Niloklives

@theonewhoplays: considering this game was handed to the Xenogears team, it shouldn't be a surprise what we got. The difference was that Xenogears was a new IP and you can be a little more experimental with no universe of standard to hold to. Xenogears + Suikoden is much harder to digest when it's wrapped in a Chrono Trigger candy shell. Xenogears is all over Chrono Cross, from the combat mechanics to the recycled story beats. I loved Xenogears for what it was and I enjoyed the first few Suikoden games, but the soul of Chrono Trigger was lost in this game and as a sequel it really misses the mark.

Speaking of FATE, upon interacting with a random computer terminal, you discover that FATE designed the "Records of Fate" (i.e., the save crystals) as an instrument of mind control. That's right, the save crystals are an actual plot point and are mind control devices that allow FATE to make sure all of the people of El Nido don't develop free will. I wish I were kidding.

@zombiepie

I just reread this part and to add to the development lore of Xenogears originally being designed as a sequel to CT, this particular plot point is also straight out of Xenogears. So as unbelievable as it might be, even more unbelievable is they already used this story beat in a previous game a year prior. Guess they really liked that idea.

Awesome read. I played the original on PSX because of my love for Chrono Trigger on the SNES and Cross as a sequel was a gigantic disappointment. Your criticisms are spot on and in my honest and humble opinion, the game feels more like fan fiction than a genuine sequel.

I did want to point out a couple things that stuck out to me about your story breakdown:

1) The Time Egg (also called the Chrono Trigger) wasn't ever directly capable of reviving people. What it did was take its user to a fixed point in time of their choosing. When the party uses it in CT, they don't revive Crono, they travel to the instant right before his death and swap his body with the clone/doll. They effectively saved him, not revive.

2) I just replayed the Chrono Cross remaster to see if I was angrier at this game as a teen than I should have been. There's the distinct possibility that there were some careful edits to this version, so I may not have the same reading as you on this one, but in the remaster, the dragons are the fragments of a biomechanical system made by the Reptites. Not evolved Reptites. my interpretation of this was "if Chronopolis had FATE, Dinopolis had the Dragon God".

3) Stupid as this might sound it's implied the Kid that saves Serge is from after the events of the game (after unification however the hell that is supposed to work).

Aside from that, I have my own nitpicks.

A) I honestly feel like they fridged the whole freaking CT cast. The only character that remotely had any agency in the events of the game was Lucca and even then, her letter to Kid was basically "Pretty sure I'm gonna die. I'll make them work for it though. So, peace out, live your best life!" Meanwhile the only defense she had: The girl who was inventing teleporters and hand-held space/time distortions. Who was building robots with designs still in use 1300 years later - the ONLY defense she had was her carnival attraction punching robot?!" I'm sorry, but even Chronopolis in the year 2400AD was like "how the hell did she do that?" and the closest thing to a constructive comment was "We can't be sure she really did." And what happened to Marle and Crono? Sure they died, but how do you explain that with just "our timeline doesn't exist anymore"? If that's true, none of the game even happens on account of Lucca also not existing. It's just dumb.

B) Also: what was Harle's fascination with Serge? So she was the Dragon God's counterpart to FATE's Lynx. A physical manifestation of their singular will - meant to help piece the dragons back together and end humanity. I get that there was likely a part of her that knew she would effectively die if the Dragon God were revived; but what does developing a will to live have anything to do with having a lady boner for Serge? Nowhere in this game did I get the sense that we were doing anything that was making us more attractive to her. I get that once Lynx gets Serge's body he was going off script for Harle's mission so she needed to get Serge (in Lynx's body) to kill FATE, but she sure as heck wasn't making herself more endearing to me in any of our interactions. We'll chalk that up to a roster of nearly 50 characters, but that only serves to highlight the flaws, not offer an excuse.

C) What the hell are the Dragon Tears? The game's events and the name itself obviously connect it to the Dragon God. I feel like they had to have talked about this in the game somewhere, but I can't for the life of me recall what or where they said it, and I sure as heck don't understand why their shattered remains would somehow merge in a single dimension to form the Chrono Cross. Are they more fragments of Lavos? The Dragon God's mouth jewel? Chipped away pieces of the Dead Sea? Schala's tears? Kid's Bady Daughter Clone incubation tank? ...WUT?! Maybe all of the above.

Like I said, the whole game feels like it was written by a highschool sophomore who really wanted to write their own Chrono Trigger sequel, but didn't really understand the game, didn't understand the writing and definitely wanted to minimize exposure to characters and Ideas that weren't theirs. Cheap fan fiction. People are free to like what they like, but as a CT fan, this game hurt my heart and as an RPG just wasn't fun.