I have a collection of older PS one rpg's and this is one of my favorites. It is really worth the time if you like the older games, which include leveling up and exploring dungeons, etc. Has a decent storyline and fun characters.

Even though this is a playstation 1 game, once you get past the graphics it's still very enjoyable. It plays similar to the Final Fantasy games which is understandable since it's by the same creator.

Chrono Cross is the type of game you go in wanting to like, but the more you play it, the more you find yourself thinking it's good (all those positive reviews surely aide this delusion) instead of actually believing that. And finally, if somehow you make it to the very end, you wonder what in the heck you just experienced. But an evil little bug inside lets you know that whatever it was you played through, it was a verrry prolonged waste of time.

We begin well, with a delightful presentation of cool looking characters and an organic environment, but the trouble sets in probably with the battles. Like all RPGs, there are too many of them (how can anyone bear these time-eating bores, title after title?) and like most RPGs the battle system is redundant and more than a little absurd. Chrono Trigger at least narrowed things down to a nearly accessible level, but here the battling is a guaranteed bore, with opposing color elements that alienates the character from the fighting.

So the battling is bad, granted, so what about the characters? Their presentation is good enough to fool us they have any color until of course we read their dialogue long enough and realize each one is a hack-job. This dialogue has to be read to be believed, especially that from a veritable blunder named Korcha, who the writers feel was appropriately fleshed out after they appended the letters 'CHA' (ex. Dont'CHA, joinedCHA) to the end of a given word in every other of his sentences. It continues like that, with small, inconsequential traits (even if it's only say an Aussie or a French accent) completely coating a character. MANY capital letters are used in dialogue, as this in their writers' mind will I suppose paint a character with passion. All in all, the dialogue honestly sounds as though the writer wrote a huge scenario for the game that was abruptly lost to him, so he started from scratch, compromising his characters for the deadline.

The story commits the opposite sin, over-complicating, stretching, and hopping around so much that before long we just wish we could start over and hear something more sane, and maybe an iota more concise. The story doesn't even seem to exist on the same plane as this game's terrain, as playing the game and learning more about the game's story seem disconnected in quality and range. We like to explore this world, take in its beautiful sights and sounds, wander outdoor lands always alive and fresh with movement. The story on the other hand is fixed and technical, more remote than any story I can think of. I would just love to ask the boneheads at IGN and others who appreciated this game so much to describe in-so-many-words, just what the heck this plot is about. And even if they could do it, which great Wikipedia can't, it wouldn't remove the overwhelming remoteness anyone must feel to it as they play. Words need a source, and the plot-relevent words of this game seem to emanate from a trench deep in the sea, or possibly nowhere at all.

So there's nothing to identify with, head to toe. Back to those locations then. I praised their presentation, their music and their color content, but how good can a place be without a good purpose? The only lingering location in this whole game for me (which is sad since there are so many from the first game I still nod with affection toward) is the Dead Sea, only accessed after a lot of heavy lifting and useless task-traveling. But this place is actually interesting, a forecast of doom suspended in motion and time, inhabited only by ghosts and machines, a fantastical mess of busted highways, ruined technology still gorgeous in an icy demise. Above it all the looming, spectral shopping mall. Just enough is shown of it to get us intrigued...and that's of course when it's destroyed by a great dragon.

The idea of having these six Elemental dragons in the game is a buffoonery I can't believe anyone would let pass. Why waste the time with six, when you can put one all powerful dragon in the game, and try to actually do something interesting with it? Why dragons at all, if only for a showy FMV or so, baffling us some more with truly odd fights and impenetrable intrigues? Why, oh why?

In the end, this is a game correctly displayed by its front cover: Silly, stupid, with only a superficial resemblance to Chrono Trigger.