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Chrono Trigger I've played this game since I was about ten-years old and recently played through it again. While I don't love it as much as I did as a kid, I still think it's an absolutely amazing game and credit my less-love-than-before to playing it so many times. Counting "New Game Plus," I've probably played this game over fifty times, probably a lot more than fifty in fact. So what makes this game so awesome? It is a perfect RPG. Not the perfect RPG, but a perfect RPG. It combines elements of story, gameplay, and battle system perfectly. It even handles time travel well! So what is Chrono Trigger about? The hero, Crono, is a boy from the year 1000 A.D. that gets involved in an experiment that accidentally allows him to travel through time. In the process, he eventually learns about an entity, Lavos, that will eventually destroy the world in the distant future. Being the hero he is, he decides to go on this amazing adventure prevent it. So he goes jumping through time, trying to find ways to stop Lavos from destroying the world. Along the way he meets a bunch of friends and helps different civilizations with some problems. The story behind this game is great. It has an excellent flow and makes a lot of logical connections so that every portion of the game seems to have a purpose.
The game hits on so many different levels. The game has a great sense of comedy with characters like Johnny (above) and Ozzie, plus some great comic timing, but there are also some deeply emotional scenes like Frog's backstory. It even develops the enemies, such as the mystics. Everything is explained in some form and the game is very intimate. The world is very small and you visit it in five different time periods (six if you count 1999 A.D.), so you see how the world evolves, see entire family trees, and so on. Plus, your cast of characters is fairly small with a total of six characters plus one optional character, so a total of seven. By the end of this game, you really leave no stone unturned and every part of the world is developed. Speaking of characters, I love that this game uses its characters so well. For the bulk of the game, you have between four and six characters. While some of the characters are more developed than others, they all gain some development based on sidequests you complete and bringing them along to new locations. Each character has unique dialogue as a response to any situation that helps to develop their character and, at times, certain characters will have personal involvement in the plot. Your characters also have a great impact on how you play the game. Each character has different advantages, either through unique abilities or based on their skillset (physical, magical, chosen element). The characters all have different advantages. For example, Ayla is the strongest character in the game (girl power!), but she has terrible magic powers. She has good skills, sure, but they're all physical in nature and are limited on their range. Meanwhile, Lucca has poor physical attacking skills, but she's the only fire-user (I'm not counting him, shh!) and she has amazing magic power, plus many group/all-target abilities.
Most RPGs have magic that can either hit one target or all targets. That's it. But Chrono Trigger changes the target system. In battles, enemies move around constantly, plus they can occasionally knock your characters around and move their locations. This is very important because some abilities hit certain areas and ranges, so the position of your characters and your enemies can greatly impact the battle. Some skills hit a circular area like Cyclone and Napalm, then skills like Slash and Flame Toss will hit a direct line from your character to a single target.
The use of these different ranges makes each battle so much fun. Maybe you're just taking a team of Crono, Ayla, and Frog so that you can pound on enemies one-by-one with their physical strength, but you could also use more strategy and wait for enemies to group up, then wail on them with a Fire Whirl. Speaking of Fire Whirl, there's another use of battle strategy when it comes to picking your characters that hasn't been used as effectively as in Chrono Trigger in any other game I've played. This is the concept of Double Techs and Triple Techs. As your characters gain certain abilities, they can begin to combine powers with either one or two other characters to do a different attack. These can completely change some of your tactics and can make the game insanely fun. By the end of the game, each character only has eight abilities, but they'll also have three double techs with each other character (I'm not counting him, shh!) and your main character, Crono, is involved in a triple tech with all combinations of other characters (ten total). Double and triple techs have increased damage since it involves two characters' turns instead of just one, but sometimes you can do more damage by having each take their turns separately; it's entirely up to you (and math!). Often it will depend on how many enemies you can target with each area attack.
Aside from story, this game progresses (for me) by the ability system. There are only eight skills per character, but it feels like so much more because of the double and triple techs. There's such a need to gain enough tech points to get new skills. Not to mention that they're spaced perfectly. As you near the end of the game, many optional sidequests become available to you. Some of these are really hard, but you'll likely just be starting to learn your final abilities and get some awesome techniques. The pacing is perfect and either the developers planned it very carefully or they were very lucky, but the flow (without grinding) is spot-on. The game does not have random encounters, and while you can continuously run in and out of rooms to make them respawn, if you don't, then there is a perfect amount of enemies to have challenging fights. That is, unless you use New Game Plus (we'll get to that later). Just as a quick mention, I must say that this game has amazing functionality. The menus, for example, flow perfectly. You can swap out characters at any time outside of battle, but you're still able to access each character's information (like their stats and current tech skills) and change their equipment. The only thing you can't do while a character is out of the party is use their restorative abilities in the menu. If you want some non-active member to heal your active members, then you have to swap them in, cure, and swap them out. It can be annoying, but I'll forgive it. After all, without this, would Marle ever be in your party? Think about it...I'll wait...
And we're back. So. Story is awesome. Ability system is awesome. Battles are awesome. How about superficial stuff like graphics and music? Well, the music is great. I love the use of character themes, plus you really get to know their themes since they play when you talk to them about changing your party. As a kid, I'd only talk to certain ones because I loved their themes, like Robo. "Hell yeah, rockin' out!" They also have fun themes, like their "something funny is happening" music, plus they like to fade/cut the music in places and even reference the music sometimes.
Graphics are incredible as well. Sure, it's no PS3, but the graphics are great. I can tell what everything in the game is, it's not too pixelated, and it's stylish. This game was right on the end of the SNES days, right before the jump to Nintendo 64 and Playstation, so what was funny for me was that I enjoyed this game's graphics in particular much better than most graphics for starter games from those two systems. Nintendo 64 had goofy graphics, Playstation had polygon messes, and I was left wondering why they didn't just make them graphics like Chrono Trigger. Yeah, eventually both systems got better with the graphics, but still, Chrono Trigger had phenomenal graphics both for its time and in general. I still enjoy playing it, unlike some games from the past where I wonder how I could ever tolerate such terrible graphics. But back in the day, you saw graphics like the at the trial (awesome scene) and you were in awe. I know it's not that great, but I remember seeing that back in the day and being absolutely blown away.
The final point I'll make about Chrono Trigger is the replay value. This game could easily stand on its own merits without any gimmicks to make you replay it. But it has gimmicks, so let's get to it! The two main gimmicks work hand-in-hand, so I'll mention them simultaneously. Gimmick #1: New Game Plus. New Game Plus is a setting that you can pick to start a new game using another game's data. So instead of starting from scratch, you start at a high level with all your awesome equipment. Suffice it to say, you kill everything very dead. This was the first game to ever do this kind of thing, and I'll bet everybody thought they were damn fools for doing it. Fools I say! "Play a game in basically God-Mode? Who'd want such a thing!?" Completionists do! It makes no sense, but I want to try to get Prism Helms for all my guys and Moon Armor and three Frenzy Bands and a ton of Gold Studs and tons and tons of Magic Tabs!
But New Game Plus works in conjunction with Gimmick #2: ten friggin endings. At a certain point in the game, you have the ability to challenge the final boss. Sure, you won't win until the end of the game...your first time through. But with New Game Plus, it is really easy to tackle the final boss since, hell, you've already done it! So depending on the current plot of the game, you could see an alternate ending. Yeah, most of them are just silly, but that's part of the fun. We've seen how it really ends, so now let's just have some fun. This game hits on everything that makes an RPG (if not a game in general) great. Great story, great characters, great battle system, great ability system, great everything. I have to really dig deep to find any flaws with this game, which is a great sign for a game. Everything is paced perfectly so that you're always striving to go on, both with story and combat from earning all those tech points (Luminaire is so close!). And one thing I really enjoy is that even the damage is calculatable. Your characters don't hit 9999 every turn by the end of the game. In fact, it's very rare. Not hitting the damage extremes really keeps your damage in perspective. And if you don't like that a speech bubble or battle screen is blocking some of the action, you just push a button and it swaps to the top/bottom of the screen. So convenient! They thought of everything! There are so many game dynamics that I love that I just can't come up with a negative thing to say about this game. It's perfect. If you haven't played it, play it. If you have...play it again. It's that good.
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