The Temporal Epiphany

Before Square and Enix merged, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, along with Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, the respective architect and character designer of the Dragon Quest series, banded to develop an RPG under the former company’s banner heavily utilizing content excised from the planned debut of Secret of Mana on the Super NES’s aborted CD add-on when Nintendo sought partnership with Sony when their negotiations fell through. The final product was titled Chrono Trigger, seeing original release on the Big N’s 16-bit console and future ports to platforms that include the PlayStation, Nintendo DS, iOS, and most recently, Steam. Does it still hold up today?

The game opens in 1000 AD when the protagonist Crono’s mother awakens him on the day the Millennial Fair, which celebrates the founding of the kingdom Guardia, begins. At the festival, he bumps into a mysterious maiden named Marle, whom he takes to test his friend Lucca’s teleportation device, which strangely resonates with her pendant and mistakenly sends her four centuries into the past. Thus, Crono gives chase, discovering various temporal events and conspiracies culminating in the destruction of the world in 1999 AD by an entity called Lavos and recruiting others to secure the timeline.

Even in the original’s time, Chrono Trigger was not the first Japanese RPG to emphasize time travel, with that honor going to SaGa 3, which received the phony moniker Final Fantasy Legend III from Square’s North American branch when it was translated years before. However, the game weaves its story effectively, with the characters being endearing and often having intricate backstories, the various substories being interesting, events in historical periods impacting the future, a few plot differences dependent upon the player’s party composition, and different endings that depend upon actions taken throughout the quest.

However, many negative plot beats abound. Among them are Guardia’s soldiers leaving Crono with his weapon and armor on when incarcerated early in the narrative, the tale of a “legendary hero,” and elements derived from literature like the repair of a broken ancestral blade, a plot point from The Lord of the Rings. Other unoriginal elements include a dystopian future and an evil queen; other tropes from previous RPGs, like a character having to relearn all powers from scratch when joining your party and a doomed floating continent also appear. Additional “why” moments like cavemen in hiding emerging to glimpse an approaching tidal wave before returning to safety are also present. Fortunately, these don’t heavily dent an otherwise enjoyable plot.

The original translation by Ted Woolsey was one of the better ones in its era, receiving much of the polish it had when ported to the Nintendo DS. As is expected of any RPG released today, the dialogue is legible, and very few spelling and grammar errors exist. Most Japanese-to-English name changes were also for the better, like the names of the Gurus of Zeal, renamed after the Magi that visited the infant Jesus after his birth, with their original names being far more comical. Magus’ generals, furthermore, had the names of condiments in the Japanese dialogue, although Woolsey changed their names to Ozzie, Slash, and Flea after musicians well known to Anglophone gamers.

While Chrono Trigger features an overworld, it relegates enemy encounters to dungeons, with foes visible to fight in most of them. Contacting enemies or coming near them triggers combat, but many cases come where they’re hidden and emerge to engage Crono and his party. Battles bequeath the active time system of the Final Fantasy franchise, with the three frontline characters having gauges that, when filled, allow them to perform commands. As in Hironobu Sakaguchi’s flagship Square franchise, players can choose between active mode, where the battle action continues while they peruse Tech and item menus, or wait mode, where the action stops during navigation of said inventories.

However, the wait mode doesn’t work universally, for example, not while targeting monsters to attack or execute Techs against or anytime outside the Tech and item menus, even when all three characters’ active time gauges fill, which would have been welcome. Attacking using equipped weapons, using MP-consuming Techs, and consuming items are the primary battle commands, but a typical RPG staple, defending to reduce damage, is oddly absent. Players can escape by holding the L and R buttons on whatever input device they use, which usually works except during mandatory battles or standard boss fights.

Winning battles nets all participating characters experience for occasional leveling, money, TP to unlock more powerful Techs, and maybe an item or two. Depending upon the player’s party composition, characters can learn Double and Triple Techs that allow combination skills targeting all allies, one enemy, or all enemies, which can help hasten even the most daunting battles. Many bosses require a specific strategy to defeat them, whether exploiting an elemental weakness or offing boss units in the correct order (critical to the absolute final battle, hint, hint). Other issues aside from those mentioned include the existence of Techs whose range depends on a character’s current location but the lack of any means to move them across the battlefield. Regardless, the game mechanics form a satisfying whole.

In contrast, control is a mixed bag. However, the Steam port has numerous quality-of-life additions, like autosaving, a suspend save, and autodashing. Other positive usability features from previous versions remain, including diagonal character movement, an in-game clock the player can view at any time and not just while saving (which oddly seems endemic to many contemporary Japanese RPGs for some reason), the ability to walk around while minor NPCs are talking, sortable item inventory categories, being able to see how weapons and armor increase or decrease stats before purchasing them, item and magic descriptions, and overall polished menus.

However, those in charge of the Steam port could have addressed issues that include a potential glitch when booting the game that can prevent it from even going to the title screen, the absence of an auto-equip feature for the player’s party, the lack of dungeon maps, no pausing outside of battle, no fast travel in the early portion of the game, the inability to speed up increasing item quantity when purchasing consumables from shops, the pause feature in combat not muting the volume (and heaven knows I hate having to fiddle with my television remote), many secrets being tedious to discover without the internet, and a late-game missable sidequest dependent upon interacting with a minor NPC earlier in the storyline. Even so, the controls aren’t absolute dealbreakers when pondering a purchase.

Chrono Trigger marked the musical debut of composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who, with help from resident Square composer Nobuo Uematsu, provided an endearing soundtrack. The titular main musical piece has several remixes throughout the game, with each character also having a musical motif, including Marle’s lullaby, Lucca’s triumphant anthem, Frog’s whistle-along refrain (which somewhat resembles “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”), and Robo’s techno tune, whose resemblance to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” as Mitsuda noted when informed of it, was coincidental.

Other notable tracks include the Fiendlord’s battle theme, which has an orchestral flamenco feel (as does that during the penultimate final boss fight), and “Corridors of Time,” the theme for the floating continent during the Ice Age, which utilizes digitized Indian instrumentation. The minor jingles have pleasant melodies, like the sleeping theme, with the sound team adding quirks like Frog’s croaking and Robo’s beeping and buzzing. However, the musical variety, especially regarding the standard battle theme, can often be minimal, many areas lack unique themes, and a few “why” tracks like Gato’s jingle and the prehistoric “Burn! Bobonga!” abound. Regardless, the aural aspect is a boon to the game.

Its original version having been of the final Japanese RPGs released on the Super NES, Chrono Trigger featured polished visuals with vibrant colors, beautiful environments, character sprites having reasonable proportions and emotional spectra, fluid animation by the player’s party and enemies, stunning battle effects, and the anime cutscenes introduced in the PlayStation port and onward, mostly readjusted for contemporary television screens. Akira Toriyama provided the character and monster designs, most being well-designed, even if most human characters have similar faces typical of the artist’s work, alongside many reskins among the latter.

Other graphical issues include countless recycled nonplayer character sprites, a few that have odd appearances such as those for the old green-haired women, hints of pixilation even with upscaling and smoothing enabled, character sprites not facing diagonally, many NPCs absurdly walking in place, and Mode 7 graininess especially evident during the ending credits. The porting team further left maybe a few anime cutscenes from the PlayStation and Nintendo DS ports out (but mercifully, the one appearing after the ending credits, which adds to the game’s story and slightly connects to sequel Chrono Cross, remains). Otherwise, the graphics serve the game well.

Finally, playtime will vary, depending upon the player’s skill, with 24 hours being an average time for an initial playthrough, even with most sidequests partaken in. Chrono Trigger was the first RPG to term and popularize the New Game Plus, even if a handful of Japanese games before featured similar modes. Combined with significant extra content, like potential plot differences, around a dozen different endings, and discovering every secret, the time-travel RPG is the epitome of replayability. 

Overall, Chrono Trigger, pun intended, does indeed stand the test of time, given its enjoyable aspects that include its solid game mechanics enhanced by contemporary features such as a turbo mode, the intricate narrative with potential variations and around a dozen different endings, the beautiful soundtrack, and the upscaled visuals. However, while inarguably a classic, “masterpiece” is an overstatement since there are numerous issues bequeathed from prior releases, like the slight inaccessibility to those experiencing it for the first time, given the difficulty of discovering helpful elements without referencing the internet and coasting through the game in general.

Furthermore, while contemporary quality-of-life features such as auto-saving and a suspend save exist, the game could have used more polish in the usability department. The localization quality is also inconsistent, musical variety can be lacking, and some aspects of the visuals haven’t aged well, even with the upscaling and smoothing. Regardless, it was in many respects a turning point for Japanese RPGs after its original release, especially with the significant lasting appeal that its various endings and New Game Plus feature contributed to the realm of roleplaying games, and, while imperfect, is easily a bucket-list title necessitating at least one playthrough from those with a passing interest in Eastern video gaming.

This review is based on a single playthrough of a digital Steam copy purchased and downloaded to the reviewer’s Steam Deck, played on a television through the Docking Station.