Chrono Cross

[Anonymous No.2244567]

How can Chrono Trigger be considered one of the best games ever made, yet it's sequel/successor is so unappreciated?

I haven't played it yet, and I plan on it soon. I was just curious as to what, if anything, went wrong.

[Anonymous No.2244584]

>>2244567
>one of the best games ever made
>I haven't played it yet
top level lel

I think it's plenty appreciated, the game play just isn't as tight (elements are really a sloppy mechanic) and the story is super convoluted. Not sure if that's by design or because they tried to shoehorn Chrono Trigger in at the end.

It's a fine game, though, and I'd play it before any of the PS1 FF games.

[Anonymous No.2244594]

>>2244584
I meant Chrono Cross. I've definitely played and beaten Trigger several times, and I agree with that assessment wholeheartedly.

[Anonymous No.2244595]

>>2244567
hardly "unappreciated". Music is god tier. Cross is a great rpg, the last act just falls apart. Nostalgia goggles are the main reason even though the fact remains that Chrono Trigger is a very fine tuned rpg.

[Anonymous No.2244602]

>>2244594
I'm talking about Cross you dipshit.

[Anonymous No.2244606]

>>2244602
I was referring to the first part of your post dude. Chill the fuck out, damn.

[Anonymous No.2244697]

Because muh sequel

[Anonymous No.2244706]

>>2244567
The only thing "wrong" with Chrono Cross is that it isn't a carbon copy of Chrono Trigger so go in with a mindset that it doesn't need to be one and you'll enjoy it.

[Anonymous No.2244770]

>>2244567
cause chrono cross is nowhere near as good as trigger. Convoluted story and the main character has pink socks

should have just kept the formula the same - perfected short + simple

[Anonymous No.2244805]

It is a good game by itself, but if you judge it as a direct sequel to chrono trigger expecting similar mechanics you may be disappointed.

CT has enemies you can see like Mario Rpg. CC has random Final fantasy style battles.

CT is about time travel. CC is about parallel dimensions.

CT has 7 playable,characters. CC has about.. 40? So there are tons of pointless characters who don't get much development and redundancy runs amok.

CTs main mechanic was double and triple techs. CC has a very nerfed version of that.

Also, CC has level caps for areas until you progress further into the game.

If your treat CC as it's own game,and don't compare it's mechanics directly to CT you may enjoy it a bit better.

[Anonymous No.2244807]

I love cross! Got a sealed black label copy..
I think it's one of the best RPG's on the PS1 and that's saying something. Triggers godlike for being as good as it is on the sufami

[Anonymous No.2244808]

>>2244567
Music is God Tier. Shoehorning in plot elements from Trigger was a terrible idea. A huge cast of characters detracts from any individual's relevance to the plot, and the positional combat, on field combat, and the dual-triple tech system was replaced with copy-paste Whoosh-to-combat-pocket-dimension with a uninspired mechanics.

[Anonymous No.2244816]

>>2244805
>CC has random Final fantasy style battles.
What are you talking about? Have you played Chrono Cross?

[Anonymous No.2244840]

It's a good game, but it's not perfect. Two things hindered Cross more than anything else:
1. Story acts like a conversation with a young yet shallow philosophy student, even in NPCs. Also the plot elements making it a sequel aren't very well handled within, making for one very confusing and odd plot. At it's root it's easy to understand once you get there though.

2. They ran out of money, much like Xenogears. The ending shows it well, I think Xenogears worked with the ordeal better personally.

Honorable mention goes to the fifteen thousand characters and literally their dog being party members. Variety's nice and the levelless system helps with the whole thing, but the only thing differentiating them outside of looks/some stats are accents that were put into only the localization. So now you can't understand what some characters are saying.

[Anonymous No.2244849]

To be honest, the more I hear about Chrono Cross the more it sounds pretty fucking good. I'll probably play it on my phone after I get through Xenogears.

[Anonymous No.2245037]

>>2244567
It's a bad sequel but a good game. A lot of people don't like it because of that, though.

[Anonymous No.2245038]

>>2244602
Learn to actually read posts asshole

[Anonymous No.2245059]

>>2244567
>How can Chrono Trigger be considered one of the best games ever made, yet it's sequel/successor is so unappreciated?
Fanboys, Chrono trigger is pretty bland at the end of the day and it's extremely overrated.

Chrono Cross, while having big problems of its own, like having a rushed ending, made a lot of things considerably better than Trigger by the only virtue of finally dropping the whole Time Travel bullshit and finally using something that kind of makes sense in Dimensional Travel.
It has lots and lots of characters with interesting designs and sometimes really good characterization, Fargo comes to mind.
Beautiful scenery, really amazing ideas and art direction make it stand among the titles of its age.
Music is Mitsuda at its finest, 'nuff said.
Plot is not really as convoluted as most people make it out to be and it actually makes fucking sense most of the times compared to Trigger where everything is LOLTIMEPARADOX.
Gameplay is fine and the lack of grind it's a breath of fresh air, a bit easy but it's not like Chrono Trigger was hard, it shares a lot of the same gimmicks and design traits.
Same mechanic regarding multiple endings.
Unfortunately the battles are random here, but it's not like Trigger had completely avoidable mooks either, in some parts of almost every dungeon you're forced to fight a few mooks to go further in anyway.
Nice minigames and cameos too.

Definitely something you should play OP.

[Anonymous No.2245126]

I see embarrassing hipsters still come out of the woodworks when people start talking about the Chrono series. Trigger and Cross can both be good you know. And you don't have to hate either one for being popular with whatever crowd.

[Anonymous No.2245160]

>>2244770
>and the main character has pink socks

Fucking dropped.

[Anonymous No.2245227]

>>2245059
CC has way too many fucking characters, most of whom never get more than two lines of dialogue for development. CT's smaller, more developed group of party members was leagues better.

[Anonymous No.2245241]

I enjoyed cross more than trigger.

[Anonymous No.2245242]

>How can Chrono Trigger be considered one of the best games ever made

I really have no idea

[Anonymous No.2245265]

Triggerniggers are too stupid to understand cross.

[Anonymous No.2245268]

>>2244567

1) if you thought CT was 'too easy', CC is so bogusly easy that the battles actually become tedious since there is almost no possible way to lose

2) there are an absurd amount of characters but almost none of them are interesting in any way, and more importantly none of them are unique from a battle/gameplay perspective

3) on the plus side, CC is probably one of the best looking games on the PS1, and like CT the music rocks. also the story is fairly unique for JRPGs and even if its not a great "CT sequel", it still has the CT vibe.

>tl;dr the battle system is garbage and the gameplay is kinda bland, but the game LOOKS and SOUNDS quite good

[Anonymous No.2245272]

>>2245227
>more developed group
Ha.
The only people who gets considerable development are Frog, Magus and Robo, the rest of the cast is almost non existent, Lucca is the same "I invent all kinds of shit/childhood friend" and the only noticeable parts of her character are "I like Robo and Crono a lot", Marle stops being relevant and getting development after the Trial and she's there because Crono's dick exists, Ayla is as blank as a sheet of paper in terms of development.

Cross might not be the best in terms of characterization but Trigger isn't better at all.

[Anonymous No.2245275]

>>2245272
marle has quite a bit of unique text during the resurrecting crono quest

[Anonymous No.2245282]

>>2245275
Amount of text=/=Development

[Anonymous No.2245293]

>>2245282
disagree that's when they are relationship takes shape and the damsel in distress thing is inverted

[Anonymous No.2245339]

>>2245272

everything you listed is still light years ahead of CC. just because neither of them have 'fantastic character development', doesnt mean that CC isn't 10x WORSE. we're talking about videogames here dude. there's no such thing as "amazing character development" in videogames.

more importantly though, i couldnt care less about "character development" from a story perspective, especially in older games from PS1/SNES days (i'm not the same guy you were talking to before, by the way). however, from a gameplay perspective, all CT characters had unique moves/abilities, and the interplay between them and other characters made for unique dual/triple techs that you could do. that means every party you made could be a little bit different. on the flipside, in CC, every character is identical. you can assign any shitty magic ability to them, and even though they have "affinities", these are completley pointless and have no bearing on how you play the game. at all.

[Anonymous No.2245357]

>>2245339
>everything you listed is still light years ahead of CC.

>Better than Fargo
>Better than Lynx and Chrono
>Better than Miguel
>Better than the whole Dragoon cast story
>Better than Glenn
>Better than Nikki and his whole story with Zelbess and Fargo

Eh.
>all CT characters had unique moves/abilities
Animation wise, yes, in meta 70% of the movesets is attacks with embedded elements though and higher multipliers, not much different from CC honestly.
The only people who truly have different abilities are Lucca, Magus and Marle, Magus simply because instead of physical damage has magic damage multipliers, Marle is a healer/mage and Lucca has a few Status modifiers, the rest are just melee attack with embedded elements, same as CC.

The flip coin of CC is that you can use the characters you like in any way you want, allowing much more replayability thanks to having them use different movesets each time.

But as always it's ending up with this bad attitude of MY TASTE>YOUR TASTE with obviously no interest for discussion.
I'm out of here since the Trigger defense force won't admit their precious little game is no better than Cross.

[Anonymous No.2245674]

Best girl.

[Anonymous No.2245690]

>>2245674
I prefer Janice.

[Anonymous No.2245694]

>>2245690
Janice a fine too.

I just like energetic girls in general.

Kid gets on my nerves, though

[Anonymous No.2245705]

In what universe is CC unappreciated? The only people who hate it are Trigger fanboys who didn't even get the basic premise of the game.

[Anonymous No.2245716]

>>2245705
That picture is fairly misleading as that is the IOS port of CT being compared with the original port of CC. I don't really know what the point of it is.

[Anonymous No.2245718]

>>2245705
>iphone version
Be fair, dude.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/chrono-trigger/mobyrank
http://www.mobygames.com/game/chrono-cross/mobyrank

They're both fairly evenly ranked on their original systems.

[Anonymous No.2245754]

>>2244567
>yet it's sequel/successor is so unappreciated
it's not unappreciated; it's shit

[Anonymous No.2245757]

>>2245754
So insightful.

[Anonymous No.2245795]

Trigger is like a retarded child's drawing comparing to the Mona Lisa that is Cross

[Anonymous No.2245901]

Radical Dreamers master race.

[Anonymous No.2245995]

>>2245357
The differences in characters between trigger and cross was that the techs duals techs, and triple techs were keyed to individual characters. Cross went so huge on the roster that it was largely a matter of equipping characters with the same techniques, with some notable exceptions.

The big problem with the "it's just multipliers" argument is that Trigger combat was very much about gauging positions and using moves based on those positions. Where combat took place on the field in Trigger, Cross went back to a sub-area specifically for combat, which was a step back design, wise. It makes sense from a technology standpoint where you get better models and camera angles when you don't have to deal with an environment, but it was a major divergence from it predecessor.

That said, it's not like cross is a bad game. It's actually one of the better PS1 entries. It's major flaw is clinging to elements from trigger and adding disturbing elements like major character deaths of the previous game. The whole game works fine without them.

[Anonymous No.2246070]

>>2245674
Agreed.

[Anonymous No.2246554]

battle system sucked

[Anonymous No.2247098]

>>2245995
>Trigger combat was very much about gauging positions and using moves based on those positions.

Trigger did a good job pretending to be more than it is, but the truth is that the underlying system is the same that's been in place in FF since the first one. Positions didn't matter. Enemies were grouped, and the game pretended that it mattered where those groups stood on the screen but that was not the case - mostly evident by your character jumping back to where they stood after an attack.

[Anonymous No.2247142]

>>2245901
Ha ha, yeah, that droll schlock. I remember when it was first translated.

[Anonymous No.2247176]

>>2247142
Oh ho ho, that droll shlock. Top of the morning, pip pip, chim chim charoo.

[Anonymous No.2247180]

>>2247098
FF and it's offshoots have the worst combat in the entire fucking world. It's so just pushing the same buttons over and over, one step above a quicktime event - if quicktime events went on and fucking on like mmorpg grinding.

Chrono Trigger is an amazing game in spite of all that, which is the real magic for me.

[Anonymous No.2247201]

>>2247180
ATB in CT made normal attacks executed ASAP the best strategy most of the time, making it even worse than FF titles. There is nothing redeemable about it except the presentation (and only if you think appealing to the masses is something positive). It's literally the Angry Birds of jRPG.

[Anonymous No.2247209]

>>2247180
>Chrono Trigger is an amazing game in spite of all that, which is the real magic for me.

aka nostalgia goggles.

[Anonymous No.2247217]

>>2245160
>likes pink socks confirmed

absolute faggot

[Anonymous No.2247219]

ITT nostalgiafags wank over the AWESOME STORY of Cross while (deliberately?) forgetting that it was delivered via an omniscient character dropping in and telling it to you right before the final boss.

[Anonymous No.2247226]

>>2247219
it truly is 50deep99u

[Anonymous No.2247239]

>>2247219
That's the beauty of it, Cross might have a rushed pacing, but the story is great. The presentation is also stellar. Trigger has a better pacing, but the story is shit. The presentation is also mostly boring muck like dull forests and castles.

What you ultimately remember is the story itself, not the pacing. The same goes for locations. I remember tons of the places and music from CC. I can't recall many distinctive locations from CC, even Zeal was just another (techno)castle more or less. Also the music sounds like leftover SoM tracks, you could swap most of the tracks between the two games and nobody would notice.

[Anonymous No.2247408]

>>2247219
Better than the story of Trigger which, by its own world logic, should never have happened.

[Anonymous No.2247471]

What is the point of this thread? If you are planning on playing why don't you just play it and form your own opinion. You might as well have just started your thread with
>WWW

[Anonymous No.2248047]

>>2247471
Considering other people's opinions is what normal people do

[Anonymous No.2248064]

>>2247219
Unlike Xenogears they just said "stop everything, here's your exposition and final boss" when they ran out of money. Pretty poor.

[Anonymous No.2248113]

>>2247408
>B-but Chrono Trigger wasn't scientifically accurate!

Is this something Crossfags tell themselves to feel better about the universal perception that their game is an unworthy sequel?

[THE GREAT LEON !!1lTeau7nbNO No.2248116]

>>2244567
My theory is that the aesthetics of Chrono Cross's first half are what really turned people off. If you play it after trigger, the tropical setting is a real shock, and Yasunori Mitsuda can't create decent battle music to save his life, despite the amazing quality of the rest of his work. So the first things you see when you play the game are a mess of flash-forwards, pink dogs and wacky audio/visual. But if you stick with it up through Termina, it's a great game.

[Anonymous No.2248120]

>>2247239
>Chrono Trigger had such bland, unmemorable music like Robo's Theme, Frog's theme, the Ocean Palace BGM and World Revolution
>Not like the glorious soundtrack of Chrono Cross!

Oh, I get it. It's some kind of "praise Chrono Cross to hilarious extremes" meme. Sorry for taking you guys seriously.

[Anonymous No.2248124]

>>2248116
>pink dogs

Poshul is love

Poshul is life

[Anonymous No.2248139]

>tfw my roommate ignored Chrono Cross for years because he didn't like the character's art style

He always complained how they looked "greasy as fuck" in the portraits.

[Anonymous No.2248149]

>>2248139
They really do, though.

Also sunburnt.

[Anonymous No.2248218]

>>2248149
Kinda makes sense given the area of the world the game took place in

[Anonymous No.2248343]

>>2248139
Seems he hates greasers.

>TFW he walks through an alley in my neighborhood.

[Anonymous No.2248385]

>>2245757
I really like how he expounded on the issue and brought forth compelling evidence to support his stance, thereby enriching the entire thread with his contribution.

[Anonymous No.2248417]

>>2248113
No not really. It's common knowledge that both aren't scientifically accurate.

Why the fuck would a game about time travel to a battle between reptiles and humans or dimension skipping to the "end of time" be horribly accurate? That's like saying the Doctor Who episode with Daleks serving under the British WW2 forces is historically accurate.

[Anonymous No.2248426]

>>2248417
>Complaining about jrpgs not being scientifically accurate.

Okay guys, thread's over, this guy has it figured out.

[Anonymous No.2248445]

>>2245995
>It's major flaw is clinging to elements from trigger and adding disturbing elements like major character deaths of the previous game. The whole game works fine without them.

I thoroughly disagree. Once you get down to it, every major player on Chrono Cross' story makes sense, elicits an emotional response and acts the way they act because they are 2.0 versions of Chrono Trigger's major players. Dragonians = Reptites 2.0. Fate = Mother Brain 2.0. Time Devourer = Lavos 2.0. Kid = Schala 2.0. And as for the major character's deaths, that's CT Cast 2.0 in my view. The purpose of the game is to undo them without losing the good things that sprung from them, and in this sense the player becomes sort of a mediator (or "arbiter", if you will) between Serge existing and Crono living.

Removing the CT references would require a HEAVY rewrite of pretty much the entire story, and even more copious amounts of infodumps/exposition to justify the actions of characters/factions we already understand because of CT.

>>2245901
And I would agree that RD is master race. The story was miles better than CC imo (while also killing everyone off, this time permanently).

[Anonymous No.2249156]

>>2248113
The game can be as scientifically inaccurate as it wants, the problem is that the game explains the rules for how its universe works and then completely ignores it.

You can have a game make up whatever bullshit it wants, but at least stick to it.

[Anonymous No.2249208]

I honestly think that a large reason why chrono cross is so disliked,especially by people that loved trigger, is that a large part of cross is looking at the negative repercussions of the actions in trigger. Chrono and friends go through time over and over to stop Lavos, cross just stopped and wondered what happened to all those aborted timelines. The time lines that were cut short, denied the right to exist, yes Chrono and his friends saved the world but every change in time undid a entire universe, in the larger picture Chrono is responsible for more death and destruction then Lavos could have ever achieve

[Anonymous No.2249224]

>>2244567
I don't know Chorno Cross didnt really captivate me the way that Chrono Trigger did, all that FF7/8 style linear while pretending not to be garbage ruined it for me, I really do think that FF7 ruined the next ten years of JRPGS

[Anonymous No.2249314]

>>2244567
It was okay compared to Chrono Trigger. It didn't have the kind of variety in terms of settings and humor that Trigger did, and I think that worked against it. To me, Chrono Cross felt like just another PS1 JRPG. I also didn't care for the music in Cross as much as Trigger. Chrono Trigger's music was just odd and foreign enough that it pulled you in.

[Anonymous No.2249327]

>>2248120

>Robo's Theme
Somewhere around the first golem encounter (the ship)

>Frog's theme
Imperial city

>Ocean Palace BGM
Any shrine, most likely the one in the snow field

>World Revolution
Somewhere around the Mana Tree

CT's music is completely devoid of even trackes of any unique character. Like everything else, the music is cobbled together leftovers with a new paintjob.

[Anonymous No.2249328]

>>2249327
i dont think any of those were unmemorable

[Anonymous No.2249336]

>>2249328
They're not unmemorable but without a distinct connection to CT. Games like Suikoden, Illusion of Gaia or Cross have a recognizable music style unique to the game. Trigger's tracks are pretty interchangeable, mostly with SoM.

[Anonymous No.2249341]

If CT's music is not so memorable, then how come everyone recognized the forest music in that Wiz Khalifa song?

[Anonymous No.2249342]

CT's music sticks out more in my mind than CC's.

Your argument is invalid.

[Anonymous No.2249345]

>>2249336
>Trigger's tracks are pretty interchangeable, mostly with SoM.

False.

Not once have I ever confused the two.

[Anonymous No.2249350]

CT's music has a more somber tone than SoM.

Even in happy, upbeat songs there's this underlying sadness to them, as if to say "no matter what you do, there is no hope.".

[Anonymous No.2249408]

>>2244567
Chrono Trigger is an extremely tight and polished game. It's built off of what made the rest of Square's 16-bit games so good and easily accessible even to gamers who normally dislike JRPGs. In many ways it's the definitive JRPG on the SNES.

Chrono Cross is an extremely ambitious game that succeeded in some areas and failed in many others. It's a wacky experiment that is only appreciated by some JRPG fans despite the good reception it got at the time of its release. It's also a very different beast than its predecessor, which split the fanbase pretty hard and leaves a lot more negativity towards Cross than if it had been its own brand new IP.

Also, Trigger was advertised with Toriyama's art at the peak of Dragon Ball's popularity while Cross' character art always looked pretty mediocre.

[Anonymous No.2249415]

>>2249408
I'll take Cross' mediocre character art over same-face Toriyama.

[Anonymous No.2249418]

>>2249415
I felt that Toriyama actually worked really well with Chrono Trigger.
His humans all look disgustingly similar but he excels at robots, technology and monster designs, and Trigger made the most of that with both its party and the enemies you fought throughout the game. He really brought life to cast members like the Mystics, Frog and Robo compared to their initial concept sketches.

He wouldn't have worked for Cross and its absurd 40-something character party though.

[Anonymous No.2249458]

>you will never lead a carefree life in a small fisher village with a readhead waifu

[Anonymous No.2249485]

>>2249458
Was Parallel Navigator ever fully scanned? The drawings in it are so cute.

[Anonymous No.2249556]

>>2244567


Chrono Cross is a great game; it's just enough of it.


It's ridiculously short for a JRPG of the era, and it doesn't ahve the "actions/consequences" aspect of CT except for whether or not to save Kidd (which ultimately works out the same except unlocking differing irrelevant secondary characters you can recruit.


And the world map is incomplete; it lacks Porre towns and the Porre base.

[Anonymous No.2249594]

>>2249556
>irrelevant secondary characters

Nigga what

[Anonymous No.2249595]

>>2249594
Razzly is cute but it's not like she's important to the storyline.
What little importance Guile/Magus had was removed.

[Anonymous No.2249615]

>>2249208
It also struck a nerve with the "get a GF" ending