Chrono Cross

Chrono Cross was met with mixed opinions when it was released. Though the majority of critics hailed it for its spectacular presentation and original design, many fans of its predecessor, Chrono Trigger, were disappointed, and the fanbase was divided over the fact that Chrono Cross wasn't a true sequel. While it's a sequel to Trigger, Chrono Cross has a drastically different approach to virtually every aspect of its presentation. The art direction is more colorful and varied, while the game's tone is overall a lot more grim than Chrono Trigger's. There are also a lot of connections to be picked up by long-time Chrono fans, such as references to Zenan and Porre, or the spirits of Masa and Mune. In spite of the drastic differences and the lack of the original Chrono Trigger "dream team," Square managed to hit all the right notes with Chrono Cross in 2000.

Our story begins with a man named Serge and two companions, one a girl called simply "Kid," breaking into a fortress of some kind in pursuit of a man named Lynx. Immediately after entry, Kid states that Lynx will pay for what he's done and that saying his prayers will do him no good-dark, indeed. The group fights their way through an array of strange creatures and eventually reaches the top of the fortress. Just as Serge is about to open the door into the final room, where Lynx waits, he's hit with several vivid images of him murdering Kid with her own weapon, and with a certain amount of satisfaction.

...Then, he wakes up. Wait, what? Yes, that was all a very real dream sequence. Reeling from the vividness of his dream, Serge starts his day to find he's overslept and that his friend Leena has been waiting up for him for hours. After a brief period of running about and gathering up a few items to make a necklace for Leena, Serge heads to the beach and waits there for her. It doesn't take long for Leena to arrive, and the two of them get to some sentimental conversation straight off; however, their moment is soon cut short as Serge finds himself spirited away to an alternate reality in which he's been dead for ten years.

Serge departs to find his alleged grave, and, sure enough, he's been dead for some time now. As he tries to leave, he's cut off by a group of knights, who explain to him that he's under arrest and is to come with them immediately. Just when all seems lost for Serge, a smack-talking blond girl flies to the rescue-none other than the girl from his dream: Kid. The two of them manage to fight off the knights, and Kid decides to partner up with Serge, as they each have business that will lead them to the same place. The two then set out to find out from the very person who sent the soldiers after Serge what the reason was, and this in turn leads them into a much greater conflict surrounding both the events of his death and Kid's elusive conflict with a man-beast called Lynx, and the mysterious item called the Frozen Flame.

Probably most impressive about Chrono Cross is how well it deviates from the traditional sequel formula. It keeps ties to Chrono Trigger for continuity's sake, but it stands on its own and never uses Trigger as a crutch to gain credibility. It all takes place in the same world, and some of the characters from the previous game are referenced and even have cameo roles, but on the whole Chrono Cross sets its own stage in a wholly different location with its own unique premise based more upon alternate realities and how the flow of time rights itself in each new alternate world created with every action taken.

As you can imagine, you'll be moving between the two parallel realities fairly often, as well as visiting the occasional pocket dimension or isolated reality. If something's missing or a miss in one world, or you need a certain item that can't conceivably be obtained in one world, you can bet that looking in the other is a good place to start. The power of choice also greatly affects the flow of the story at certain points. Most noticeably, you can realistically go through nearly the entire game without ever once actually having Kid (though she will still appear fairly often throughout the story) or any number of the other 40 party members ever join you. Making certain choices at crucial moments will affect things like how you get to a certain area or whether or not you can get certain characters or items at specific points or even if you can get them at all. Even if you do miss certain things on your first time through the story, though, you'll be able to replay with all your current equipment through the New Game+ feature used in Chrono Trigger.

The fields and dungeons are all generally fairly complex, without usually getting you lost or requiring a massive amount of backtracking. Usually, you'll be moving along a set path with a pretty good idea of where you're going to end up, but this isn't to say that it's a very linear game, either. Most of the time, there are a couple ways to get where you're going, along with a lot of other branching pathways that'll take you to other areas that generally hold something valuable or relevant. Also, as you move around the map, you'll see enemies wandering around and can actually avoid fighting altogether if you're not feeling up to it, but if an enemy spots you, you'll have to run to get away from it. You can almost always avoid a fight if you don't want to get into one, but occasionally there are fights, be they with regular enemies or bosses, that you can't avoid.

Insofar as battles go, Chrono Cross is a relatively standard turn-based system. The active time system used in Trigger was dropped in favor of a seven-point stamina system, which allows you to essentially attack at your leisure and use several attacks in one turn. You have three different attack types: weak, which consumes one stamina point and almost always hits; strong, which consumes two and is fairly accurate; and fierce, which consumes three points and hits for the highest damage with the lowest accuracy rating. When attacking, you can use any number of these in any way you like, until you deplete your stamina bar. And as long as you have at least one point in that bar, you can take a turn almost whenever you like, with whomever you like. Of course, the same principle applies to enemies as well, and they're free to interrupt your turn on occasion and attack whenever the AI allows them to. Even though Chrono Cross is essentially running on a turn-based combat system, that makes things more hectic at times, and it allows for some interesting strategies as well.

Perhaps the most interesting and relevant aspect of the battle system is the element system, which is Chrono Cross's take on magic. All characters and elemental techniques have one of the six attributes: yellow or green, red or blue, black or white. Each of those pairs cancel one another out, and using an element of the opposite affinity on a character will deal greater damage, while an effect of a similar affinity will deal less. Obviously, characters with a certain attribute are going to be better with elements of their color, but it's also generally wise to keep an element of every color you can fit on each character.

Each character has an elemental grid that can be accessed through the main menu, in which you can place a certain number of elements. As you attack in battle, levels of this grid will open up for use dependent upon the type of attacks you successfully land on an opponent. Eventually you have a total of eight grid levels to use elements from, and the use of elements from a given level will reduce your "grid gauge" by the level in which the element you used was placed, and you'll also lose seven full stamina points for the use of that element, which will temporarily take you out of action until you've refilled at least some of your gauge. Luckily, you can also use elements even at the bare minimum stamina of 1 and they'll lose no effectiveness. Elements naturally have certain limitations upon where they can be placed in your grid; each one has a set level and can be placed within a certain range of that level. For instance, an element might be level 5, so its average placement on your grid would be the fifth column; but you might also be able to place it within a given range, such as two places below (an element can usually be placed in any position above its recommended one, though there are some cases in which they can only be placed in one specific level).

As you use the many elements in battle, a color-coded "field effect" indicator at the top will keep track of the last three used in battle, usually starting off with three random colors. If the field becomes all one color, characters and elements of that color gain a bonus to damage. A full field effect of one color will also allow you to use one of that element's summon spells, which are typically exceedingly rare, and half of them can only be obtained through obscure means with trap elements (they steal an element of that type when it's used and then disappear, giving you the element instead of allowing it to deal its damage). The field effect manipulation sounds easy in theory, until you take into account that a lot of enemies are also actively trying to interfere with your field effect or aggressively trying to manipulate it in their favor, further adding to the subtle intensity of the system.

There are a lot of during and post-battle nuances that make things much easier for you in the long run. If you don't like the way a battle is going-even if it's a boss battle-you can immediately run away, with no chance of failure, to change up elements and equipment for a particularly difficult boss (though you can never actually leave an area and avoid the boss entirely) or to just avoid a fight with a bunch of pesky enemies you don't want to deal with. You're also able to defend during battles to significantly reduce damage to your character and allow them to more quickly refill their stamina bar, which is an extremely valuable function in tight spots. Double and triple techniques used in Chrono Trigger have also made a triumphant return, and while they play something of a smaller role and aren't quite so varied as the original roster of combined attacks, they can be fun to use and watch while also having more potent effects than regular techniques. Another useful feature is the ability to automatically heal after a battle, which gives you the options of not healing at all, searching your stock for consumable items to restore health if necessary, or using only available elements from your characters' grids after the battle to restore health. This basically cuts out the middleman and makes it so you don't have to visit the menu screen after every single battle to keep your characters in peak condition. Fortunately, this doesn't make things too easy, as a lot of the time the automatic healing will be used out of necessity due to some enemies being able to dish out a healthy serving of damage at one time.

As you progress through the game, you'll want to keep your equipment up to snuff, as enemies get progressively much stronger, especially if you're using outdated items, so forging and locating new equipment is a must. Chrono Cross's equipment system, you'll notice, is somewhat different from many RPGs. You can buy it from shops and occasionally obtain it from chests or battles, but when purchasing it, you have to offer up a set amount of reagents to forge it. You gain these items from pretty much anywhere, and there are usually traders who'll let you barter some of your unused elements for forging materials, and you can also dismantle equipment you're not using to gain them. Some characters also have character-specific weapons such as Serge's swallow (a double-bladed weapon), Kid's dagger, Glenn's dual Einlanzers, and Viper's Venom weapons. In the way of "ultimate" or "final" weapons, there are very few, apart from Serge's Mastermune and Glenn's two Einlanzers, but there are also the elusive "rainbow" weapons which can only be forged with an exceptionally rare reagent called a Rainbow Shell, as well as various "shiny" materials.

The 40-character roster of Chrono Cross deterred some, but it was executed brilliantly. The characters of most relevance to a given situation can sometimes pop in to say something or interact with people in a certain way, but beyond that, when you're playing through certain situations and watching certain scenes play out, you get a feel for which characters are actually important to the story and which ones are there for extra fun. This isn't to say that certain characters are just there as filler. Every character has their own sort of personality that shows through the way they carry themselves, the mannerisms of speech, the way they idly, and the way they fight in battles-no two of the 40 characters are exactly the same, and while some seem trivial and rather useless, they all have their own little niche to bring to the story and combat. Also, nearly all of the characters have multiple unique side quests to gain new elements or special items, and they also each react differently to any given situation in the game. If a character knows someone you're talking to there'll be a side conversation between the two, or they'll share their thoughts on what's going on in the game.

Simply put, Chrono Cross is beautiful. Every one of the countless areas you'll visit looks spectacular, and whether it's a 3D area or a 2D backdrop, it all comes together perfectly in a way that most other games can only dream about; an especially nice touch is the differences between the same area in separate worlds. The vibrant colors and lush, inspired environments all lend themselves perfectly to the atmosphere of the game's tropical setting and manage to be greatly varied without seeming out of place. There's a lot of exploration involved a lot of the time, and there are items stashed away inside of things, and players are encouraged to check everything they can before moving on, which is good, because all the places look so good that many people will want to wander around in them just to look at everything.

Character and battle animations are fluid and unique to every character, and all characters' attacks also have their own unique critical damage animation. Most of the unique elements to each character are unique and interesting to watch, albeit often poorly named; "BottomsUp" and "FoiledAgain," to name a couple. A lot of the regular elements are beautiful as well, and most of them are mercifully short, breaking from the age-old RPG tradition of more powerful spells being drawn out and dramatic. This doesn't mean there aren't a lot of over-the-top animations for the elemental techniques; Chrono Cross makes up for time with some absolutely ridiculous elements like giant venus flytraps and icebergs falling from the sky to crush foes.

The FMV sequences in Chrono Cross are absolutely out of this world for the PlayStation, and there are very few games on the console that even come close. The characters in the movie scenes really come to life and convey a lot of emotion in ways that a lot of current generation games haven't yet done.

Chrono Cross's graphics, story, and gameplay are outstanding, to be sure, but the sound direction is where it truly shines. All the sound effects are clear and brilliant, fitting perfectly to their assigned actions, and nearly everything has its own unique and recognizable sound. Even better than the sound is the soundtrack, which is arguably composer Yasunori Mitsuda's finest hour. There's an absolutely incredible amount of variety, from somber avante garde to bouncy tropical-style music, and everything down to the very last evokes strong emotion and fits seamlessly in place. Fan of the game or not, Chrono Cross's soundtrack is truly one for the ages.

Rather than rely on previous entries in already established series, Chrono Cross strikes new ground and establishes itself as not only a strong entry into a beloved series but also a strikingly unique and bold title in its own right. Maybe it wasn't the sequel Chrono Trigger fans had originally wished for, but Chrono Cross is a unique and innovative RPG that goes above and beyond the norm for a title in the genre. This is one game that should absolutely not be missed.