• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #1: Ten Out Of Ten? Review It Again!
• Get Chrono Crossed: Part #2: This Game Might Be The Weirdest Sequel To A Beloved Video Game Ever Made

Part 16: It's Time For A Bunch of Side Stories With No Connection To The Main Plot!

When we last left off, Serge uncovered more information about the Frozen Flame while occupying Lynx's body. He discovered the Frozen Flame could wish into existence anything whoever holds it into reality, which is why multiple parties are vying for it. Nevertheless, that leaves an inordinate number of unanswered questions. Is the Frozen Flame the reason for Lynx swapping bodies with Serge? What happened to Kidd? Who or what is the malignant evil working in the background trying to destroy the fabric of reality? What's the deal with that random dragon that rescued Serge before Chronopolis exploded? Well, we have another five hours before the game answers any of those questions! Instead, the dragon from earlier drops Serge off at a beach near Marbule and directs them to "seek the Sea of Eden." It's anyone's guess how to accomplish that, but one of your party members muses that Serge's ability to shift dimensions should be working, and their theory later proves to be correct.

Once you drag your ass back to Opassa Beach and shift things to the "Another World," you find the quaint town of Arni in disarray. It appears Serge, who is Lynx, has been waging total war on the various settlements in this dimension, and as such, the town is abandoned. Likewise, Porre's occupation of Termina is notably more authoritarian. When you manage to seek counsel with a handful of former dragoons, they relay what happened to General Viper and Kid at Fort Dragonia. Viper is away at Hermit's Hideaway, healing from his injuries, whereas Kid is a loyal lackey of "Punished" Serge. Oh, and by the way, this entire conversation is way funnier if you bring the Home World's version of Norris along. I will give the game credit where credit is due; Karsh and Zoah are not happy if Norris is in your party, and it is one of the few times when the story actively recognizes its massive cast. You also need to pick between allowing Karsh or Zoah into your party, and I strongly recommend Karsh as he adds far more to the story than Zoah.

Regardless of whoever you pick, the dragoons instruct you to save Lady Riddel at Viper's Mansion. What ensues next is an extended rescue mission where you discover Norris is a crueler military agent in the "Another" dimension than the one tagging along with you. Furthermore, the amount of time the game puts into painting Riddel in a sympathetic light so the narrative can lecture you about how "war is bad" is groan-inducing. At best, raiding Viper's Mansion with the "Resistance" is an excuse for the game to present another batch of party members. Orcha, Riddel, and Grobyc are "nice," but they don't add anything to the story beyond a handful of character moments. Grobyc ended up being my go-to black elemental character when Serge transformed back into his normal self. But I sure as fuck wasn't a fan of another puzzle platforming bit in the sewers. This middle portion of Chrono Cross is when the game recycles prior levels and environments to a fault. Finally, to resurrect a bit from my last blog, I want to say the sub-plot about Porre's occupation of Termina is a decent plot thread that might have worked as a self-contained story in a different game.

The boss battle against Grobyc is certainly cinematic, but your return to Viper's Mansion is the first sign of Chrono Cross's aforementioned "padding" strategy. This is the THIRD TIME the game has used Viper's Mansion as a backdrop for a dungeon sequence! It's around the game's mid-point when the variety of levels plummets. Instead of showcasing new set-pieces, it forces you to swap back and forth between dimensions while revisiting previously encountered levels. After finishing things up at the villa, you return to Hermit's Hideaway and after milling about with Viper's dragoons, Punished Serge arrives. He unleashes Kid, who seeks to kill Lynx, not knowing Serge and Lynx have swapped bodies. Shockingly, Kid reveals that she wants to kill Lynx to "avenge Lucca." Just as Kid moves to murder your party, Fargo arrives and saves them in the nick of time. You might have forgotten all about the game's subplot with Nikki and his concert about world peace, but the game sure has not!

Part 17: And Now This Game Decides It Needs To Lecture About How War Racism Are Bad... AGAIN!

I have been avoiding this subject, but we need to talk about the English localization of Chrono Cross. Chrono Cross is of an era wherein accents and dialects are used to communicate different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Working Designs did not touch this game, but their spirit looms large over its direction and many of the decisions made regarding its translation. There are two French characters (i.e., Harle and Pierre) who, when they speak, the letter "s" is replaced with "z." To call the localization "campy" is an understatement. Similarly, it does not help that the creative direction with the localization is incredibly inconsistent. For example, Kid oscillates between a Scottish, Cockney, and Australian accent, and sometimes all three in the same scene. It's indeed funny; but, this direction sabotages the game's more dramatic moments. Harle and Kid, in particular, have some genuinely tragic and heart-rendering moments which are tough to swallow because of how their lines of dialogue are translated. And if you think I'm making a big stink over a "non-issue," I want you to consider that this game came out the same year as Vagrant Story. I refuse to believe the same studio that signed off on Alexander O. Smith's localization of Vagrant Story didn't know any better.

To return to the story at hand, after Fargo whisks you away from the clutches of Punished Serge, a family reunion of sorts takes place on his ship. General Viper and his supporting dragoons recognize Serge despite his appearances and join him in his quest to stop Lynx. More bizarrely, Kid announces that she too believes that the person masquerading as Serge is Lynx, even though not five minutes ago she was following his orders without question. The game never addresses what convinces Kid to see the error of her ways or if she was under the influence of a spell. She's here to be a part of #TeamRealSerge and has her knives ready to shank some fools. Likewise, it's around here when the narrative kicks in its romance angle between Harle and Serge. This romance angle comes out of nowhere, and it feels astonishingly half-baked considering Harle's limited time in the game. I imagine the writers realized Chrono Cross lacked an immediate love interest for Serge, and slapdashed this to remedy the situation. However, Harle previously has only acted as a lore dump for the player, so when she becomes depressed when she realizes her role in the story is ending, I found her arc rather underwhelming.

Speaking of odd shit that comes out of nowhere, there's Nikki's rock opera. A massive issue I have with Chrono Cross's endgame is that it feels incredibly cheap. Large swaths of important storytelling are conveyed through dialogue boxes and static images, making what the game does with Nikki all the odder. You see, Serge and company discover they must first defeat all of the elemental dragons that populate both dimensions before they can continue with their journey. Unfortunately, many of these dragons are in a deep slumber and need to be reawakened. The solution here is obvious: let Nikki sing a love ballad about "Ziggy and the Neptunian Nymphs." So, with both dimensions of El Nido well aware of the situation, the Fargo in your party accosts the Fargo in the Home World to whip him back into shape. With Nikki's help, they convert the S.S. Zelbess into a concert ship. Upon which, Nikki sings about a poor sap getting embroiled in a star-crossed lovers situation.

I want to say; this in-game cutscene is a notable technical achievement. The music is perfectly synced with the animations of the characters, and the game showcases a masterclass of directorial framing and lighting. I was utterly enamored with how this concert looked and couldn't help but get excited with the characters as the scene reached its crescendo. Nonetheless, and I cannot believe I have to repeat this yet again, but this might have worked better as part of a self-contained story in a different game. The first issue I have is that if the game has this scene, why the fuck is Nikki an optional character? I opted for Guile in my playthrough, so Nikki lives and dies on the S.S. Zelbess. As a result, I had no idea about Nikki's life as an orphan until two-thirds into the game. Second, there's no denying how ancillary the entire concert feels in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it awakens the dragons that need to be murdered. However, NOTHING here addresses ANY of the late-game story revelations regarding Kid or Serge! Finally, there's no denying how the concert is an obvious example of the development team not correctly using their budget. Until we get to the actual end of the game, the number of fully animated cutscenes that even approach this concert in terms of quality are few and far between. Simply put, they blew their wad on this scene, which comes at the cost of the conclusion feeling more rushed. But hey, at least this concert scene looks good.

Part 18: Update on My Thoughts About How This Game Plays!

Spoilers, I still think this game plays like shit! The main culprit, at least for me, is the endless number of sub-mechanics. In the last episode, I briefly touched upon a few of the character-specific mechanics. These mechanics do a fine job differentiating party members, but they often require an absurd amount of player investment before paying off dividends. The two most prominent examples are Sprigg and Pip. Sprigg, for example, is Chrono Cross's version of a Blue Mage and transforms into enemies they have captured. It is an incredibly involved process scouring the world and picking up the enemies that make Sprigg an asset in battle, and that's my issue. Most of these systems require busy work for them to even tread water with your standard array of physical attacks, which prove to be effective at murdering everything that stands before you 90% of the time.

Nevertheless, I wanted to invest in at least one of these sub-mechanics before passing an overall judgment of the gameplay. For whatever reason, I decided to capture as many of the optional "summons" as possible. I did not need to do this, but I did, and I fucking hated it! To even humor the idea, I first needed to purchase a bunch of capture magic. Next, I needed to find various enemies capable of summoning the monsters I wanted to trap. Next, I had to make sure the color field was the same as the summons's innate color so the enemies would pop them off during a battle. Luckily for me, trapping magic has no failure rate, but hot damn, it involves way more trial and error than it should. And what was the payoff of my hard work? I got to witness some flashy summoning animations that were virtually impossible to see because filling a field with the same color and timing that with your summon is easier said than done. To add insult to injury, the summons are terrible! Most of them bestow a handful of situational buffs that don't even last for the duration of a battle.

That lack of satisfaction from playing according to Chrono Cross's rules is a recurring issue. Something that drove me crazy are the late-game tech abilities. Every character has three unique skills they can use when building up their meter, and these are bolted at various intervals on their spell slots. The issue comes with each character's third and final unique ability. Some characters gain this skill by leveling up, some require you to make specific choices throughout the story, and others only gain their last ability if you complete a side quest. There's no rhyme or reason for which characters fall into any of these categories. Worse, the game does an AWFUL job of communicating when you have failed your opportunity to pick up a final ability. For example, I missed out on Kid's last tech move because I had no idea it was hidden in some furniture in a one-off environment you can never revisit. That's a problem because you end up using many of these tech abilities more often than the magic commands because, as I hinted at earlier, your regular physical attacks usually murder everything you encounter. When you miss a single tech ability, that can jeopardize the long-term viability of that character.

There are other reasons why I was not impressed by how this game controlled and felt. Principally, this section of the game is an absolute slog because the boss encounters do not pop off as often as they did during the game's introduction. The problem is that your character's levels only go up after you beat a storyline boss and progress the story. That means you plug along in the mid-game with a moderately leveled party far longer than you should. If you complete some of the side quests, you can end up with level six and seven spells without any hope of using those abilities for hours. The second, and far more prominent issue, is the one I have already hinted at twice. Chrono Cross's difficulty curve drops like a sack of bricks after you beat Miguel. Serge/Lynx does an absurd amount of damage from regular attacks, and there are several other party members where this also applies. The other issue comes from the game's introduction of the "Magnify" and "Diminish" abilities. The magnify ability increases elemental damage by x1.5, whereas Diminish halves all elemental damage. Using some basic math, you can use both of these abilities to make enemy magic moot, thus leaving you to your own devices.

Part 19: Killing The Dragons Sucks So Much Shit

In the last episode, I mentioned there were two levels in Chrono Cross I genuinely hated. The first being your initial go on the S.S. Zelbess and the second, which is now before us, is when you need to track down all of the elemental dragons in El Nido. There are two reasons why I HATED this part of the game. To begin with, it is here I once again need to belabor the point of Chrono Cross lacking a mission log. Even knowing which islands have dragons on them is a pain in the ass! Sure, some of the islands bear the namesake of their dragon-based residents. Nevertheless, that's not always the case, given how you need to go to Gaea's Navel and Mount Pyre. Furthermore, the amount of backtracking during this sequence is atrocious. Due to you only being able to warp between the different dimensions at Opassa Beach, there's a TON of aimless wandering back and forth involved.

At least things start off simple enough with the Black Dragon residing conveniently at Marbule. Nonetheless, there's another nefarious part to each dragon's design worth mentioning. Each boss has a matching elemental plate that absorbs their element or color when it is equipped to a character. Getting these plates is a one-time-only opportunity, but the game doesn't even mention they exist in the first place. The issue here is two-fold: 1) Kid and Fargo are the only characters in the game that can steal items, and 2) You can only use the steal command once per battle for each character. So, if the RNG Goddess is pissed at you, it is easy to fuck up your shot at getting these essential items. Usually, I wouldn't mention optional equipment in one of my blogs, but things are different with the dragon plates in Chrono Cross. These items are CRITICAL, if not necessary, for the penultimate level and boss.

The final part of this infernal sequence worth discussing involves the puzzles you need to solve before fighting one of the dragons. None of these are especially hard, but they take time, and some have a frustrating amount of trial-and-error. Case in point, you have to move sand cockroaches using explosives to open the door to the Earth Dragon. The direction you need to push these large insectoids is unclear, and the game provides little input to guide your attempts to solve this puzzle. Worse, the subsequent boss battles are rough if you are not adequately prepared, and failing at one of these bosses is bound to force you to repeat many of these levels from the beginning. That said, other dragons (i.e., the Blue Dragon, Fire Dragon, and Sky Dragon) leave the path to their encounters wide open with no extra work needing to be accomplished. However, in these cases, the player needs to navigate previously explored environments, further suggesting that this game's budget wasn't the biggest. There's no reason for you to explore the Isle of the Damned or Mount Pyre for the umpteenth millionth time. It's just lazy game design.

All of this grousing pales in comparison to what you need to do to get to the Green Dragon. To kick things off, accessing Gaea's Navel is complete horseshit. You first need to head over to the Hydra Marshes of the Home World and find a "Beeba" shaman. This amphibian magician provides a magical flute that you can use to summon a giant dragonfly that Serge can ride to get to Gaea's Navel. HOWEVER, you need to use a summoning fruit on a specific part of the Hydra Marshes for this to work. When you first land at Gaea's Navel, you find Leah, Chrono Cross's cheap facsimile of Ayala. When you find the Green Dargon, Serge discovers it encased in a protective barrier. Leah reveals that it will only lower when all hostile life is eliminated on Gaea's Navel. That's right; you need to finish around twenty or so random encounters before you can continue with the story! This part of the game can fuck right off for all I care. Needing to eliminate a fixed number of enemies before being allowed to fight a boss is a shitty trope. What makes Gaea's Navel ten times worse is how the environment loops, making it is a thousand times harder to discern if a part of the environment is clear of enemies. As I said, this part of the game sucks, and everyone responsible for making it this way should feel bad.

Part 20: Turning Serge Back Into A Person Broke My Brain

I do want to mention that the order you tackle these dragons is up to you. Equally important, there are a handful of character moments and side quests that should be attempted before you slay the last one of these bosses. The dragons aren't Chrono Cross's proverbial "point of no return," but there are a handful of plot threads that get locked away if you progress the story too fast. I would bemoan how Chrono Cross fails to clue you into this part of the game being your best opportunity to explore the greater world and its massive cast of characters. Unfortunately, that's kind of how Chrono Cross rolls. You are the one that needs to decide when you want to pick up optional items and party members because Chrono Cross isn't the type of game to hold your hand. It is worth chastizing how the story stops dead in its track when you do all of this dragon-based bullshit. Each time you encounter a new dragon, it challenges Serge to prove he is a worthy opponent. Upon defeating them, they repeat the same soundbite saying they wish to see Serge complete his destiny. There's no progression about what Serge's destiny might be as you slay the dragons other than what the game has already provided.

Nonetheless, after beating the last dragon, you are told to seek a female mystic at Guldove named Steena. I should have mentioned this point beforehand, but you encounter Steena earlier as she is the one who tips Serge off that the next leg of their journey will involve dragon-based genocide. Steena provides Serge with a "Dragon Tear," which introduces the final part of our quest before venturing into the Sea of Eden. Slight aside, when you defeat the last dragon, it instructs you to seek out the Sea of Eden. However, you can't accomplish that until AFTER you meet with Steena and use the Dragon Tear to return Serge to his human form. Also worth mentioning, it's WILD how Chrono Cross is still introducing new party members this late into its story. You are only a handful of hours away from seeing the ending of Chrono Cross, and yet, here we have Steena joining your motley crew. I can only assume Steena has a real purpose and role, but my party composition had solidified by this point, and I was not in the mood to invest the time to see what she was all about. I mean, I can respect her for rocking a popped collar, but that is about it.

Steena at least has the common courtesy to tell Serge he will need to return to Fort Dragonia if he wishes to become human. Upon discovering this development, I groaned loudly. The path from Guldove to Fort Dragonia is no joke as it involves piloting your ship for a while and then re-ascending Mount Pyre. Luckily, you will not need to resolve all of the dungeon puzzles you needed to deal with the first time you entered this fortress. The elevator at the spire is already activated and Punished Serge meets the party without much trouble. Regarding the boss encounter with Evil Serge, I have to say almost everything in this game post-Miguel goes without a hitch. The gauntlet of dragons can have their moments wherein they pop off cheap bullshit, but nothing during the second act of Chrono Cross comes close to Miguel in terms of difficulty. That is not to say nothing in the game gave me a rough go. There's one more encounter in Chrono Cross that kicked my ass, but that's a topic for another time.

After beating away your evil doppelganger, Steena encourages Serge to enter the final room at Fort Dragonia. After placing the Dragon's Tear in a receptacle, a series of dragon statues power up. After these statues shoot a laser beam at Serge, we watch as he evaporates and is reborn. I'm not kidding. That's an actual scene that happens in this game, and it blew my goddamn mind.

What can I say? Squaresoft loved them some ridiculous plot twists during the PS1 era! Over my many years of blogging on Giant Bomb, I have seen some bizarre shit. Watching Serge emerge from a blue crystal after being reborn is undoubtedly up there as one of the craziest scenes in a video game I have ever seen. It's up there with the final boss of Kingdom Hearts transforming into a boat, and it compares favorably to the "Orphanage Scene" in Final Fantasy VIII. It's fucking WILD! I have no idea what Serge being reborn has to do with the story, but it made me cackle with glee. And before you ask, this isn't even the craziest plot twist in Chrono Cross! WE HAVEN'T EVEN TALKED ABOUT THE TIME-TRAVELING DINOSAURS, "PROJECT KID," OR TIME DEVOURER YET! If we were to make a "meme iceberg" of crazy shit in Chrono Cross, this would, at best, be in the middle! On that note, I think it is time to end this episode. Next time, I plan to do a fun supplemental on all of the side quest shit, including stuff that didn't make the cut in this episode, before jumping headfirst into the ending.

Also, I keep forgetting to mention this but if you want an even deeper look on where I stand with Chrono Cross, you should check out the podcast I ended up recording with @thatpinguino and @jeffrud

I remember that one Canadian dude who worked for EGM got SOOOOOOO much hate for not giving Chrono Cross a 10.

Nowadays I am not sure I can be convinced that this game is any better than one the the Saga series games. I was so damn excited for this game, and the only things I remember about it are all the things it did to annoy the hell out of me. It's a damn shame.

You might be well on your way to convincing me this game was Bad, Actually, but I won't let my childhood memories be tarnished by the likes of you!

It hurts to see this game compared to Kingdom Hearts, if only because you’re starting to convince me of its batshit insanity. I accepted bullshit a lot more readily in 2000, probably. Awesome write up as always!

I like Serge's expression after he is reborn. He doesn't looked shocked or disoriented at all. He's just like, "Dude, nice!"

Pretty nice review of this legendary game.

This game got by with aesthetics, music, and brand recognition at the time of its release. It's a wildly ambitious game. but hot damn is it not fun to play nor is it the compelling narrative a lot of people at the time claimed it to be. In fact, the story reeks of Akitoshi Kawazu at times.

I'll ask you this... how much of the ending do you remember? I think that's definitely the point at which I realized I did not like this game nearly as much as people at the time. I can respect its technical ambition and the fact it tried something different with its gameplay and narrative. But completely falling apart at the end with a dozen or so story revelations that come out of nowhere is where I draw the line.

They made an actual movie that only plays during the credits. Who does this other than "peak Squaresoft?" And all the times the story active recognizes Chrono Trigger are batshit crazy!

He pulled a JRPG Terminator! I couldn't stop myself from thinking someone working on this scene saw Terminator 2 and went "I can do that!"

@zombiepie: I'll be honest, I don't think I ever beat this game. I played it multiple times, but my memory of the game is that I considered Miguel the final boss and most of the lead up to Time Devourer an epilogue and excuse to continue recruiting characters and toying around with the battle system. I watched an analysis of this game after reading this recap and was completely caught off guard by the live action footage of Kid wandering in the real world...I'm really pretty certain I defeated the Dragon God and walked away from the game afterward whenever I replayed this game. Really looking forward to your next (last?) entry!

I love reading these. Just wanted to put in a good word. Always wondered about Chrono Cross after the rave reviews back in the day, it's wild seeing what it really is.

It can't be understated how nice this game looked back in the day, and some of the music I still listen to today. That said, the game is a legendary fascination mess. I got all the endings and haven't touched it since. They really should re-release it someday though - it deserves to be remembered. Re-release Xenogears while you're at it, Square!

For me, CC is the only real disappointment from PS-era Square RPGs, which IMO was their best period overall. And that's despite being probably the best-looking and sounding game on the Playstation. Not as ambitious as FF7 or Xenogears. Not as intricate and thought-out as the Matsuno games or Front Mission. Not as coherent as FF9. Broken and messy, but unlike FF8, not broken and messy in a fun way. And while I didn't play the Saga Frontiers, from what I've heard and seen, they seemed like a high point for that series, which certainly wasn't the case for CC.

The game felt like a hodgepodge of leftover storylines and mechanics Square wanted to stick somewhere before moving on to the PS2. Aside from the disjointed, pointlessly huge cast of characters, which you discuss very well, my biggest sticking point with the game was the way it controlled your party's strength at all times. That game seemed so obsessed with making sure you're not overpowered or underpowered that it ended up kneecapping its own mechanics. The terrible level-scaled progression system seems clinically designed to provide as little satisfaction as possible to both min-maxers and casual players. The tedious magic/elemental system (which theoretically is at the core of combat) never feels rewarding or necessary. And as you point out, even the unique character mechanics of Sprigg and Pip, which I should have been thrilled by given how samey the rest of the cast feels, never really feels worth it.

It's telling that I felt let down by this game when I played it around 02, around the peak of my Square fandom and before the subsequent 20 years of disappointment. Though I think comparing it to Kingdom Hearts is going a little too far; CC still has some redeeming qualities.