Each element also has its own restrictions on where it can be placed, and each character has unique techs that can’t be moved around. Put something in a higher tier and it’ll be more powerful, but sufficiently charging your elemental level in battle (through normal attacks) will take longer. In place of techs and items, everything in Chrono Cross is governed by elements: abilities that you slot into each character’s element grid, with effects and power depending on where in the grid they’re placed. Chrono Cross isn’t the first game to have mutually-exclusive optional party members, but the role those decisions play in the overall story-in both plot and the way it touches on those different themes-is significant.Įven the battle system, which at first seems rather simple even in contrast to Chrono Trigger, gradually reveals a welcome degree of depth. There are more than 40 potential party members to recruit, and while the sheer number means that don’t all get as much focus as you might hope, the choices of who to recruit and when have a noteworthy impact on how the narrative unfolds. That makes it sound a lot heavier than it actually is, with a large and intriguing cast bringing plenty of levity and poignant moments through their own stories. There are times where Chrono Cross feels more like a horror game than fantasy, in its willingness to sow a bit of existential discomfort.Ĭomparison of original and remastered graphics for Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Sometimes that’s in the most literal sense-why not have a bit of body-switching on top of everything else that’s going on?-but it’s the more subtle, persistent ways that increasingly distorted perspectives of time and space challenge Serge’s self-identity that are the most significant. Central to Chrono Cross is the question of who “you” really are, in a world with so many things trying to tear away the concept of self. There’s a strong existentialist thread running through the whole thing, too. As you peel back those layers, the brilliance starts to shine through-far more than just a plot device, the parallel dimension framing is a gateway to a masterful exploration of identity, the dynamics of different types of relationships (to oneseful most of all), and environmental destruction. It’s confusing, sometimes to a frustrating degree, but I’d wager that’s deliberate: Chrono Cross is a game that wants you to really engage with to fully understand the intricate web of different threads and ideas it weaves together. What follows is a rollercoaster of time travel, dimension-hopping, and criss-crossed identities. But when Serge collapses on the beach and wakes up in a parallel world in which he died as a small kid, well, things start getting a little bit more unorthodox. Your first proper quest (notwithstanding a mysterious cold opening) is to go hunting for lizard scales from a coastal rocky outcrop just outside, a goal achieved through simple field-map puzzles and battles that mostly consist of using “Attack” over and over. Serge, a young adventurer from a small fishing village lives a life of fighting monsters and helping out the townspeople, with simple turn-based battles that eschewed the popularity of ATB-style systems. The irony is that, at first glance, it seems fairly typical-even quaint. But for all its subversive quality, it holds strong to the unique charm and vibrant aesthetic of ‘90s JRPGs, striking a careful balance between pushing the envelope and capturing what people love. It puts clever twists on foundational JRPG ideas and mechanics, with a story that goes in some fascinating directions and pushing boundaries of the way videogame stories can be told-arguably even more than Chrono Trigger before it did.

Even playing it for the first time in 2022, it feels original and unique I can’t imagine how ahead of its time it would have felt when it first came out more than 20 years ago. It doesn’t take long to see why Chrono Cross has the reputation it has. Case in point: Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is the first time one of the most acclaimed-if divisive among Chrono Trigger fans-PS1 JRPGs will be officially released in Europe. Local releases of Japanese games-even those that got an American release-were much rarer, and a huge number of beloved games just never made the jump. In Europe (and by extension, Australia and New Zealand), the situation was a little different.

The genre had been steadily growing in the West, and the runaway success of Final Fantasy VII in particular opened a whole lot of doors for localising games… at least, in the States. The late ‘90s were an odd time to be a JRPG fan outside North America or Japan.

Chrono cross ps4 controller on ps3