“I have such mixed opinions about Chrono Cross. It did some wonderful things in its day, and if you had asked me back in 2000, I would have considered it one of my favorite games of all time. But I replayed the game when it came out on PSN, and it sunk in how much injustice this game did to the one that came before it, the much more celebrated Chrono Trigger.”
“The story (written primarily by Masato Kato) and the music (composed by Yasunori Mitsuda) still stand the test of time because these two appeared in the first game, but it was missing so many other key developers and artists that made the original great. This isn’t to be nit-picky, this is just to briefly state: I tell everyone I know to read the script for Chrono Cross while listening to its soundtrack, instead of actually play through the game.”
“Chrono Trigger tells the story of six or seven close-knit people as they fight to save the future. Chrono Cross, in contrast, is more concerned with plot, timelines, and other complexities as the player meets and creates a party from forty-eight playable characters. Does that number raise any red flags? It should. All but a handful are ultimately forgettable—which means that whole mechanic was a waste of time.”
“This, and so many other things about the game (including its battle system that did nothing to build upon the game to come before it, actually borrowing from Xenogears for the most part) just make it seem like Chrono Cross was a playground to test new ideas rather than improve old formulas.”
“There are a lot of developers I can trust to create a sequel that feels like an evolution over an experiment. Square-Enix is definitely not one of them, and there’s not enough room in Kyle’s article for me to articulate just how…afraid I am of letting Tetsuya Nomura be left alone with his pin collection again.”
———-
During the whole kerfuffle with that teaser site for The World Ends With You last week, everyone was expecting/hoping for a sequel to this beloved game. That’s not what Square gave us. While most of you are no doubt disappointed, I’m kind of relieved. Sure, the iOS port of the game is expensive as hell, though not quite as costly as Final Fantasy Dimensions. But I’d rather see a classic game that tied up its loose ends be ported to other consoles than getting a sequel that, under Square Enix’s care, will more than likely screw with the franchise.
In my mind, The World Ends With You ends here.
