Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition

Here we enter a particularly difficult case to judge: is it worth playing Chrono Cross these days? Absolutely. Is this faulty port worth buying at its launch price? It depends. It's a shame the remaster turned out this way, but Chrono Cross is still a gem even after all these years.

An ambitious but often confusing game, further held back by an unsatisfying remaster serving neither old fans nor new adoptees adequately. [Issue#14, p.86]

Chrono Cross is a strange, wonderful game that was not afraid to take big risks. The port doesn’t exactly cover it in glory but considering the game has been languishing in purgatory for so long it’s nice that it sees the light of day at all. There is little here for people who aren’t already fans of the genre to recommend. But for JRPG fans this is a fascinating time capsule, especially for PAL gamers who didn’t get to experience it first time round.

I’m not sure what I thought I was going to get with Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. I thought I would be swept away in the story and taken on an adventure I wouldn’t forget. What I got was a game that feels like it is trapped in 1995. Some of that is good, solid combat, old-school CG cutscenes, excellent music. If you are new to Chrono Cross this edition is the one you want. It is beyond welcoming to new players. But there was too much holding the game back for me to make it a great game. A cast list so massive I felt bothered by it, and a story that is a bit bonkers was too much for me. Chrono Cross had to crawl so modern JRPGs could run, but it doesn’t fit in with JRPGs of today.

If you've never played Chrono Cross, you should, and there's little reason not to take advantage of the upgrades available in The Radical Dreamers Edition. If you already have access to the original edition, whether it's worth the double-dip comes down to how determined you are to play Radical Dreamers; I'd wager it isn't worth the price of admission. But regardless, however you do it, you should play Chrono Cross. It's just a shame this remaster isn't all it could have been.

It hasn’t aged particularly well, and there are serious technical issues with the remaster, but the sequel to Chrono Trigger is still one of the original PlayStation’s best Japanese role-players.

Playing Chrono Cross was both better and worse than I expected, and I’m glad to have a better understanding of what all the fuss has been about after all these years. I wouldn’t place it in the rare tier of games I’d recommend to positively anyone, but if you’re someone with a deep affinity for this genre, it’s a risk-taking riff on a classic that’s still got surprises to spare.

Considering that the Chrono franchise has a larger fanbase than the Mana and SaGa series do combined (at least in the West), I would have thought this would be the crowning jewel of Square’s efforts to bring its PS1 classics to modern platforms. Instead, it’s a very meh attempt that doesn’t even feel like a cash-in because of all the money it leaves on the table.

I had a lot of fun playing Chrono Cross again; the unique spin on turn-based combat, colourful locales, and dimension-hopping narrative was a joy to re-experience all these years later. However, through a critical eye, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition leaves a lot to be desired. Glaring issues with performance, improvements, and graphical inconsistencies take away from the truly great source material. This lack of care and attention to detail flies in the face of some of Square Enix’s other remaster works, and is a disappointing black-eye on what could have been a truly great remaster package of a still phenomenal classic JRPG.