that while it might not be one of my absolute favorite games from Squaresoft, I can understand why it is regarded as a classic by so many. The island theme—which was inspired by Masato
Kato’s scuba diving excursions in Southeast Asia—alongside a beautiful implementation
of the artstyle, a refreshing battle system, and a gorgeous soundtrack, are probably its
greatest achievements; creating this really chill and relaxing vibe as you play. The story itself, while putting the kind of
heavy late game exposition dumps that the genre has become infamous for on full display,
still plays with some interesting ideas, and I think it flows quite naturally into some
of the unanswered questions Chrono Trigger was unable to resolve. For me, it was these connections to Trigger
that provided the game’s most interesting content, but they aren’t really the focus
of the story necessarily. For Kato at least, the game is more of an
“ole boy-meets-girl story”, and also carries some wonderfully poignant depictions of the
search for identity. In order to elaborate on this, I’ll have
to delve into some spoiler territory, so if you’d like to avoid that please skip ahead
to the timecode shown on the screen now. It’s obvious that jrpgs are heavily inspired
by anime, and considering that kids and teenagers were the target demographic for games in those
days—at least generally speaking—it makes a lot of sense that self-discovery and coming-of-age
tales (the kind that are commonly seen in shonen anime) crossed over into video games
as well. The usual template for JRPGs pits young people,
who are struggling to find their place in life, against the world’s greatest threats,
and that template has become a pretty big cliche at this point. That being said, I think the journey of Chrono
Cross’s main character, Serge (as well as a number of others in the cast), are easily
some of the more subtle and nuanced examples you’ll find in the genre. Serge in particular, through early events,
finds himself thrown into a parallel world in which he had died as a child, and where none of his village friends or acquaintances recognize him. Through his efforts to return to his own world
he gets swept up in a larger plot, eventually swapping bodies with his nemesis, only to
return to his own world and be rejected by his loved ones due to their prejudice against
demi-humans. For some players I’ve spoken with, this
sense of not belonging in your own skin was very personally relevant. In the end, having embraced what makes him
different, Serge finds the strength to reclaim his identity and embrace his unique gifts,
and with the help of his friends faces the dangers that are his destiny to defeat. Messages like these, I think, are what really
lingered with young players who were also struggling to find their place in the world,
and who perhaps felt different or out of place in their social circles. For these players, Chrono Cross offered courage
to face their own fears while embracing who they are, and I have to agree that when it
comes to themes of self-discovery, this game can be deeply resonant. For others though, it was all about the journey
across such a beautifully realized world, discovering memorable locales and endearing
characters to recruit. This game has a total of 45 playable characters
to enlist to your cause, many of which can only be unlocked over multiple playthroughs;
and while trying to implement and execute on such a large cast inevitably leads to majority
feeling shallow or underdeveloped, for those who enjoy collecting it can be quite satisfying
to find and round them all up. Personally, I don’t enjoy that kind of collecting,
and would have rather seen the cast reduced in order to bring a stronger focus to the
characters who play major roles in the story, but even if the character development isn’t
quite as deep as I would have liked, there are still some absolutely brilliant moments
for a select few, and those moments certainly deliver on an emotional level. One thing that bothered me a bit though was
that there are certain choices that can be made in the game that more or less create
a branch in the game’s story and change which character’s you’ll be able to recruit
and so forth. For one such choice, you are forced to make
what I would see as the obvious bad or wrong choice in order to have access to one of the
most beloved characters in the entire game. This may be considered a small thing for some
people, but the way choice and consequence are handled in the game didn’t really work
for me. I also think the game struggles to find a
central message or theme used to guide the directorial choices and overall pacing, and
because of it I think the story tends to feel a bit messy. This is something Kato has inadvertently admitted
to in interviews. “I don't normally think particularly about
a theme or message at the launch of a project. The important question is whether the player
will enjoy playing the game... What's important is not the message or theme,
but how it is portrayed as a game.” For me, this lack of attention to the importance
of theming hurts the delivery of the story in some spots, but in particular in how the
game resolves. Without spoiling anything major, Kato really
tries with the closing text to beat you over the head with this message about how humanity
needs to overcome its violent impulses and learn to coexist peacefully with nature, and
while there was one or two small instances where this idea was played with in the story,
it certainly was never a main focus of the game, and so this heavy-handed pontificating
in the game’s closing minutes felt terribly out of place to me. For this reason, alongside the giant exposition
dumps in the closing act, the game’s resolution did not feel particularly satisfying for me,
and therefore hurt my overall sense of cohesion with the narrative. In other words, while I think there are some
exceptional ideas in play here, I ultimately did not like how they were executed, and I
think a big part of the reason why it feels so messy is because of Kato’s flippant dismissal
of the importance of theming, especially for a story as large and ambitious as this one. In my opinion, it would have made a great
deal more sense to bring the idea of self-discovery into the closing monologue, or perhaps even
a focus on the resolution of Schala’s story that served as the genesis for this project
in the first place. While the ending credits sequence does that
to some extent, it does so in only a nebulous and obscure way, which kind of defeats the
purpose of creating an entire game to help resolve a subplot that felt ambiguous in Trigger
to begin with. I will say though, that this game has one
of the better localizations among Japanese games from that era, and that is largely because of Richard Honeywood’s influence within the company. After his horrifying experience translating
Xenogears, he went on to contribute several major changes to how the company approached
localization. “Xenogears was pure hell, but it revealed
what really needed to be done for proper localization. From that project on, I contributed to change
Square’s approach to localization. Basically most of the factors that make Square
Enix’s localization different from other companies’ methods came out of the experience
of this project.” Honeywood’s approach to localization is
one that I strongly agree with, and I find his perspective valuable when it comes to
understanding the process. I’ll leave a link to this interview where
he describes his approach in the description and I definitely suggest you read it, but
in short I think he knows exactly when changes from the original script are both necessary
and more effective for English speaking audiences. That being said, another addition Honeywood
and his team made to the game was a script they wrote into the game’s code that generated
accents, which was put in place to help individualize the 45 playable characters without the need to go in and manually tweak each and every dialogue box. So basically they could place in a more direct
translation for a character, and then the script they wrote would apply an accent to
it on its own. Any time you’re dealing with an automated
system like this you’re going to get some level of awkwardness, and there were a few
times when I had to really stare at a sentence for a second to try and make sense of it. With games that rely on written text only,
I prefer they either go light or stay away from accents entirely, but overall I think
the accent generator did it’s job in this case, and I definitely understand the need
here to try to make all of these characters stand out and be memorable in their own right. Again, personally I’d rather they had just
reduced the cast and focused on hand-crafted dialogue, but that’s just me. Anyway, while not perfect by any means, the
story still has some absolutely amazing moments, and I’m certainly glad to have played through
it myself. My problems with its execution are firmly
rooted, but they would never keep me from recommending the game to other players, even
if only for some of the character scenarios and subplots which is where the storytelling
truly shines. On the gameplay side of things, however, I
have a lot of praise. Not only did the team try to create something
refreshing and different from the established formula, they succeeded in making it really
interesting, fun, and fluid. I’ll start with the combat, and the best
place to begin there I think is with the element system. Magic spells, or elements as they’re called
in this game, are actually items that can be found or purchased in the world, and you
can hold several of each in your element inventory. In order to use elements they have to be equipped
to your characters before battle. In some ways this is actually similar to how
Final Fantasy VIII’s junction system worked, but with one key difference. In FFVIII, when you used a spell it disappeared
from your inventory and you’d either have to draw another spell to replace it or refine
one. When you use a spell in Chrono Cross it isn’t
used up like that. Here you can only use any particular spell
once per battle. After the battle ends you’ll be able to
use it again in the next one, but you’re only allowed to use any given spell once in
a single battle. This means you’ll have to equip several
elements to use if you want to cast more than one spell in a fight, and additionally you’ll
have to equip duplicates of the same element if you’d like to cast a spell, say fireball,
more than once. At the beginning of the game you’ll have
very few slots available to insert your elements, but as you level up you’ll find yourself
with dozens down the line. The layout of the slots in the grid is also
important to note. Each column represents the next level of magic,
so elements in column one are level one spells, elements in column two are level two, and
so on. However, you aren’t locked into placing
level one magic into the first column. You could also put a level one element into
the seventh column if you wanted to, and doing so would increase the spell’s power (which
is indicated by the plus sign next to the number). You can also do the reverse and put a high
level spell into a low level column, but its power would be decreased. Once you have your elements set up and get
yourself into a fight, you can’t just use them right off the bat. You have to build up to them first by performing
physical attacks. So, if I land a successful attack once, I
gain access to the level one elements, if I land a second attack, I gain access to level
two, and so on. Physical attacks also function a little differently
here than in most other jrpgs. In this game you don’t just select the attack
command and watch your character jump across the screen and swipe at the enemy. Rather you have three options: a level one
attack which is weak but has a high chance of success, a level two attack which is stronger
but is less likely to succeed, and a level three attack which is the strongest but also
has the lowest chance of success. If you succeed though you’ll gain three
levels on your element grid. This is somewhat similar to how physical attacks
were handled in Xenogears with triangle, square, and x… or cross if you prefer that “sorry”. However, each time you successfully land an
attack, your chance of success across all three attack levels will increase as well. This is why the game suggests attacking with
a level one strike first, which will increase your chance of success, then a level two strike,
which will increase it even further, and then a level three strike, by which time your chance of landing the more powerful attack will be a lot higher. Of course, you aren’t unlimited in how many
times you can attack like this, but have to pool from the character’s stamina. At the beginning of every fight your characters
start with seven stamina, and consequently a level one attack will require one stamina,
a level two attack two stamina, and a level three attack three stamina. Simple enough, right? The goal is to use your stamina to gain access
to your higher level spells, then use them to inflict big damage by exploiting enemy
weaknesses. Red deals extra damage to blue, green to yellow,
white to black, and visa versa. However, using the spell at the end of the
turn also takes stamina, which means you’ll dip into the negative, and might not gain
a full seven stamina back for your next turn. On top of this you have the field effect gauge
in the top left corner of the screen. Basically this tracks which elements were
used for the previous three turns, and both the player’s party and the enemies’ effect
this. The goal here is to get all three circles
to be the same color, let’s say white, so that when you cast your white elements they’ll
be greatly strengthened. On the inverse, if the enemy were to cast
a black element while the element field is entirely white, it would weaken the spell. In addition to this, you can only cast summons
in this game when the element field is filled entirely with the element that summon is associated
with. To me, it was kind of a hassle to make this
happen so I didn’t really mess around with summons too much, but when you can make it
work they are really powerful for sure. So there’s a lot to manage in these fights:
element selection and equipping before the battle, stamina, physical attack chance of
success, building toward the element level you want to use, enemy weaknesses, and the
element field. Overall it might seem like a lot at first
(I certainly felt that way as I was trying to figure it out in the early game) but when
all is said and done I think it has just the right amount of layers and depth to keep it
feeling exciting as you play through the game. Even if that isn’t the case for
you, enemies can be avoided in this game if you’d rather just move on; so there’s
no dealing with random encounters. You can also run successfully from any fight in the game, and yes that applies to bosses as well. This is a super great feature in my opinion,
considering that sometimes in these older jrpgs you wouldn’t know exactly what to
expect when you reached a boss and perhaps hadn’t prepared the right way. Being able to run from battle, requip yourself,
and come back was something I really liked and I wish more jrpgs did this as well. The only real criticism I have when it comes
to combat is that similarly to the way materia makes character selection a bit meaningless
in Final Fantasy VII, the element system sort of does the same thing here in Chrono Cross. For the most part combat is about using physical
attacks to build up to the element you want to use, and so the strategy is universal for
just about every character. The characters don’t really feel unique
in how you use them in combat, so again I never felt all that motivated to experiment. Their innate element color, which effects
their elemental strength and weakness, was more important than the actual character in
that sense. There are a couple of exceptions to this,
like Sprigg who can use the dopplegang ability to transform into monsters she’s killed
and use their abilities. This makes her unique from any other character,
and plays a part in learning the necessary abilities to win in a monster battling arena
later in the game, but outside of that there’s kind of a select few characters who have the
best stats and special weapons, and you’ll typically want to go with them since most
characters play the same way anyway. Also, with the combat being as layered as
it is, sometimes it did feel like battles progressed a little slowly—more so than
other games anyway—but there’s always the option to instantly escape or avoid fights
altogether if you’re finding battling tedious. There’s often not much incentive to fight
a lot of battles anyway because of how level progression works in this game, which was
something I also really liked and wish was more common in the genre. Basically you don’t earn experience points
from battles at all. You only level up after defeating bosses. That might sound strange at first, but I actually
really like it because it totally eliminates the need for grinding and makes sure that
the party is at the appropriate level to fight the next boss, which helps the devs with balancing
the game. “I there any purpose in fighting regular
enemies then?” you might ask. Yes, there is. After you’ve defeated a boss and leveled
up, the game resets this sort of hidden system for the next several battles against regular
enemies, which will result in small stat upgrades to things like strength, agility, HP, and
so on. After fighting a certain number of battles
these stat increases will start to become less and less frequent. There’s kind of a lot that goes in to how
the game determines this that I have neither the time nor desire to explain, but I’ll
put one of the better guides I’ve read on this in the description if you’re interested
in looking at it. The basic idea is this: when you fight a boss
you level up, and after that each battle you fight for the next little while will give
you small increases to your stats, but the more battles you fight the less often you’ll
see stat upgrades, and eventually you’ll get to the point where you’ll get nothing
for fighting battles. Then, in order to start seeing the small stat
upgrades again you’ll have to fight the next boss and level up to reset this. Overall I like the idea because the player
is never under or overleveled this way. I also loved the new game plus feature, which
functions identically to how it did in Chrono Trigger, where you can go fight the final
boss at varying times throughout the story and unlock multiple endings. Many of your items and equipment carry over,
and they also included a fast forward and slow down feature, making it possible to get
through the game much quicker the second time, as well as get a really good look at some
of those awesome battle animations. As far as new game plus goes, both Trigger
and Cross get it exactly right. It’s great stuff. Yasunori Mitsuda is a guy I relate to a lot,
at least from what I’ve read about him. He’s an extremely passionate guy and a total
perfectionist when it comes to his own work. His willingness to work himself to death to
make up for perceived shortcomings is something I relate to in a big way, and I think it’s
primarily why his music is so full of emotion. Chrono Cross’s music is no different. It is considered by the vast majority to be
an all time classic video game soundtrack, and for good reason. After having gone through the rollercoaster
ride of bad health that he experienced on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, Mitsuda finally
decided it was time to take better care of himself, so he departed Squaresoft and began
working as a freelance composer. Luckily Kato convinced the company to bring
Mitsuda back, despite their unwillingness since he had just quit, knowing that he wouldn’t
be able to get that “Chrono sound” from anyone else, and Mitsuda was able to write
without destroying himself for the first time since he started composing for games. The result was a soundtrack that captures
all of the uniqueness that Kato sought to bring to Cross while also placing a number
subtle call backs to Trigger in the form of leitmotif, essentially bridging the gap between
the two and making Cross feel like it exists in the same world while also cementing its
own identity. There are some tracks here that are just…
incredible… especially the slower-moving, emotional pieces which is where I think Mitsuda
really shines. Tracks like Chronomatic, The Girl Who Stole
The Stars, Fragments of a Dream, Arni Village, Forest of Illusion, and the ending credits
music, Unstolen Jewel, just put me at a loss for words. There’s nothing I could say to do them justice. However, where I think Mitsuda on the whole
struggles a bit is with battle music, and I think Cross more so than Trigger and Xenogears
suffers in this area. I think the most criticized track in the whole
game is easily Gale, which was aptly described by a fellow youtube commenter as “the song you hear when you get molested by clowns in hell." Now, I think the reason it gives that impression
has more to do with instrument choice and mixing than it does with the melody or musical
phrases. Gale’s melody is carried by this fiddle-esque
string playing, which is usually associated with a more festive piece rather than a dangerous
one, and the bouncing, bubbly bass adds to that wacky or silly nature that obviously
conjured up the image of clowns for this person. However, listening to the version of this
track that appeared in Radical Dreamers gives a very different impression. It still has the same melody, the same crazy
9/8 time signature, but definitely feels more threatening in my opinion. It’s amazing how much a simple change of
instrument and a closer mix can alter the entire feel of a piece. To be completely honest though, I didn’t
love any of the battle themes in this game, and yes that includes Dragon God and Fate
- The God of Destiny. It’s not that these special boss themes
are bad or anything—they’re good compositions—they just never made me feel the same sense of
peril that Mitusda was able to capture in other games with tracks like Awakening and
Knight of Fire from Xenogears for example; both of which I find to be excellent. The only reason I bring this up is because
a jrpg’s main battle theme is the music the player will hear more than any other track
in the entire game, and so for me it’s very important that this piece be super engaging so as not to become fatiguing to the ear as you play. Unfortunately in this case, Gale was fatiguing
to my ear after about five seconds. Aside from battle music though, Mitsuda’s
work here is absolutely brilliant. Chrono Cross is very much a product of its
time, both as a PS1 jrpg and as a Squaresoft project of the late 90s. In that sense, the development team endeavored
to create something new. They wanted to innovate their formula and
take advantage of the hardware they were working with. They sought to escape the boundaries of what
fans might expect from a followup or sequel to Chrono Trigger, and were willing to take risks in the pursuit of constructing something wholly unique. When played with that in mind, I think Chrono
Cross proves to be an enjoyable experience with an incredible sense of style and compelling
ideas. The storytelling can be a bit uneven, with
a vast majority of its complex plot being dumped in huge paragraphs of text near the
end of the game, and it struggles to embrace a clear theme, but there are some really excellent
character moments and the world is both gorgeous and satisfying to explore; especially with
such a masterful soundtrack to accompany you. If you go in expecting an iteration of what
you loved in Chrono Trigger—a game that looks, feels, and plays in much the same way—then
you’ll certainly be setting yourself up for some level of disappointment. It’s clear that the developers didn’t
want Cross to be thought of as a direct sequel, so if you’re a huge fan of Trigger, and
can separate the two in your mind, you’ll likely find it easier to swallow. Looking at the game on its own though, without
using Trigger as a benchmark, I can easily see how it could be considered a classic from
an age where JRPGs were truly in their prime, and would not hesitate for a second to recommend
it. There really isn’t anything else like it I've ever played.
I love this game. I still play it to this day on my PSP
r/JRPG