Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! I'm so glad to know that for once a long-hyped game is actually good. While the actual plot could have used some more meat and the characters could have used some more time to interact with each other, it was all plenty fine and was plenty enjoyable. The runtime was a great amount of time, not too short and not too long for a game of its genre and age.
The game in general was very much enjoyable indeed, at least barring the DS' exclusive sidequest line that involves way too much dull backtracking and makes the combat unfun. Speaking of which, man, the combat! It's as if ATB wasn't bad! Honestly still not a huge fan of it even here, but this implementation works super well with how the game has few to no random encounters at all. It tended to be a tad easy throughout, but enough of the bosses were challenges where I used my brain a bit that I think it balanced out well enough.
The only real complaints I have are probably that the game's world is way too tiny with far too few random nooks and crannies to explore and find things in. The game's almost structured with a small set of levels in mind stretched across several time periods rather than as a cohesive world that is explored throughout time. Not a bad direction to take and certainly one that didn't make the game's scope too big, but it was a tad disappointing that what the DS version added was just a couple extra dungeons rather than more meaningful worldbuilding that the game otherwise lacked. I guess I also thought the ending FMV where Crono gets married and stuff was pretty unnecessary and random, but that wasn't a problem - just something kinda weird for how little characterization or relationship acknowledgement there is surrounding the character in the maingame.
Otherwise, this game was awesome, smarter than expected, and generally lived up to the hype. Certainly worthy of one's time, and a classic I'm glad I got to finally experience in full.
The game in general was very much enjoyable indeed, at least barring the DS' exclusive sidequest line that involves way too much dull backtracking and makes the combat unfun. Speaking of which, man, the combat! It's as if ATB wasn't bad! Honestly still not a huge fan of it even here, but this implementation works super well with how the game has few to no random encounters at all. It tended to be a tad easy throughout, but enough of the bosses were challenges where I used my brain a bit that I think it balanced out well enough.
The only real complaints I have are probably that the game's world is way too tiny with far too few random nooks and crannies to explore and find things in. The game's almost structured with a small set of levels in mind stretched across several time periods rather than as a cohesive world that is explored throughout time. Not a bad direction to take and certainly one that didn't make the game's scope too big, but it was a tad disappointing that what the DS version added was just a couple extra dungeons rather than more meaningful worldbuilding that the game otherwise lacked. I guess I also thought the ending FMV where Crono gets married and stuff was pretty unnecessary and random, but that wasn't a problem - just something kinda weird for how little characterization or relationship acknowledgement there is surrounding the character in the maingame.
Otherwise, this game was awesome, smarter than expected, and generally lived up to the hype. Certainly worthy of one's time, and a classic I'm glad I got to finally experience in full.