Chrono Cross Review

Judged on its own terms it is remarkable. The element grid replaces experience with a stamina and colour system where every action costs and the field shifts toward whichever element was last used, so battles are short, tactical and never a grind, and levels arrive only from bosses. The two world structure lets you meet the version of a person who died in the other timeline, and a few of those encounters land hard.

Mitsuda's soundtrack is the best thing on the hardware, and the prerendered coastal art still looks astonishing. Judged as a sequel it is deliberately difficult. It treats the events of Chrono Trigger as backdrop, kills off that game's optimism in an epilogue and explains the connection in a long lore dump late on that many players never untangle. The forty five character roster is a width problem too, since only a handful get writing and the rest are stat blocks with accents. Divisive, uncompromising and unlike anything else in its genre.