Chrono Cross is back!

[Skinypupy]

I somehow missed the announcement that Chrono Cross is getting a remaster with bonus content. Releasing on April 7 for all consoles and PC. Has a host of improvements, including a remastered soundtrack (yay!) and the ability to turn off random encounters (wut…there weren’t any random battles).



Looks beautiful and just hearing that music (best gaming soundtrack ever, imo) brings back so many good gaming memories. Oddly, I never actually finished the original. Got stuck on one of the last bosses and couldn’t break through. Can’t wait to give it another shot.

This announcement makes me very happy. You better not fark this up Squeenix.

[NickAragua]

Man, I have mixed feelings about this game. Apologies for the "life story".

So, I first played through Chrono Trigger when I got to college and discovered the joys of SNES emulators and ROMs. And then I played through it again. And again. Etc. I could probably go through the entire damn thing on muscle memory at this point.

Eventually, near my junior or senior year, I saved up a good chunk of change from a summer job, and enough money to buy an original playstation (it was a "mini". I think it's still in my basement somewhere.) I don't know what I was expecting from the sequel, but what I got ... wasn't it. The music was beautiful, but, I don't know. The multi-colored combat system never really grabbed me; I was under the impression (still don't know if it was correct or not) that if you didn't grind enough fights between the bosses, you could miss out on XP upgrades for your dudes; instead of a focused experienced with a few party members, there were fifty different people that I just couldn't get myself to care about. I stuck with three or four to maximize color coverage and swapped them out as required. And I'm not one of those people that watches a movie and asks what's going on every five seconds, but I could barely follow the storyline.

Spoiler:

I'm pretty sure it was about time traveling dinosaur dragons fighting time traveling computers across two parallel worlds and some kind of unrelated time god thing as a side story, but it was actually the final boss? And basically everything that was done in the first game got thrown out?

Not to mention the disc had a scratch on it, so I couldn't complete one of the side missions since it would just hard-crash the console; something about having to climb up a bunch of cliffs behind a mansion for the second time. It was near the end, too, so I just said screw it and went to play xylophone on the final boss. I'm not, uh, kidding about that.

Still, it had a few moments that really made me feel invested in the main character and Kid; that bit around Chronopolis was amazing; and I sure spent a lot of time chasing after Kid and trying to uh, "restore my original state", so to speak. Anyway, if there's anyone out there who hasn't played it, it's a very interesting take, mechanically speaking, on the JRPG, but it *is* a JRPG.

Also, I watched the trailer, and it's also got that text adventure game that only came out in japan and you could only play it if you had some kind of rare expansion pack for your SNES? Thankfully, I played it through on an emulator so I didn't have to worry about importing out-of-manufacture electronics from across the pacific ocean. I enjoyed it, but it's real easy to go off the beaten path and accidentally wind up fighting a final boss without having anything that'll help you.

Kind of wonder what other content they added.

[Skinypupy]

I actually played Chrono Cross first and absolutely fell in love with it, especially the music. Having missed the 16-bit JRPG era entirely (my first RPG of any sort was FF VII on PS1), I didn't have any connection to or nostalgia for Chrono Trigger. That's probably a good thing, as it seems Cross was wildly disappointing for those who were expecting a straight sequel.

I actually read somewhere that Cross was initially developed as a standalone game, then shoehorned in as a Trigger sequel late in development. Not entirely sure that's true, but if so, it would explain why they're such wildly different games.

I have gone back and tried Chrono Trigger a couple time since, and while I think it's a decent enough game, I've never really quite understood the glowing praise it gets. It's fine, but I much prefer Chrono Cross. FF VI is a far better SNES JRPG, imo.

Really looking forward to this remake, as it's been nearly 20 years since I've played Chrono Cross. I'm hoping it's as fun as I remember, and it's not just the nostalgia talking. I know it had it's quirks (especially with all the recruitable characters), but I remember really enjoying it.

Oh, and I checked the bookshelf in the spare room this morning and look what I found.

[NickAragua]

I have gone back and tried Chrono Trigger a couple time since, and while I think it's a decent enough game, I've never really quite understood the glowing praise it gets. It's fine, but I much prefer Chrono Cross. FF VI is a far better SNES JRPG, imo.

Oof, them's fightin' words, lol

I'm sure part of it was that I played Chrono Trigger when I was at the tail end of my teenage years, still forming my "likes and dislikes". I don't know if I could deal with it if now if I went in "blind". I guess I tend to prefer being able to focus on a smaller number of characters rather than have fifty surface-level people swapping in and out, so it'd probably be ok - although I tried plowing through FF6 a few months ago, and I ground to a halt. Those endless random encounters just make me want to punch people.

I'll give the re-master a shot when it goes on sale; I'm curious to see what they re-mastered.

[Sudy]

I didn't care for it much at the time, but my few memories of it awaken nostalgia. I got pretty deep into it but didn't finish. I think I was frustrated because it felt like lighter fantasy to me than I thought Chrono Trigger was about (I hadn't played it either), and I was waiting for the "real" story to begin.

I'm not sure what it would be like playing an older JRPG with no random encounters at all. (I know this has been an option in others, or at least to tone down the frequency.) Wouldn't that just make it an adventure game plus a few boss battles?

[NickAragua]

It's a weird thing to brag about removing in Chrono Cross, because there are no random encounters - they all happen in fixed locations. Some you can avoid, some you can't, some re-appear if you leave an area, some don't. But, unlike Final Fantasy, there's zero random element involved in whether a fight happens.

That's not to say that there aren't a whole bunch of "throwaway" fights against the standard array of random misshapen animals and anthropomorphic furniture that serve absolutely zero purpose story-wise. These grindy encounters do serve the purpose of letting you power up with extra cash and XP; if those are taken away, then the loot and XP has to come from somewhere else, or the boss stats need to get toned way down. They also comprise, in my opinion, the majority of the most of a JRPG's play time. So yeah, it'd be pretty weird being able to plow through Chrono Cross in 10-15 hours instead of 30-40 or more.

[Jaymann]

Late to the party as usual. Never played the original, so picked this up for PS5. Even remastered the graphics are a bit too cartoony for my taste, but I like the turn based battles with just enough strategy. The game is very tricksy, with some "best" decisions very counterintuitive. Glad I'm following a guide.

[Skinypupy]

After trying and bouncing off this new version several times now, I have resigned myself to the fact that Chrono Cross is a game that should just continue to live in my rose-colored memory as something I thoroughly enjoyed…back in a different stage of my life.

[Jaymann]

LOL, I am many hours in and just discovered you can allocate elements to your characters. Up until now I was only using the default ones, but actually surviving.

[Jaymann]

Finished the game and got the good ending. Don't see much point in doing a NG+1.