<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I'm not exactly sure when the game got good, because, well, I finished it and I still didn't really find it overly enjoying. The end with all the techno stuff reminded me even more of the Breath of Fire games, also, revisiting area's over and over again, I didn't like that in Breath of Fire and I didn't like it there.
I liked the characters to a point but I found them to be too serious most of the time. I didn't like how you played nearly half the game as Lynx, and how Kidd was missing for a very long time, and I find it annoying that her hair wasn't blue like Schala's, and that when you finally met Schala that her hair was also blond. Also, Magus from Chrono Trigger didn't show up, maybe he's a playable character that I missed, I found that extremely dissapointing. Anyways, my final party was Serge, Kidd, and General Viper.
About Lucca, Crono, and Marle, I didn't like how Lucca and Marle were bland characters, completely unlike the orriginals, I loved those orriginal characters. And Schala, I found her fate after the Kingdom of Zeal, binding with Lavos, to be kind of strange, and the whole project Kidd thing, I don't know, I just didn't find it to be very interesting. I got the good ending of the game, using the Chrono Cross, and I didn't really like it. The biggest dissapointment of all was fighting Lavos, now they made one fatal error here, Lavos in Chrono Trigger was about 800 times larger than this, and you went inside and fought the core. I think this is probably just a case of bad translation, that the end boss of the game was actually meant to be a Lavos-Spawn which had captured Schala.
Music, now personally, I think it's generally overated, I only liked the outside World theme's and the opening theme's.
Graphics, now here is an area where I think I've been spoiled in, these graphics seam to be quite dated, there is a lot of very choppy slowdown throughout the game, happens about every five minutes, the loading between area's is annoying especially since normally you only spend a short time in each area.
Story, I thought it was pretty average, not as bad as Breath of Fire III, but not as good as Final Fantasy 8 or 9, I'd say it's on the level of Grandia II.
Characters, there were several interesting characters, but none of them compare to 'any' of the main characters of Chrono Trigger.
Locations, There were very few, first I'll just say that I disliked the Dungeons, they were either way too short, or they were way too repetetive. This is an important aspect of RPG's for me, even Breath of Fire 3 had more interesting Dungeons, both games were very repetive, especially since you had to visit Dungeons multiple times. Viper Mansion was fun. All of the towns seamed relatively lifeless, I can't really explain, but I had a similar feeling about the towns in Secret of Evermore (even though the rest of the game I thouroughly enjoyed).
Gameplay, now I didn't really enjoy this aspect of the game at all, after about 10 hours and through to the end, the game seamed more like a chore than gameplay.
1) The movement was too slow, the characters move at a snails pace, and I didn't really like that.
2) Battle system was too complex, not that it was at all hard to master, it just seamed like they just added a whole bunch of uneeded stuff.
3) The encounter system was useless, why even have enemies running around if you don't even have to fight them? It just made things frustrating, especially since each battle was long, many battles could drag out several minutes. I think the best non-random encounter system is Earthbounds (where you automatically beat certain enemies when you're a certain level, and enemies will run away from you when you beat the final boss or are a certain level).
The orriginal Chrono Trigger's battle system just ran so much more smoothly, and moving through towns, dungeons, and other buildings was quick and painless.
Also, it was as much a pain in Chrono Cross to equip on all of the elements each time you changed characters as it was to equip on Elements in the FF8 junction system. So basically, the gameplay is plagued by almost all the same problems as Final Fantasy 8.
One last thing, I didn't like how they made the game attempt to parallel the real world in so many ways (Humans evolving 3 million years ago, all the genetics stuff, etc...) when the orriginal Chrono Trigger plot was more light hearted, Humans were around 65 million years ago, floating Continents, A Robot planting a forest which spanned half the worlds landmass. The game authors obviously didn't take the plot seriously, rather, they focussed on the actual events and characters than on the details. Chrono Trigger was more like an Enix game than a Squaresoft game, Chrono Cross is truely a Squaresoft game, one that seamed to be rushed by 10 months to over a year as well.
Overall, I would say that this game is below Grandia II and Final Fantasy 8 (It does not exceed these two games in any points, but lacks in a lot of points where these games are great), but above Breath of Fire III (The plot is generally better, not by a good deal, and the ending is more satisfying, though not by much, both of them are fairly similar). I was really expecting a game that felt more like Skies of Arcadia and Chrono Trigger, I got something that more or less reminded me of a Breath of Fire game made by the Final Fantasy 8 team on a lower budget. Although I know some people enjoyed it a lot, I guess it's just not my mug of beer.</div>
I liked the characters to a point but I found them to be too serious most of the time. I didn't like how you played nearly half the game as Lynx, and how Kidd was missing for a very long time, and I find it annoying that her hair wasn't blue like Schala's, and that when you finally met Schala that her hair was also blond. Also, Magus from Chrono Trigger didn't show up, maybe he's a playable character that I missed, I found that extremely dissapointing. Anyways, my final party was Serge, Kidd, and General Viper.
About Lucca, Crono, and Marle, I didn't like how Lucca and Marle were bland characters, completely unlike the orriginals, I loved those orriginal characters. And Schala, I found her fate after the Kingdom of Zeal, binding with Lavos, to be kind of strange, and the whole project Kidd thing, I don't know, I just didn't find it to be very interesting. I got the good ending of the game, using the Chrono Cross, and I didn't really like it. The biggest dissapointment of all was fighting Lavos, now they made one fatal error here, Lavos in Chrono Trigger was about 800 times larger than this, and you went inside and fought the core. I think this is probably just a case of bad translation, that the end boss of the game was actually meant to be a Lavos-Spawn which had captured Schala.
Music, now personally, I think it's generally overated, I only liked the outside World theme's and the opening theme's.
Graphics, now here is an area where I think I've been spoiled in, these graphics seam to be quite dated, there is a lot of very choppy slowdown throughout the game, happens about every five minutes, the loading between area's is annoying especially since normally you only spend a short time in each area.
Story, I thought it was pretty average, not as bad as Breath of Fire III, but not as good as Final Fantasy 8 or 9, I'd say it's on the level of Grandia II.
Characters, there were several interesting characters, but none of them compare to 'any' of the main characters of Chrono Trigger.
Locations, There were very few, first I'll just say that I disliked the Dungeons, they were either way too short, or they were way too repetetive. This is an important aspect of RPG's for me, even Breath of Fire 3 had more interesting Dungeons, both games were very repetive, especially since you had to visit Dungeons multiple times. Viper Mansion was fun. All of the towns seamed relatively lifeless, I can't really explain, but I had a similar feeling about the towns in Secret of Evermore (even though the rest of the game I thouroughly enjoyed).
Gameplay, now I didn't really enjoy this aspect of the game at all, after about 10 hours and through to the end, the game seamed more like a chore than gameplay.
1) The movement was too slow, the characters move at a snails pace, and I didn't really like that.
2) Battle system was too complex, not that it was at all hard to master, it just seamed like they just added a whole bunch of uneeded stuff.
3) The encounter system was useless, why even have enemies running around if you don't even have to fight them? It just made things frustrating, especially since each battle was long, many battles could drag out several minutes. I think the best non-random encounter system is Earthbounds (where you automatically beat certain enemies when you're a certain level, and enemies will run away from you when you beat the final boss or are a certain level).
The orriginal Chrono Trigger's battle system just ran so much more smoothly, and moving through towns, dungeons, and other buildings was quick and painless.
Also, it was as much a pain in Chrono Cross to equip on all of the elements each time you changed characters as it was to equip on Elements in the FF8 junction system. So basically, the gameplay is plagued by almost all the same problems as Final Fantasy 8.
One last thing, I didn't like how they made the game attempt to parallel the real world in so many ways (Humans evolving 3 million years ago, all the genetics stuff, etc...) when the orriginal Chrono Trigger plot was more light hearted, Humans were around 65 million years ago, floating Continents, A Robot planting a forest which spanned half the worlds landmass. The game authors obviously didn't take the plot seriously, rather, they focussed on the actual events and characters than on the details. Chrono Trigger was more like an Enix game than a Squaresoft game, Chrono Cross is truely a Squaresoft game, one that seamed to be rushed by 10 months to over a year as well.
Overall, I would say that this game is below Grandia II and Final Fantasy 8 (It does not exceed these two games in any points, but lacks in a lot of points where these games are great), but above Breath of Fire III (The plot is generally better, not by a good deal, and the ending is more satisfying, though not by much, both of them are fairly similar). I was really expecting a game that felt more like Skies of Arcadia and Chrono Trigger, I got something that more or less reminded me of a Breath of Fire game made by the Final Fantasy 8 team on a lower budget. Although I know some people enjoyed it a lot, I guess it's just not my mug of beer.</div>
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