Chrono Trigger has this legacy like no other game. I’m sure I can vouch for the general population that I have never heard a bad thing about Chrono Trigger. With many who have played the game placing it in their top ten personal lists, I can proudly say Chrono Trigger, after all these years, is still a wonderful, memorable, fun, and emotional journey from beginning to end.
So what makes Chrono Trigger such a great game? Well, the game starts off with Crono waking up with his mother saying he should go to the Guardia Millennial Fair. Crono heads there and meets a girl named Marle, who then gets trapped in a time gate by one of Crono’s friends Lucca, who built a teleportation device to show off at the fair. From there Crono and Lucca travel through time to not only save the new girl, but to also save the world from catastrophe. Without going too in depth, the story is one of the shining aspects in Chrono Trigger. Each event feels like it belongs to the story, and nothing feels extraneous. In addition, what builds off the story, and makes the game feel so alive, are the characters and worlds.
In Chrono Trigger, the main aspect of the story is the time traveling, and with time traveling, the overall world Crono and co. explore feel like actual places. For the most part, the world maintains the same shape, with the same locations staying on the same place in the world from one era to the next. Plus, every world just looks very beautiful when looking at it from a birds eye view. The pixel art in Chrono Trigger is probably my favorite part of the game, as not only does the world feel alive, but the characters feel alive as well.
Chrono Trigger’s cast of party members is like no other. Each one has their own unique personality, their own time to shine, and are unforgettable. First off, the reason why I praise the party so heavily, as mentioned earlier, is the pixel art. Every character is super expressive, as each character has many different sprites of animation, making them full of motion with every action they do. Also, the dialogue just adds on to each character’s personality. There are some legitimately funny parts to this game, as well as super touching moments. If you put it into perspective, a 1995 game with very limited hardware, using only music, SFX, dialogue, and 16-bit characters, being able to express a wide range of emotions, is a monumental task, and Square was able to pull that off with flying colors.
If I had to mention one more thing about Chrono Trigger, is one aspect of the gameplay: the ability to beat the game whenever you feel prepared to. Similar to modern games like Breath of the Wild, after beating a small beginning portion of the game, you have the ability to either continue with the game or decide to vanquish the ultimate enemy of the game. As far as I know, this is one of the first instances of a game letting the player beat the game whenever they want to. Of course, beating the game at certain points of the game will result in different endings, which gives the game so much replayability, and offers a wide variety of endings (13 in total).
As I’ve said multiple times on this blog, I can go on and on about Chrono Trigger. The music, the graphics, the story, the battling; this game’s quality is through the roof, even with the limited hardware of the SNES. If you can nab a cheap copy of Chrono Trigger (SNES, PS1, PC, Mobile), then by all means, purchase this game, and experience the magic that is Chrono Trigger. You will not be disappointed by what you will play.