RPG Diary

Chrono Cross

Chrono Trigger is possibly my all-time favorite RPG, but I've never played its sequel, Chrono Cross. I'm not really sure what to expect with this one — many of the people involved with Chrono Trigger did not work on Chrono Cross, but the game seems pretty popular.

Title	Chrono Cross
Year	1999 (US 2000 )
System	PSX
Developer	Square
Publisher	Square

As a sequel to Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross is a massive disappointment. It can be hard to remember it's even a sequel at times — the gameplay mechanics are completely different, and the plot seems completely unrelated (outside of a couple name-drops) for about half the game. However, once the plot connections were finally revealed, I was even more disappointed. But if we ignore that aspect, does Chrono Cross stand up on its own?

For most of the game, there is very little explanation about what is going on. Serge, the main character, is whisked away to an alternate dimension. After regaining the ability to return to his home dimension, the game begins to feel aimless. Lynx is introduced as the primary antagonist, but without any clear goals, so there is just that generic RPG motive to "stop that bad guy, because he must be doing something bad." The game also kind of tries to force the other main character, Kid, into the party several times, but you can actually choose to reject her. Kid's backstory and motives are also barely explained for most of the game. I found myself losing interest in the game and debated abandoning it.

The story does have its moments. There was a pretty unexpected plot twist about halfway (switching bodies with Lynx) that captured my interest for awhile. However, the core plotline of what Lynx is actually trying to do continues to be a mystery until the last third of the game or so. Unfortunately, the mysteries are revealed via lore dump monologues before or after boss fights rather than seeing anything in cutscenes. This was extremely frustrating and unsatisfying. I'm a huge believer in "show, don't tell." The last few hours of the game is a whirlwind of convoluted (and barely explained) plot twists, and I just wanted the game to end already. I had to read summaries online to make any sense of the story.

One of Chrono Cross's claims to fame is that there are 44 party characters available in the game. Unfortunately, these characters have very little personality or impact on the story, and they basically all perform identically in combat. This was probably my biggest disappointment. I'm a completionist, but it felt like a total waste of time collecting all of these characters.

Characters share a combined party level ("star level"), which in theory means that you don't have to micromanage leveling all 40+ characters evenly. However, in practice there are permanently missable small stat gains that can be earned between star levels. Chrono Cross is not a hard game, but by the endgame I could clearly see the differences in stats for the characters I used and the characters I did not use.

The battle system in Chrono Cross is pretty different from anything else I've seen so far. Three different levels of basic attacks are available, providing a tradeoff between accuracy and strength. Successful attacks increase the accuracy of future attacks, creating a simple combo system. Characters do not have MP in Chrono Cross — instead, attacks charge up characters so that they can use elements (which includes both abilities and items). I had fun with battles at first, but the elements became a pain to manage towards the end of the game. Furthermore, basic attacks became so strong that there really wasn't much reason to bother with elements either.

Ultimately, Chrono Cross reminds me of Final Fantasy X-2: a thoroughly disappointing sequel that deviated way too far from the original game.

After completing a game, I add it to my overall enjoyment ranking which orders the games I've completed from those I most enjoyed to those I least enjoyed. Like Final Fantasy VIII, the story was a huge mess, but at least that game had an interesting world and characters. I'll put Chrono Cross between that and Final Fantasy II which was more annoying to play.