Chrono Trigger

Game: Chrono Trigger
Company: Square
Type: Traditional RPG
Platform: Super Nintendo, Sony Playstation
Normal Characters: 6
Optional Characters: 1
Favorite Character: Magus/Frog/Ayla
Most Powerful Character: Ayla (Physical), Magus (magic)

I first saw Chrono Trigger at my friend’s house. She played a bit of it for me and I instantly fell in love with it. The plot looked excellent and most of the characters were awesome. Finally, I received the playstation version of the game and I didn’t put it down until I beat it (which only took a couple days). I loved the game, but it had some major flaws.

It starts off where you control the main character, Chrono, as he goes to the millennial fair in 1000 A.D. He meets up with a girl, Marle, who asks him to escort her around the fair. He agrees, and they walk around together, meeting up with Chrono’s childhood friend, Lucca, a scientist and total nerd. She promptly asks Chrono and Marle to try out her new invention, the telepod, but something goes wrong, and Marle disappears in the telepod. Chrono agrees to go after her, and he ends up in 600 A.D. He and Lucca meet up with a humanoid frog named… Frog. (Wow, creative name, huh?) He’s a swordsman and he talks with an old English accent. Finally, the three of them rescue Marle, so Chrono, Lucca, and Marle travel back to 1000 A.D. They travel to more times meeting Robo, a farily annoying robot from the future, and Ayla, the primitive screwhead.

Graphics: 8/10
At the time, the graphics for Chrono Trigger were excellent. Even though they were mere SNES sprites, they still had emotions (even though it looked rather funny when their facial expression changed). When it was released for the Playstation along with Final Fantasy IV in Final Fantasy Chronicles, the FMVs were very good, yet they looked exactly like Dragon Ball GT.

Music: 9/10
After I beat Chrono Trigger, I looked everywhere for the soundtrack. Finally, I got it, and I listened to it all the time. Though it may be simple 16-bit music, I loved it. The character themes were excellent and represented them completely. Also, as this game involves time traveling, the music for each time period matched perfectly. The music in 65,000,000 B.C. was a lot of simple drums and other simple percussion, and very simple instruments to produce the melody. The music in 600 A.D. was moderately medieval sounding, as they used a lot of strings in their music. In 2,300 A.D., the music was very techno and used a lot of synthesizer-type instruments. Other time periods like 1,000 A.D. and 12,000 B.C. had “normal” mususic.

Characters: 8/10
Once again, I love character development. This game was fairly good in that department, as I loved and hated some characters. I hated the character, Marle. She was this annoying and spoiled princess who tried to become a rebel but failed. The bad-ass, Magus, was developed very nicely and had the most interesting past. I felt much compassion for Frog, as he was also developed very nicely. I loved Ayla, as she was the comic relief. She was very much like Quina from Final Fantasy IX. The only thing I didn’t like is that the main character, Chrono, never talked. If he did talk, he would probably be on my top ten list of favorite video game characters (since when do I have a list?). The characters weren’t outstanding, but I loved most of them.

Story: 8/10
I loved the story. When you think you’ve defeated the main villain, there’s really another villain who’s even bigger. It’s as complex as an SNES RPG can be. With time traveling, the story gets even better. But the only thing is, the main villain, Lavos, could have been a little better personality-wise. All it was, was just this big thing that fell from the sky and sucks the life out of planets to live. I’m sorry, but Square could have developed a little more on the main villain!

Gameplay: 9/10
I enjoyed the unique style of gameplay. Instead of the job classes, there was the technique and element system. Each character (except for Ayla and Robo) had a specific element assigned to them. For example, Chrono was lightning, so he could cast mostly lightning spells. And each character had eight techniques, which were spells. There were also double techs and triple techs. Double techs were when two people of the same party would each cast one tech at the same time and they would combine to make an even bigger tech. For example, Lucca would cast fire and Marle would cast water to produce antipode. And triple techs were… you guessed it, three people casting a tech at once. For example, Magus would cast dark matter, Lucca would cast fire 2, and Marle would cast water 2 to produce dark eternal. I also enjoyed the fact that you could travel through time… it made the gameplay a lot more fun.

Overall rating: 8/10.
Chrono Trigger is a very good RPG, but it’s rather short and easy. I would recommend this game to any RPG fan or any kind of gamer. You may not like it, as it is very short, but you have to remember that most SNES RPGs aren’t that long.

Janna Highwind's Reviews
Chrono Trigger Reviews


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