Genre: Video Game
Publisher: Square
Players: 1
Retail Price: $40
Availability: Nintendo DS
Chrono Trigger is beloved by many, many people. It’s one of the go-to examples of games for which people will pay crazy amounts for a sealed copy, and so bringing it to the Nintendo DS was either a great way to bring the experience to a new audience or a wake up call to the nostalgic crowd, pointing out that maybe it wasn’t so great after all. I first played the game over a decade ago, so I was cautiously optimistic going in that the game I had practically deified — like many peoples’ girlfriends to mothers, the standard to which I compare all RPGs — would hold up over time.
For the uninitiated few: as the name implies, Chrono Trigger involves quite a lot of time traveling. There’s a fairly small set of territory to explore, but when multiplied by the five eras of history you visit the number of towns and other attractions grows quickly. Your ability to travel between the ages grows as you progress: initially limited to finding various warp holes that lead to the same spot in another time, ultimately you can travel from any point in time and space to any other.
Your party is fairly small, at least by standards set by games like Suikoden and Chrono Trigger’s sequel, the original Playstation’s Chrono Cross. I like the small size better, though, as it emphasizes getting to know the characters over ‘I got the chef to join my party, never to be used in battle.’ Each character has their own set of weapons, like broad swords and guns, and magic, like water and fire. In addition to the individual techniques learned, which can be magic-based but are just as often a stronger physical attack, characters can also learn Dual and Triple Techs which combine techniques for stronger attacks. Crono’s spinning Cyclone attack, then, can be combined with Lucca’s Flamethrower to become Fire Whirl. These attacks are preset, so it’s not possible to try combining two or three random attacks, which is probably for the best as it’d take far too much trial and error to find them all. It’s in your best interests to play the characters with fairly equal regularity, since techniques are earned via TP in battles (like XP, but for techniques): it’s possible to have a fairly high level character who’s still missing most of their techniques.
The battle structure of Chrono Trigger is still the most dynamic and innovative of any RPG I’ve played. Battles can be played using either the Active (attack as your meter fills up) or Wait (true turn based, everyone goes at the same time) systems. Enemies can move during battle, which makes a difference as some attacks are more than ‘hit one enemy’/'hit all enemies.’ Some, like the aforementioned Cyclone have a hit radius, so focusing on the middle of a pack of enemies will get the best results. Others hit in a line from the character, or in a horizontal line on the screen. Attacking becomes about more than using your most powerful attack on the most powerful enemy: I rarely used Cyclone Sweep (Crono’s Cleave/Robo’s Laser Spin), but when a group of enemies who counterattacked every time they were hit huddled together, I wanted to finish them in one shot.
While the battles are still as fresh as ever, the story does show some age. The plot is still great, though that may be tainted by nostalgia, but playing through it again highlighted how linear it is: for the most part you’re being taken by the hand and led through the game, which is fine as long as you don’t mind always being told where to go next. The first time you’re given a choice of ages to travel to, you’re given unsolicited advice about seeing what’s happening in your own time (1000 AD). Then there are the anachronisms: finding a new arm (weapon) for Robo in a chest a millennium before he was created. These complaints don’t really affect much, they’re just overt trappings of a game and have a tendency to break the fourth wall. Then of course there’s the question of how the time gates remember the exact second you left, so traveling repeatedly to 600 AD doesn’t end with infinite copies of your party…
Another unfortunate addition to the game are the cutscenes, first added in the PS1 release. I don’t mind changes to the original experience — I’m not that much of a purist — but they break the flow of the game. They’re animated versions of significant events that happen in-game, but after the videos the events still happen in-game. Ayla attacks a bunch of Reptites to save you in a cutscene, then her sprite comes running in afterwards and attacks the same Reptities. The worst example is before the battle with Magus, where the mood of running up a darkened hallway with flames popping up as you pass them is ruined when the climax is a video that plays before the flames illuminate the Fiendlord. Either the FMV or the original would have been acceptable, but the two together simply don’t work.
Once you complete the story, in addition to the new dungeons in the DS version, you can start a New Game+: featured in a few games since Chrono Trigger’s original release, you can replay the game with your characters from the original. You have the option of fighting Lavos whenever you’d like, meaning you can beat the game — or try to, anyway — five minutes after starting it. Did the fairly generic default ending leave you unfulfilled? See what happens when you don’t ensure the Reptites aren’t the dominant species 65 million years ago. Or play through it again, but stop before you fulfill one of the major quests at the end (I won’t spoil it, but you know what it is). If you like the game enough, you can get aeons (ha! time joke!) of play time out of it.
The DS version makes use of the hardware as best it can: it’s not integral to the experience, but it can be useful if you want it to be. While exploring dungeons the bottom screen acts as a map, and during battle it shows the attack menus, which can be touched to select or navigated with the D pad. These options can be turned off if you’d prefer the original experience, but I used a mix of old and new, eschewing the stylus but using the second screen for its expanded menus. You can also walk around using the stylus if you’d prefer a touch-only game, but it seemed much less intuitive than the original method.
There are two types of people in this world: those who have played Chrono Trigger and those who haven’t. If you’re among the former, well, then you should know if you have any interest in playing it again. If you’re the latter, and you own a DS, then you owe it to yourself to experience this game. The time traveling mechanic adds incredible depth to the gameplay, as events you change in the past have visible effects on the future. I’ve made it this far without mentioning the music, but I cannot in good faith review the game without imploring you to play it with headphones on. Again, this may be entirely due to nostalgia, and I wear my love of the game on my sleeve, but I still believe that Yasunori Mitsuda’s soundtrack add a lot to the game. If you like RPGs, or think that there’s a chance you do, Chrono Trigger is a great way to spend your time.
