Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition

Genre: Compilation / Turn-Based JRPG / Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, released in 2022 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, is a Compilation that includes the Turn-Based JRPG Chrono Cross, originally released on the original PlayStation in 2000, and Radical Dreamers, previously only released in Japan on the Satellaview service for the Super Famicom in 1996.

I have previously alluded to my feelings about Chrono Cross as being rather complicated. I suppose I should probably go into that here. So… consider yourself warned for the impending rant…

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The Dream That Time Dreams

Chrono Trigger, the game that preceded both Chrono Cross and Radical Dreamers, is quite possibly my favorite game of all time. I say “possibly” because it has been quite a long while since I last played it, and other more recent games like Skyrim are also strong contenders in my mind. But few games had the impact on me personally as Chrono Trigger. The wonderful characters, the moving story, the interesting world to explore, and the absolutely stunning soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda still all reside in a warm place in my heart decades later.

I don’t recall when I first heard about Radical Dreamers, the Visual Novel sequel of sorts supposedly created to tie up one loose end left at the end of Trigger, but I think it was probably close to when Chrono Cross was announced, as I didn’t feel a need to pursue the fan translation of Radical Dreamers that had been circulating the internet. After all, Chrono Cross was purportedly a reimagining of Radical Dreamer’s story, so I might as well wait for that and play the official modernized release of the game, right?

I don’t know if I ever looked forward to a game as much as Chrono Cross. Early previews of the game that leaked online gave a hint of what to expect – the late-generation presentation of the game featured some of the most impressive graphics ever to grace the PlayStation, and what few songs had leaked from Yasunori Mitsuda’s new soundtrack for the game were achingly, hauntingly beautiful. I braced myself for what could very well become my new favorite game of all time…

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But the World Refused to Change…

Let me make one thing clear right from the start. I do not hate Chrono Cross. I like it quite a lot, actually. But it frustrates me tremendously, and there is no question in my mind that it doesn’t even come close to the brilliance of Chrono Trigger.

In many ways, Chrono Cross isn’t really a sequel to Chrono Trigger, but a “gaiden” or side-story, focusing on a completely different set of characters, with a plot that for the majority of the game is only loosely connected to the first game, and with gameplay that bears little resemblance to the original Chrono Trigger. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – the game needn’t be a direct sequel to still be good.

Unfortunately, even if we don’t compare it directly to Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross has issues. The new combat system, while certainly inventive and unique, is overly-elaborate without feeling like it gives players meaningful choices in battle. The story, while ambitious and original, was also absurdly convoluted and confusing. And the characters… well…

In the original Chrono Trigger, the game had a core cast of six main characters with a seventh optional character, and while all of them were archetypes, they all had well-crafted personalities that made each pairing of characters have their own dynamic, making for some wonderful interplay as they conversed with one another through the course of the game. This also meant that having different characters in your party could make for different responses from them during some story points, with each character responding to situations based on their own personality. In addition, each character brought something different to battle, and had different ways of combining their abilities with other characters, meaning that deciding who to bring with you could make a real, meaningful difference in your battle strategy.

Chrono Cross, on the other hand, prided itself on its cast of forty five characters, with players enticed to try to find out how to recruit them all. Of these characters, only a very select few have any significant attachment to the game’s plot, and most of these characters don’t even really have their own personality, per se. Rather, most of them will say the exact same thing but with a different accent or quirk of speech. What’s more, for the most part none of these characters had any unique abilities, instead only having an “elemental affinity”, and combination attacks were minimized and made more of an Easter egg than a significant gameplay element. As a result, the majority of this game’s characters are largely interchangeable.

At the very least, Chrono Cross did deliver in one area – the presentation. Those early previews didn’t lie, Chrono Cross was one of the most beautiful-looking games to ever release on the PlayStation platform, combining lush, colorful pre-rendered backgrounds and detailed character models, with full, gorgeously-detailed 3D backgrounds for battle scenes, and beautiful pre-rendered cutscenes. And behind it all, Yasunori Mitsuda’s instrumental soundtrack was one of the greatest videogame soundtracks ever made.

However, as beautiful as it was, Chrono Cross left me feeling somewhat empty. Not only did it lack the elegant simplicity of Chrono Trigger, it lacked the playful charm, and it lacked the beautiful depth of character. And making matters worse, elements of the game’s ending were not only frustrating, bizarre, and arbitrary, but that ending also seemed like it was created specifically to infuriate fans of Chrono Trigger, killing off major characters from the first game off-screen.

In the two decades after Chrono Cross’s release, the original Chrono Trigger would be re-released multiple times, including a highly-celebrated port to Nintendo DS that many consider to be the definitive version of the game, but Chrono Cross sorta’ fell by the wayside, its initial success and acclaim fading over time. And while there would be rumors of a potential third game in the franchise (Square Enix trademarked the name Chrono Break, and then quietly allowed that trademark to lapse), this series remained otherwise untouched over the course of two decades.

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Dreams can come true. But at what price?

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition aims to dust off this flawed classic, add in some modernized elements, as well as providing the first official localization of Radical Dreamers to the West. So, how does it fare?

In terms of gameplay, my views on Chrono Cross haven’t really changed since the game’s original release. It is a very good JRPG in its own right, but also highly flawed, and nowhere near as good as its predecessor. However, this is my first time playing Radical Dreamers, as I’m sure is also the case for many other Western players.

Radical Dreamers has many of the same plot elements as Chrono Cross, but the plot is somewhat different – both Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross are not canonical to one another (though a scene in Chrono Cross hints that Radical Dreamers’ story could have taken place in an alternate reality). The events here are largely self-contained to one location, Viper Manor, where versions of Serge, Kid, and a mysterious character named Magil are seeking to steal a jewel called the Frozen Flame, and Kid seeks to get revenge on the manor’s owner, Lynx.

As a story, Radical Dreamers is sorely lacking – players tumble from one room of the manor to another and encounter various obstacles that are at times seemingly random, with the game overall having a really dour tone, and with all three of the game’s lead characters pretty thoroughly unlikeable from the game’s outset – Magil is callous, distant and sneering, Kid is boorish, violent and uncaring, and Serge is Kid’s lovestruck sycophant (one of the deciding factors for which ending you get is how much he’s managed to endear himself to her). What’s more, the late-game revelations in the plot aren’t conveyed clearly – players who have played Chrono Trigger will be left trying to piece together what’s being alluded to, and those who haven’t played Trigger will likely be completely lost.

As a Visual Novel, Radical Dreamers is similarly flawed. The way the layout of rooms is conveyed to players is unnecessarily confusing, and players will need to traipse back and forth through the manor’s halls repeatedly throughout the game’s 3-4 hour plot. Players have to contend with random encounters, but the strategy for these encounters isn’t clear. There’s also a health meter that’s hidden from players, much as the measure of Kid’s affection for Serge.

I’m still glad to see that Radical Dreamers has finally been localized, as fans of the series can now finally partake in this long-lost missing puzzle piece. However, what’s here doesn’t add much that isn’t already better-served by the plot of Chrono Cross, and the game itself is tedious to play through. Do yourself a favor and if you really want to play this game, do so with a guide.

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A Bowling Ball Dreaming It’s a Plate of Sashimi

It should be noted that neither of these games is being presented as a simple cut-and-paste port, with both games receiving some updates.

For Radical Dreamers, the main update is the English localization, but there is also a “fast forward” feature to speed through repeating text, as well as a new ending. Speaking of text, all of this game’s text is being presented in a higher definition to be clearer for easier reading, and much the same holds true for Chrono Cross, too.

As for updates to Chrono Cross, players can now speed up or slow down the gameplay speed, they can press in the thumbsticks to turn off non plot-progressing battles (which is just as well – what little you earn in this game’s non-boss battles is negligible, making them little more than a time-waster). And then of course there’s the presentation.

The visuals in Chrono Cross have all been upscaled or redone to add much more detail, making the game look better than ever. This includes the 3D textures, pre-rendered backgrounds, and character art. 3D character models have been updated as well to have more detail. I should note that this is all optional – if you prefer, you can play with the game’s original graphics.

In terms of performance, by now it’s well known that this release of Chrono Cross is pretty abysmal. The game’s framerates fluctuate from 30FPS all the way down to 10 FPS, actually faring worse than the original version of Chrono Cross on the original PlayStation (thanks to Digital Foundry the numbers). This isn’t an issue with the Nintendo Switch hardware either – the PlayStation 4 version of the game running on a PlayStation 5 suffers from the exact same problem.

In addition to the changes to the visuals, while Chrono Cross’ and Radical Dreamers’ soundtracks have been left untouched, Yasunori Mitsuda has returned to provide a few additional tracks for this game’s main menu music. It’s a shame that there’s no music test so you can listen to these tracks (as well as the original games’ music) at your leisure, and sadly I don’t have any examples I can point you to here, but suffice it to say it’s quite good.

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HP/MP restored! … But you’re still hungry.

The result of all of this is that Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a flawed port of two flawed games. I will note that I’m not saying that it’s a bad port of two bad games – Chrono Cross at least is still a solid JRPG that’s unique, beautiful, and original enough to be well worth playing (though Radical Dreamers is somewhat less worthwhile), and this remaster of these games does add value and update the presentation in good ways, even as the performance takes a nasty hit as a result. Given that there’s not really any other way to play Chrono Cross on modern platforms via official means, it’s still wonderful that we now have the ability to play this flawed classic, it’s just a shame that the package it’s in is less than ideal.

tl;dr – Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a Compilation of the Turn-Based JRPG Chrono Cross and the previously Japan-only Visual Novel Radical Dreamers. Chrono Cross was and remains a great JRPG, albeit one with some major flaws. On the other hand, Radical Dreamers is a deeply flawed Visual Novel. And this port of the two games has its ups and downs – the presentation is improved, but the performance for Chrono Cross is actually worse than the PlayStation original. As a result, this is still a modern release of a flawed classic that’s still worth playing, but one that has major flaws of its own.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Port / Remake, Most Disappointing

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