Chrono Trigger

The Good
Ah what can I say? I enjoy RPGs, and while I've always been a PC guy, there's always been a spot in my heart for them good ol' console RPGs. Chrono Trigger was a game that had been thoroughly recommended to me via friends and relatives, and I'd seen such praise about it here on Mobygames and on various message boards, I thought it was finally time that I tried it out for myself.

Right from the very beginning, this game glowed with that "SNES classic RPG" feel that I'd gotten so many times, from so many games, and for most of them I have Squaresoft to thank. Nostalgia instantly hit me as I saw the ticking of that thing in those grandfather clocks (you know what I mean - that bar with the circle on it? It goes tick-tock? Erm...anyway...) even though I'd never played this game before. I knew I was going to enjoy this romp.

So I began my game and...well, I'll finish this paragraph in "The Bad". For now, let me reflect on the good parts of the game.

It's a console RPG. If that ain't a "good" thing, I don't know what is. None of these new-fangeled game engines with wacky rules that are too confusing to understand. Nope, instead, this is a very simple game that takes absolutely no time to figure out. Once you begin playing, you understand the game. Anything "new" that the game might bestow upon you (such as spellcasting) is introduced with a warm in-game tutorial, so you're never lost. Good ol' console RPGs.

If you didn't know already, the game's plot revolves around time travel. (I'm not giving too much away here - you figure this out two minutes into the game) This is one of the few RPGs, or games in general I've played for consoles that involved time travel, and being an ol' kiddy sci-fi whacko, I loved the idea, and I felt the game did it very well. I also liked traveling back in time to see what the land was like, say, one thousand years ago...or foward in time, to see what it's like several thousand years in the future. Familiar landscapes and cities are a welcome treat. Some of your events in the past are even retold by people in the far future! This added a great thrill to the game.

You can fight the "big bad boss" at almost any point in the game, and possibly kill him (though I wasn't able to until I'd completed all the other parts of the game). I love this sort of open-ended gameplay.

The Bad
Now, where was I? Oh, right. So I began my game and was instantly disappointed. Why? Because there is absolutely no atmosphere in this game at all. Almost nothing to entrance me, nothing to bring me into this game. RPGs have a way of making you feel something about the characters in it, they have a way of making you become the character you play. I've never seen an RPG fail at this so horribly as this game. Now, don't get me wrong, the game was fun...but it completely lacked the atmosphere RPGs tend to have. Every NPC you talk to spits forth the most boring and unrealistic series of dialogue I've ever read. You never have any sense that what you're doing really matters because the people that your actions affect never seem to care about anything. Walk up to someone and they might say, "Did you hear about the weather? Yeah, it might rain. Oh, and I hear there's a secret entrance underneath a bush near the cave to the East."

I've played plenty of console RPGs, so I know that dialogue (particularly in Squaresoft games) is never really "realistic", but this is way below par. Never in the game do YOU ever acomplish anything on your own, except perhaps defeat a boss. Everyone directs you wherever you need to go, everyone tells you all the secrets, and if they're not doing that, they're dropping little "hints" that are so obvious that if you didn't get them perhaps you shouldn't be playing video games anymore.

Even worse than the NPCs in the game are the ones you get in your party, which include two annoying girls, a frog and a robot, none of which I gave a damn about. One girl is some sort of scientist, the other's some psycho hyperactive princess whom I got rid of as soon as I got more than three party members (as per the norm, you can only have three fighting at a time), and the other is some sort of robot that has feelings. Every time a part in the game comes along that requires one of my party members participates in a dialogue exchange, I want to just turn the television off so I don't have to endure their childish, boring, unrealistic and unimaginitive stories and obvious questions.

The characters are also all about five to eight years old, I would suspect. That, or they all escaped from the short bus. It's a personal pet peeve of mine in games when the "hero" is some eight year old kid with a sword. And by the way, why do you start with a sword? What happened to the whole "I wielded this sword to defend myself!" acquiring of your weapon that happens in so many classics? Link grabbed a sword to fight those ball-spitting things. That Secret of Mana kid pulled one out of the thing to defend himself. In Final Fantasy 2 you were a knight, fighting for justice or something. In this dumb game, you're just an eight year old kid who happens to have a sword with him and gets himself into a whole lot of trouble. I wonder what his mother thinks of him wielding that thing around? And another eight year old kid is armed with a pistol!

One of the "key scenes" to this game was one in which you race someone in a post-apocalyptic ruined highway. This has got to be the most overrated worthless "scene" I've ever bothered to watch. First of all, it's not a damn race. It's a two minute animation of two guys on bikes (which, to their credit, did look pretty cool for SNES games) who are constantly getting ahead of each other. There's no strategy involved here. You just try and be the one "in front" when you reach the finish line. Here's a funny story - I set the controller down and just won the race.

The game is also painfully easy. You get tons of cash for killing easy monsters, and aside from boss battles, I've never lost a fight, and typically, I just hit the "A" button until the battle is over. Strategy? Tactics? Who needs'em? Well, actually, they come in handy in boss battles...

This game has the setup for a really great story, and it almost comes together at times, but it's completely ruined by the fact that your actions seem to have no affect on anyone but your damn annoying party members. And while it's typical for console RPGs, the entire setup at times just seems way too unrealistic.

"Let's save the world!"
"Okay!"
"Do you know how to use a weapon?"
"Nope, but let's save the world!"

Save the world? I say let'em burn. Maybe they'll give a damn then.

The Bottom Line
It's obvious that this game was targeted at a younger audience, but old farts like me still love to play these games, so guys over the age of eight still make up at least half the market. I just can't see this game appealing to anyone over eight years old, unless they REALLY enjoy console RPGs and don't mind stupid kiddy dialogue, ininteresting (and uninterested) NPCs and annoying party members.

The time travel thing is a great idea, and it comes together in some places, but not enough for me to care.

The Good
It's an honor for me to be able to review this game. I really don't know where to start. It's my favourite game, and it's good points are endless. Well, let's begun. The first time I played the game, it was trough a SNES emulator. Now I borrowed the real SNES cartridge from someone and completed 4 times the whole game, two times trough emulation and two times on the real thing, and I'd be ready to do it more times, if there weren't so much games I want to try or even complete right now. I usually don't mention replayability in my reviews, because Chrono Trigger is the only role-playing game I ever played more than once.

I played a lot of RPGs, and I have even a biggest list of pending RPGs I want to play right now. But still, Chrono Trigger is always in my heart. I just can't forgot this game at anytime. Well, let's come back. The first time I played it, trough emulation, I have much less experience about gaming and about RPGs that I have right now. I just excepted another RPG, my reference back in the time was Final Fantasy games, and also Secret of Mana. So I just excepted something similar, and I wasn't wrong. But I was thinking that nothing could beat Final Fantasy 6 and 7, and man I was wrong.

You begin your game in your bed, and you get up. I was instantly caught by the graphics, that are bright but contrasted (so dark places are also very dark), colorful, and very detailed. Just when I saw the Crono's cat get up, and when I saw you can open and close the curtain of the room's window, and this will change the room's luminosity, I just fell that the graphics of the game are way better than the average SNES game. The characters looks just like they do on the artwork, and I don't think there is many games where I can say this unless the recent game machines such as the PS2 came out. (for example, FF8's characters are much less finely rendered than Chrono Trigger's characters, regardless of the possibilities of the console. And well, actually the PlayStation is supposed to render better graphics than the SNES, and about the characters it is the other way around. Really). All the playable characters have countless animation frames, but some NPCs also have fun stuff with them, and the monsters are also the most detailed monsters I ever seen in a SNES RPG, especially when you take account that they are present both on field and in battle (no separate screen for battle, making programer's live harder, but really worth it !)

There is a lot of originality for them, for example, you will have two Imps playing football using a Roly as a ball (my favorite set of monsters of all RPGs). Isn't that cool enough to fell in love for the game ? Well, several monsters of the game does cool and fun things like this, while others are just walking or flying. You will even sometimes open conversation with monsters, before fighting them. It's what this make this game really great, there is no a single battle in the whole game that setup the same way as another. There is no longer boring random battles, and the screen doesn't change when a battle scene opens, making you remember what you was doing before the battle. No longer "What was I doing ?" or "Where am I going to ?" that I often ask to myself after beat a Final Fantasy battle. Also, the animation during the battle is very varied and well done, even if the playfield is still there, unlike the "dummy" background you'll found in a FF game.

All the playable characters are incredibly cool. They may be a bit cliched, but they're so fun, it's sure easy to fell in love for any of them. I'm even sure that Chrono Trigger has the best set of characters even seen in any role-playing game out there. They are plainly so cool ! Some found them too much cliched and lack of interest, but myself, I simply love them, and what I like is that the game focuses more on the gameplay than on boring discussions between characters like several FF titles (no all, however). The few discussions between characters are short and addictive, plus you can switch them to get different dialogues, that's sometimes very fun.

Controlling the game is simple, and efficient. The menus are easy to use, and you can even walk while speaking to people ! It's the only RPG that ever had this feature to my knowledge.

Now, I'll talk about the music. Man, it's great. There is upbeat tunes, nostalgic tunes, sad tunes, simple bliss tunes, fun tunes, everything is there is this soundtrack, that is the most varied soundtrack I ever seen in a game. It may not the very best, since there is still a couple of bad songs (like the ending fair one), but the good songs are WAY good. Overall it's one of the best soundtrack for any RPG. And the battle theme is the best battle theme of all RPGs, it is nearly perfect. There is almost no melody, just bass, a lot of drums, and some chorus chords then some notes played with an organ and a marimba. It's as plain as it, but a such battle-theme beat all battle theme of FF games that will be coll the first few dozen times you heard it, then it will make you mad due to the amount of battling involved in the game. It will never get on your nerves. (it happened once to me to listen it during 57 minutes trough Winamp before be tired of it).

Not only the music is good, but also the sound quality is impressive, and possibly the best of all SNES games. The sound effects are catchy, exiting and incredibly varied, they sound real (warning for those using an emulator, they're very different from the real SNES, they emulate badly the noisy sounds). I especially liked the echo in the sound effect, while the majority of (non-Square made) SNES games have just analog low frequency sound effect without echo. The game features a large set of different instruments, and pretty much all of them sound CD quality. It's one of the only SNES games where the drums sounds real (recorded with at high frequency), while others instruments are for sure much harder to simulate, but still sound great.

I seriously think no RPG have ever be able to compete with the battle system of this game, except of course strategy RPGs, but that's a different genre. It's simple, fun, enjoyable, easy-to-learn, effective and varied. You can learn some techs and some magic, then you'll be able to combine your tech with the one of a friend when both are ready at the same time (both ATB bars full). This is a combo, or double-tech that is much more effective. Even if each character has a very limited list of tech, the list of possible double-techs is endless. There is even triple-techs, but they're only available if Crono, the main character, is in your team, or by equipping strange accessories replacing the ability of Crono by other people. Each boss has his own strategy to be beat, it you don't found the good strategy, you'll probably be unable to even beat it, unless you have your levels twice up as what they are supposed to be.

Finally, the story of the game is just catchy and... so sweet ! There is nobody saying stupid stuff in towns, and you really fit in the main character that is actually speechless (like in the Dragon Quest series or Golden Sun, you just select between Yes and No). You just are him. Well, I didn't even notice that on my own, a friend tell that to me and I firstly couldn't believe him, even after playing one half of the game (back in the time I had played neither DQ or Golden Sun, so I wan't used to speechless heroes). The story is easily understandable, "light" and half-linear. You still have an order of events to do, but you feel like free to do as you want, even if you aren't. There is a large bunch of side-quest, but none of them is really impossible or boring like they are on some other RPGs. Overall, you can visit the past or the future as you wish, to eventually build up your characters and beat the big bad guy to restore the destroyed future. You can defeat him when you want, but it's needed to "complete" the game at least once. Then, a "New Game +" option will pop up, allowing you to begin a new adventure, but with the stats of a saved game.

Well, the very impressive thing about this game is that there is absolutely no flaw. Of course, time travel is still confusing, but the game setup it in a sweet ambiance, you just shouldn't think about the possibility or not to change the past to make the future like this, else you'll end up hating Chrono Trigger without even knowing why. Such story impossible, I know, but who cares ? It is so cool !

The Bad
Something bad about Chrono Trigger ?? Hahaha. There is really none to say here. Heh, I'm still talking about the good here, proof that there is most certainly not a single bad point in this game. Well, I'd still say that a game under New Game + option becomes rather boring at some points, when you beat each bosses in one hit. They should have added a bit more secrets and ultra strong bosses for these occasions.

The Bottom Line
Chrono Trigger is not just a game. It's a world. The game is in 2D, but the world is in 4D, because there is time travel. I won't determine if this is the best game ever or not, because there is no "best game ever". Chrono Trigger is still sure one fine title for the SNES, and it's a must play regardless if you like RPG or not. If you haven't played it yet and if you like RPG, play this. If you don't know what is a RPG, play this, you'll quickly learn it. If you hate RPGs, play this, you may change your mind. If you have already played the game, play it again. It's all I can say.

The Good
Chrono Trigger was one of Squaresoft's first independent titles ("Independent" meaning separate from an on-going series, such as Final Fantasy), and most definately their best. The game has solid gameplay, excellent well-rounded characters (Including Magus, one of the coolest villians-turned-good I've ever seen), beautiful music, and a great story line. I'm assuming you've read the synopsis by MobyGames, so I won't go into detail. The game also features a "New Game +" feature, which is, as far as I know, exclusive to the Chrono series. This allows you to restart the game with everything you had before you beat it. This, along with the 13 endings, adds excellent replay value, besides the game itself. This game, I say again, is the best of the best. If you EVER have the chance to buy it, BUY IT.

The Bad
There was NOTHING I disliked about the game.

The Bottom Line
This is an extremely good game.

Play it. You'll like it, and you'll thank me for it later.