Chrono Cross (1999)

This title is a remarkable and ambitious follow-up to the legendary Chrono Trigger. Rather than offering a direct sequel, it explores parallel worlds, fate, and identity through an entirely new cast in which the MC is called Serge, a young boy who finds himself at the center of a cosmic mystery after discovering a world where he apparently died years ago. This premise quickly expands into a deeply layered story that blends science fiction, fantasy, and philosophical reflection on the consequences of human choices.

The game’s world is stunningly realized for its time, boasting vibrant pre-rendered backgrounds and expressive character designs that give each location, from tropical islands to eerie ruins, a distinct personality. The OST is often hailed as one of the finest in video game history, weaving Celtic, tropical, and melancholy melodies into a soundscape that perfectly complements the game’s dreamlike tone.

Gameplay-wise, it departs from standard JRPG conventions. Its stamina-based combat system encourages fluid strategy, rewarding rhythm and balance rather than raw grinding. The vast roster of over 40 recruitable characters may overwhelm some people, but it showcases an impressive range of personalities and playstyles. You don't really need to interact with all of them, but I highly recommend doing so, their side-quests are what makes this game shine. Just keep in mind that some decisions you make through the journey can affect if you are going to be able to experience all the side-content.

Although its indirect connection to Chrono Trigger divided fans, some longing for a more explicit continuation, this game earns its place as one of the PlayStation’s most daring and emotionally resonant RPGs. It’s a game that values atmosphere and introspection as much as mechanics, leaving a lingering impression long after the credits roll. This is definitely one of the best JRPGs of all time, and a must-play for fans of the genre, despite it not being as good as it's predecessor, at least in my opinion.

I really liked this game and I wanted to love it but I couldn’t. In fact, it frustrated the heck out of me.

Why are the basic battles so long? Because there is no attack-all without a series of slash attacks first and guess what, they miss constantly. Also, weak enemies get a ton of moves, hitting party members for near zero pts over and over… and over, yay. Plus the spells take forever and yes, the weak enemies cast those too.

Why are the boss battles so short? Because the bosses don’t have enough health and the weapon attacks crush them in only a few turns. The main character can slay most every boss with phys attacks solo! This doesn’t encourage the player to explore the many interesting strategies built into the game.

What is this parallel universe story-line and how can anybody follow the clues needed to get to the next story-beat? Answer to the latter, you can’t. I could wander forever looking for some NPC to talk to, but I just don’t want to, I’m not 14 anymore with endless free time, so I’m forced to check a guide instead of enjoying the exploration. Answer to the former, it felt like a really cheap way to make the game larger, no new locations just different NPC dialogue and a few new colors. Which brings up the enemies, which were so skunking repetitive, it felt like a dozen or so unique enemy builds you meet over and over.

The characters, I love all the characters. The variety the play strategy, the designs, great. Why must I have Serge in every single battle of this game? Can I please try out some different teams? Also why is ‘steal’ not an element ability. There’s 40 plus characters and every boss battle has to have Serge and one of two steal characters so we can grab the loot.

This game got turned into a mish-mash. Sorry I’ve ranted long enough!

TL; DR A great sequel but doesn't quite strike gold like Chrono Trigger. It has less variety in the world, though it's still large, and it has less character development due to the large cast of characters and how the magic system makes most characters play the same. Combat is new and interesting and it has a great new art style (not better that Chrono Trigger but comparable in a different way). The music is good, but can get pretty repetitive (not as bad as Xenogears but still). The combat music will make your ears bleed! Still worth a playthrough though.

I haven't played the original Chrono Trigger in a long time so there were many references and characters in this game that I didn't catch. It's pretty laughable that execs tried to market this as a different game and not a sequel. On one hand I kind of get it. This is a pretty different game that radically changes it's approach to story telling. Both in terms of game play and art direction from its predecessor. In some regards it lands in others it falls pretty flat. Either way, I respect the bold changes they made.

The combat is a pretty interesting and initially an intimidating twist on the standard turn based game play. You can set the turn order of your party by pressing "select." This was never communicated to me in game. It's possible there was a menu or tutorial I skipped. This is a problem given there's a puzzle that requires you to change your party order. I ended up having to look up a guide to figure out how to change my party order... so definitely a bit of a flop there in terms of explaining explicitly important mechanics. Once the turn order is set, you have a stamina meter that has a maximum value of 7. When you attack, you have three levels of attacks (weak, medium and strong) which each take up more stamina to use (1, 2 and 3 stamina respectively). Once you land a successful attack, you build up combo points. These unlock "levels" of spells that range from 1 to 8. Thus using a weak, medium and strong attack for your turn would generate 6 combo points and unlock up to level 6 spells. As you progress through the game, you unlock more slots and elemental (spell) levels.

You don't learn new spells per say. Instead, you either buy, find or steal spells. Then you need to allocate them on an elemental grid (confused yet?). This sorta functions like a combination of the materia system (FF7) and the junction system (FF8). The main difference is your spells don't level up (you need to find or buy higher level spells and equip them) and while you can only use them once in a battle, they regenerate at the end of battle. Thus if you equip "cure," you can only use it once per battle, but it will regenerate at the end of battle and be usable next battle. Any character can equip almost any elemental (some require you to have an innate color) which is both good and bad. Good for the customization, bad because it makes most characters play the same and feel identical. This is further compounded by some characters having better stats and better weapons, thus making objectively better party compositions.

The combat is still more complicated than this... spells have colors that are associated with elements. Each color has an opposite color that it deals more damage to and takes more damage from (red vs blue, green vs yellow and white vs black). Thus you need to be mindful of an enemies color to counter them and perhaps counter the type of moves they will likely use. It took me awhile to fully grasp this dense system. The final bit of convolution is the field color. As you cast more spells, the color of the battle field will shift. The last three spells' colors determine the field color. If the color becomes uniform, then that element will deal more damage (and you unlock high level summons for the color). Thus if you cast green spells in a row, the field would be color green and green spells would deal more damage... and that about covers it. Easy right?

Overall, combat is deep, requires planning, tactics and is very engaging once you grasp it. The difficulty curve can be sporadic though. There were some bosses that I barely survived with only one character left and others that were a cake walk (the last boss). Still, one thing I like about the game is how you can't grind levels. You level up everytime you kill a key miniboss or boss. This ensures you are always at a certain level. Sadly the difficulty can still feel sporadic despite the devs controlling exactly what your level is at a given moment... I do like the system. Like with Chrono Cross you can also skip enemy encounters. They run around on the map so you can just run around them. If you get into a battle (either random or boss) you can ALWAYS run away. A very nice feature given the importance of elements. Thus you could enter a boss fight, have terrible elementals for his innate color, run away, re-do your elements and re-engage. The only issues I have with combat are the battle music (which gets grating to keep it succinct) and the lack of a victory dance from the party. The later might seem like a small thing, but I honestly really like that aspect from the final fantasy games. There's something satisfying watching Cloud spin his sword around and then sheath it on his back.

The most ambitious aspect of the game is in the sheer number of characters. I believe there's roughly 45? While that's cool and in theory can lead to drastic replay value, it is ultimately kind of vapid. As mentioned in the combat section above, most characters feel identical since they can equip most elementals... and some characters are just flat better because of their stats and potential weapons. Another (and in my opinion a far greater issue) problem is the sheer amount of characters means the devs had to juggle game time around such a large cast and ultimately leads to most characters feeling flat and having pretty uninteresting arcs. To be fair, there is a subset of characters that have great moments, but these are sparse and sadly fleeting. I would have preferred a quarter of the characters and have them be more developed. As is, "Kid" was a character I didn't care about and she's so pivotal to the plot and given heavy emphasis towards the end of the game. This felt jarring to me since I rarely used her in my party composition.

Another meaningful change is a time travel. They replaced it with a multi-verse (beat Marvel to it). It's pretty simple, only involving two alternate dimensions, but the world map is dense. The game is longer than Chrono Trigger and while the pacing didn't feel off to me, I would have preferred a smaller map and more parallel dimensions to explore. At the end of the day video game development is full of compromises so I don't criticize the game too harshly on this front.

The music is really good, but unfortunately gets too repetitive and doesn't always match the themes of a given level. The worst example of this is with the Isle of the Damned. This level is composed entirely of bones. It's so atmospheric and horrifying but the music is this weird funky jungle beat. Also don't get me started on the battle music... holy hell.

In conclusion, this is a worthy successor but flawed. Chrono Trigger I think overall is better but this game has plenty to offer and is worth your time.

I do not hate this game for its music, visuals, story (at least some of it), and even some of the mechanics. I really wanted to give this game a chance because it is quite beautiful.....most of the time.

The main reason why I don't like this game is it is the most pointless rpg system I've ever seen. You don't get experience and level like normally, you level when the game tells you you can. What is even the point of engaging in battles besides money and the """""levels""""" they give you that barely increment stats inbetween the real level ups between boss fights? It really sucks too cause the actual battle mechanics are interesting, but then the fun is kind of sucked out of it when I'm using characters that I don't really care for.

This was the final nail for me. There are a myriad of characters you can get in this game, something around 30 if I remember correctly. You'd think that wouldn't be a negative, but it destroys any interest I have in the characters cause they never get the chance to develop. They interact with each other sure but most have no real agency to the story as a whole and just aren't very interesting. Couple that with no real drive to engage in battles and I saw no point in trying to continue my playthrough.

I completely missed this game when it came out, which was weird because Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series are among my best games of all time. I first found out about the game sometime in the early 2000s from listening to video game online radio, where I was like "holy shit, what game is this music from? I have to play it!". It has been high on my wishlist since. I did look for a copy online and even found one in a local store but they are competing with the pirate's discount. I signed up for notifications for the playstation store and the day before my birthday 2019 the game went on sale. I got it as a birthday present for myself for a comfortable $6. Totally worth it for such a masterpiece.

My team for the 1st part of the game was Kid and Pierre. I missed quite a few characters and eventually decided that Pierre sucks. I kept using him though because I had invested in an iron sword, he was the 2nd character to join and thus had a lot of stat gains, and being blue he could use the frog summon. I accidentally put Kid in the lead but it worked out well because I had her steal every battle. My strategy was to have each character spend 6 stamina on attacks (usually 1 of each type) and then use an element. Rarely used defend and never bothered with consumables. Sometimes I had to let up on doing the full attack chain to get a heal off.

For the 2nd part of the game my party was Harle and Radius. Other than Sprigg (I did not want to use her) they were the 1st to join. I booted Radius for Norris for story reasons, and because he was a brittle old man. I liked Harle's magic protection but this was the part of the game where I had the most trouble with 3 bosses in a row. 2 of them were white innate and those did not go so well with 2 blacks in the party. For Garai I had to flee and use items to heal up to try again. Had to let Harle get off her magic protection ASAP. I had to flee from the black robot because its darkness dragged out the battle too long. Put on a couple eagle eyes and try again. I actually got a game over on Miguel and had to change up my strategy. I think this is when I started using diminish because there is not much else to do when characters are getting one shotted.

For the rest of the game my overall strategy was to use diminish early on, pile debuffs on the boss, use strengthen on each and wreck the boss with physical attacks. Each party member had a variety of elements of every color, including nukes, heals and debuffs. After Harle left I used Irenes for a while because she was blue. Never got a chance to use my only summon again though and she was not a great character. I booted her when Lord Viper joined because I had his special sword. I got the Mastermune but missed the Chrono Cross. Replaced Norris with Kid and beat the game. Serge's attacks were insane and the entire end game was easy. I was able to make 2 prismatic mails, which were given to Serge and Viper. Kid got a defender plus to make up for it. Everyone had stone helms and attack boosting accessories like power seals and dragoon honor. After getting the bad ending I read a walkthrough to see what I missed. Not too much. It was a simple thing to get the Chrono Cross and get the good ending.

I overall loved the game. The world, the story, the characters. The nostalgia of the music and references to the previous 2 games. The innovative mechanics that clearly make the game a Jrpg but not the same as most others. My only complaint is that it is tedious to assign elements, which made me not want to fiddle with the grids much. So no trying to optimize for specific bosses with more counter elements or other characters. Despite the huge cast I never wanted to use anyone else because I did not want to set up their grids. I did try the auto fill feature but it sucks. I also felt that the story in the end game was running out of steam and going off the rails a little bit. I wish the ending showed what happened to the important characters.

I will play again new game + at some point in the future when the story is no longer fresh.

Played and finished this digital PSOne Version on the PS3 after about 45 hours. This had been in my backlog for a long time and a game I had always wanted to experience, because of Chrono Trigger’s legacy in videogames as basically the best JRPG ever.

Chrono Cross was fun and I enjoyed it. The battle system is unusual, but engaging once you understand it. There are many characters to choose from, but mostly I just stuck to the same ones. In the end, I was using Serge, Glenn and Marcy, who were awesome. I’m glad I went with the “don’t save Kid” option early in the game, so I could get Glenn. I did most sidequests and enjoyed the world and the characters.

The story is intriguing, but very complex towards the end and it overwhelms the player with too much info at once. In the end, I was glad when the game ended cause it felt a bit too long, but the excellent music (especially the world map theme) was definitely worth it. I also finally re-experienced that old PSOne-RPG-Feeling. Many times while playing this it reminded me of FF8 or FF9, probably because of the graphics, but also somehow just the style of Square RPG.

Thoughts here are partly from a podcast conversation about Chrono Cross which will be linked at the end.

Chrono Cross will always come short in direct comparison to Chrono Trigger, but their aims are different. CT is infused with a "gee whiz" spirit that anything is possible. CC is more about the indifferent march of progress and mortality.

CC's only flaw is in its far too big cast of playable characters. That said, I like that the character design team was able to go wild so Serge could be joined by a skeleton clown, living voodoo doll, or cybernetic assassin.

Taken on its own, the combat system is a fascinating case of risk / reward system that can't be breezed through quite as easily as its predecessor. Building up elemental blocks, feeling frustrated when the enemy gets a turn that undoes careful planning, and the satisfaction when everything finally comes together for big numbers. The soundtrack, overall, sits alongside the best music of the PSX-era while establishing a melancholic tone throughout instead of the still great, if more immediately engaging, music of CT.

CC's a fascinating example of a sequel grappling with its own reason for existing and successfully communicating this tension via an existentially fraught story with Serge and Kid. It's not a smooth ride, but it's one that holds heavy in my heart as the years go by.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/chrono-legacy-2-15444398

While Chrono Cross is technically a sequel, taking place 10 years after the events of Chrono Trigger, it's really better off being considered as its own unique entity. There are some mechanical similarities, and a few story elements that are enhanced by having played Trigger, but for the most part you can comfortably play through the entirety of Cross without having ever journeyed through time with Chrono, Marle and Lucca... but could you really live with yourself?

In any case, you take control of a boy named Serge who, aside from being present for a temporal anomaly or two as a baby, is fairly normal. You'll soon realize that there's a parallel dimension to your own, and while Chrono Trigger had you bouncing around time periods you'll be spending the majority of Chrono Cross hopping back and forth between these two parallel worlds. It lacks the cause and effect elements that I enjoyed so much from Chrono Trigger, but what it does bring to the table are fun and interesting in their own right.

Before long you'll start gaining insight into the true nature of the archipelago the game takes place on, the real stakes of your situation, and the history of you and your party members. The cynic in me wants to call the story somewhat slipshod, with some things making little sense, some major reveals missing their mark, and boatloads of Deus ex Lucca, but everything is presented and delivered in such a way that it's easy to suspend some disbelief and just enjoy the ride.

My one major complain with Chrono Cross from a mechanical standpoint is character movement. It feels unnecessarily difficult to get Serge to do what you want him to on the map, and it's been the primary cause of expletives being sent to my TV over the 35 hour journey. That's pretty much it, and I wanted to get that little complaint out of the way early because there's a lot of ground to cover from here on out!

There's no traditional experience points or leveling system in the game, nor are there traditional consumable items or abilities. Character progression is governed by Star Ranks, which are increased after completing major encounters during the game's central plot. Additionally, each character in your party will gain a small stat increase after every combat encounter, and the maximum amount of stats a character can gain is based on your current Star Rank. This effectively removes both the need to grind for levels, as well as ability to. The Star Rank system also directly affects Elements.

Every character in the game is given an Element Grid on which they may place Elements, which can be found and bought all over the world. Elements are effectively Chrono Cross' take on spells, except they can be freely equipped and swapped as needed on your characters. As your Star Rank increases, your characters' Element Grids will not only expand, but also allow for higher ranked Elements to be equipped. There are also consumable Elements which basically function as items.

Furthermore, you have to factor in the color of each Element, the innate color of your characters, the innate color of your enemies, the field color, and how all that ties together in combat when making decisions concerning your elements! I'm not writing a walkthrough here so I don't want to go off into tangents, but it all comes together into an interesting system that you'll be working with from the beginning of the game to the end, and after all this we haven't even touched on combat yet!

Even combat in Chrono Cross has to break traditional JRPG form, opting for a building stamina system instead. There's all the aforementioned Element management to take into consideration, but also a stamina gauge and an escalating physical attack modifier to keep track of. Each character in combat has a total of 7 stamina, and is able to initiate one of three different physical attacks that increase in stamina cost and damage, while decreasing in accuracy. With each successful attack your accuracy improves and you move up that many levels on your Element Grid, and your allies regain that much stamina. It sounds a lot more complex than it really is in practice, though it's never really well explained either.

For the longest time I went back and forth with my feelings towards game's combat mechanics. I often felt like they were superfluous and cumbersome, making using Elements feel way too difficult. In the end, though, I really started appreciating the system for what it is, recognizing that ultimately it allows for choice and tactics.

Aside from a couple notable encounters, Chrono Cross is definitely on the easy side which isn't something I have a problem with. Playing through Final Fantasy on the NES made me appreciate not having that extra difficulty in an already time-intensive game, and Chrono Cross is pretty comfortable.

My one major wish is that the equipment system was thought out a little better. There's an extremely finite amount of gear options, and only minute differences between them. Each character has three accessory slots, but every accessory in the game is some variance on "The HP Ring", "The Strength Ring" or "The Magic Ring" with variable power levels on each.

Chrono Cross looks about as good as you could hope for from a late generation PS1 game from Square. The pre-rendered cutscenes look great and they try (for better or worse) to cram a ton of detail into the world as you play through it. Everything looks great, especially coming off older titles like Soul Blade and Tenchu, which clearly show their age. Enemies are all fully modeled and animated, and characters are full of life and expression. My one gripe is that it could often be difficult to discern interactive objects from the environment due to the style of the game.

I've always said that the only game whose soundtrack rivals Chrono Trigger's was Chrono Cross and for the most part I still agree. The music in this game is phenomenal but I'd be lying if I said that by the end of everything it hadn't lost some of its luster. It's telling when the best tracks in the game are actually remixes of Chrono Trigger pieces! I don't mean to downplay it though as, again, the score here is excellent. Equally satisfying are the game's sound effects which go a long why in bringing home all the slashes, clanks and BAMS of combat!

I think this is the longest I've spent on a single game for this project so far, but I also know it's going to become more of a regular occurrence as things move forward. Regardless, I'm really happy about finishing this one, as it's been on the backlog for a very long time now.

Now that it's all said and done, I can't quite call it one of my all time favorite RPGs. The story was a bit weak, as were many of the characters, and it just didn't draw me in like other titles. That said, it was a great voyage and the things that did make an impact made a great one. Now I really need to play my copy of Flames of Eternity...

Chrono Cross is an RPG first released in 1999 for the Playstation 1, featuring a unique battle system, over forty playable characters and branching storylines. The game begins with a leap - mid-way into a dungeon with no idea as to why. This introduction provides a taste of both the familiarity and uniqueness of the game but before long the real beginning starts.

The most impacting aspect of Chrono Cross is the battle system, which involves managing endurance for the party of three. Every character has the same commands: attack, elements, defend and run away, all of which are highly functional.
The attack command has a sub-menu where weak, mid and strong attacks can be performed, which require 1, 2 or 3 endurance, respectively and offer a trade-off between accuracy and damage. Also, because each character has a maximum endurance of 7, attacks can be woven together as combos to increase the accuracy of stronger attacks. Without a combo, weak attacks have a hit rate around 95% whereas strong attacks have a hit rate around 70%. If used to finish a combo however, the hit rate of a strong attack can exceed 90%. This unique system allows the outcome of an attack to depend on the player's choices rather than chance. In addition to dealing damage, when a character attacks an enemy their "element level" increases by the value corresponding to the endurance requirement of that attack. Element level is then consumed to use elements which are identical in effect to magic in traditional RPGs but are allocated (equipped) from the menu. Using any element reduces endurance by 7, which can decrease endurance below 0 and require significant cool-off time. The player can freely cycle between the command menu for all characters that have at least 1 endurance and perform actions at any time. This battle system demands intelligent management of the endurance of the entire party while considering damage, accuracy, increasing element levels and retaining endurance.
Aside from attacking and using elements, the defend and run away commands in Chrono Cross are also highly useful: defending is necessary to quickly restore endurance to allow for large combos, and running away is unique in that it always succeeds. You can even run away from bosses to access the menu before restarting the battle. This accessibility is forgiving to players since it is possible to forget to update equipment for every character because there are so many of them. This leads into the next interesting aspect of the game: the large cast of over forty playable characters.

In traditionally in RPGs the number of playable characters if often around double the size of the party. This allows the player to use characters they prefer or that are more useful for a situation and also allows for two separate parties to be formed. However, in Chrono Cross there are so many playable characters that it's unlikely that a player will use all of them, even once. With this large cast the player is given excessive freedom to choose characters they prefer even when fitting to a particular situation. While many of these characters fit traditional RPG-archetypes, most do not. A brief look at the cast includes a doctor, a pirate, a magician, a wrestler, a cyborg, a mermaid, a dancer, a rockstar, a chef, a dog, a painter, plenty of kids and plenty of creatures. However it is important to recognize that some of the cast is restricted for parts of the game and that most characters are optional to recruit such that managing an enormous party is never a necessity. But because of the unique experience system, where characters never fall behind in level, cycling characters is encouraged.

The plot of Chrono Cross is epic albeit confusing, which may be fascinating or frustrating. For much of the game, the player embarks on simple quests while only hinting at a larger story. It is not until very late in the game that the plot comes together. The adventure is later extended by the inclusion a new game+ feature and the incorporation of multiple endings. In addition, throughout the game the choices that the player makes actually has a significant effect on how the plot moves and also affects who joins the party. These features allow for replaying the game to be slightly dissimilar.

Chrono Cross is very well-made with many highlights: maps are well-designed and exploring areas is quick because of on-screen enemy encounters, equipment and element system are highly customizable or quickly automated, an auto-heal option after battles decreases unnecessary menu time and allows consecutive boss battles to be enjoyable, the game presents an outstanding atmosphere through the music and plenty of secrets and sidequests throughout the game. Some of the flaws in the game include the low level of difficulty for most bosses, many uninteresting characters and no increased difficulty for new game+. All in all, Chrono Cross is highly enjoyable due to the customizable approaches in battle and the adjustments to the familiar RPG formula.