Chrono Cross

Chrono Cross is the sequel to the 1995 Super Nintendo RPG, Chrono Trigger. You play as Serge, a young boy with beach clothes and spiky blue hair. A couple hours into the game, you discover a second world identical to Serge's, except that in this world, Serge died when he was ten years old. The remaining Serge is being hunted by a man with a cat's face (cleverly named Lynx) because Serge unknowingly holds the key to saving or destroying all worlds.

If you can't tell already, Chrono Cross was made by the company behind Final Fantasy, and Squaresoft's quality shines through the entire game brilliantly. The 3D character models are nicely incorporated into the 2D environments and the whole game looks like the designers ran out of pencils and were forced to draw with some kind of especially awesome neon crayons. But as fun as the visuals are, hands-down the best aspect of Chrono Cross's presentation is the stirring and unbelievably fun soundtrack. In terms of classic Squaresoft (Enix) soundtracks, it's right up there with Final Fantasy X and Nier.

So how does Chrono Cross actually play? Unlike its FF brethren, there are no random battles. All enemies show up in the 2D environment maps and you can go bonk into them to trigger a 3D battle screen familiar to any Japanese RPG fan. The battle system puts a twist on traditional turn based RPGs. Characters have seven points to spend per round, and a magic gauge--the magic coming in the form of colored elements similar to the Materia system in FF7--which fills depending on how hard you strike an opponent. You can summon powerful creatures as well, but as with a lot of JRPG summons on the PS1, they are complicated to use and unnecessary. Battles can become desperate very suddenly because using magic always costs all seven points. So if you use six physical attacks and one magic attack in one turn your remaining points will be at negative six, allowing a foe to attack twice before you can attack again. Still, most battles are relatively short and easy.

          Chrono Cross has ample sidequests, as you might expect. Most of these demand that you take a character from one world to the other, sometimes to meet up with themselves. However, there is only one point on the world map where you can go from the Home World to Another World, and going back and forth quickly becomes tedious. Depending on how many sidequests you complete, the game also sports about a dozen different endings, some of which are only possible after multiple trips through the game. Considering that a first playthrough will take you close to 40 hours, unlocking every ending is no small commitment. For the casual gamer, though, there are two endings of note. The last boss is easier than many of the previous mini bosses in the last dungeon, and this is on purpose. Hammering away at the boss with physical attacks will eventually trigger the ending credits with no cutscene or explanation (after 38 hours of dedicated play, I nearly threw my controller across the room). But inputing the correct sequence of elements will trigger the "good" ending, which at least explains what happened after you defeated the last boss.

Chrono Cross earned perfect scores from multiple outlets when it came out a decade or so ago, and it is still very good. If nothing else, it gives you a chance to see Hironobu Sakaguchi and the best brains of Squaresoft kicking back and having a little fun without the pressure behind a Final Fantasy game. While I didn't enjoy Chrono Cross as much as the three FF games on the PSX, I would say that it is a must-have for any fan of Japanese RPGs