Squaresoft’s Chrono Trigger was considered to be one of the most amazing and enjoyable games in the history of SNES era. From the “dream team” of Yuri Hoji of Dragon Quest, Hironobu Sakaguchi of Final Fantasy, and Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball Z, CT was created. With its original plot with the theme of time travel, CT was crowned to be the best. 5 years later came Chrono Cross, the ultimate sequel to CT, which quickly became the best seller among the gaming industry even with the fact that the “dream team” was nowhere to be found. Does it matter really? The answer, no, Hironobu Sakaguchi took care of everything under his hands. This is the ultimate itself; this is the perfection itself; this is Chrono Cross.

The story takes place in a small village of Arni where Serge lives peacefully with his mother. Still with her immature mind, Leena, Serge’s girlfriend, wants the popular Komodo Scale necklace and asks Serge to meet her at Opassa Beach when he had collected the scales. As Serge headed to Opassa Beach with the scales, his life and faith was at their peak. As the two lovebirds were discussing about their future, Serge is thrown into a parallel world, where he meets up with a girl named Kid who is after the Frozen Flame. Now the duo must find the Frozen Flame and make sure that it won’t fall under Kid’s demi-human enemy, Lynx.

Chrono Cross’ battle system is somewhat similar to that of Xenogears where the attacks are divided into 3 individually powered attacks, which depends on the stamina. One of the aspects of CC, which differs from the traditional RPG is that there are no more ATB gauges in the battle. In the place of ATB is the stamina gauge. This gauge will be crucial in the battle since it controls the turns of attacks. Whenever you attack an enemy, the stamina gauge will decrease. As long as you have the stamina, you can change between characters and attack. When you’re out of the stamina, you can either let the other character in your party attack who still has their stamina, or defend if the party’s stamina’s wiped out. The stamina will fill up slowly after every turn.

CC’s magic system was also altered from the traditional RPGs. These magic spells in CC world are called “Elements”. These elements can be bought as well as it can be found in the dungeons. After you’ve retrieved the elements, you can equip it on to a character just like the materias. The unique factor in the system is that there are certain levels to the elements and to the character’s element grid. In order to successfully defeat the enemies using the elements, you need to understand the rules to these elements and the grid. You need to equip the elements in a desired grid, which meets their level. For example, if the element you have is at Level 3, then you need to put that element into your Level 3 grid. If placed it on a lower or higher grid, that specific element will be weakened or become more powerful. While being weakened will be crucial to the magic power, being upgraded won’t do much good, so it is important to place the right element in the right grid. Another factor which is important to the element system is the element colors. There are six different element colors and they are grouped. White and Black, Blue and Red, Green and Yellow. These element colors will be crucial to your success in the battle with the elements, since you can crank up the damage by casting elements which has the color that is opposite from the enemies’ Innate color. For example, you can cast White element on enemies who have Black Innate colors to inflict a maximum damage. Another way you can inflict more damage by using the Innate colors is to turn the elemental field which is located in the upper left corner on the battle screen into a certain color. For example, you can use Turn Blue element to turn the field into blue in order to inflict more damage when using the Blue elements. There is also the dual tech system, which acts like the limit breaks from the famous Final Fantasy series. Having certain characters who can combine their unique Innate Elements (unique limit breaks) together can pull off these techs. These basic techniques and knowledge are crucial in the battles that will occur later in the game.

In terms of a unique game play followed by the interactions between characters to the menu selection, CC features a whole new key items list section. The items in this section are needed to advance forward to the game, recruit characters for your party, and bypass obstacles in certain points of the game. It also gives player a unique realism that only CC can provide. Another great aspect of the game has to be with the amount of characters in CC. Topping off at 43 party members total in the game, each and every one of these characters have their own unique texts which makes the game more enjoyable while it expends the value of the title, along with enormously large amount of side quests.

All right, now that the game plays are taken care of, let’s get into CC’s superb sound department. One of the most important factors which make a game superior depends on its music. CC was not an exception to this rule. CC’s soundtracks are powerful, emotional, dramatic, and whatever else you can think of, all composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, the man behind the soundtracks of CT. Some die hard fans of CT will recognize some altered tunes from CT, which makes CC more “friendly” and gives somewhat of a “welcome back to the series” message. The sound effects are also beautiful, and done at the right situation. While the soundtrack is not perfect, it is definitely a fantastic aspect of the game.

With all these great aspects of the game, can there be anymore? Of course. CC also provides players a huge amount of eye candies. The environments are detailed and the colors are vibrant, giving players a more of a realistic and “earth” like feeling that are lively than the cold, future esque of which the recent FF titles provided. The character models are also well modeled and detailed, as well as the monsters and enemies that you need to face in the battle. The special effects are also stunning and fresh every time, since the colors provide more of a lively feeling than those of sharp yet dull feelings of FFs, which makes the game more enjoyable.

Chrono Cross can be only described as the god of RPGs. While it may not be perfect, there’s nothing that can be compared to it, not even the famed FF series. The gameplay’s fun, the battles are deep, the soundtracks are wonderful, the graphics are stunning, and the replay value goes through the roof. Squaresoft’s ultimate weapon has arrived and do not dare on missing the greatest RPG, no, one of the greatest games to ever grace on a console, because simply put, missing this title means on missing one of the greatest gaming experience of all time.