Review #277: Chrono Trigger

 One of the best soundtracks of all time.

 Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard of Chrono Trigger, an era-defining JRPG made by the 'dream team', Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, with Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu on the music front. This game was destined for greatness, and greatness it achieved. Chrono Trigger on the DS is the third time the game got ported, and it received even more extras!

 In Chrono Trigger you play as Crono, the red-haired swords-man who happens to look a bit like Goku. What should've been a merry day at the fair soon turns into a trip 400 years into the past. And then into the future. And then back to the dinosaur era(with the suspicious cohabitation of cavemen). The story is pretty straight-forward, although not without its plot-twists and every character in the 7-man party gets a their chance to shine... except the mute hero Crono, who is as boring as a plank of wood and deep as a puddle. At time's it feels like Crono is just along for the ride, he is not the princess, he is not the 'destined hero' and later in the game, you don't even need to bring him alone. One of the game's novelties, at the time, was the fact that it had multiple endings depending on when you chose to tackle the last boss, with the addition of New Game+ which carries over most, if not all, of your stuff from your previous playthrough, which is a must if you aim for some of the endings. That said, one complete playthrough(All sidequests done) lasts about 20 hours, even less if you know what you are doing. As far as RPGs go, it's rather short, but I guess it has to do with the 13+ endings you can go for.

 Back in the day, another of the game's novelties where the non-random encounters... kinda. 90% of the enemies can be perfectly avoided by walking around them, but there are a few tiles that engage pre-scripted encounters, and if you leave and then re-enter the room, these tiles reset, so not 'every' encounter can be avoided. Before you earn the time-travelling ship, going back and forth the 'Middle Ages' era can be slightly annoying since you absolutely have to fight one of these scripted encounters. As for the battles themselves, they use Square's then-famous 'Active-Time Battle'. which means that enemies can act even while you pick your attacks on your turns. If it proves too challenging, and I can see how people not familiar with the genre could find themselves overwhelmed, you can just turn it off and fight more traditional turn-based battles.

 The battling itself is fairly simple and fun. During your turns, characters can either: Attack, use spells or use items. Another of the game's novelties, at the time, where 'dual' and 'triple techs', basically, two or three characters can combine their turns and mana to use a more powerful spell... which are fancy to look at, but if you ask me, eventually it becomes more useful for each character to do their own thing on their turns. But hey, they are nice to look at! The game isn't very hard, but I did feel like enemies were a tiny bit too fast, I would get pummeled while rummaging through my spell list finding that one spell I want to cast, and mind you, I am used to Square's ATB!

 As for the DS version in particular, it adds various new extras and gimmicks that further enhance this great classic. Firstly, we get all the Playstation extras, the anime cutscenes, the bestiaries and galaries, the maps, without of the loading times that plagued that version! Even better, the maps are now displayed on the bottom screen for further convenience... not that you'll actually need the maps, since dungeons are fairly straightforward, but it's nice to have. The game also sports a new, more accurate re-translation, although some people have expressed disappointment at things like Frog losing his accent... although he still speaks in a more archaic English than the rest. Personally? I didn't miss the old translation at all. There's optional touch-screen shortcuts and controls, which I never used, but you can also use the bottom screen to display life-bars and the such, leaving the top-screen, the one in which the action happens, uncluttered. This port also introduces a weird arena mini-game, which is mostly automatic, but you can raise a critter to fight battles... it wasn't much fun. Then there's a couple of new dungeons and a new ending which ties into Chrono Cross. And here's where I've got beef. I'm pretty sure that most people getting this game have already played this game before... so whose idea was it to make the new dungeons only available on a New Game+? Most people have probably finished this game before and want to play the new content, so why would you make us play through the game twice to get to it? Baffling.

 If you ask me, Chrono Trigger hasn't aged at all, it's still every bit as amazing as it once was. Everything in the game blends into a fantastic overall game: The amazing music, the simple but engaging story and characters and the fun battles/ While I wouldn't say the new features are worthy of double dipping if you already own the game on SNES or PS1, while they are rather neat, they are also completely superfluous.
10 out of 10