Chrono Trigger reviewed

I will say this upfront, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game ever.....ever. This was a shining achievement for the Super Nintendo, Square and Akira Toriyama, the guy who made the Dragonball series. Everything from the graphics, to the dialogue and even making sure people don't get lost during the story was on-point and awesome. Hell, even over 10 years of playing this this game still has me discovering its secrets. For the record, I am talking about the SNES version, not the PSX version where everything took forever to load or the DS....which I'll probably play eventually but not soon.

Anyways, this story may be dense if you think about it but it is easy enough to follow. You're this guy in 1000 AD who bumps into this girl and then go to a science demostration thing where things go horribly wrong and you go to 600 AD to right things that went one...like Quantam Leap! Then you do and now you're an enemy of the state in your own time so you go back to the future and find it.....a horrible one! You find out what caused this and vow to kill it and right things again, and eventually do it a bunch of other times in a bunch of other time periods, just like a season's worth of Quantam Leap. But there is a slight twist, you can fight the Big Bad shortly after discovering about him but you will probably die a horrible horrible death if you do. But basically there's like 5% real plot and 95% sidequests that advance the plot in it and there's something refreshing about it, something fresh. It's borderline genius.

Sure with out fancy 3-D graphics and our fancy generated-in-engine FMV's, the graphics here may be a bit old-hat. But then again, you are discounting the highly animated sprites and the great use of the Mode 7 engine(best scene in the race against Johnny and the "normal" ending). The sprites have enough animations to express anything at all, from joy to laughter to shock and even sadness which is a step up from the normal SNES sprites that usually had two movements, maybe three so that is quite a big leap, I'm not sure that even Final Fantasy VI had this many sprites. And the lands are so richly detailed that you can see the mountain backgrounds, the ruined future and even houses with appliances with such clarity it's amazing. It's one of the best graphical examples of the SNES-era.

And the music here is amazing. Almost every theme is composed to unleash the maximum awesomeness out of each and every note. Each track is awesome that it's easier if I just list the themes that aren't awesome, Marle's theme. That's it, just one failure of a theme in a sea of awesomeness. Trust me, listen to Magus's theme, The Kingdom of Zeal's theme, Crono's theme or Frog's theme they will be remembered forever inside you.

The gameplay is easy to pick up but it runs deep. The enemies are usually out in the open, granted some of them come out to ambush you but you don't have to worry about random encounters, which is nice. Also, the game has double and triple techs or you can use your special moves in tandem with someone elses special moves which is awesome. And this system does run deep with getting every combination of characters in your party so you can get every single tech in the game.

So this game is pretty much Quantum Leap as an RPG. You go back and forth in time to right things where they went wrong...and trust me, there's a lot of wrongs to be righted which results in a lot ass to kick so you can right those wrongs. And this game does have something for everyone with the characters. Girls can appreciate the love story between Crono and Marle. Guys can appreciate the friendship between Crono, Frog and Robo. Nerds can appreciate Lucca. S & M guys can appreciate Ayla. And the rest can appreciate Magus. See, something for everyone.

10/10