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Chrono Cross (Not to be confused with Trigger, Crusade, Force, or anything else)
Tcheldor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I was in this random game store that opened near my house the other day, and I saw a new copy of this for 20 bucks, and I said to myself "Self, I hear this game is good and controversial, and it might be neat to buy it." Now I wasn't the biggest fan of crono trigger(it was a good game, but i don't think it's this awesome god people make it out to be), but I was wondering what you guys thought of the "sequel."
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FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Tcheldor on
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Chrono Cross is nothing special. It's alright, but won't blow you away. The hooks are that there are parallel dimensions that you travel between and that you can get a lot of characters. The dimension thing is done pretty well. Also, it has a unique battle system which involves colors, magic/special moves, three strength of strikes, and probabilities.
If you have $20 and 30-40 hours, go nuts.
Edit: There are also choice points that affect which characters you can get. I mainly focused on 3 or 4 characters so it didn't really matter that much to me. I think it's just to give you a reason to do New Game+ (as well as the multiple endings).
I beat the game and was not compelled to do a New Game+.
JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.
ALL MY DICKS. THEY EXPLODE.
Chrono Cross IS something special.
Good art, Great music, fun battle system, decent end of PSX era graphics.
Neat story if you can digest it all.
That doesn't mean I didn't like it though, was a pretty fun and for 20 dollars I would pick it up.
Best. Score. Ever.
The biggest selling point should've been the music.
If there was a commercial with a black screen and 30 seconds taken from anywhere in the score I think it would've sold bajillions of copies and everyone would've bought seventeen copies each.
As for the game itself, I loved every minute of it. The game looked, sounded, and played well, and I enjoyed the plot for what it was. Hell, for what it's worth, I enjoyed it as a sequel, if not because it wasn't trying to be Chrono Trigger version 2.0
Cross, Final Fantasy IX, and Vagrant Story all do, if I remember correctly.
I think it was really bad in this game. I honestly remember the guy in the beginning talking like: "Dost thou haveth thou weapons?" "Hark! What'st..." etc.
I couldn't play it very long after that.
It's a great game.
Everyone in Chrono Cross has a different accent, don't be spreading them lies.
Yes, but I think the question was about a single character, which does use the archaic english. I don't think it's an enemy though, rather it was Radius, the village chief.
Now that I think about it, Frog from the first game used that speaking style.
The commercial they aired was 30 seconds of FMV with Scars of Time playing in the background, so it was pretty much what you asked for.
If anything, Cross DID continue the one only notable loose string that Trigger left behind by exploring what happened to Schala. How else should it continue what was a pretty close storyline without it sounding increadibly forced? Crono and Company invents the rocket ship and goes into space, performing a mass genocide on every existing Lavos?
Dammit why didn't it sell more?
I honestly didn't pay any attention to the game until I played CT in.... 98?, wanted more, and then started it up. Then the first thing I did was cleaned up after hearing Time's Scar.
People who like CT were expecting it to be CT2(which it wasn't)
People who liked FF7 were expecting it to be the next FF7(which it wasn't)
And therein was the problem.
And I hear the music is pretty good.
I would suggest hitting up the character FAQs before you start the game, or buying a guide (Ha!). There are a lot of cool characters that are easy to miss. Especially that voodoo guy, who you can miss by not going into a certain house and doing a certain thing 5 minutes into the game.
The music was, indeed, awesome. I listen to the soundtrack on a regular basis (like, once a week). The story was good, and some of the extra "non-essential" characters were awesome. I mean, there's a man-sized voodoo doll with a huge nail through his chest. Which he stabs people with. Also, Starky.
My only real complaint about the game was that it was way easy. The only remotely difficult part of the game was trying to fight the final boss
sketchyblargh / Steam! / Tumblr Prime
Crap, I was wrong. I don't like this game, it's complete shit. As backed up with the fact that it was horrible, as described above.
I was mistaken in my opinion.
sketchyblargh / Steam! / Tumblr Prime
The opening Chrono Cross theme, with the FMV in the background, made me change my shorts with glee. I still play the CC soundtrack sometimes when I need some great music in the background.
I actually preferred Chrono Cross' story to Trigger's in many ways, especially when I finally pieced together what is going on.
MAJOR SPOILERS
Or do they?
Chrono Cross is a more. . . I guess it's a mature game. The theme of Chrono Cross is consequences: what happened after the grand adventure of Trigger? What if that happy ending wasn't so happy after all? What if terrible things happened because of the good you tried to do?
One key example: one of the major quests in Trigger is the restoration of the Masamune. The Masamune is basically a weapon of great power symbolized by two rambunctious monster children who make up the spirit of the sword. In Trigger, the Masamune is wielded by Frog, a cursed knight who is basically the paradigm of chivalry and honor, and because of that, it becomes a great force for good.
But what happened to the Masamune after its wielder passed away?
Cross reveals that power can be used as a force for evil as well as good. It says that after Frog passed away, the Masamune Sword fell into the hands of. . . less than honorable. . . people. It was used to commit terrible atrocities, and the sword itself became corrupted. It became a blade of murder and rage, that would turn friends against each other and comrades into enemies. One of the major quests of Cross is once again restoring the Masamune: in this case, you restore it not just to a weapon of power, but to a weapon of morality (by introducing the third monster triplet: Doreen, who'd been sleeping inside Serge's oar. . . I mean, Sea Swallow.)
Another example: In Trigger, part of the storyline involved stopping a race of sentient reptiles descended from dinosaurs (Reptites) from wiping out the primitive human race. It turns out in the end, however, that humanity was meant to be wiped out: it was only the fall of Lavos that destroyed the Reptites and allowed mammalian, not reptilian life, to become ascendant. There are basically three timelines: Reptites Win, Lavos Wins, and Humans Win. And basically, the storyline moves towards the idea that the Humans are meant to survive.
Cross turns that upside its head. The idea is that in the Reptilian timeline, scientists there looked back into the past, discovered a time anomaly, and found out that Lavos was coming. Their attempt to save their species - just what Crono did in Trigger - screws up the timeline even further, resulting in something called the Dragon Tower. So the question is, who has the right to live, and who has the right to not only die, but cease to exist entirely?
Cross is filled with things like that. There are no cut and dry "right" choices, good or bad. Even the enemies are not truly evil: in some cases, they are simply misled, in other cases, they are noble. The whole game basically orients towards the final battle, which can't be won by violence (if only they'd made it MORE clear HOW it can be won :P I've yet to meet someone who figured it out without an FAQ or strategy guide.)
Basically, Chrono Cross had an excellent story and an incredible soundtrack married to a rather confusing presentation and a somewhat sub-par battle system/cast of player characters. I loved it. YMMV
Mmmmm. . . how do you mean by that? I mean that the battles didn't feel as exciting as, say, Final Fantasy, where character selection makes a difference in the flow of battle. You could basically plug in any character of any chosen color into one of your three character slots and get much the same result.
Sure, when you have three man parties and 40+ characters you are going to have some overlaps. I'd say on a whole that the characters are quite a bit different compared to those in FF VII-VIII. Some do magic well, some have good specials, some have huge grids, some have specialized grids.
Combat in this game is fast and never boring. You can see every enemy before you fight them, and run from any enemy. Summons are a reward for being able to manage both your stamina and the field. Bosses fight using basically the same rules that you do and are a good balance of difficult without being frustrating.
Mmmmmm. . . I had a bit of a different experience than you did. For me, the combat system was the part I slogged through to get to the next part of the story. Rounds usually went weak-weak medium-strong or weak-strong-strong for attack, then use rank 1 elements to set the field before slamming with the hardest elements you could muster. Specials, after the nuanced double-triple-tech system of Trigger, were a bit underwhelming: I'd have preferred if they'd just left out multitechs entirely, to be honest.
At least the combat animations were fun to watch. Norris looked great moving from stance to stance firing his handgun, and Harle, of course, carried out her throwing knife attacks with flair.
Actually, that's a general point of praise for the game: everyone's animations, both in and out of combat, are really appealing to watch. For example, watch the way different characters run and walk.
Blame yourself or God.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
The many throw away characters are my only qualm, but it doesn't really hinder the story. The story is absolutely stunning if you have or haven't played Chrono Trigger, but it takes a good mind to sort it all out.
The music and backdrops are absolutely stunning. I have the OST and I've listened to it since I first got the game years ago up until now, and I'm still not tired of it. I think one thing that doesn't get said enough is how original the atmosphere was for an RPG. Chrono Trigger had some nice atmosphere, but it was kind of generic sci fi/high fantasy at its core. Chrono Cross, on the other hand, does this crazy tropical fantasy vibe that just works perfectly.
Really, for anything less than $50 I feel you owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot. Is it a direct sequel to CT? No. But it carries on its legacy of JRPGs that stand out from the crowd of me-toos.
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As opposed to FFX which had this crazy tropical fantasy vibe that didn't work.
...little ram and slow cd drives made fighting more of a chore than it really should have been.
Also, another plug for the OST; multiple discs of music, and being able to listen to the different versions of each song one after the other is well worth the price I paid oh so long ago.
PSN: LucidStar_BC