Chrono Cross: A Tale of Two Worlds

If I'm being 100% honest, my all-time favorite PS1 game is Final Fantasy IX. If you listen to my podcast (which you should, we're hilarious) you'll hear me talk about the game on almost every episode. For the sake of not beating a super dead horse, I've chosen to write about the only other PS1 game that comes even kind of close to the level of greatness of Final Fantasy IX: Chrono Cross. While I didn't grow up with Chrono Cross and don't have any level of nostalgia for it, this game became one of my favorites simply because it's good. People love to hate on it because it isn't the Chrono Trigger sequel that everyone wanted, but if you give it a shot I promise it's amazing. Think of it as a new game in an existing series, with light ties to the previous game a la Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest.

We didn't want to directly extend Chrono Trigger into a sequel, but create a new Chrono with links to the original. Yes, the platform changed; and yes, there were many parts that changed dramatically from the previous work. But in my view, the whole point in making Chrono Cross was to make a new Chrono with the best available skills and technologies of today. I never had any intentions of just taking the system from Trigger and moving it onto the PlayStation console. That's why I believe that Cross is Cross, and NOT Trigger 2.
— Masato Kato

I first played this game mid-COVID pandemic 2020. I was working from home and decided to collect some cool retro games. After hearing a gigantic amount of praise for this game from the dozens of "Best PS1 Games" articles on Google, I saw that it was a measly $20 on eBay and bought it right away. When I finally got to play it, I was immediately blown away by two things. The first was the opening movie, which used some of the best CG that I've ever seen on the PS1. I mean, the game out in 1999, so no duh. Regardless, it was impressive and hooked me right away, showing me all sorts of scenes from within the game that had me asking myself "what the fuck did I just get myself into?" The second thing that blew me away was the title screen. Right after the opening video, you'll see the Chrono Cross logo on the screen, and then the white background fades into this delightful underwater wonderland, with "PRESS START" flashing just beneath the logo. As the camera sweeps across the ocean floor, you'll see all sorts of aquatic creatures just swimming, and the camera will sometimes change angles to show different parts of the ocean. While you're staring in awe of this jaggy, polygonal fishtank, you'll hear one of the calmest and most serene tracks in all of VGM.

One of the most standout parts of this game is the sheer volume of recruitable party members—45 in total. Each character is totally unique, with different speech patterns (no voice acting, only text), unique element grid layouts, techs (special attacks unique to each character), and many are crucial to the plot of the story. In fact, depending on which characters you've recruited, the story changes in some ways. But you aren't able to recruit them all in one playthrough. You'll need to play through the game at least twice to get everyone, using the awesome New Game+ feature, which helps you skip certain portions of the game and speed-up repeated playthroughs. It sounds a little broken, but it really fits with the parallel worlds theme that this game goes for.

Let's circle back to the recruitable characters, because they're pretty wacky. Of course you have your human characters, your humanoid-animal types, and even a cyborg. But you also have:

A sentient voodoo doll
A skeletal clown
A mushroom man
An alien
A flower girl creature
A sentient turnip person

While it may sound pretty overwhelming and unnecessary, I think it adds a lot of charm and whimsy to the world of Chrono Cross. I've had a great time experimenting with the different party characters, seeing which ones work best with the ones that I love. It ends up being a lot like Pokemon, where you're looking for the best characters to fill those empty spaces and work on your type coverage. Your party is limited to 3 characters though, so you're going to have to make do without a few elements.

Speaking of parallel worlds, let's talk about the story. The game takes place in El Nido, a tropical archipelago. Just like a tropical island, the game is super colorful and vibrant. The main protagonist, Serge, gains the ability to travel to an alternate version of his world, and through a series of events that I won't mention in order to avoid spoilers, goes off on an adventure to reclaim an artifact known as The Frozen Flame, which has the power to alter time and space. The story does get pretty wild and might not make sense at first, but it's really interesting and has loads of backstory to learn about that helps to immerse you.

These next two go hand-in-hand: combat and elements. Elements are essentially the items, spells, and special attacks that characters can use in-battle. Each character has an element grid of a different shape and size, and has an innate element color that they're stronger with, resistant to, and weak against. The element colors are:

White - holy and light
Black - gravity and darkness
Red - fire and lava
Blue - water and ice
Yellow - lightning and earth
Green - nature and leaves

The combat system has so much depth and so many layers to it. I love diving into a complex combat system, learning the ins-and-outs and how things work, and challenging myself to get better as I go. Because of this, I found myself becoming pretty addicted to it. While encounters take place in the overfield (NO RANDOM ENCOUNTERS AT ALL) and you can run from any battle 100% guaranteed, I fought almost everything that I came across, with the few exceptions being where I just wanted to explore without being bombarded with enemies. I don't want to go too in-depth into the combat system right now, but trust me when I say that it's awesome. It might be a little difficult to grasp at first, but it'll getcha.

If you do end up playing this game, I would highly recommend the remaster that's on modern consoles. It speeds up the frame rate quite a bit, helps you with the final boss (you'll know when you get to it), and adds a fast-forward function. The original version isn't bad at all, but the frame rate does chug in combat if you have lots of enemies or some bigger enemies. Please do not let the haters keep you from playing Chrono Cross—it's an awesome game that absolutely holds its own.