If you ever owned a Super Nintendo or are even remotely familiar with 16 bit RPGs then there is a good chance that you have heard of Chrono Trigger. The 1995 brainchild of four RPG dreammakers, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yuji Horii, Akira Toriyama and Yasunori Mitsuda. Chrono Trigger amazed players with sharp graphics, colorful characters, fresh gameplay, an ambitious storyline and memorable music, and it was just a matter of time that the sequel to Chrono Trigger became reality, enter Chrono Cross.

Like many feared, the entire Chrono Trigger development team did not return as a whole, most notably missing is the character designer from CT, Akira Toriyama of Dragonball fame and the planner from CT, Yuji Horii. Both are currently working on Dragon Quest VII for Enix in Japan. Yasunori Mitsuda returns to compose the music for Chrono Cross and the main story planner for Xenogears (I cannot remember his name) was in charge of the plot, which was good news in my opinion. This might come as a surprise to some people but the absence of Toriyama and Horii did not hurt Chrono Cross one bit and Chrono Cross turned out to be an impressive and somewhat memorable RPG despite its flaws. Now onto the main part of the review.

The main character of Chrono Cross is Serge, a blue haired kid who lives in the small ocean town of Aruni with his mother (sound familiar?). One day while on the beach with his childhood sweetheart Lena, Serge suddenly hears voices in his head calling his name "Serge..........Serge......" followed by a string of strange flashbacks involving a Yamenko (jungle cat), then out of nowhere a giant tidal wave rushes towards him and a split second before the tidal wave hits Serge seems to vanish into thin air. Serge wakes up in the same place, only something feels different, something feels wrong.

Chrono Cross features a surprisingly complex and somewhat confusing plot (especially if you can't read Japanese). What else should you expect from the team behind Xenogears? You will be surprised how this game ties into Chrono Trigger and you'll come across some familiar areas from CT as well. The story of Chrono Cross features many branching points for your character to take which means that certain characters and events can only be obtained by taking a specific route. Chrono Cross also has multiple endings just like Chrono Trigger, but sadly all of the endings in Chrono Cross are short, unrewarding and feel rushed, and it actually brings my final score down a few points so you can tell I was pretty disappointed.

Chrono Cross features 40+ playable characters ranging from those who have a decent development (Serge, Kidd, Glenn, Karsh, Ridel etc.) to the characters who are just damn cool (Gyradun, Steena, Ishito, Miki etc.) to the characters who aren't worth life (Lucky Dan, Snef the Chef, Poshul etc.). The one true thing that Chrono Trigger lacked was character depth and while Chrono Cross may not have the best character development in the world it definitely has more than Chrono Trigger.

The graphics in Chrono Cross are to put it simply, amazing! Chrono Cross pushes the PSX hardware to the limit and even outdoes the graphics seen in Final Fantasy VIII. The CG in CC is pure perfection, the only thing that could have made it better would have been voiceovers, Squaresoft has never been a big fan of voice-overs so I guess I'll be wishing for a long time for that to happen.

The battles are fully 3D and feature some of the most detailed characters that you will ever see in a PSX game. It's hard to still believe that you're playing PSX with some of the effects used in this game; the lighting effects are amazing and the blurring effects (you will know it when you see it) kick ass. The towns are static renderings ala FF8 and they don't beat the fully rotational town, but considering the hardware it's on it just couldn't be done without diminishing the graphic quality. The overworld map stays true to the Chrono Trigger style only this time it's beautifully drawn and rendered. Chrono Trigger was a graphical achievement for 16 bit RPGs so it only seems right that Chrono Cross is a graphical masterpiece for 32 bit RPGs.

The gameplay has changed quite a bit from Chrono Trigger. The battles are more like Xenogears but don't let that scare you, the battle system is much more polished and faster paced. You get a maximum of 7 stamina points and 3 levels to attack with, weak (1), medium (2) strong (3). It is more likely that you would land a weak hit before a strong one and the more hits you get the higher accuracy you get. I know it sounds confusing but it's really not complicated at all. There is also no more MP. CC uses an element grid that allows you to place certain elements at certain levels for usage. For example, an element on a level 4 grid can only be accessed by having 4 or more points of magic stamina that you gain from weapon attacks (sounds confusing?). There are also combination attacks in CC but they're not as easy to find as those in Chrono Trigger. I have found Serge/Glenn's combo and Ishito/Gyradun's combo. Chrono Cross had easy to average difficulty throughout the entire game with a couple "god" bosses thrown in that will have you punching the walls. All in all it is about as hard as Chrono Trigger.

Chrono Cross is MUCH longer than CT, in fact CC is one of the longest RPGs I have ever played, coming it at 55 hours (I also did all of the sidequests). BTW there is a NewGame+, thank god.

Yasunori Mitsuda has made a name for himself with his Chrono Trigger and Xenogears soundtracks and his Chrono Cross ST lives up to the tradition, though not without its faults. The instrumentation quality of CCs soundtrack is great and has that polished "non midi" feel to it. The overworld and character themes in Chrono Cross are amazing and are some of Mitsuda's best work ever. The battle theme is where this soundtrack falters. It is horrendous and becomes more and more annoying each time you hear it. And, though the boss theme is fast paced and full of bass, it suffers from repetitiveness. The one battle theme that really stands out in Chrono Cross is the battle atop the Star Tower, which sounds like it came straight out of the Xenogears soundtrack complete with Latin chanting. The one huge downfall about the Chrono Cross ST is that there is no final battle theme, none at all. Is CC's ST good? Yes. Is it as good as Chrono Trigger or Xenogears ST? No.

Overall, Chrono Cross is a worthy follow-up to Chrono Trigger and is one of Squaresoft's finer titles. However, if you're expecting a flawless experience then you will be somewhat disappointed.