really special game, lovely in ways you don't necessarily expect video games to be, so earnest and passionate and cute and sad...has this palpable sense of anger and despair and lost possibilities and best wishes gone to the wayside underneath it all too. it's impressive how well the game manages to convey both genuine anguish and tempered hopefulness without becoming nicecore or fake-angsty (but actually vapid) a la persona. absolute stellar collection of funny little guys that you can assemble and i really appreciate how (aside from one or two hiccups) you really can organize your team on the basis of aesthetics and style over pure functionality....biggest complaint is in the second to last boss fight the RNG fall damage is hilariously busted and can instakill you at any point despite doing 0 dmg 90% of time

playable schizophrenia. hey, don't like it? give me a call at 968-173-3825464-788743 so i can tell you about how wrong you are for saying this ruins chrono trigger. get a better favorite game while you're at it, nerd

anyway apart from the sonic nightmare that is navigating the zelbess for 36 hours and the testicle-twisting experience of acquiring all the colored relics, there aren't really any low points here. the plot throws what-the-fuck moments like free candy and the cast is so abundantly varied that there's bound to be at least a couple you'll be happy to ride along with. battle system's pretty neat albeit not nearly as snappy as trigger's, but it makes the later bosses pretty fun and strategic

i recommend the radical dreamers edition for encounter disabling and speedup. trust me those nigh unavoidable battles in the backend really become tedious as hell, and the slowdown isn't any worse than the ps1 release. just keep the graphics on classic and you're good to go

Best sequel to anything ever. I can't express how much I love this game. It and Chrono Trigger are my all time favorite games. They are such good companion pieces.

FF8 was my first RPG and after playing that and loving it I wanted to play something else just like it. Then I remembered watching a commercial on TV that showed off this game and I was thinking how beautiful it looked and I wanted to try it based on that. That's right a US television commercial sold me on this game. Crazy I know.

Even though this is a follow up to Chrono Trigger, I didn't know that at the time. Looked stand alone enough to me and with out context and can be but what I didn't know was how much this really was a follow up to another story. Immediately, I was taken aback by the visuals and music. Game looked and felt like I was playing a piece of art or a painting. The visual style was like nothing else I played and it really captured me. I was already a big fan of prerendered backgrounds in games like FF8 and Resident Evil but this game took it a step further. This was such a cool world. I loved the look of the characters and the locales and very much absorbed myself into this world.

The story starts out simple enough but the more you get into it the deeper it gets. You start off by being transported into any dimension that is just like the one your from except for small changes here and there. Like in this one your character Serge is dead in this relm. So you try to find out how you died in this world and how you even got here and along the way you meet a bunch of characters and get roped into doing various things. I love all the set pieces of the game and traveling from town to town seeing what would happen next. Just visiting home world and going into another to see the sometimes subtle changes in the characters or personal stories really paints out the world. Can one small decision completely change a life? I was hooked from start to finish.

The gameplay was really fun too. I like how there are like 50 characters and you can choose who you want to play as when you like and not feel like you are lagging behind in battle stats. Sure a lot of them are superfluous but it's okay. Your not forced to use anyone you don't want to and the game fleshes out about 10-12 of the main ones pretty well. Every character has their own weapon and several different strike animations that use stamina based on hit percentage to build up levels of magic. Everybody shares the same spells and they are customizable based on a grid dependent on the character and everyone has three unique special attacks they can learn. The battle system is easy to learn and it always feels like I'm doing something different as opposed to just spamming my best attack like in some RPGs. You only level up during bosses and normal fights only earn a fixed amount of exp and are only really useful for obtaining weapons, armor, accessories and loot. So no grinding necessary and use whatever characters you want.

I can talk about this game all day so I'll try to wrap it up. This is a game that stuck with me a long time and I still think and play it a lot to this day. To me this game is magical and I just adore it's world and characters. It's music, which is highly regarded as if not one of or THE best soundtrack of all of gaming, just takes me away into it's fantastical world into an adventure to save all of space and time. The game has such a complex story when it's all said and done but I never felt like it was nonsensical or full of itself. You know what happens but it's all the small details that the creators put into it that makes it so special. I think it's an excellent follow up to Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is perfect. I don't want CT2. I wanted this even if I didn't know it. A game that follows the world and action of the first game from a different side. Alright I'm starting to ramble. CC is my second favorite game behind CT and I think it's a game that everyone should try at least once. The CT and CC world is one of my favorite fantasy worlds and this game is a big reason why.

chrono cross represents square at their best to me: sloppy, scatterbrained execution leading to overly passionate, expositional tantrums of art pieces slapped together to make a functional and generally enjoyable gaming experience vastly overshadowed by the fact that the writing and artistic profoundness overwhelms and oh-so-moves me.

chrono cross wouldn't be chrono cross if it were perfect. it wouldn't be chrono cross if i couldn't ruin a man's life by horribly disfiguring him and then never addressing him for the remainder of my time with the game after he resolves to join my party. it wouldn't be chrono cross if a half-pint mecha-toting alien with a speech impediment didn't waddle around and balance himself on his fish-bowl helmet during crucial dialogue. it wouldn't be chrono cross if bosses didn't end up pulling megaten-like preparational requirements out of nowhere and forcing my hand in tight scenarios i was woefully underprepared for. it wouldn't be chrono cross if i didn't reach for the tissues every. damn. instance. "the girl who stole the stars" sweeps the scene. and it wouldn't be chrono cross if it didn't comment on its roots with such daringness, such audacity, and such passion that it isolated and infuriated people.

i'm glad this game gets a reaction out of people. i'm glad there are people who can't see the heart in this game. true, ballsy art doesn't exist without burning a few bridges or ruffling some feathers. this game is fucking beautiful - far from perfect but objectively cleanliness is vastly overrated anyways. a timeless, boundless journey and a worthy entry in square's gold-standard late-90s catalogue.

A pretty excellent RPG, and a well-worthy successor to Chrono Trigger. The game has an excellent combat system, that has a lot of depth and is used for some challenging and fun boss battles. The only major drawback is that the game's ending portion is rather easy, and it doesn't draw out the full potential of the combat that the other bosses do. The soundtrack is just great all around. While it's not as catchy as Trigger, it's certainly drives the emotion and atmosphere. Visually the game is great. I love the models and background art. The art direction is just superb. I like the story, but it can get somewhat confusing at points with a bunch of terms and split timelines and the like. However, some moments are extremely standout and well-executed. The dungeons are fairly well designed, but they can sometimes lead to repetitive encounters. The game does also feel a bit sluggish, so playing on an emulator with speedup or the recent rerelease is recommended. The game does pretty much everything very well, with a couple of flaws preventing me from rating it above an 8. But as is, the game is great. An easy recommendation for RPG fans, especially if you've played Trigger first.

Fields of Time -Home World- is my favourite song

Might edit in more detailed & serious thoughts later

But good god this touched my soul on top of being very fun