Chrono Cross Review

Before starting off this review I should point out the fact that I have never played Chrono Trigger before. With that in mind, this review is a fresh and unbias opinion from someone that is not a devoted follower of Chrono Trigger. This is what you want isn't it? An opinion that is not from a Chrono Trigger follower.^_^ So the question is do I get it, to all the hoopla surrounding this game. In a word, no. Read on my disloyal followers.

The story starts off with you, the hero Serge, waking up in your village. You are then sent on an errand to fetch some animal scales for your childhood friend, Leena. After getting the scales, you've met up with Leena at a beach. While talking to Leena, Serge heard a voice calling him. Within seconds, Serge passes out. Later awakening to find out that Leena is gone. Now heading back to his village, he discover that all is not the same. It appears that his mother is dead and him too. The people from the village are the same but treat Serge as a total stranger. After gathering more information on why people thought that he was dead, Serge headed out to his grave site. It appears that Serge had awaken in a parallel world, with the exception that this world's Serge had died many years ago. While at the grave of the Serge in this parallel world, Serge is attacked by a couple of Dragoons. A female stranger by the name of Kid shows up to lend a helping hand. After defeating the Dragoon knights, Serge quickly learned that a stranger by the name of Lynx wants to capture him for some unknown reason. Serge of course wants to learn out why and how he came about to this parallel world. Kid just also happens to be on a journey to find this Lynx. Why she wants to find Lynx is unknown. So with the two sharing a common goal, they headed out on a same journey to find this Lynx and to learn more about Serge's pass. This pretty much summed up the starting point of Chrono Cross story and quest.
Now the story starts of very slow. Basically there really is no plot at the beginning to near the middle of the game. You really have no sense of what the story is about other than to find out who Lynx is and why Kid wants to kill Lynx so bad. Only late into the game does the story starts to unravel a bit shredding more light to the whole story. This kinda hurt the story a bit. You want to keep the gamers attention glue to the storyline as quickly as possible and not have them fall asleep midway into to the story only to have them wake up and say, "Okay now it's starting to get interesting and now I'm starting to understand everything." A good story is one that keeps you glued to it right away. At times the story can be pretty confusing as it tries to explain the whole concept of time travel and time jumping. It's sort of like Xenogear where there's a deep rich story there but you have a little problem understanding it at times. It also doesn't help if you've never played the first game like I did as I'm sure there are quite a few references made from this game about the things that happen in Chrono Trigger. Now some of you will say that's the reason as to "why I don't get it". That is probably very true but Squaresoft or the gamemakers should have made the game more understandable to those that never played Chrono Trigger before. They simply can't rely on everyone that played Chrono Cross to have played Chrono Trigger before. A good direct sequel that gamers can played without having a hard time understanding the story is Suikoden 2. 1 point loss for sometimes making the story too complex. 1 point loss for lack or emotional strong characters. (I'll get to that in a minute.) 1 point loss for not making the story more understandable to the new generations of gamers that never played Chrono Trigger before. Overrall a 7/10. I've seen better storyline and I'm sure you have too.

Characters? If characters rating in a game is base solely on quantity then Chrono Cross gets a 10/10. Unfortunately you have to add quality with it and Cross definetly lacks solid characters. Yes there are many characters feature in this game but many of them really has no purpose in this game at all. Most of the attentions in character background and developement is focus solely on Serge, Kid, and probably Lynx to some extent. Serge is the silent type. Now there's nothing wrong with that but a strong silent characters need strong supporting cast to help make him come alive. Cloud, Squall, and McDohl are all silent characters but they all had a strong supporting cast to help boost their character. Kid is a very unique character with a good personality but for a supporting female, she doesn't last very long into the game. Other than that there's really no supporting cast for Serge to play off of. The closest supporting character developement comes from Radius and his Dragoon companions. The game should focus more on the Dragoons as a strong supporting cast around Serge instead you only get bits and pieces of what could be a great storyline behind the history and past of the Dragoons. Lynx started off as a mysterious bad guy but ended up as a major letdown for a bad guy. The game really lack a strong and solid bad guy for gamers to identify with. Nothing that comes close to Sephiroth, Ultimecia, or Kefka. The game is better off with a smaller cast with the Dragoons as the supporting cast than a 43 supporting cast members.

The graphic is very good but nothing that you haven't seen from a game before. Nothing stunning that breaks any border in terms of graphics. The graphics is very much like FF8. You have a 3-D render background with details animated characters in the way of FF8. The colors are very nice. If you've seen FF8 or Legend of Dragoon or any other similar graphics then you have a good idea of what the graphics looks like. There are FMV in the game but very little to tell you the truth. Most of the FMV are quite regular and nothing stunning. Oh they're nice but nothing exciting to talk about. The rendition of spells are pretty nice but nothing like a FF spells. Overrall nice and good graphics but nothing that will give you a lasting impressions.

Excellent music. Really excellent music. You're talking about all the tunes being good. Downside? While all the tunes are excellent not one of them stand out amongst them. FF7 had Aeris theme, FF8 had Eyes of Me, and Suikoden had Sadness in the Night. The only thing that comes close is Scars of Time I suppose. Scars of Time is good but it's not one that will pop up in your mind when ask what's your favorite top 5 rpg music. Another small downside is the quantity of tunes. Still I really did enjoy the music.

Gameplay is very unique and innovative. You will either love it or hate it. Okay, I'll try and give the best description of the gameplay as possible. Now the gameplay is like with most rpg quest with a few exception. The quest takes place between both worlds. In other words, you'll have to travel back and forth between worlds to help further your adventures. Sometimes you are require to get a particular item or find a particular someone in one world but that world doesn't have the item/person that you need so you have to move/travel to the other world to find it/them. Now this isn't so bad with the exception that there's only one spot where you can switch between the two worlds. So travelling between the two worlds can be a pain in the butt sometimes when you're all the way at the other side of the world map and have to make it all the way back to the wormhole spot. The game also have many different storyline branches for you to choose from. This of course can result in the ending you get. Throughout the game, you can recruit numerous characters. Some important ones and some not. Due to the differences in the storyline branches, you won't be able to recruit all 43 supporting members. Maybe your second time around but not on your first time around. The game also uses elements very heavily. Each of your characters come with an element and all magic are in elements. Unlike with most rpgs, weapons/armour you can't buy but have to forge yourself. You can get materials from monsters or treasure chests. Now going back to magic, the magic system is sort of like the junction system of FF8. Each character comes with a bunch of magic grid bars in different levels. Now you can buy or find magic grids throughout the game. Once you have a magic grid, you can junction(?) it to the character's magic grid bars. Now you can only use one magic grid once during battles so you have to choose very carefully as to when you want to use that particular magic. Finally finishing up, the game doesn't use experience points at all. After each battle the characters that are still alive will get stats up points like HP+ instead of experience points. Oh yeah, the game doesn't use random battles at all as you can see the monsters roaming about in the world of Cross. You can also run from all battles including boss fights ones. The no random battles is a big plus in my eyes.
Battle System: Now the battle system is very unique but sometimes quite annoying. Like with the usual rpg fare, you have 3 members each with attack, defend, magic, ect. Now the game rely on stamina points, hit% points and different type of attacks. Each time you attack, you use a stamina point. If your stamina points reaches zero then you can't attack. The number of times you can attack on one turn per character depends on the number of stamina points they have available. You have three attacks to choose from. Weak, medium, and strong. Each attack comes with a different hit% points. Weak has the best hit% points while strong has the worse hit% points. So you have to choose your attack well as you don't want to be using strong too much as you'll end up missing the enemy all the time. Everytime you hit the enemy, your magic level goes up. This is important cause the higher the magic level, the more choices of magic grids use are available to you. Now at the top corner of the battle screen is a magic element field made up of 3 smaller fields. Everytime someone uses an element magic, a small element field becomes the color of the elements. It's important to keep an eye on the element field cause you want to make all three small element field the same colors to have a big same color element field. Two reasons for this is that when all three small elements are the same colors, you can use an elemental summon spell of that color plus any magic you use of that color will have an added extra punch to it. Of course the enemy can do the same thing to you. There's also combo attacks available but only between certain characters. Overrall the battle system can be fun but annoying as hell. Especially trying to use a summon spells.
Gameplay wise, it's okay. Fighting bosses and enemies are pretty easy. The quest isn't very straightforward at all. You may have some problems trying to find out where to go next. Is it fun? Yes, it can be fun but it can be annoying at times. The summon spells are nice to look at but pretty useless as it's really very hard to try and use a summon spells on bosses. With the use of only 3 characters per battles, a very large supporting cast isn't really necessary and useless. I found myself to be using only about 5 regular fighters out of the 30 to choose from in my game. Overrall a 7/10 for me.

There are a few extra side quest available for this game but nothing really major here. You can find some cool extra special attacks and weapons upgrade for your fighters throughout the game. The replay comes from the many different story branches and multiple endings. If you finish the first game, you can make a new game save+ mode to start on your second game. This will open up some new stuff that wasn't available on your first game. Very good for replay value.

Overrall, Chrono Cross is a good rpg but it doesn't do it for me in terms of a lasting rpg game like Star Ocean or Suikoden series. Maybe it's because I haven't played Chrono Trigger so the emotional value of the game doesn't surface for me when there are some references to Chrono Trigger. This is a game strictly for Chrono Trigger fans only. If you've never played Chrono Trigger before then stay away from it and don't buy the hype from Trigger fans as you'll probably don't know why they're so excited about this game. Case in point, me.

Chrono Cross: When Worlds Collide

Chrono Cross:
When Worlds Collide