GasJocket214's Full Review: Chrono Cross for PlayStation 1
One day I was in the mood to play a good Squaresoft RPG. (Squaresoft is the company responsible for most of the best RPG’s of all time) Recently I had posted a review on the Final Fantasy movie, (made by Squaresoft) which I thought was incredibly horrible. So I was in desperate need of a good Squaresoft game to bring my spirits up. I was browsing through some Squaresoft RPG’s and came across Chrono Cross. I hadn’t played Chrono Trigger, (Chrono Cross is the sequel to Chrono Trigger) but I had heard that Chrono Trigger was one of the best RPG’s of all time. Usually sequels to games are horrible, but take a look at the Final Fantasy series. Squaresoft manages to keep making each Final Fantasy game better in some way, so how could Chrono Cross possibly be a bad game? For the situation that I was in Squaresoft was due to put out a good game. So I picked up Chrono Cross for the unbelievably low price of $20, then I went home and started playing.
Wow, my eyes like to see the pretty polygons
I think that to give the graphics in Chrono Cross the credit that it deserves you would have to say that the graphics are unmatchable. Chrono Cross came out almost 2 years ago and there still hasn’t been an RPG that has surpassed the graphics of Chrono Cross. The range of the graphics is really incredible. Usually a game is set either for all dark colors or all bright colors. Chrono Cross comes through with an array of amazing bright, and dark colors. It really is impressive when you see the bright, crisp blues and greens shining from the light of the sun, and then the next minute you are in a dungeon full of dark grays and mysterious blacks being seen only by the candlelight.
The cut scenes are really something to marvel at too. You could compare any RPG out there to these cut scenes and there will be no match. Square really put the effort that should have been put into the graphics in Chrono Cross. The next RPG that will have graphics better then Chrono Cross will probably come from the highly anticipated Final Fantasy X.
What an epic RPG sounds like
The bottom line is that Chrono Cross has an incredible soundtrack. The music that you get from each city when you pass through is incredible. I was really amazed that the sound seemed to match each city so perfectly. There are also some ‘silent moments’ in the game that you will come across. I don’t know if Square did this on purpose or not, but if they didn’t it was an incredible accident. What I mean by these ‘silent moments’ is this: Sometimes you will enter a dark hallway, or a closed in room, and when you enter these rooms sometimes the sound disappears completely. The only sound that you can hear is the thumping sound that the shoes of your character creaking on the floorboards make. It really is a nice touch, because this very eerie silence makes the game that much better. Usually when there is an eerie silence that is your cue to get ready to fight a boss, but in Chrono Cross these silences occur when there aren’t any enemies even close to you. I like this because now you will always be kept you on your toes. All of these little factors make the sound in Chrono Cross top notch for any RPG.
What good is an RPG without a confusing plot and under-developed characters?
All right, all sarcasm aside now, Chrono Cross does have a very confusing plot, and extremely under-developed characters. Here is the plot in a nutshell: Your name is Serge, in the world that you live in everything is fine, you get along great with everyone, and everyone is extremely friendly. One day you are sent out to find some dragon skins to make a necklace for your friend. You come back with the skins, and your friend makes her necklace. It seems like a normal day. Then you are to meet another friend at Opassa Beach. You go to the beach, but before you can talk with your friend a very weird feeling comes over you, and suddenly your friend has no idea who you are. You explain who you are, but your friend seems not to remember. Your friend then hints about how a child died 10 years before in a tragic drowning accident. Oh no! That was you! Without giving too much of the plot away, you must fight treacherous enemies in both worlds (present and future) to finally find what your true destiny is. What starts as just helping a few friends, turns into a battle against Lynnx who you think is behind all of the destruction going on, but really there is a greater power out there, the controller of all time.
Note: I left a ton of the plot of the game out of this review on purpose. Why write an entire encyclopedia of the plot of the game? That would be very boring to the reader, and plus why should I spoil the game for them? This review simply states what my overall opinion of the game is, and that is what the purpose every review should be: helping others make buying decisions, that is what this site is all about.
From that summary of the plot of the game, you might not think that it sounds to incredibly confusing. Believe me it gets very confusing. You must go back and forth between worlds to obtain certain items and to accomplish certain tasks, and things will start to complicate themselves very quickly.
I have no idea what Squaresoft was thinking when they decided to put 40+ playable characters in an RPG. The main character, Serge, gets developed very well, as does the lead female character, Kid. Those are the only 2 characters that really get developed at all. If you have a strategy guide with you, you can get over 40 people in your party! (You can only play with 3 of them at a particular time.) Wow, that is an incredibly high number, and no one gets developed at all. You talk to someone and out of the blue they join your party. It really gets ridiculous after a while, people joining your party left and right you have no idea who to use. My advice is to pick a party of 3 and stick with that party no matter what.
Square really killed the game by putting all of these meaningless characters in the game. You really only feel emotion for 2 of the characters and the rest of them you could care less about. If there were only 6 or 7 playable characters in the game this would be considered by many one of the best RPG’s of all time.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have one of the best battle systems ever on our hands, can we deal with it?
The battle system is sheer genius. Every turn you have the option to do a regular attack. There are 3 different regular attacks. Those attacks are: light, medium, and hard. The harder the attack the less chance of hitting the opponent you have. After you are done with your regular attack you have the option of using an element. Elements will come into play a lot in the game, because each one has a different color. Black cancels with White, Green with Yellow, and Red with Blue. If an enemy is black you would want to use a white element against it. The battle system should sound very easy to use, and it really is. All that you will need are a few warm up battles, and then you will be set for the rest of the game.
How does that purple haired freak move?
The controls are really what you would expect out of any RPG. One thing that I thought was pretty cool was the fact that your character can get poisoned and when he does he will walk different. The first time that I got poisoned I kept thinking how horrible the controls were, but in reality he was sick so he moved very awkwardly. You can easily cure yourself of the Flu with a simple antidote, but it is little things like this that make me think about all of the detail that Squaresoft put into this game. Instead of making simple controls like they could have, they decided to put extra effort into the game and make it a little bit better, which I think Squaresoft should be commended for in this game. You really shouldn’t have any problems at all with the controls in Chrono Cross.
My overall impression of the game
Chrono Cross is an excellent game. Yes there are over 40 meaningless characters in the game, but you are going to have to overlook this fact. If you can bring your mind to forget the fact that there are so many pointless characters then your experience with this game will be incredible. Chrono Cross has an excellent battle system, incredible graphics and sound, so why kill the game with useless characters? Hopefully you can overlook these characters, because if you do you will find that Chrono Cross is an incredible game.
Chrono Cross follows a boy named Serge across parallel worlds--both the world in which he lives and one in which he drowned 10 years earlier.More at onSale
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