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amazon Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition reviews
Chrono Cross is already one of the great JRPG storylines, launched in the heyday of Squaresoft (before merging with game publisher Enix to create today’s Square Enix), comparable to the big guys from Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, with its essence a “remaster”, will of course be different from Final Fantasy VII Remake, reserving 100% of what is considered the most quintessential of the Chrono Cross plot, allowing users to experience the original completely and unchanged.
Broadly speaking, the Chrono Cross storyline is a sequel to Chrono Trigger, but if for some reason you haven’t played Chrono Trigger (you should play it right away if you’re a “hard fan” of the JRPG), you won’t have much of a problem when playing Chrono Cross, because the connections appear very late and it is not something too serious.
In Chrono Cross, the player takes on the role of Serge, a 17-year-old youth living comfortably in his village of Arni, who is suddenly thrown into a parallel reality where a disaster has occurred and Serge is in the universe was… dead at the age of 10!
Of course, this parallel universe will be very different from the one in which Serge lives, and the player will have to constantly travel between the two worlds to solve problems, and witness the butterfly effect where an action is taken, just a small impact, also leads to two completely different results.
With such a “strange” background, throughout Chrono Cross, players will constantly encounter situations that make us sit down and reflect, reflect on our place in this universe (in a style) similar to Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker).
Serge’s nature is both live and dead, so when we play Serge, we also allow ourselves to “drop souls” into Serge’s two worlds, and wonder if “identity” exists, and what would the world be like if our “identity” suddenly disappeared?
“Is life worth it?” – a character raised this question, shortly after the game started.
To be honest, the narration and direction that Chrono Cross uses are heavily influenced by Final Fantasy titles released around that time (VI, VII, VIII, IX), when not only one The times these games make players wonder about their identity in this world, what is their purpose in life, like Zidane, like Squall, like Terra…
Of course, just like Squaresoft’s games at that time, the plot is not a black one, but there are light, humorous moments when the characters on the team interact with each other.
However, the number of characters that players can recruit into the team is up to… 45 people. With such a large number, Chrono Cross would not be able to achieve the same level of character development as Final Fantasy, and there are even a few characters that I can’t even remember the names of, but each character – there will still be enough room to grow for players to at least understand their personalities – and of course, the important characters will have the necessary “on air” time to play properly developed.
As noted above, Chrono Cross’s plot is non-linear! There are many twists and turns in the plot, leading to many different consequences, depending on the actions of Serge and his gang.
There are more than 10 different endings for Chrono Cross if I remember correctly, but one thing is for sure, you can’t collect all 45 characters in one play, and your choices will affect It depends on which character will join your party – and not every choice is “clear”.
In short, the storyline of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition easily ranks among the best JRPG storylines, with one (two) worlds built with wonders, vivid, thrilling, and fascinating details, and a branching system that makes players ready to replay the plot to feel different aspects.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition has a rather strange turn-based combat system, different from the JRPG titles released around that time, even different from Chrono Trigger.
Each character will have three attacks: light, medium, and strong, light attacks will have much higher accuracy, and only take 1 stamina, while medium and strong attacks will cost 2 and 3 stamina, plus with decreasing accuracy.
However, each time an attack hits, the following hits will be more accurate – meaning you’ll use stronger attacks after hitting the enemy with a lighter hit before, forming chains.” combo” even though it’s just turn-based gameplay.
Each hit also increases the character’s “element” by 1, 2, and 3 levels, respectively, and these tiers will be used to perform spells of the corresponding tier.
For example, in a basic “combo”, you hit the enemy with light, then medium, then strong, which will cost 6 stamina, in return you have 6 element tiers, enough to cast a 6 Magic.
If you run out of stamina, you can switch to another character, each action of that character will restore the stamina of the original character. There isn’t a specific turn, you can switch characters at will, and if the whole team runs out of stamina, the enemy can cut in at any moment, making the fighting form a smooth, close flow like real-time combat.
About elements, this is also a rather unique aspect. Each character can attach elements to each character’s grid, allowing them to use different spells such as healing, flames, and more.
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The special feature is that instead of using MP, the elements are only used… once per battle (except for some consumable elements).
This makes players have to think carefully before using elements in combat, especially with boss monsters.
Each element also has an intrinsic color property, which belongs to one of six colors: white-black, green-yellow, and red-blue.
When using an element, the entire field will be affected by that element’s color, and depending on the last three element attacks, the power of the next element will be greatly increased or decreased depending on its color.
In short, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition has a complex, unique, different combat system, and according to the writer’s comment, is relatively fast and attractive, but still requires a lot of pre-calculation.
If a remaster does not have any improvements, then Square Enix is probably already being “spoiled” by a large number of fans everywhere!
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition’s improvements include game acceleration, the automatic meshing of elements for the entire team, automatic healing after each battle, auto-save, and more.
There’s even an auto-battle mode for “training” to save suffering!
If to comment on the graphics improvements, perhaps the writer is not too impressed, but the players of the “nostalgic” system can choose the ancient graphics background to experience the right version 20 years ago.
The great songs of Mitsuda Yasunori are also “remastered” to a higher quality without affecting their original “quality”.
One of the most intriguing additions for Chrono Cross fans is the Radical Dreamers text series, which was written to address plot twists and emphasize the connection between Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger.
Radical Dreamers had never been translated to the Western market before because the game director at the time, Masato Kato, found the quality of the part too low, but as a result, gamers outside of Japan never got it. Experience this small but relatively important part of the story.
However, with Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, players were able to experience the entire Radical Dreamers, it was fully translated right after completing the Chrono Cross main storyline, only missing the Chrono Trigger package. I have a collection that is 100% complete from start to finish!
It must be said that Square Enix is the “goddess” of the remasters when Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is on the long list of remasters that the company has failed to do well.
It is easy to see that the number of frames per second fluctuates continuously, which is quite unacceptable for a game that is 20 years old and does not take anything seriously.
The FMV (full-motion video) scenes are not even upgraded, if you zoom out to the big screen, you will see the characters are blurred, broken, and broken.
There are two graphics options: old and new, and as mentioned above, the writer is not impressed with the new graphics system, mainly because the backgrounds are still blurry, and the anti-aliasing filter is applied. Using bluff, invisible in general makes the characters look extremely … industrial, losing the old JRPG temperament.
The writer also had to switch continuously between the 4:3 and 16:9 modes, because in some places, 16:9 looked good, but in a few places, the image was pulled out very funny, so the writer have to revert to the 4:3 format.
A game like Chrono Cross deserves a better remaster, if not a remake with modern graphics!