As a consequence of this narrative scope, despite being of relatively few words, Chrono Cross leaves the impression of a true epic. Linear narrative wouldn’t have worked here. After all, if we’re examining the impact that an individual can have on existence, then the outcomes can’t be universally the same based on the decisions that the individual makes. This is all woven beautifully into the game (to the point that I wasn’t even sure that I was making decisions that would affect my eventual party at times), and suits the thematic core of the game. Some are obvious and others are not, but the route you take through can substantially affect the party make-up, and therefore the stories that you get to see that time around. There are many branching paths through Chrono Cross. You won’t get all the characters from any single playthrough, however. Of course, the size of the roster does mean that, outside of Serge, you don’t get to know the characters quite as well as you would in a Final Fantasy game, but there’s enough there that the plight of each character does feel like a meaningful individual with a core role to play in the overall tapestry. Most game developers struggle when trying to handle five characters, let alone nearly fifty. At first, I was a little concerned that the massive roster – 45 playable characters in the end – would mean that some of the characters were short-changed and used in the game as utility, rather than given real arcs. It’s also very character-driven, with an eclectic and absolutely wonderful cast, of which there are almost no duds. At other times it knows how to be evocative, even romantic, and with every step of the journey, it never forgets to be compelling. One side quest involves you travelling the world to pick up the bones of a talking skull that has somehow been lost all over the place. It is frequently funny right through to the surreal. However, Chrono Cross is not a game that’s trapped in its own head, either. Right from the start the game is basically asking “is the existence of the self – any self – a net good in the cosmic order? Is there value in life at all?” and it does predictably wander down some dark philosophical roads in asking players that, much like the Final Fantasy series itself does. ![]() It raises questions about what is a person’s identity, how is that projected into the world, and what impact it has if that identity no longer exists. It’s the question of the self and its relationship (and impact on) reality, the environment, or simply those around that individual. This game is particularly concerned with the question of self, the impact of the self on the world and the relationship dynamic between the two. It’s handled with the relative brevity of narrative and cut scenes from that era (what would take a half-hour cut scene today would be handled with two lines of dialogue back in the day), but if you’re paying attention and then start reading the works of Sartre and Camus, you’ll see the existentialist pondering that goes on within Chrono Cross. In typical Square style, there’s plenty of complexity within the narrative, which uses the dual “alive but also dead” status of the hero to examine the very nature of existence. So Serge needs to pop over to the other world so he can slay a hydra and rescue his friend.įrom there you’ll go back and forth between worlds, solving problems and observing just how different things can be were time to split at the point of a major event, with two separate outcomes according to each timeline. The problem is that on that world there are no hydrae left – they’ve been hunted to extinction. The first major application of this comes after the first major boss battle, when one character is infected with a deadly toxin that only some part of a hydra (I actually forget which part… blood, perhaps) can counter. The nature of the butterfly effect being what it is, the two worlds have spiralled in very different directions over the time where Serge was dead in one world but not the other. Once he gets over that shock and starts to wonder why he’s on an entirely different version of his planet, he also discovers he has the ability to travel between both the universe where he still exists and the universe in which he doesn’t. You play as Serge, who is very much alive in one world, but is drawn into an alternative universe where some kind of disaster had instead killed him. The core theme of this one is that of parallel worlds. So, if you’re like me and have never played it before, congratulations! It is the year 2022, and now you get to play one of the greatest JRPGs of all time.Ĭhrono Cross is set in the same world as Chrono Trigger, though if you haven’t played that seminal classic (what the hell?!?), you will be able to play this without an issue, as the stories are effectively independent of one another. ![]() This is the first time that Australians have been able to (legitimately) play Chrono Cross.
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