Support NeoGAF

[Aesius]

Got it Christmas 1995 along with a PlayStation and my family's first desktop computer (gift from my grandmother).

Christmas morning, I was freaking out over Chrono Trigger, my brother was freaking out over the PlayStation, and my parents were freaking out over the computer.

Imagine that scene. I'm 9 years old running back and forth between my room with Chrono Trigger, my brother's room with the PlayStation, and the kitchen (yes, we were THAT family) with the brand-new PC.

I think that might still be the greatest day of my life. Sorry, wedding day and birth of both of my children!

 

[Kacho]

Got this for Christmas in 1995 with Donkey Kong Country 2. Then we had a massive blizzard which kept us out of school for weeks. I poop socked the shit out of both games. Some of my most cherished memories.

 

[ReyBrujo]

Bought it back in 1995 shortly after release, I remember I paid USD 105 (down in Argentina games were somewhat rare to get and prices were up, you couldn't just preorder something). To put it in perspective, Mortal Kombat 2 was about USD 130, Final Fantasy VI was USD 90 and Secret of Evermore was USD 95. The game was a masterpiece from beginning to end, in fact I still have a hard time choosing between Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger (I usually prefer the former because of the larger scope and because I'm more of a traditionalist but it's a really close one). It was amazing discovering the different endings without internet nor magazines, the one where you get to talk with the programmers of the game was quite a shock, never seen something like that. And the feeling when you go start the game and see the "New Game+" there, thinking "What is that thing?" and discovering you could start anew with your same old character with his experience and items, I still get goosebumps thinking about that moment.

Nostalgia has a role but it's a very good game. You have to understand it was one of the first games to pioneer many things taken for granted today. 1) Multiple endings 2) New game+ 3) Battles without a screen transition. It also has a S tier OST, and it's secret weapon is correct pacing. It's a JRPG that's actually only about 30 hours, without filler, something that almost doesn't exist.

Don't forget the magic combination system, there were games that had similar stuff before but none the level of the dual and triple techs. As for the pacing, you didn't need to grind. The pace was perfect, you had only enough enemies on screen to beat and level up to reach the bosses at a level which would make them challenging but not impossible. You never felt you had to sit down and grind tyranosaurs or brachosaurs as in Final Fantasy VI (which wasn't an issue for me but could have been for others).

- Seiken Densetsu 3, this is one is super underrated because it never released outside of Japan back in the day. It's now playable on modern hardware as Trials of Mana in the Collection of Mana. There's a remake too but I think the original game as included in the Collection of Mana is better. Good characters, great

I played on emulator decades ago and I liked it, then played it again last year while completing Collection of Mana for Switch and man, I found it extremely sluggish and boring. Not sure if it was a perfect port or if it had some issues but while the graphics were nice navigating the different menus was horrible, it could take 10 seconds to reach the equipment menu. Secret of Mana felt much, much more responsive, it was a real action RPG where things happened while you were choosing spells whereas Seiken Densetsu 3 froze every time you chose an item or spell. The experience was horrible. However I was extremely satisfied with Final Fantasy Adventure, considering the GameBoy limitations it was an amazing game with multiple spells and weapons and a nice number of bosses.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Played it last year on PC and it had ultrawide

GOAT

 

[Arsic]

Is it just nostalgia, or is this game truly that good?

So many people talk about it, there has to be something special about it. I need to give it a chance sometime

Not nostalgia. It’s a great game even by today’s standards. I’m playing it now and it shits on most things released in the last 30 years.

 

[Chuck Berry]

What a terrible lazy fucking OP for one of the greatest games of all time

Christ

 

[Gamerfan81]

 

[Chuck Berry]

Dude is talented but that cover sucks. There's way too much going on.

Some songs are just not meant to be fucked with.

 

[Azelover]

It was unbelievable at the time. Still great..

 

[Wonko_C]

Kato: No storm lasts forever. Even eternity must come to an end. I think.

As a teenager, this quote from the game gave me existential crisis and depression. It took time for me to recover and I never got near that game again. It turned me into a nihilist and misanthrope. But my fear of death and the nothingess that follows it kept me from taking my own life back then. Nowadays I dig that stuff like Nier Automata. LOL.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

- Seiken Densetsu 3, this is one is super underrated because it never released outside of Japan back in the day. It's now playable on modern hardware as Trials of Mana in the Collection of Mana. There's a remake too but I think the original game as included in the Collection of Mana is better. Good characters, great music.

I'm so mad that Collection of Mana didn't come to PlayStation. I'm sure it's because some of those titles were funded by Nintendo under Brownie Brown/1-Up.

I would have really liked if they included the original version with the remake as consolation at least. I played the demo for Trials of Mana and was less than impressed.

It's crazy how little resources Square has put behind Seiken Densetsu and Star Ocean compared to Nintendo with Zelda.

 

[diffusionx]

It's been a long time since I played CT - the DS port - but this is probably the best game ever. It's not just a great Japanese RPG with a great story, peak 16-bit art, peak 16-bit music, but so innovative and pioneered New Game+. I should play it again.

 

[Aesius]

As a teenager, this quote from the game gave me existential crisis and depression. It took time for me to recover and I never got near that game again. It turned me into a nihilist and misanthrope. But my fear of death and the nothingess that follows it kept me from taking my own life back then. Nowadays I dig that stuff like Nier Automata. LOL.

I remember thinking about death in an abstract way for the first time as a kid upon reading this:

It's especially impactful because you, the player, turn him off.

 

[StereoVsn]

It's a masterpiece.

Yep, it’s an amazing game and still slaps 30 years later. One of my favorite games of all time.

 

[Naked Lunch]

As good as videogames can get.
One of the greats...

 

[Chronos24]

If there was ever a game I would love to get a remake like Secret of Mama or the Octopath route it's this one. Chrono Trigger is my favorite of all time.

 

[Deerock71]

Fugg. I was old enough to drink when it came out legally, so I doubt I was paying much attention at the time.

 

[Idleyes]

I'm an old man now, but if my memory serves me right, I picked this one up simply because it was the only thing available between Final Fantasy releases, then turned out to be way better than I expected.

 

[Sentenza]

Is it just nostalgia, or is this game truly that good?

So many people talk about it, there has to be something special about it. I need to give it a chance sometime

Highly subjective.
Personally, I'm not that much in love with it as the rest of the world seems to be.
I played it, I finished it (including a few alternative endings) I KINDA enjoyed it, but by the end I was done with it and not once in my life I found myself wishing to have more of it.

It's a competent JRPG, but it's still a very typical JRPG in every way, with all the shortcomings I typically associate to the genre (tons of timesinks, tons of repeated combats that resemble each other way too much, etc).
Admittedly I played it too long ago to have specific memories about stuff like its difficulty (or lack of it).

Story and characters are "amazing" in the same way a 12 years old would find amazing reading his first manga or watching his first anime of competent quality.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Story and characters are "amazing" in the same way a 12 years old would find amazing reading his first manga or watching his first anime of competent quality.

The magic of Chrono Trigger is how it manages to distill the fundamentals of a good story.

It doesn’t rely on overlong, overcomplicated pseudo-philosophical tripe mixed with a mishmash of religious references like too many RPGs (not only the Japanese type) just love to do. There is no poignant introduction - things just happen. There is no training, no schools, no armies, no wars, no besieged kingdoms, no chosen ones, no malignant deities. The characters are believable and relatable.

Yes, in a nutshell, it’s very much a cartoon story with cartoon characters. But it’s very unusually well told for its medium and its genre. It’s never preachy, never cheap, never self-important. Just think about how the game deals with the scene where you can amend Lucca’s past. It doesn’t dwell on it after its conclusion like just every Final Fantasy game under the sun would. It’s a very rare thing in gaming, and in storytelling at large.

Unfortunately the genre never learned much from CT. Just a couple of years later, FFVII and Evangelion rocked the world of Japanese pop culture and established tropes that became the norm for JRPGs, and mostly for the worse. From outlandish character designs to exceedingly long exposition and ridiculously convoluted bs that amounts to pretty much nothing at all, the genre has been infested with it ever since. Chrono Trigger remains special because it managed to do so much with so little.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Highly subjective.
Personally, I'm not that much in love with it as the rest of the world seems to be.
I played it, I finished it (including a few alternative endings) I KINDA enjoyed it, but by the end I was done with it and not once in my life I found myself wishing to have more of it.

It's a competent JRPG, but it's still a very typical JRPG in every way, with all the shortcomings I typically associate to the genre (tons of timesinks, tons of repeated combats that resemble each other way too much, etc).
Admittedly I played it too long ago to have specific memories about stuff like its difficulty (or lack of it).

Story and characters are "amazing" in the same way a 12 years old would find amazing reading his first manga or watching his first anime of competent quality.

I know everyone has an opinion that is different but this is on a whole different Level lol

 

[Jinzo Prime]

Dude is talented but that cover sucks. There's way too much going on.

Some songs are just not meant to be fucked with.

I've been listening to video game covers and remixes for a very long time, and Chrono Trigger seems to be the hardest game ever to cover. And PPF is actually really talented:



...but most struggle with Chrono Trigger in particular.

 

[swaffles23]

Dude is talented but that cover sucks. There's way too much going on.

Some songs are just not meant to be fucked with.

Corridor of Time is one of the best pieces of music in any video game.

 

[Juja]

I'm going to shamelessly plug a video of my friends and I playing the title theme for Chrono Trigger live. It's my favorite song from my favorite game ever. It was a fantasy of mine to actually play this live to an audience, and I finally got to do it (like 7+ years ago, but still!). We also did 600 A.D. Live, but I don't have footage of that one.

 

[Chuck Berry]

Tim Rogers’ review SO GOOD

chrono trigger (****) | action button dot net

www.actionbutton.net

…There’s a virtuoso sequence here, involving a court trial and imprisonment of the main character. The game has ingeniously recorded the actions of the player at the fair, where you had an opportunity to steal and eat a man’s lunch or even make a kid cry. If you were nice, you can find a girl’s missing cat and score positive points with the jury. How well you do doesn’t matter in the end, though — you’re gonna get jailed.

In a breathtaking use of fast zooms and side-angle shots, with an amazing swell of music, Chrono Trigger impresses the player with a feeling of dread: the main character is being led across a bridge, under an ominous moon, hands and legs shackled, by an evil man. Here, all of the tools of the “Japanese RPG” developer’s idea kit are being used simultaneously, transforming the game at once to the 1990s videogame equivalent of “Gone with the Wind”.

The crucial pieces are all in place, both physically and emotionally — and though the player might have just endured the more subdued colors of an older world, and a boss battle in a possessed church, the terror of being wrongly accused and imprisoned, awaiting the death penalty, in one’s own time period really hammers something home.

 

[bigdad2007]

It is fitting that instead of a big announcement on the 30 anniversary, Square tells us “stay turned for projects later in the year”.

It is par for the course. It’s criminal how they have treated one of the best games to come out of their golden age.

 

[cortadew]

Possibly best game of all time, but I haven’t played every game to make that determination.


No, it does not need a remake. The game is perfect as is.

Better than Disco Elysium?

 

[kunonabi]

This is the staple for me. I can't stop comparing other JRPGS to Chrono Trigger.

Can anyone recommend other JRPGS (16 to 32bit) that are as good or surpass the quality of Chrono Trigger? I'm talking about addicting and fun battle system, unique characters and unforgettable music.

So far I only beat Super Mario RPG which was a masterpiece and currently playing Earthbound. Not a fan of it's battle system at all but the quirky characters and World is keeping my attention.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for the original Playstation is pretty much the greatest JRPG ever made.

 

[Raven117]

Square was in a golden era that is arguably the best run of any video game company when Chrono Trigger came out. They couldn’t miss across multiple genres.

(Maybe Nintendo being the only one longer)

 

[Raven117]

Better than Disco Elysium?

In my mind,absolutely.

But I played CT when I was like 12 years old…one of the best games ever made at the best age for video games. It mainlined into my brain.

One could say, the reason I still pick up a controller at all is to try and get that feeling of playing CT at 12 years old.

It was magic

 

[alf717]

Wow 30 years. Chrono Trigger is one of the best role playing games I have ever played. My brother and I got it Christmas day and we both completed the game. The replay value is through the roof, we hunted down all the different endings.

 

[bender]

Tim Rogers’ review SO GOOD

chrono trigger (****) | action button dot net

www.actionbutton.net

What's Tim Rogers up to these days?

 

[WhiteWaterM00se]

Chrono is Still quite arguably on the Mount Rushmore of gaming.

Still, even more amazing thing to me was how in my mind and my friends mind, the SNES lifespan was divided into two parts.

The second half of the SNES life’s —(1994 and after) with Super Metroid, FFIII, DKC, Super Mario RPG, Super Punchout, X-men Mutant Apocalypse, Chrono Trigger, Ogre Battle, NBA JAM TE, SSFII, Kirby’s Dream Land 3, MK 3, EA Sports 95-96 sport game lineup.

This was imo, when Nintendo started to pull away from Sega. Up until that point, it was always neck and neck in my mind. Chrono was one of the most important games of this era, even late in SNES life.

 

[The Lunch Legend]

Arguably, Chrono Trigger is Mitsuda's finest hour.

One of the most thematically brilliant OST's in gaming history.

 

[DelireMan7]

The goat. If theres any game that deserves a remake, this is number one in the list for me. This game is a legend , an OG. Best Rpg element and great story and excellent design and music.

For me this is THE game that doesn't need a remake. Just a release on modern platform would be perfect.

This game is timeless. The pixel art graphics, the story, combat, pacing etc... everything is still perfect even for today standards.

Playing Chained Echoes at the moment in the wait of Clair Obscur : Expedition 33 but I might do a Chrono Trigger run in between.

 

[Oberstein]

For me this is THE game that doesn't need a remake. Just a release on modern platform would be perfect.

Yep. For Chrono Trigger, they don't even need to do HD-2D, just refine the sprites like they did with FF Pixel Remaster.

 

[Sentenza]

I know everyone has an opinion that is different but this is on a whole different Level lol

Yeah... If you are trying to guilt tripping me about not masturbating daily over the game you are out of luck.

What can I say. Maybe being already an adult when I played it for the first time spoiled it a bit for me.

 

[yogaflame]

Is Chrono Trigger on steam and if yes, is it a good port?

 

[Pejo]

Is Chrono Trigger on steam and if yes, is it a good port?

Yea it is, and it's not bad. If you want a more authentic experience, you can fix the HD looking menus to make them look more like the SNES counterparts.

 

[Protocol7]

"if you know, you know"

(talking about those of us who played the NTSC-J version of course)

 

[Shifty1897]

Is Chrono Trigger on steam and if yes, is it a good port?

It was rough at launch but they've patched it up pretty well to give options for unfiltered sprites and such.
If you haven't played it, it's certainly worth the price of admission, though I wonder if a Pixel Remaster or HD 2D remake is around the corner.

 

[DelireMan7]

Highly subjective.
Personally, I'm not that much in love with it as the rest of the world seems to be.
I played it, I finished it (including a few alternative endings) I KINDA enjoyed it, but by the end I was done with it and not once in my life I found myself wishing to have more of it.

It's a competent JRPG, but it's still a very typical JRPG in every way, with all the shortcomings I typically associate to the genre (tons of timesinks, tons of repeated combats that resemble each other way too much, etc).
Admittedly I played it too long ago to have specific memories about stuff like its difficulty (or lack of it).

Story and characters are "amazing" in the same way a 12 years old would find amazing reading his first manga or watching his first anime of competent quality.

I respect that opinion.

For me who also play Chrono Trigger as an adult I really enjoyed it. It's a classic JRPG but as it's unique story with the time travel that is well used. And music is on top tier.
But agree it's a very JRPG game.


I had a similar experience than you for Lunar.
I heard a lot about how great this classic was and play few years ago the psp version. Well it was extremely basic and generic. Generic characters, generic music, generic story. Combat system was awful for me.

I guess on its release it was a big thing due the fact it was beginning of the genre but now it doesn't stand the test of time for me.

 

[DelireMan7]

"if you know, you know"

(talking about those of us who played the NTSC-J version of course)

What it is again ? I think I heard a story about that but can't remember it.

Is it link to the dialog of the old man ? My memory is fuzzy.

 

[Protocol7]

What it is again ? I think I heard a story about that but can't remember it.

Is it link to the dialog of the old man ? My memory is fuzzy.

Old man : "Go in the other room"
Other room
Spekkio : "Run around the room clockwise, three times"
Go back to see Old man.

(edited to give a bit more context)

 

[Closer]

I beat the game at least once every year. This my favorite RPG since I rented this gem as a kid and got blown away. So much great memories. One time, my now 25yo nephew saw me playing the DS release and asked me why I was playing this old RPG instead of the good games on Wii and 360. I said that there were no better games to play, and he laughed. After a while, curious, he started his own save, played some of the game and begged me to get a translation patch just after the Millenium Fair (he didn't speak english up to that point). We emulated the SNES version, kid got blown away the same way as I did all those years back. To live it and to see it live years later was magical. When he finally finished the game, some days later, he couldn't stop talking about the game, how this or that happened or were connected or if he could have changed stuff... The same enthusiasm and excitement I had way back when. This game is now our favorite RPG of all time and we love it to bits.

 

[DelireMan7]

Old man : "Go in the other room"
Other room
Spekkio : "Run around the room clockwise, three times"
Go back to see Old man.

(edited to give a bit more context)

That rings a bell but I don't remember what you meant with your original post xD

 

[Protocol7]

That rings a bell but I don't remember what you meant with your original post xD

For anyone who imported the game and wasn't fluent in japanese, it was a terrible roadblock...
But that was also part of the fun

 

[DelireMan7]

For anyone who imported the game and wasn't fluent in japanese, it was a terrible roadblock...
But that was also part of the fun

Ha ok xD I see now

 

[RoboFu]

Just another reminder of how bad games are today.

 

[StereoVsn]

Yep. For Chrono Trigger, they don't even need to do HD-2D, just refine the sprites like they did with FF Pixel Remaster.

Nah, Star Ocean 2 R or DQIII style treatment would have been amazing to see and shouldn’t have taken them many years, but it’s SE and they are generally not very competent bunch now days.