One of my fondest memories of my pre-teen years was watching my older brother play through Chrono Trigger on the original SNES in 1996, back when the game was still fairly new and easy to obtain (good luck finding it for that system now!).  I was a bit too young to handle it on my own then, but even as a mere viewer, I remember being entranced with the time travel, the different eras and their atmospheres, and the entire style of gameplay.  An immersive role-playing game (RPG) not that much unlike the games from the Final Fantasy series from that era, Chrono Trigger is still hailed as one of the greatest RPGs of all-time, and rightly so: it plays as wonderfully in the 21st century as it did in the 20th.

15 years later, I now have access to Chrono Trigger on the modern handheld DS, and I am pleased to say that little has been tinkered with in this version.  This kind of restraint is very refreshing as the game easily could have been adjusted to meet "current" graphical and sound standards despite not needing them, or else the storyline or other game elements could have been ruined with some new twists.  I'm so glad the port left well enough alone - more developers bringing great old games to a new generation should take heed.

A bit more about the graphics: for those who remember (or those who don't, for that matter), the original Chrono Trigger boasted some pretty impressive ones for the 16-bit SNES.  Following in the footsteps of the wildly popular and excellent Final Fantasy VI, the sprites of the main party are larger and more detailed than those from most role-playing games made just a handful of years earlier (and they also exhibit more realistic movement rather than moving about like automatons), and the backgrounds are more lush, subtle, and complex, whether the scenes are like the beautiful trees of Guardia Forest or the bleak jail cells of castles.  The only place where the graphics fall a bit short are in the overworld map, where your characters truly do look small and robotic, and the continents from each era lack the sophisticated visuals of the places they hold.

The music and sounds also remain delightful, especially the music - the enchanting End of Time theme, which I used to play as a MIDI on my personal Tripod web page in the late 1990s, and the mystical Antiquity 12,000 B.C. overworld music, are particularly well-executed, not to mention the haunting forest theme.  The best sounds occur during battles, particularly during the animated attack sequences, like Frog's water attacks and Crono's lightning ones, which call to mind fanciful effects of those elements.

Some of you new to this game may be wondering who all these characters are, what the time travel aspect is about, and just what else makes this game so knee-slappingly amazing to me and others who remember the older generations of video games.  The basis of Chrono Trigger is no different from most RPGs: you start off with one character and a lot of hoopla and dialogue to sort through, you travel around buildings and find other towns and areas on an overworld map, you eventually run into other characters whose stories and adventures develop an intricate plot (including a bouncy young girl named Marle, whose pendant is really darn important for a reason you'll find out later in the game, and a technical whiz named Lucca, who is gifted at science like her father and eventually figures out the principle behind all this time traveling weirdness), and you have to fend off some evil along the way (namely, a huge creature named Lavos, who is one ugly and scary looking thing who also wields diabolical power over many other enemies and bosses you'll face in the game).  Honestly, what makes this game so fascinating isn't all the characters and storyline per se (I think Final Fantasy VI actually has a significant edge here, which is one reason I consider that game the greatest RPG ever instead), but the different moods of the different eras you visit during the course of the game, along with the vastly superior battle system that made this game really, really stand out when it was contemporary.

There are two particularly great things about Chrono Trigger's otherwise standard turn-based battle system: you can AVOID most random encounters, unlike in the Final Fantasy series, and you can employ dual and triple tech attacks with multiple characters, similar to the magic spells from Final Fantasy, but done with more than just one character at a time.  The ability to see your enemies on the field beforehand, along with the option to walk around them if you so choose, makes fighting a much less tedious affair than it is in most other RPGs from the era.  You still have to level grind to an extent and gather up money from battles so you can buy upgraded equipment at various times, but you can do it at your own pace for a change.  There are many, many times when I simply want to explore the terrain of a level rather than fight a battle every three or four seconds when I walk, so I really can hardly praise this system enough.  There are also enough different and interesting attack styles so that when you do employ your techs, there are tons of nifty animations and effects they can have.  The battle edge almost made Chrono Trigger better than Final Fantasy VI for me.  Almost!

As I mentioned previously, not much in the game has changed, but there is one ever-present new feature that is quite useful: a map on the bottom screen of the DS that shows you what the level you are on looks like from an upper linear perspective.  The SNES version didn't have this display anywhere on the television screen, but it comes surprisingly in handy when you're not on the overworld, where the map is already part of what you travel over each time.  This feature also comes with the option of controlling your character on the top screen by dragging your stylus along the portions of the bottom screen to the areas you want to go in the level, but I found this unwieldy and simply kept controlling my character on the top screen with the d-pad.  As far as controls go, in fact, that's the only complaint I have: the d-pad and the A and B buttons perform everything you need to do in the game without any hang-ups.

Another new feature is an arena mini-game separate from the main game where you can raise a monster and duel it against other monsters.  While this sounds fun in theory, I didn't particularly care for the execution of it.  For one thing, after you create your monster, it's very confusing as to how your monster gets its training.  The instruction manual says to give your monster time for it to train on its own, but every time I go back to visit my monster, he never makes any progress.  I'm not sure how to go about getting him any experience at all.  I'd look up some help to do this online, but I shouldn't need to do that - it should be made more clear how to get your monster its training.  For those who are able to figure it out, good for you; further, you can also do this mini-game through wireless multiplayer if you so wish.

Honestly, though I understand why some new things were added, I have to say I got Chrono Trigger on the DS mostly to relive those SNES glory days, and that is where this game shines the most.  Chrono Trigger is worth either playing again or playing for the first time.  If you are newcomer to the game, enjoy discovering its magic and figuring out why you must travel through time to fulfill the game's main quests.  If you are like me and have done it all already, enjoy doing it all over again - this RPG has some of the greatest replay value of any game ever made, which means newcomers too will probably want to revisit it again in the future.

Recommended: Yes