Hey Duders,

Here is a Baby Deep Look! My usual Deep Look videos focus in on a cool gameplay mechanic or story element from a game I have played the heck out of, in the hopes that I can share what makes that mechanic so cool. This Baby Deep Look is just as deep as a normal video, but I focus on a mechanic or ability that is so small that the video is much shorter than usual. I aim to keep Baby Deep Looks around 5 minutes long. These videos should be small little observational nuggets that hopefully give you some useful insight into a game's design that you might not have noticed otherwise.

In this Baby Deep Look I show off some of the early tracks from the amazing Chrono Cross OST. I talk a bit about what makes this OST stand out so much after all these years and why you should check it out. Come vibe along with me and the cool island music of Chrono Cross!

From the little I played of Chrono Cross, the soundtrack was what immediately stood out to me as being fantastic. It's a pity the rest of the game is a little more... divisive.

@arbitrarywater: The rest of the game is certainly worth seeing, but the soundtrack is a best game soundtrack competitor. It is both a shame and a bold choice that you can't see the whole cast of characters in one playthrough.

I liked Chrono Cross a lot, I had no idea it was so divisive for years. I just never bothered to check the internet much for opinion back then. I bought the game because it was a sequel to Chrono Trigger

I thought the story was a little obtuse, but I enjoyed the world, battle system and music.

@slag: I don't believe Chrono Cross was divisive until years later, it even got more respect than Final Fantasy IX (which was a tad divisive when it came out) from some magazines.

Certainly the best soundtrack of all game time.

@thatpinguino: You can get all the good characters (Glenn, Viper, Fargo, Orlha, Starky, Karsh, Greco, Radius) in one playthrough, just not some of the crappier ones. I'd kill for a Suikoden where you could only access the worthwhile characters. I guess Riddel counts as a good character since she lets you fight Dario and dies immediately at the start of the fight.

@fredchuckdave: That song is so damn good. Man, if only the rest of Chrono Cross was as good as its soundtrack.

I still genuinely think Chrono Cross has one of the best video game soundtracks ever made.

Chrono Cross is superior to Trigger. The music is one reason why.

@fredchuckdave: I can believe that. I feel like I got blindsided by the ChronoCross is garbage thing about 5 years ago.

I wonder what changed the consensus?

I used to be able to sing Radical Dreamers.

That's all gone now since I don't actually speak Japanese.

But it wouldn't Suikoden if you didn't end up with 108 people by the end of the game that are mostly worthless but you better level them up anyways then some miracle happens and someone comes back from the dead or whatever. Also Jeane, Viki, and a Silverberg (or Silverberg adjacent) strategist.

Chrono Trigger has fantastic music also. That Robo theme.

It would be cool if you had played the alternate version of that song you were discussing in the video too, so we could get a better idea of the contrast.

Gotta love the Chrono Cross soundtrack so much. I have so much fondness for this game, it's one of the best examples for what exactly I want out of RPGs. Hint, it's not the "amazing" stories.

@bollard: Yep I'm starting to brush up against more and more topics that would be helped by editing... Damn it I'm going to have to learn how to do that aren't I? Well here is the compare and contrast between regular Arni village and Another Arni:

Another Arni is a down tempo and piano focused interpretation of the original Arni village theme.

@fredchuckdave: Sure if all you care about is having the best party possible then all you need is one playthrough. But I like seeing all of the characters and getting to know them. Like Pierre is far from the best character, but I hate missing out on his fake Frenchness just because Guile is the best character in the game. Even still, it is amazing that almost every character with a character portrait can join your party if you know what to do.

@slag: Oh boy is the story obtuse! There are alternate dimensions, super AIs, AND time travel. In the same story at the same time. Chrono Cross might have the most obtuse story that I have ever been exposed to outside of anime.

Chrono Cross did get one of Gamespot's rare 10 review scores in its day so it was not completely divisive. It is only looking back that it sticks out as a bit of a mess story-wise. I mean people were readily accepting FF7 and 8 around the same time.

@thatpinguino: Awesome, thanks!

@bollard: I also looked into the dungeon stuff and the dungeon themes stay the same while the towns and overworlds have two separate soundtracks for each reality. The dungeons have different enemies and enemy placement to make them distinct.

Chrono Cross has a pretty dang solid metacritic score of 94 and even a good user score of 8.7 (despite the usual 1s and 0s from the negative reviews). I would think that the negative opinions are largely revisionist history combined with a reevaluation of the game's story. I think the gameplay, graphics, and soundtrack hold up as well as any PS1 era game, so those aspects are probably not the issue. Most of the negative opinions on this site could easily be from people revisiting the Chrono series after the endurance run and looking at them from a modern perspective. Also looking at Cross after Trigger is a real tonal dichotomy. Cross is a lot more crazy anime in its plot twists, melodrama, and conceits while Trigger is largely a lighthearted time travel story. Cross just lacks some of the charm that made Trigger stand out despite some of its contrivances. Chrono Cross is still an amazing game, but it invites comparisons to one of the best JRPGs of all time and it is found wanting.

There are a lot of things I really liked about Chrono Cross, like the branching paths, large character roster, unusual battle system, and of course the fantastic music. It didn't match what I was expecting to get out of a "Chrono Trigger sequel" and the plot can be hard to follow, but it's a cool game in its own right despite its flaws. It tried a lot of new and interesting things, which I appreciate over staying overly safe, even if not all of those experiments worked out. That's much of the reason that I also like Final Fantasy VIII.

I've never finished Chrono Cross despite buying it on day one, but I have intentions to right that wrong in the near future.

I bought a Japanese book of piano sheet music with no idea of what was what. So I played through each one a little and instantly recognized it as "oh, this is the space between time song, this is the dragon, this is the future city." I marked each page with its English title, or whatever I called it.

It was easy to do because each track is so damn memorable.

@csl316: That sounds like a pretty fun purchase!

@cloudymusic: You should really try to finish Chrono Cross. The final boss and end credit sequence are quite memorable. Not to mention all of the late game characters you meet. My final team involved a dragon baby and a space alien if that is any indication.

Chrono Cross also has one of my favorite combat systems in a JRPG (second only to Valkyrie Profile 2).

I find the game a lot more fun and replayable than Trigger. Just looking at a list of endings I unlocked in fast-motion... the memories.

@csl316: Oh yeah since people haven't mentioned it yet the fast forward system is possibly the best NG+ mechanic ever.

Well, yeah, aside from the new routes accessible with the Rood Inverse.

@csl316: What is the Rood Inverse?

@fredchuckdave: What is the fast forward system?

@csl316: Well I'm assuming you weren't counting VS as a JRPG with your previous statement (joking).

@thatpinguino: Thing from Vagrant Story, huge spoiler but suffice to say Vagrant Story is better than everything. On NG+ if you hit R2 I think the game (everything in it) goes twice or more than twice as fast, and it goes slower with L2.

@fredchuckdave: Wow. I never knew you could even do something like that on the PS1. I thought you guys were talking about a hidden fast forward feature in Chrono Cross so I was a bit confused. I know Chrono Cross has multiple endings like Chrono Trigger, so I thought some other hidden stuff might have been there too.

@thatpinguino: Oh the fast forward mechanic is in Chrono Cross not VS, VS the Rood Inverse is a specific thing tied to the main plot but it also opens a bunch of doors for you. It's also an historical thing from the Spanish Inquisition as I recall, a branding for a particular kind of heretic or some such.

@csl316: Shadow Hearts has a pretty good combat system as well if you haven't tried that out yet. VP2's is amazing of course, though the exploration mechanic is even better. Best 2D platformer on the PS2?

@fredchuckdave: Dang, I'll need to beat Chrono Cross again and check that out! I had no idea that feature existed. Honestly that is a feature that most rpgs should consider. Overclocking your way through combat is pretty darn time saving.