Our next podcast recording (6.7.25) - 677: Chrono Cross

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Chrono Cross for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[K1tsnats]

TWR: Starky Best Character

[Tbone254]

For years I searched the internet for news of a potential Chrono Cross remaster/hd upgrade. (I can’t be the only one that randomly looks up old game to see if there are remasters/HD re-releases on the horizon, right?) It was a favorite of mine growing up and the options for playing it on modern hardware were pretty limited. I also didn’t have access to original hardware. So a remaster or PC releases would have been a dream come true for me. After years of waiting and searching I finally broke down and emulated it, but it turns out Chrono Cross isn’t t the easiest game to get up and running on an emulator, in a decent looking state at least. It took me a few hours to get everything set up, looking nice, and streaming to my TV, ready for me to play this along side my wife. Of course, not a month after we finished playing through it, the Chrono Cross Radical Dreamers edition was announced. Story of my life right there.

I really liked Chrono Cross when it was released, and I still like it now. It definitely has some flaws but I never really understood a lot of the hate the game gets, at least from some vocal Chrono Trigger fans in some forums. I understand that a sequel to one of the most beloved RPGs is going to have astronomically high expectations, but I think they did a really good job with this game. I really enjoyed the direction they took the story, with the whole parallel universes and dealing with past consequences thing. I read an interview with one of the developers (can’t remember when or whom) that they didn’t want to use the time travel aspect of Chrono Trigger again because it would essentially be the same game and they wanted to make something different. I agree with their choice. I think the parallel worlds kind of encourages the massive cast and the almost vignette style storytelling of some of the minor characters. And while I enjoy epic tales of adventure with complex relationships and deep character growth, I also enjoy the simpler stories. Sometimes less is more and it helps to build the world so that the main story can really flourish.

You can’t talk about Chrono Cross without talking about the music. It’s easily one of the best video game soundtracks ever recorded. Or at least that’s what I think. It just hits all the right feels for me. It’s an achingly beautiful soundtrack that evokes the emotions of melancholic longing of times past, and the hopeful adventure of the unseen future. I don’t think I’ve ever heard music that could make me feel happy and sad at the same time, like this music does. I’m also a sucker for anything with violins and cellos and man does Yasunori Mitsuda put those strings to work here. I obviously love this soundtrack. I used to let the game sit on idle to just let the music play when I first played it 2 decades ago. Now I regularly listen to it while doing busy work around the house. It’s the one I fall back to when I just can’t figure out what station to put on. On my, not important to anyone else, list of greatest video game soundtracks, this sits at number 1.

Chrono Cross is a lovely little game. It has an incredible diverse cast, a unique battle and leveling system, a weirdly complex storyline, and some of the most gorgeous backgrounds Squaresoft has ever created. They hold up incredibly well today, especially in the Radical Dreamers edition. I think Chrono Cross is great example of a developer at its most confident and creative. I have enjoyed watching and experiencing what video games have become over the years, and some of the greatest games I’ve played have been from the past couple of generations of consoles. But there is something incredibly charming about this time period of gaming. It was practically the wild west of 3D gaming and when a developer really began to hit its stride, it made for some uniquely wonderful games.

[derek332]

eah, I’m right there with you. It's funny how everyone seems to have this "I’ve been waiting for a remaster for years" story. I mean, Chrono Cross is one of those games that always felt like it had a cult classic vibe, especially when you compare it to Chrono Trigger. I get why some fans of the original might have had high expectations, but honestly, they took risks with Cross, and I think those risks paid off in spades.

And yo, the music? No question, it's on a whole other level. Yasunori Mitsuda’s score is legendary. I don’t know how he managed to make something so beautifully haunting yet oddly uplifting. It’s like listening to memories on repeat, and it always hits the sweet spot when you’re in the mood for something nostalgic but not quite in-your-face.

The gameplay and story are weirdly complex in a good way, though. The multiple characters and parallel universe thing make it feel like a world where anything could happen. A bit scattered, maybe, but that’s what gives it so much character.

If anything, the Radical Dreamers edition was a blessing for people who couldn’t track down the original hardware or emulate it without feeling like they’re doing some crazy tech wizardry. It's one of those gems that, despite being a little rough around the edges, stays with you.

[AndrewElmore]

I've never gotten more than something like six or eight hours into Chrono Cross because I've never figured out the battle system, as I am not a clever man. That being said, I have an abiding love for Chrono Cross that is almost entirely rooted in manners of aesthetic; the art direction and mise-en-scène of a painterly world springing with vibrant life and light that dance across the screen. I've seen very little of the game for myself, but I have a lot of fondness for it. Mitsuda-san's masterful score is unassailable as far as I'm concerned. His legendary work on Cross is, if you'll allow me a brief indulgence of hyperbolic phrasing delivered in stone-faced sincerity, straight up some of the best of the best that has ever been.

If I can also enter a state of self-parody for the moment, I want to shout-out the implementation of Dolby Surround in this release. When decoded properly, a lot of the music is actually mixed in four-channel analogue surround, Quadrophenia-style. I have no idea if that's the case for the recent re-release as I haven't played it, but there's a big ol' Dolby Surround logo on the back of the case of the original game. This is the case for most of Squaresoft's PlayStation games from late-'98 onward, such as Final Fantasy VIII et al. Anyway, Chrono Cross is a particularly strong example of multi-channel surround audio on the PlayStation, so I always like to shout that out when I can.

Anyway, I love Chrono Cross--I hope to play (the rest of) it someday!

[Jobobonobo]

Out of curiosity, will ye just be talking about Chrono Cross or will Radical Dreamers be a big topic of discussion also?

[Jobobonobo]

Like with Trigger, I never got to experience this until way after its original release date in the US and Japan. I have heard many varying perspectives on this game to those who think it is a masterpiece to those who think it is not worthy of having the name Chrono attached to it. I was always surprised at how certain Chrono Trigger fans were so hostile to it as I thought like so many JRPG series, Chrono was just the series name and each entry would have its own story, setting and characters. And while that is mostly the case, I was surprised at the sheer number of callbacks to Trigger and how it follows on directly from where that tale ended.

Before getting onto that, I just wanted to say how luscious this game looks. The tropical island setting with its watercolour backgrounds is stunning to see and really made me nostalgic for the visual style of the PS1 era of RPGs. The soundtrack is equally delightful and for me it is certainly on par with Trigger when it comes to quality ranging from silly whimsy to beautiful tearjerkers, all of it is aural bliss. I also really dug the way combat was approached here and while somewhat unorthodox found it nowhere near as off-putting as critics claim it to be. I enjoyed the flexibility of the elements system and knowing when to utilise certain elements and summons depending on the field colour made battles a much more engaging affair. Not having MP and when you use a certain element it is gone for the rest of the battle meant you need to be more strategic in how you approach battles. I also thought levelling up only when you beat the bosses made not only such battles a lot more interesting as you cannot rely on higher levels to beat them but also got rid of grinding which made the game a lot less tedious. Speaking of bosses, while the game is mostly easy certain bosses were real walls for me to get through and thus made my eventual victory over them all the sweeter. Particularly tough cookies for me were the Green Dragon, Dario and especially Miguel. Good god how can such an ordinary looking guy kick my backside so hard?!

Where things go a bit south for me is the story towards the end of the game. While I thought it was cool having the Reptites be a big part of the plot with Terra Tower being a memorable final dungeon for me, it just vomits up a load of exposition at the end where I felt like I was watching a recap of Kingdom Hearts Lore. Lavos went to the future and then travelled to the past from the future, I can`t remember; Lynx is Serge`s dad and for me the most glaring was Kid being a clone of Schala. That twist never worked for me due to one simple detail. Schala had blue hair, not blond. Why did she turn blond? I appreciate the effort to tell a more complex story, but I think it really needed a bit more time in the oven and felt rushed near the end. Related, while I enjoyed recruiting loads of characters, only a few were really developed to any real degree and so I had nowhere near the attachment to them the way I did to Trigger’s party.

Despite those misgivings, I enjoyed myself with this enough that I got all the endings and the gameplay and world just grew on me the more I experienced it. While I had some issues with the story, I had a real great time with Chrono Cross and if you just want a beautiful, unique and ambitious RPG then I say give it a chance. I did not go into this expecting another Chrono Trigger and as a result, I appreciated what this game did right a lot more than I might have otherwise. Is it as good as Trigger? For me, no. But Cross is still a great game and one I am glad to have finally experienced after all these years of not having access to it.

TWR: Boo Hi-Ho Dwarves

[Mr Ixolite]

Having not played it until this year, I had convinced myself in advance that I’d enjoy Chrono Cross. I have no nostalgic reverence for Chrono Trigger, making me unfazed at the common criticism that Cross is “a poor sequel to Trigger”. Conversely, I do have immense nostalgia for 90’s PS1-era Squaresoft RPGs with pre-rendered backgrounds, and a tendency to root for the underdog.

First impressions were great; the scenario was intriguing and Kid a great companion, the audiovisual presentation sublime, and the combat…more or less comprehensible. Yet issues piled up quickly. The one outlier in the soundtrack was surprisingly the combat theme, which quickly grated on my nerves. Not ideal when it’s the most frequent track you hear. Tangible goals and stakes beyond “get home” were absent, and my frustrations with Silent Protagonists in Party-Based RPGs quickly resurfaced. Strong interplay and colorful personalities in the remaining party members can fill the void left by the silent protagonist, as was the case in Trigger, but sadly, this is where Cross disappointed me the most. In RPGs with large casts, characters can suffer from hard dialogue ceilings, often leaving latecomers and optional recruits feeling vestigial and poorly integrated in the group dynamic. Even games with smaller parties such as Chrono Trigger can have jarring scenes of Frog describing his animosity towards Magus to an NPC, oblivious to fellow party member Magus, standing unblinkingly at his side.

For Chrono Cross, this issue felt omnipresent across my entire sprawling party.

I kept waiting for characters to converse more, to react more to the fact that a glam-rock star joined the team, but rather than a close-knit group of friends I'd expected, I got a cornucopia of puddle-deep acquaintances.

Things came to a head after Viper manor where Kid, the one character I cared about, was incapacitated. As I was tasked with finding a cure wondered why exactly my party members were going along with this, what, if anything, they felt towards Kid, or the revelation that they were going to hop to another dimension. My playthrough stalled out then.

It’s possible that the 2025 version of myself no longer has the patience to wait for 90s RPGs getting their character and story hooks in, or that I was too blinded by nostalgic expectations of what Chrono Cross “should” be. Hoping for essentially “another Final Fantasy IX” is an unfairly tall order for any game. It’s frustrating though, because it feels all the right ingredients are there.
But in the end, the quirk that somehow most defines Chrono Cross in my mind, is the surprising absence of post-battle victory animations. A small little flourish adding just a little more personality to your party members, one you don’t know how much you miss ‘till it's gone.