Reviewer: Silveromen

E-Mail: Silveromen@hotmail.com

Comments: When I first heard about this game, I was a little nervous that the characters would be a little too "cute" for my liking. Because of this, I was not eagerly awaiting the arrival of Chrono Cross. However, once the game arrived in stores, it received incredibly good reviews. Being a fan of the original Chrono Trigger on the Super Nintendo, I decided to look past the character design and try the game out. So I bought it.

Chrono Cross uses pre-rendered backgrounds, a standard it seems in RPGs today. All the backgrounds are very colorful, and bring the player into a fantastic fantasy setting. The areas in the game range from beaches, to forests, to city's, but the whole game has an "island" feel to it.

The characters are all very strange looking, ranging from drag-queen party members to fighting clowns (I'm serious). Chrono Cross does feature many party members (30-40), but perhaps there are too many of them. While Square tries to make the characters individual with different accents, there is really no back story for most of the game's characters. This is probably due to the fact that aside from 4 characters every other character in the game is optional. Square didn't make too much back ground story for the characters because there is no guarantee that you will get them. Also, the main character never talks (like Crono for CT), but his silence doesn't seem to work as well as it did for Crono.

The story is interesting, but deals with alternate dimensions rather than Chrono Trigger's time traveling. The story does make several references to Chrono Trigger, but some of them you might not like. For instance, your image of certain characters from CT might be shattered in Chrono Cross.

In Chrono Cross, there are no random battles. Instead you see your enemy on screen, and can thus avoid battles. The battle system is as follows: you buy spells and equip them on your characters. A character has to reach a certain level in battle before he\she can use the spells. In order to reach the needed levels, the character must continually hit enemies with physical attacks. It's a lot easier than it sounds. Once you win a battle, Your stats increase randomly (like in Saga Frontier). There are no experience points in Chrono Cross.

The sound effects are standard RPG fare, with clashing swords and environmental effects, but in battle characters are pretty silent. The music is a mixed bag. While there were many tracks that were inspiring, there were also many that were not. I didn't like the battle music (something that you will have to listen to a lot), and I really didn't like the boss music (not at all inspiring). Also, the grand shame: The last boss has NO MUSIC . The soundtrack was definitely not as good as Chrono Trigger or Xenogears, but it was still good for the most part.

If anyone remembers the original Chrono Trigger, they remember the insane amount of endings that it had. Chrono Cross continues the tradition by also featuring many endings. It also features a mode where you can start the game over with your abilities and stats from the first time through to make your second trek through the game easier. The game has a high replay value, but unfortunately I only played through once. I was so disappointed by the games normal ending (or lack thereof), that I didn't have the drive to find the others.

The Final Word: While the game does have its faults, any fan of the genre should at least rent the game to see if they feel that it's really the greatest RPG ever, or just another title.

Gameplay: 8

Graphics: 9

Sound: 7

Music: 7

Replay Value: 8

Final Score: 8.0