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Chrono Cross is a sequel to the beloved SNES JRPG Chrono Trigger, though calling it a sequel comes with some caveats. While it takes place in the same world as Chrono Trigger (taking place twenty years later from when Crono and friends started their adventure), absolutely continues off of one of Trigger's biggest remaining plot threads, and ultimately contains meaningful connections to Trigger by the end of the game, it features an almost entirely new cast with only fleeting returning characters and isn't quite concerned with being Chrono Trigger 2. It is self indulgently weird, often times pondering, and has a lot of twists and turns that managed to stick with people (for better or worse) for over twenty years.
-An open ended adventure:
While not being completely branching at all times, Chrono Cross gives you various points that can change up the course of your adventure and gives you a lot of freedom in how to approach certain situations. Due to the number of characters and ensuing combat options, you have a lot of different ways to take on encounters, too.
-A Tale of Two Worlds:
Instead of travelling through different points in time in the same world, Chrono Cross instead has you always in the same point in time in the world but crossing between two different timelines where history branched a decade prior and has you figuring out what is different between the two worlds.
-A Ponderous Tale:
Chrono Cross has a very weird story that is told in unconventional ways and often time leaves things up to the player to piece together the larger threads. This was something that not everyone gelled with in 2000, but today's media landscape features popular games that base themselves around unconventional storytelling and popular shows that tackle similar themes and concepts to Cross and also do the same thing as Cross in being unconventional sequels that are simultaneously uninterested in playing up their connections while also still making its connections as a sequel important. Chrono Cross's story and storytelling stands to play very differently today.
-A Fresh Take On RPG Combat:
PS1 Square was all about experimenting with combat, and Cross was no different. Instead of the straight forward Final Fantasy-style combat of Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross has a more methodical turn-based system that grants each character a stamina gauge that can be utilized to enact chains of attacks that utilize different levels of strength and accuracy. The game also features a novel magic equipment system that has you equip spells to a combat grid of varying levels (and every single character has a wildly different distribution of spaces on their respective grids) where you can boost lower level spells by pushing them up to hire level spaces and weaken higher level spells by putting them in lower level spaces, all of which feeds into an elemental grid system in combat where spell usage in a given battle will determine the strength of an element (using more red spells fills the grid with red spaces, making red spells more potent at the expense of blue spells) and open up the door for more advanced mechanics like summoning.
-This game has character(s):
In what is still somewhat of a controversial decision, Chrono Cross eschews both traditional styles of party building by not going with a small group of defined characters or having you build up character generated characters. Instead, while there is a small group of story critical characters (shown above), Chrono Cross basically allows you to recruit just about any named NPC with a portrait, each of whom has a small little story, some kind of gimmick, and their own little quest to complete. These characters run the gamut of what other games would often just have as side supporting characters and bosses and also just gets into the weirdness of what you'd expect out of the SaGa franchise. I do personally hope that people's awareness of the SaGa franchise and its approach to party building will perhaps get people to reconsider Chrono Cross going that route.
-Levels? Shmevels!:
Chrono Cross doesn't feature a conventional leveling system for its characters. Though it would be easy to see the game as having a SaGa style character system where your stats go up totally randomly, Cross does a neat thing where you have a universal party level (Star Level) that is based around the number of bosses beaten. By default, all characters have a hidden stat cap. Every Star Level you gain ups the cap on your characters' stats and your characters basically just earn stat improvements every battle or so until they hit their new cap. This massively minimizes the grinding you do for stats, as you tend to quickly hit your caps for a star level. This means that you never have to spend much time building up characters, which serves a dual purpose of enabling you to more easily switch to lesser used characters (in turn pushing you to actually try out all the weirder ones!) while also encouraging you to never spend too much time grinding in a single area.
-And I Ran, I Ran So Far A-Way:
Chrono Cross was very forward thinking for 2000 in allowing players to run from every single encounter, bosses included. While this remaster allows you to disable encounters (which were not random in the original game! you can see everything on the field, a rarity for its era!), the running feature actually allows for a lot of tactical freedom with how you encounter battles. If something doesn't quite go your way, you can run and just start the encounter over and see if you can do things better.
-An Audio-Visual Masterpiece:
As noted, Chrono Cross is a bit of a heated topic for people due to its story content and mechanics, but the elements of the game that has always been a topic of praise is its audio-visual aesthetics. While obviously losing the iconic artwork of Akira Toriyama (creator of legendary manga works like Sand Land and Go! Go! Akman!) from Chrono Trigger was a bummer for a lot of people, Nobuteru Yuuki's incredible character art and Yasuyuki Honne's equally incredible world design created what was a virtually unparalleled landscape for PS1-era JRPGs full of unique and vibrant areas and characters that you just usually don't get in the genre. On top of that Yasunori Mitsuda delivered a career highlight with the soundtrack for this game (albeit with some borrowed tracks from his previous works) that is one of his best works of his career (and there's room to debate if it is outright his best period, we had that thread recently!). Even if this game doesn't gel with you from a narrative or mechanical standpoint, it stands to be a treat to take in just for the music and visuals alone.
- Upgraded models and fonts:
3D models have been converted to high-definition visuals, making them look beautifully crisp on modern displays. The font has also been reworked for HD and there's a background filter available too.
- Character redesigns and new artwork by Nobuteru Yuuki:
Chrono Cross's original character designer has come back to create new versions of the character portraits that you see in game
- Newly refined music by Yasunori Mitsuda
Yasunori Mitsuda, the original composer for Cross (and a major part of Trigger's soundtrack) has returned to remaster the soundtrack and compose new work. The new song (and remixed older songs) are separate from the game experience and do not force you to listen to music that was different from what was there 20 years ago. There is also a jukebox option to listen to the game's soundtrack (and thus also the remixes).
-Graphics Toggle
You can switch between new and updated visuals, font and 3D models! You can choose between playing with the updated 3D models, fonts, illustrations, and filtered backgrounds and the original graphics. So if you're a purist (or just nostalgic) you can enjoy the game as it was originally presented. (Note: The 3D models, illustrations, font, and background filter cannot be toggled separately. They will all be switched together.)
- Battle enhancement features
There's a bunch of quality of life improvements, including an autobattler (handy for when you are grinding for materials), an encounter-disabler, fast forward and slow motion toggles (these were originally a NG+ reward), and the standard Square remaster battle boosters
-Auto Save
There is now an autosave feature that instantly saves the game to a dedicated slot (which always takes Save Slot 1 in the menu) whenever you enter a state where saving is possible. As such, any transition to the world map and any time you pass through a save point will instantly save the game for you.
- RADICAL DREAMERS
Radical Dreamers, the game that helped to inspire Chrono Cross is also bundled in, not only releasing outside of Japan for the first time but making the game itself available for the public for the first time in general since 1996!
If you are coming into this already hating Chrono Cross for not being Chrono Trigger 2, this remaster won't likely change your minds, but I hope you still give it a shot regardless. While it's not been completely unavailable for the longest while, it has only been available in an emulatable form via PSN that isn't even something you can access on modern systems. This version makes the game more widely available and with tweaks that make the experience a little easier to play. Also it includes Radical Dreamers (see the mini-OT below), that is kind of a miracle in its own right. Also, the year 2022 is a much different year from the year 2000. With the changing media landscape, I think Chrono Cross might hit differently now than it did two decades ago.
Q: Do I need to have played Chrono Trigger for this?
A: It helps to understand the context of a few notable story beats and for some of the cameos, but it's really not that essential in the long run. The important parts are explained and the purpose of the game really isn't in being a sequel, even though it ultimately is one.
Q: I heard this game is a bad sequel that kills off important characters from CT and therefore my childhood. Is that true?
A)As for whether or not it is a good sequel, that's up for you to decide. As for characters getting killed off, sort of but not really? You see spirits represented by child like versions of certain CT characters, but it's not confirmed they are actually those characters or if they are actually dead. Likewise, there *is* a version of a CT character who *is* killed on screen, but it's only one version from a possible future
Q: Does this game have any missable content?
A: Yes, there are some things that you can miss and never have access to for the rest of a playthrough. There are also things you can do/get that missing them at one point means having to wait a long time to be able to get them again. What is more frequent, however, is that you will have to simply choose between getting/seeing one thing or another, which means that there are some characters in particularly you will not get on a normal playthrough because certain routes through the game have exclusive characters to recruit.
Q: Chrono Trigger had New Game +. It was one of the earliest notable examples of it! This better have New Game+
A: Chrono Cross indeed has a NG+, and it's a pretty dang good one at that. Character gear, techs, and levels all carry over. With how CC handles character growth, subsequent NG+ runs actually means you can level higher than what a fresh run would allow because your star level does not reset. In the original version of the game, NG+ runs unlocked Fast Foward and Slowdown features, though this will be a little less special in 2022 since Fast Forward is at least now a default feature. Finally, you can actually import your characters from a previous playthrough into your current playthrough, which is how you can get characters on your team that are normally exclusive to routes you didn't take. This feature is partially how you can also finally permanently recruit the game's two temporary characters
Q: Wait, it isn't possible to get 100% on a single run?
A: Nope! Due to the small branching paths and choices you have to make, seeing everything and doing everything will take multiple runs. If you do everything right, you can swing having the entire cast in your party by your third run.
Q: I missed [x] character! Am I going to run into difficulty later?
A: Thankfully, Chrono Cross is a very forgiving game. While you can potentially put yourself at a color typing disadvantage by missing out on certain characters and thus having a harder time covering certain needs, you can make up the difference by refocusing what elements you have equipped and just playing smarter with how you use them.
There is a specific boss later on in the game that serves as somewhat of a skill check of how well you've learned how to handle the game's mechanics and not having certain characters can make this encounter more difficult, but he's not insurmountable without the proper colors.
Q: Chrono Trigger had multiple endings. I heard Radical Dreamers also had multiple endings. Does this have multiple endings?
A: Yup! While Cross doesn't have the same feature that Trigger had where you could skip to the final boss throughout most of an initial run, all NG+ runs allow you to take on the final boss as soon as you start. As with Trigger, beating the final boss at various points of the story will give you different endings. Doing this is actually the other half of what you need to do in order to permanently recruit the two temporary characters.. And, yes, beating it at the start of the game gives you the same special reward as Trigger. What is different from Trigger with the different endings, however, is that Cross also has some minor exclusive content that is determined by who you take into the final battle. Most of it is not too special, but you can get some pretty neat character reveals by taking certain characters into the final battle. For twenty years, I have been laughing at every single person who never took Leah into the final battle and has thus been confused at who she is.
Q: What's with all the zany accents?
A: There's a good reason for them! I don't know how much you know about the Japanese language (I'm not an expert), but there's two quirks to Japanese as a language that, when combined with the nature of the game's many characters, would have made it hard for a straight localization without the accents. Due to the reality that Japanese as a language relies much more on nuance being delivered through what specific words are being used, each character had different speaking habits in the Japanese version that ranged from the simplicity/complexity of the language used, the tone implied by the words used, and also just various different verbal ticks that characters use when they finish speaking. Combine this with how Japanese as a written language uses individual symbols to represent entire words/phrases/ideas rather than being phonetic and thus can communicate more information with less text, it was possible to have different dialog based on which of the 40+ characters are in your party because Japanese simply takes up less digital space. Granted, it's not like you were getting 40+ entirely unique scripts, as the characters often would just say the same thing as another character, but in a different way. English (and the other languages in the new EFIGS localization that is present in this version) functionally works different as a phonetic language, and thus having the same amount of dialog but with the more text that English would require to communicate the same dialog would take up dramatically more space that the PS1 wasn't really able to provide without making sacrifices (this was an even bigger problem in prior generations). The easiest thing to do would have just been to make it to where the characters just said the same thing and the only difference was whose portrait was showing in the text box, but that obviously would have stripped the characters of a lot of what made them stand out. In order to streamline the game's dialog but also retain the idea that all the characters spoke differently from each other, Square's by-then very solid localization team (seriously, it's easy to forget that they did massively improve from "This guy are sick") took the route of creating a system that took the dialog in the game whenever it was being called up for a specific moment and would put it through an accent filter determined by what character was making the statement. As such, you could have Kid (who speaks with a faux Australian accent) who has all of her "generic" dialog filtered with her specific accent, while the same dialog being spoken by Harle (who speaks with a faux French accent) would have her specific accent. In addition, times where characters genuinely had unique dialog were just written to have their accent by default and required no pass through the filter. As such, it preserved the intent of the original Japanese, without having to make any major sacrifices for technical reasons. And, let's be real, most of them are actually fine.
Q: Is this digital only?
A: There is a physicial Switch release, but currently only in Asia. It is currently set to release on April 26th. You can find it at most import sites though try to avoid the bad one.. If you need a guide to finding a copy for preorder and avoid the bad place, TheMoon made a really helpful guide here.
Q: This has SaGa style leveling, right? Do I need to beat myself up to get stronger in this one?
A: No. Stop asking. That wasn't even a good strategy in FF2 and the mechanics don't even work like that here.
Q: So...Guile
A: He was going to be Magus but then he isn't in the final version due to time constraints. You can believe what you want, though.
Well that didn't age well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Q: Why does this game get a remake and not Chrono Trigger/Final Fantasy Tactics/Parasite Eve/Brave Fencer Musashi/[insert your choice of preferred game]? IT ISN'T FAIR
A: Yes, SquareEnix is weird about its remasters but there is seemingly a throughline where its remasters happen because they have an exec willing to fight for it and an important creative from the original version interested in working on the project. The SaGa remasters happened because Kawazu and Ichikawa really want to make them happen (and a very popular gacha title helps). The FF Pixel Remasters happened because Kazuko Shibuya and Nobuo Uematsu both had an interest in redoing their aesthetical contributions to those games. The Mana games, Live A Live, and Front Missions all likely benefit from similar circumstances, and Chrono Cross is almost certainly happening because Masato Kato and Yasunori Mitsuda both really wanted it to happen and had support from an exec. If [insert game you want] hasn't happened yet, it's likely the stars just haven't aligned for them yet. Please don't be a jerk here about it. It's not like Chrono Cross having a remaster means you aren't getting something else because of it.
Q: I heard some of the remixes and don't like them! Do they replace the old music?
A: No. The remixed music is just there for you to listen to in the game's jukebox mode. The "remastering" done to the music that you actually hear in game is exactly that. It's the same music but reworked to be in higher quality.
Character Recruitment Guide
Open image in a new window/tab for a simple, one-stop guide!
How Combat Works
Abuse Running
Guide to the Many Endings of Chrono Cross
(click the pic!)
More to come!
More to come!
► Chrono Compendium Guides
► Official Website (NA,JP)
► Purchase (Switch (NA), Switch (CA), Switch (JP), Switch (EU), Switch (AU), Switch (NZ), PSN, Steam)
►TheMoon's Physical Copy Purchase Guide
More to come!
Radical Dreamers is a visual novel originally broadcast via the Satellaview peripheral for the Super Famicom in early 1996, exclusively in Japan. It was created as an experimental way to tie up Chrono Trigger's remaining loose ends, while also allowing Chrono Trigger's main writer, Masato Kato, work through his frustrations at the development cycle for Chrono Trigger.
The game itself is a visual novel with very light RPG mechanics that follows earlier versions of Serge, Kid, and "Magil" as they seek to infiltrate Lynx's manor and steal the Frozen Flame. For astute players, you'll note that this is roughly the same scenario on the surface as the Viper's Manor segment of Chrono Cross, for that segment was thoroughly repurposed from this.
Masato Kato was reportedly unhappy with the end results of Radical Dreamers and actually had already scrapped and reworked part of the project during production. As a result, we've never seen an official rerelease of the game up to this point. Square originally planned on including it in the PS1 port of Chrono Trigger, but Kato didn't think it was really in a state worth releasing and instead opted to effectively redo the scenario as part of Chrono Cross once that project started. The possibility of a rerelease came up again for Chrono Trigger DS, but Kato again didn't think it was in a state worth releasing without work being done to make it better. As such, this is the first time that Radical Dreamers has been officially made available since its original broadcasts in 1996.
-A moody adventure that keeps growing:
Radical Dreamers is a very gripping visual novel that explores some of Trigger's remaining plot threads, all set to some really moody songs. It has multiple base endings, but completing one cycle of the game actually unlocks different possible routes, which allows you to go on some wild tangents.
-Familiar characters, familiar beats, familiar music, all with a new twist:
This story follows incarnations of Serge, Kid, and Magil (who was rewritten as Guile in Cross) as they attempt a heist that immediately be familiar to Chrono Cross players. Even a lot of the music here is going to be familiar, as much of it was reused later in Cross.
-More than just a visual novel:
Radical Dreamers features some light combat (with a timing element) and a limited inventory. Serge's adventure can come to an end if you do poorly in combat!
While many players of Chrono Cross will already be somewhat familiar with the plot and characters of Radical Dreamers, since it was heavily repurposed into Cross, there's a lot of stuff in here that will be new and different. Serge and Lynx are both much different characters this time around and there's much more to Magil than his counterpart in Cross. As such, think of it less as a beta version of Chrono Cross and more as an alternate timeline (which is what Kato officially considers it) where things were different and play out differently. It's not always a good game, but it is fascinating to experience and there's a lot of fun secrets to explore, especially once you finish your initial playthrough.
Likewise, due to the nature of Radical Dreamer's original release and the fact that it never has had an official rerelease up until now, this has been completely unavailable for over twenty five years. The only way to have legally played it since early 1996 was get lucky and have the necessary hardware and a Satellaview memory pack that still had the game stored on it.
Q: Do I need to have played Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross
A: Not entirely. Radical Dreamers makes more sense having played Chrono Trigger due to it continuing off of loose threads from Trigger, but it does so in the same way as Cross where the connections are important but are also not the point of the game.
Q: So is this really a visual novel? You talk about combat, hitpoints, and items
A: Combat is a thing in this game and you do have to manage Serge's health and a few other statistics, but the combat is largely still based around pushing through the narrative.
Q: So...Magil
A: Yes, he actually is Magus this time
End of OT
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