DS Review: Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger. Regarded as one of the best, if not the best, RPG on the SNES, some people calling it the best RPG ever. And not without reason, as this is truly a masterpiece. It’s no surprise that the DS remake was long awaited to fans of the series.

After 13 years (the original SNES version was released in 1995), does it still hold its own? And what about the extra content? Let’s check that out!

Story
Some people say RPGs are all about the story, and Chrono Trigger doesn’t disappoint. Basically, it’s just the cliche story of a bunch of kids out to save the world. But it’s a lot more than that in reality.
The story starts out with a kid, Crono McSilent-Protagonist, going to the Millenium Fair. In the fair, he bumps in a girl named Marle and starts hanging out with her(drinking, playing games, dancing, fighting giant cat robots… you know, normal fair stuff).  After a while, Lucca, a friend of Chrono’s, opens up her booth, displaying a badass teleporting machine. When Marle tries it out, instead of teleporting, she disappears through a weird portal. Crono, being silent and badass, goes to find her, and ends up in 400 years in the past. After saving Marle and going through various events, Crono and the gang find themselves in the future (2300 AD) and see that, in 1999 AD, the world was destroyed by an entity named Lavos and left humanity(or at least what is left of it) in despair. So being heroic and stuff they decide to stop the big bad monster named Lavos.

Afterwards Crono and various other characters from different time periods team up to go up against what some consider one of the better vilains in RPG history. There are multiple ways to end the game, with 13 endings in total (including 1 new ending), depending on when(story-wise) and how you decide to defeat Lavos.
Truly an epic story that spans the ages. There might be plot holes here and there, considering the story largely deals with Time Travel, but overall it’s really well done. 

Graphics
Well I’ll start by saying that the graphics have not changed since the SNES version. They look just as good. Featuring art by Akira Toriyama (Hey, is that Goku with red hair?), this game has some of the better graphics on the SNES to me. the sprites look great, the characters are very well animated, the bosses and monsters look great. It’s hard to find an RPG on the SNES that has such detailed and vibrant graphics. From the joyful world of 1000 AD to the grim ruins of 2300 AD, everything looks awesome and the atmosphere is really great. There’s not much bad I can say about this really.

Sound
The music is great. Nothing more to say. But I will. Each and every piece of music is great. The sad music, the happy music, the music at the fair, everything just fits. After playing I always find myself with one of the pieces of music stuck in my head the rest of the day. The soundtrack here is just magnificent.

Gameplay 
RPGs can have amazing stories and such, but without a fun battle system, no matter how badass the story is, the game itself will FAIL. Gladly tough, Chrono Trigger delivers fun gameplay so that the game stays interesting.

First, there are no random battles, which should make some people happy. You see the enemies on the screen before having to fight them. Some fights you can’t evade, but there are some you can just pass besides the enemy and not go through it.

The battle system itself is quite intuitive. You get no weird transitions before a battle. Your characters just move in position on the map itself and the enemies position themselves as well. from the the battles starts. This goes seamlessly from the map navigating to the battle and works really well. 
The fights themselves are fairly basic. You either attack, use techniques or use items. When your character is ready, you can either attack now or wait. If multiple characters are ready, you can decide which of them attacks or not so you can easily formulate battle plans. What’s interesting here is that some enemies have special effects when you use certain attacks on them, so just tapping A won’t lead you anywhere most of the time. In addition to normal attacks and techniques, you have attacks that combine the skills of multiple characters for more powerful attacks/healing. These are learned as characters learn 2 or 3 “combinable” techniques. To execute those, all characters who will use it must be “ready”. The animations for attacks are a bit simplistic, but it works.

As for the rest of the game, it’s really basic. Item management, buying/finding new equip to make your characters more powerful. After battles you earn experience and technique points. EXP levels up your characters (including your characters in reserve) and TP makes your active characters learn skills.

Overall the game plays really good. They nailed the battle system and everything else works awesome. 

New Stuff
DS controls
If you want to, everything can be controlled on the touch-screen. Quick access to different menu items, moving, choosing things in battle. Everything can be done with the touch screen. I find moving and fighting doesn’t really work well with the touch screen, but the menu shortcuts are nice, and battle information display on the second screen is really nice.

Dungeons: Lost Sanctum and Dimensional Vortex
There are 2 new dungeons in the game. The Lost Sanctum appears once the Black Omen comes out, and the Dimensional Vortex opens up when you complete the game.
The Lost Sanctum appears in 2 eras: 65 billion BC and 600 AD. Basically, it’s a bunch of fetch quests that give some good equipment. But it’s really tedious. you have to switch from the 65 billion BC and  the 600 AD Lost Sanctum for many of the quests, some require you to go through long and tedious maps to get stuff, and going back through them multiple times in the same quest. Overall it might end up being worth it, but it’s still really annoying.

The Dimensional Vortex is a series of 3 dungeons. Here you find some more new equipment, and after finishing all 3 dungeons you get to fight a new boss, which leads to a new ending! Yay, new stuff! It seems to give a bit of a link between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross from what I’ve read, but I didn’t play Cross so I wouldn’t know.

The one disappointing thing is that the enemies in the dungeons are pretty much just palette swaps. 

New Equipment
Not satisfied with  Crono’s 220 attack and 70% critical rate with the Rainbow weapon? Fear not, now he has access to a weapon with 240 attack and 90% critical rate.
All the characters have 2 new weapons (except for Frog >_>, and Ayla of course, whom I THINK has 1 new fist upgrade, but’m not 100% sure), and there’s a bunch of new accessories. Some are character specific, other are for everyone. If you somehow feel your characters weren’t overpowered enough before, there might be some way to make them even better now.

Anime scenes
This comes from the PS1 version of the game. Some scenes are shown in anime. Overall they are nicely animated, using a style similar to Akira Toriyama’s other work (AKA Dragon Ball). But I can’t help but feel that it’s useless to have those. They show the scene in anime form, and they show it AGAIN with the in-game animation. Why show both? Just one is fine.

Arena
This is a little feature that I actually didn’t play around with much. Here you train a monster and make it fight other monsters to make you win items and equipment for your characters. Fights are automatic, all you can do is send them items so they’ll use techs. Otherwise you can send them to train, choosing 1 monster-item and a time period for them to train in. Not incredibly deep from what I’ve seen, but I might be wrong. Fun little mode I guess, gets you some new equipment.

Overall
There’s really no question that Chrono Trigger is a great game, one of the best RPGs around. If you liked it on the SNES and want to revisit it, the new boss and ending might make it worth it. If you haven’t experienced this already, WTF are you waiting for? Go get it now, dammit! Let’s face it, the game is damn fun. Fans will love replaying it, and newcomers will most likely love it.
This is a great game, and still stands the test of time. Good graphics, great gameplay, amazing story, nothing short of a masterpiece.