Board 8 > Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yes...wait, what? The last thing I heard was the anime of the Jumi arc.

The Mana Sword posted...

wait what

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/06/square_enix_confirms_the_next_ mana_game_for_console_is_now_in_development

It was announced almost a year ago!

oh, right. that. not hard to forget a random comment in an interview!

I still don't have a handle on how much of Chrono Cross's criticism is legitimate (and if it should prevent me from buying this remaster) versus how much of it are upset Chrono Trigger fans being sour.

PrinceOfKoopas posted...

I still don't have a handle on how much of Chrono Cross's criticism is legitimate (and if it should prevent me from buying this remaster) versus how much of it are upset Chrono Trigger fans being sour.

I played Cross first and it's a solid 6.5 game in every way but the music

PrinceOfKoopas posted...

I still don't have a handle on how much of Chrono Cross's criticism is legitimate (and if it should prevent me from buying this remaster) versus how much of it are upset Chrono Trigger fans being sour.

Chrono Cross is a middling PS1 era JRPG with some janky combat mechanics, and a fairly nonsensical story. It's only considered an absolute garbage tier game because it absolutely failed as a sequel/followup to CT, and basically killed any concept of that being an ongoing franchise, and that's the real crime here.

I played Cross second and it's a solid 9.5 game in every way

Seriously though, it's a game that a lot of people like, and other people dislike. The criticisms are valid, especially when it comes to the cast: there are people who like the cast size just for the feeling it gives, but most consider it to be poorly executed compared to something like Suikoden. I think it could've been a better game with a smaller party.

For the battle system, some people like it while others don't. I thought it was really fun. Not sure where the divide there comes from.

Personally, the highlight to me is replaying it and getting all the different endings. They're highly entertaining IMO.

The story is fifty flavors of fatalist stupid, trying to both not be CT (the writer admits it wasn't meant to be tied to it), but also shoehorning things with a lead pipe. The battle system is a less shit FF8/not as fun Xenogears combo hybrid (it's a very weird thing).

The music though? Fucking godly.

Also, probably more of a personal nitpick to me, but by far the biggest issue I had with the game is that the whole region the game takes place in simply does not exist at all in the CT world. Could they have not built the world map around the CT world map (even if you are restricted to a single area)? The fact that literally the only thing connecting CC to CT is the confusing and weird shoehorning of Robo/Prometheus, and that one illusion of Lenne square with the child ghosts of the main 3 protagonists from CT

yeah, I'm not sure what the fascination was with having "strong, medium, and weak attacks" in turn-based JRPG's was, but lots of people were doing it and it was never good. it probably worked best in xenogears, but it still made everything unnecessarily slow.

I liked the battle system.

I didn't mind the battle music. Then again I have what are considered strange opinions so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Useless consumable spells, the complete lack of Techs, and the elemental system just made battles a chore, then you add in the fact that there's no level progression meaning if you get stuck in certain areas/bosses, there's no way for you to level up and sometimes the only option is to restart or revert to an old save if you're lucky enough to have one. I'm looking at you Miguel

Just played through Radical Dreamers for the first time ever. Here's some thoughts.

1. The battle music works better here, which leads me to believe it's really the orchestration that hurts the battle music in CC. It's the organ/violin being turned up so high in the mix I think. It's actually meant to be MIDI/low quality.
2. If you think of this as an interquel meant to build hype for the sequel to Chrono Trigger, it actually does a pretty good job. I imagine if I played this when it came out/before Cross I'd be super amped. I also probably wouldn't really have had any issues with the questionable story stuff like Lucca dying, the Schala/Magus/gil/Guile stuff or the cursed masamune because I'd just assume that the sequel would "fix" that stuff. The problem with Cross is that it doesn't fix that stuff at all and is basically like "this happened, deal with it"
3. However from what I know it wasn't marketed as an interquel or anything, so as a weird spin-off game that uses characters/ideas from Trigger to tell it's own parallel universe story it's... also better here than in Cross. I like the idea of Lynx demolishing the dragoons and keeping Riddell as a kind of hostage/daughter scenario: real big One Piece vibes.
4. Anyway you slice it though, one story thing that doesn't make sense here or in Cross is the idea that Porre is suddenly a big military power.
5. As a text adventure / "visual novella" it's surprisingly decent. Kid here is basically the same, but it really makes me long for a Cross where Serge is an actual character. I like me a silent protagonist, but I think Cross's story would be aided immensely with a likeable main character. RD did more to get me to like Serge in an hour than Cross did in its entirety.
6. Really interesting to see the early character designs. Might honestly prefer this Kid to what we got. Magil>Guile as well. Serge's design is a wash, because it's bad either way.

Anyway, nice to finally play this. So thanks Square, make Chrono three now.

How does Radical Dreamers play? Is it a Zork style text adventure that's completely inpenetrable, or is it more of a "visual novel" for lack of a better term? I feel like I tried a fan translated ROM of it decades ago but I remember literally nothing about it

Visual novel. I think you can actually die if you fuck up some story stuff too much, but that's all I know.

I died once, which kind of surprised me. I had to start all the way over too, and there's no text skip, so that was annoying. you can save, so it was mostly my fault.

but yeah, it's basically like those "text dungeons" from Nier Replicant if you played that. Or a really really short and basic visual novel.

Holy jesus this remaster isnt good.

Strife2 posted...

Visual novel. I think you can actually die if you fuck up some story stuff too much, but that's all I know.

Yup, which already happened to me. And I hadn't saved in a long time so I lost a lot of progress. And I was doing it on stream. Luckily no one was watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFnYz5J6kXA

Starting to sound like this shit is even worse than people thought from the previews.

The game already had the uphill battle of so many people thinking it was bad in the first place, now this.

The only reason to get excited for this was being able to play Radical Dreamers for the first time, and at least it was hard for them to screw that part up.

ninkendo posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFnYz5J6kXA

lmao the FPS is worse than the PS1 version in some areas? Holy hell. This took an extra three years to make???

ninkendo posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFnYz5J6kXA

That was disappointing to watch man. Was planning to play it in classic mode anyways but that just cemented the deal.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Disagree. The graphical and QOL upgrades have been very, very good. I dont get what people are whining about.

The only QOL upgrade that would ever convince me to play that dumpster fire ever again would be to reduce the cast by 30 characters, and replace the entire battle system with something more akin to CT

Cross is a fantastic game. Haters abound in this topic. Battle system was just fine and got better late game with double and triple techs. Why medium and weak attacks were kept I dont know but it didnt hurt anything. Rainbow items and equipment were fun to collect and perfect in the new game plus with fast forward option. Lots of nooks and crannies to explore between time lines for great gear, optional tough fights, unlocking allies, and story.

The music was phenomenal across the board. Id say this was the one spot it was better than CT on. But I doubt many will agree.

Too many characters I can agree with. I used about 6 characters for 90% of the game. And the story in the long run was a tad confusing.

Despite the poor remastering efforts I'm still enjoying replaying the game a lot. Many tiny aspects of the story I've just straight up forgotten and re-experiencing again.

Going to be a long road to platinum though

What is the plat?

it's like 2 playthroughs and a small portion of a 3rd getting all the party members, getting 99 growth stars and getting all the endings

Luckily they don't require you to get the level 7 techs for everyone, but there are a handful you have to do mostly just main characters though.

That's just a normal playthrough of the game

but I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it before the FF14 patch hits in 3 days v_v