While a lot of people praise Chrono Trigger (and right they are! Play it! It’s an often recommended game for a reason), its sequel Chrono Cross doesn’t get as much love. There are valid reasons for that in my opinion, but I want to argue that CC is still a strong and good game, but it needs to be looked at separated from its ancestor. They didn’t call it Crono Trigger 2, in order to separate it more from the first game, but people still expected a sequel to the characters they loved in the first game. And they didn’t get that. Spoiler for CC now:
While the game is obviously set in a different world than CT, there still is a connection to the first game.
spoiler
The 3 main characters from CT Chrono, Marle and Luca only appear in a short sequence in the late mid game of CC where they tell the player characters that the universe of the player characters is fucked and they live in a crapsack world. Nearly everything you did in the first game is wasted because of time shenanigans. So the players of the original game get a sucker punch to the stomach, while non-CT players are wondering why 3 ghost children are telling you the world is fucked. While the end fight was interesting in that the player finally learned what happened to Schala, it ultimately wasn’t a net positive.
That is the biggest problem in my opinion. By including this link to the original game they hindered CC of being its own thing and instead alienated fans of the first game and non players alike.
But Chrono Cross has its own strengths, which still create a good game in my opinion. First and foremost I would praise the world itself, set in a tropical archipelago, which was great to explore in combination with a wonderful soundtrack. The atmosphere is often nicely serene, but there is also humor and drama there during the story. I don’t know many other RPG games building a tropical world to explore. The story has some interesting twists in it and the parallel world setup means some interesting interactions between them. And while 42 playable characters is a bit overkill, I was surprised how well their language modification works to give nearly every character a characteristic speech tic.
So it should not be seen as a direct sequel, but rather as a story in an universe adjacent to the original one. To keep those stories separated makes both stronger in my mind.
I tried to like CC but…
No question the 3D graphics of the time are far worse than pixelart, but I actually liked the art direction. Personally I’m not really a fan of Akira Toriyamas style, although it is characteristic and easily recognizable.
Regarding the battle system I’m neutral. I liked the old system, but I also like that they tried something new. I appreciate the possibility to teach characters skills how you like. But it isn’t easily understandable for sure.