Square Enix’s Chrono Bind Isn’t Chrono Trigger Related

My two cents? Pretend Chrono Cross never happened and let Chrono Trigger die as the awesome legend that it is. The fact that the game is over 15 years old and still holds up as an EXTREMELY SOLID video game in today's hand-holding era of video games, is nothing short of amazing.

As much as I would love to immerse myself in more of the Chrono Trigger world, I just want to enjoy everything that is rather than what could be.

Besides. Getting Sakaguchi, Toriyama and the rest of the crew together to create a proper sequel would be beyond impossible. The thought of a good remake is a distant and faded memory in my book.

Square Enix’s Chrono Bind Isn’t Chrono Trigger Related

Who really wants a Chrono sequel from the current powers-that-be at Square? Loaded with Tetsuya Nomura's recycled designs (I bet the hero would have that same smirk Sora, Tidus, Snow and everyone else has!), one dimensional characters cribbed liberally from the "horrible shojo anime stereotype" rule book, and messy "go nowhere" plots. They'd just mess it up, royally. REALLY, REALLY BADLY.

We'd either need Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama to work on something with Mistwalker, and get a spiritual sequel, or just wait out the current regime at Square Enix. They're seriously horrible.

As much as I want the remake or sequel to FFVII and CT, not right now. SquareEnix is in a bad place right now, so I'd rather they wait until they get some new blood in there, or get back some old blood, and have the next golden age begin.

I still don't get Patrick's random hate for Chrono Cross. I've been playing it lately and it's definitely among the cream of the PlayStation RPG crop in terms of characters, battle system, visuals, and basically everything. It's not the same thing as Trigger, but then what is?

It would make to too much sense for a Brono Trigger game. That why SquareEnix isn't doing one.

HAHAHAHA!!

Eat me, Square.

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

Also don't let Square make another Chrono game.

@DonChipotle said:

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

You crazy.

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

You crazy.

Nope. It was a better game in pretty much every way.

@DonChipotle said:

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

You crazy.

Nope. It was a better game in pretty much every way.

I disagree. It was one of the early "we're Squaresoft and our shit don't stink titles." Game was a joke.

Robo Trigger is coming out this summer though, starring Robo, Legion, and HK-47 among many other great RPG robots. Also the robot from Giftpia.

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

You crazy.

Nope. It was a better game in pretty much every way.

I disagree. It was one of the early "we're Squaresoft and our shit don't stink titles." Game was a joke.

It had a far more interesting story and a much, much better soundtrack, an interesting and fun combat system and it actually made Chrono Trigger's story mean something instead of just happy go lucky time travel with absolutely no repercussions. Chrono Cross actually took advantage of its plot and connection with Trigger to make a far more engaging tale.

So much hate for FFXIII, I've been playing that franchise and all of square's games since the beginning and honestly XIII is one of my favorites. The linearity thing people always bring up bothers me, X was pretty much exactly the same and people love that game. I definitely agree about the auto battle thing though, that was dumb, but they don't force you to use it so its not a deal breaker to me.

Why would they call it 'Chrono' anything? What did they expect would happen? It's like Sega calling something "Shenmue City" and then announcing it has nothing to do with the actual Shenmue games. It's idiotic.

@DonChipotle said:

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

You crazy.

Nope. It was a better game in pretty much every way.

I disagree. It was one of the early "we're Squaresoft and our shit don't stink titles." Game was a joke.

It had a far more interesting story and a much, much better soundtrack, an interesting and fun combat system and it actually made Chrono Trigger's story mean something instead of just happy go lucky time travel with absolutely no repercussions. Chrono Cross actually took advantage of its plot and connection with Trigger to make a far more engaging tale.

The story of Chrono Cross was needlessly convoluted and at times utterly nonsensical. The majority of characters had literally no personality (all the dialogue was the same, parsed through a dialect filter. Terrible idea). Battle system wasn't necessarily bad, but it had nothing on the fast and fun battles of CT. Music was great, I'll give you that. Not better than Chrono trigger's though, that's just silly.

Chrono Cross is a game that was decent on its own merits, but as a sequel to CT it will always suffer in comparisons.

From Wikipedia:

Electronic Gaming Monthlygave Chrono Cross a Gold Award, scoring it 10/10/9.5 in their three reviewer format; the first review declared the game to be "a masterpiece, plain and simple".GameSpot awarded the game a perfect 10, one of only seven games in the 40,000 games listed on Gamespot to have been given the score, and its Console Game of the Year Award for 2000. IGN gave the game a score of 9.7, and Cross appeared 89th in its 2008 Top 100 games list. Famitsu rated the game 36 out of 40 from four reviewers. As of December 2010, GameRankings rates Chrono Cross at 92.18 percent.

@stoic665 said:

@DonChipotle said:

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

@algertman said:

@DonChipotle said:

Hey guys, stop hatin' on Chrono Cross. It was a better game than Trigger.

You crazy.

Nope. It was a better game in pretty much every way.

I disagree. It was one of the early "we're Squaresoft and our shit don't stink titles." Game was a joke.

It had a far more interesting story and a much, much better soundtrack, an interesting and fun combat system and it actually made Chrono Trigger's story mean something instead of just happy go lucky time travel with absolutely no repercussions. Chrono Cross actually took advantage of its plot and connection with Trigger to make a far more engaging tale.

The story of Chrono Cross was needlessly convoluted and at times utterly nonsensical. The majority of characters had literally no personality (all the dialogue was the same, parsed through a dialect filter. Terrible idea). Battle system wasn't necessarily bad, but it had nothing on the fast and fun battles of CT. Music was great, I'll give you that. Not better than Chrono trigger's though, that's just silly.

Chrono Cross is a game that was decent on its own merits, but as a sequel to CT it will always suffer in comparisons.

The story wasn't convoluted at all, it just required the player to actually read the databanks in Chronopolis. They even have characters explain everything at the end of the game. It may not be the cleanest way to get the information across, but it wraps up the story. Chrono Cross at least attempted to answer and fill the plot holes left from Trigger while also making their alternate dimension plot work within the context of the overall universe. The mandatory characters all had personality and they often had quests to flesh them out more, like Riddel and Glenn and Karsh, just to name a few. Even the ones like Nikki had personalities and developed backstories. Yes, not all of them were fleshed out, but a good chunk of them were. And honestly, did a character like Poshul or Turnip really need a detailed and intricate backstory or character arc? The battle system in Cross was a lot more indepth than the one present in CT. CT's battle system hardly had any depth and generally amounted to "USE STRONG TECHS". Hell, Patrick and Ryan brute forced their way through enemies weak to magic, that's how simplistic the CT battle system is. You can't just use the strongest magic in Chrono Cross, what with the Element Field and alignments and increased importance of status effects. And the music was phenomenal. It was far and away better than CT's music. It is some of Yasunori Mitsuda's best work, and Mitsuda has a lot of phenomenal work. Prisoners of Fate alone is better than a quarter of the tracks in Trigger.

Chrono Cross is unfairly hated because it wasn't exactly the same as CT. It takes away the happy go lucky tone and instead becomes a much darker and serious game with a story that isn't just a series of mildly connected subplots.

It had a far more interesting story and a much, much better soundtrack, an interesting and fun combat system and it actually made Chrono Trigger's story mean something instead of just happy go lucky time travel with absolutely no repercussions. Chrono Cross actually took advantage of its plot and connection with Trigger to make a far more engaging tale.

@Uberdubie said:

Hm. If by "really good" you mean "really redundant, terrible, and completely lost everything that made the series good in the first place", I agree.

@MasterWGS said:

@thellama042 said:

I do wish that they'd come out with something in the Chrono vein, but honestly, as long as Square keeps putting out good games, I don't really care.

So you've been caring for a while, then.

Couldn't have worded that better myself.

Someone needs to buy you a thesaurus and a dictionary if that is what you got out of what he said. It is actually a fantastic game.

@Rox360 said:

@DonChipotle said:

It had a far more interesting story and a much, much better soundtrack, an interesting and fun combat system and it actually made Chrono Trigger's story mean something instead of just happy go lucky time travel with absolutely no repercussions. Chrono Cross actually took advantage of its plot and connection with Trigger to make a far more engaging tale.

And despite all of that, I didn't manage to play more than a couple of hours of it before deeming it impenetrable to my thick, western skull. Chrono Trigger was the second ever JRPG I ever found enjoyable enough to play to completion (preceeded by Super Mario RPG and closely followed by Final Fantasy 6, and to this day that's about it, as far as traditional console RPGs go), but I just couldn't get into Chrono Cross. Maybe it is the better game and I just happen to hate it because I never felt like I was even close to understanding anything about it, but does it really matter in that case? I gave it hours of my time, and I can't even recall the protagonist's name because throughout that time, nothing made me want to care about him. Okay, let's strike a deal. I'll be fine with people calling Cross the objectively better game, if you all are fine with me insisting that it's significantly less fun and not at all worth the time it feels like I'd have to spend on it to get anything out of it. That sound fair?

A couple of hours? The game doesn't even start to explain its plot until Fort Dragonia, which is a quarter of the way through, until then you're supposed to be confused as to why this weird shit is happening to Serge. Which is the main character's name, by the way. The entire first part of the game is all about finding out the answer to two questions: "What happened ten years ago?" and "Why is this panther demon so interested in me?" I think it is unfair to judge a game like Chrono Cross based on a couple of hours since that is still largely set up for the pay off hours down the line. But if you want to think it is inferior, that is your right. I'm not saying you're wrong for not liking it. I couldn't care less if people like or dislike Chrono Cross. I believe it is the superior game but that is also probably because I think Chrono Trigger is not a very good game at all.

If only because Chrono Trigger lacks an adorable alien party member who summons giant robots, Which Chrono Cross totally has.

Just saying.

Required reading for anyone trying to bash Chrono Cross without having actually played it:

http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=cross

How about some of that Lightning DLC instead...

A fourth Chrono game would be awesome, but hey...if it's not a Chrono title than it's not. Trigger and Radical Dreamers were great of course. I really enjoyed Cross, largely for the incredible story. Admittedly, the huge cast of characters in that game dragged it down a bit, outside of a central few, they had no real development, and were just sorta there. Still, so much great tie-ins between all those games really helped flesh out the world and backstory.

So many questions I'd like to see answered, like what happened to Dalton after the Guardia Invasion, or even a bit more about what happened in that Invasion itself, specifically.

@Rox360 said:

And despite all of that, I didn't manage to play more than a couple of hours of it before deeming it impenetrable to my thick, western skull. Chrono Trigger was the second ever JRPG I ever found enjoyable enough to play to completion (preceeded by Super Mario RPG and closely followed by Final Fantasy 6, and to this day that's about it, as far as traditional console RPGs go), but I just couldn't get into Chrono Cross. Maybe it is the better game and I just happen to hate it because I never felt like I was even close to understanding anything about it, but does it really matter in that case? I gave it hours of my time, and I can't even recall the protagonist's name because throughout that time, nothing made me want to care about him. Okay, let's strike a deal. I'll be fine with people calling Cross the objectively better game, if you all are fine with me insisting that it's significantly less fun and not at all worth the time it feels like I'd have to spend on it to get anything out of it. That sound fair?

A couple of hours? The game doesn't even start to explain its plot until Fort Dragonia, which is a quarter of the way through, until then you're supposed to be confused as to why this weird shit is happening to Serge. Which is the main character's name, by the way. The entire first part of the game is all about finding out the answer to two questions: "What happened ten years ago?" and "Why is this panther demon so interested in me?" I think it is unfair to judge a game like Chrono Cross based on a couple of hours since that is still largely set up for the pay off hours down the line. But if you want to think it is inferior, that is your right. I'm not saying you're wrong for not liking it. I couldn't care less if people like or dislike Chrono Cross. I believe it is the superior game but that is also probably because I think Chrono Trigger is not a very good game at all.

If only because Chrono Trigger lacks an adorable alien party member who summons giant robots, Which Chrono Cross totally has.

Just saying.

The Square Enix of today cannot make a true successor to the classic Chrono Trigger. The team of that game has been dismantled for years and they are not with the company, so unless Square changes their approach of making games it won't happen.

It kinda makes sense for them to call the card game chrono something, given its a time travel game... or at least it would if it were any other company aside from SE... on top of every thing else its actually a terrible card game... Damn it SE... Then again maybe they decided to call it chrono bind just to judge how much coverage the chrono thing would get.. to see if theres still a demand for a chrono game out there, or maybe Ive been smoking too much crack.

I still dont forgive Square for destroying the Enix/Tri-Ace dream team. Am I the only person left who loves Star Ocean 2?

If square enix is having so financially wrapped in debt, why not just make a Chrono Trigger game.   Is there anybody that needs this much final fantasy right now?

Damn it. I love Cross. Love, love, love it. Trigger is great too of course, but I want Chrono Break! Or whatever the third (fourth if you count Dreamers) game will be called.

Perhaps it's better to leave it alone? I think what happens is people get way too nostalgic for old games and they tend to get "glossy" over them to the point where the game was perfect and the best game ever. A remake or a sequel etc will never ever stand up because the original game has reached heights that are impossible to reach.

@akumous: I wouldn't even WANT square to make a sequel now, they havent made a game that gives any indication that they could make it even passable in quality in years

@thellama042: Square-Enix hasn't been releasing good games at all. They are no longer the quality company they used to be.

I definitely agree about the auto battle thing though, that was dumb, but they don't force you to use it so its not a deal breaker to me.

@I_smell said:

Chrono is just one of those JRPG words they throw around, like "chronicle" or "fate" or "spirit".

Indeed.

@Nasar7 said:

Stop dissing Chrono Cross, that's one of the best RPGs ever.

Agreed