This site basically stands on the shoulders of Chrono Cross — it was the game that practically gave GameSpite its first-ever audience to speak of — so perhaps the fact that we revisit it on a somewhat regular basis shouldn’t be surprising. But perhaps you will be impressed that we always manage to find new things to say about it! We’re sexy like that.
9 thoughts on “GameSpite Journal 11: Chrono Cross”
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I still listen to the soundtrack regularly. I hope that Square Enix realizes what an asset it is, as they’ve done recently with the (totally unexpected) Xenogears orchestrated soundtrack.
I was under the impression that that was more of a “Yasunori Mitsuda and his personal studio getting around to it (with Square’s blessing) sort of deal than a direct Square marketing decision. But yeah, I don’t think anyone would mind more Cross music.
Back on the main topic, I still have a huge soft spot for Cross and don’t even mind it when looked at in relation to Trigger – I just see it as more of a side-story than a direct sequel, seeing as ultimately most of it takes place in alternate timelines/dimensions. And radically different gameplay is no surprise for a Square franchise anyway.
Mitsuda said he was working on a Chrono Cross arrange album in two thousand FIVE. Don’t leave me hanging, man!
Maybe I’ll replay it one of these days.
My recollection is that the music was great, the characters were charming but one-dimensional, the battle system was quite good but got tedious after awhile, and the plot read like bad fanfic mixed with the typical 32-bit JRPG pretentiousness and incoherence.
Maybe replaying it after putting this much distance from the original playthrough would make it more endearing. I’ve been replaying the two Mega Man Legends games and I’ve found that everything I loved about them is magnified and everything that bugged me about them seems more trivial.
Still one of my favorite games~
Ha! I’ve been reading this site ever since i typed ‘lucky dan’ into what ever search engine I was using 10 years ago.
As a game, Chrono Cross embodies almost everything that was both right and wrong with 32-bit RPGs. It’s still a good game, but, as many others have pointed out here (including this well-written article), it’s a _terrible_ sequel.
Chrono Cross’ soundtrack is the only part of the game that I’ve ever heard people talk about. No one ever mentions the story or characters. I don’t know a single character’s name from Cross, whereas I knew the names of everyone from the main party in Trigger just from cultural osmosis.
As someone who completely missed out on the PS1 era JRPG scene and whose only knowledge about them comes from listening and reading other’s accounts, they seemed very uneven as a whole. They had a lot of ambition, but usually faltered in big ways. It also didn’t help that nearly JRPG developer was a HUGE fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion…
People are dissing PS1 era RPGs now? Man, that was the golden age!