Archview #26: Chrono Cross

 Not as incredible as I remembered it....

 Chrono Cross is a game I remembered fondly. It was one of the first PS1 games I bought, and if I remember correctly, even before I had the means to play it. I was so hyped, Squaresoft, the creator of FF 7 and 8, which I loved as a kid. The magazines were being so kind it... and when I played it? Let´s just say that my first, and to this day favored, e-mail adress was based off the title of the game. Yes, I loved Chrono Cross.
 This game is a follow up to Chrono Trigger, it´s set 20 years after it, but you wouldn´t know it, since the setting, El Nido archipielago, wasn´t featured in Trigger. Regardless, mentions to beings and characters to that game are everywhere. Instead of travelling through time, Serge and his party get to travel through two opposite worlds, opposite in the sense that different decisions were made, for example, in one world a certain NPC chose to focus on doing what he wanted for a living, thus, he is poor. In the other world, however, the very same NPC veered towards what made money, instead of what he loved, thus he is rich. It´s a very interesting premise, and an excuse to reuse dungeons, but further into the game it takes a turn for the convoluted. It goes all Sci-fi with black hole generators, computers that control humanity and the such.

 The game plays like most other JRPGs, you go from town to town talking to NPCs while tackling the usual assortment of dungeons. But it does have a few distinctive features, for starters, equipment is not bought but made. Actually, you need the materials to craft it and the money to pay for it, this means that you will have to grind to get these materials. Funnily enough, the game touts that it does away with grinding, which is quite false. There are no "levels" in the straight sense, instead, you collect Growth Stars from most of the bosses. With each Growth Star your stats increase a bit, however, any character that is KOed won´t get any stat boost. After each Growth Star you can go into 5-6 encounters, which are not random, monsters roam the dungeons and you can avid them, and get minimal stat boosts from them. Get another star before completing the 5-6 encounter cycle? Too bad, those bonuses are gone forever.
 The combat system is actually kinda interesting. It´s a bit like Xenogears, you get 7.0 Stamina, and you can choose to use a Weak Attack(Consumes 1.0 Stamina), Medium(2.0 Stamina) and Strong(3.0). The stronger the blow, the easier it is for it to miss, however, if you pummel the enemy with weaker attacks, the accuracy rating for the other attacks increases. Enemies can break out of your combo before you use up all your stamina, so if you were building up the accuracy percentage for a Strong Blow, but get interrupted, it´s all gone. Sometimes, sometimes it´s not, it´s odd. There are no conventional Turns in the game, instead, you can interrupt a combo whenever you want and have another character attack. The party recharges stamina as other members or enemies attack. Every time you hit an enemy, besides boosting the accuracy, you also increase your "Element" level, which allows you to use "Elements"(Magic).

 Elements are made up of three objects: "Items", "Spells" and "Techs". There are 3 unique Techs per character, but the one-use elements(Items) and the "Spells"(Which can only be used once per battle) are completely customizable by the player. Each character has their own grid upon which to place the elements though, some may have lots of slots on the earlier levels, while some have a lot on the latter, etc.
 Each character and each enemy has a elemental affinity(Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black and White). Red opposes Blue, Yellow opposes Green and Black opposes White. Characters of opposing elements deal and recieve double damage from the opposing element. Also, during battles, on the top left corner there is a circle made up of three circles, which represents the elements of the enviroment, each time an element is used, the color of the element gets put on the inner circle, pushing out the other elements outwards. By filling the circles with a certain color, you make Elements and characters of said color stronger, and weaken the ones of the opposite color. Yeah, the combat is pretty nuanced, but it´s actually quite fun, even if the lack of experience points make it feel a bit hollow.

 The game is very colorful, from characters to enviroments, the game oozes color everywhere. There are over 40 playable characters, and the designs are very hit or miss. As for the enemies, most of the bosses are alright, but most of the common non-human enemies look very silly and harmless, a bit of a bummer. The music is... amazing, right up there with Xenogears. There are loads of tunes, and each piece is very unique and memorable, some tunes are still stuck up on my mind!
 There is a problem with having so many characters... some get almost none character developement. Most of the Acacia Dragoons get their fair share of screen time(If you recluted them!), but the rest of the other characters are lucky if they get a little scene with their other world counterpart or when they find their third tech. There´s a bunch of endings depending on when you tackle the last boss, like Chrono Trigger!, and there are 2 forks during the game. Sadly, both times all roads lead to the same conclussion, it only changes what characters join you and which dungeon you tackle, which is a bit of a shame.
 Chrono Cross is a great game, but the PS1 had lots of great JRPGs, so that´s not saying much. It is quite interesting, and worth at least one playthrough, but I think Young Archile was victim to the hype...
8 out of 10.