(Technically that girl doesn't use fire in the game, the only error this game has.)
CLASSIC GAMING
Chrono TriggerDeveloper - Squaresoft
Publisher - Squaresoft
Genre - RPG
Year - 1994
System - SNES
For every three games that are risen up to great fame, there is at least one game which deserves more attention. When the case in point comes from the same company though, you have to wonder what happened to turn one glorious game into semi-obscurity undeservingly so, to the point where 1/3 of the world has practically never even heard of it. Let's end that ignorance here and now with the praise of one great 16-bit RPG.
Story - Chrono Trigger starts off innocently enough, with the young boy Crono enjoying the local celebrations of the Millennial Fair as he is in the year 1000 A.D, thankfully having never to suffer with the Y2K crisis when there's no computers and it's the good old swords and half-steamtech world. He encounters a girl called Marle, who's really a princess trying badly to blend into the environs because she wants to, both of whom head off to Crono's inventor pal Lucca, who has invented a cool teleportation device able to go short distances at first. However Marle's pendant screws it up and both her and Crono are shot back through a space-time anomaly and back 400 years.
(There can only be-oh sod it, nobody likes Highlander anymore.)
A terrible mixup ensues afterwards when Marle is thought to be the princess of that era while the real one has gone missing, Crono setting off to find the real one to make sure history doesn't go like that Futurama episode where Fry did the nasty in the past-y. Anyways what follows after this is a battle against a demon horde, culminating into time travelling into 2300 A.D where the world as they know it is completely ravaged and post-apocalyptic, complete with self-riding motorcycles and scraps of humanity surviving in dirty isolated dome communities. Later it is found that in 1999 A.D something a lot worse than Y2K happened.
A huge monster called Lavos recreated Judgement Day unto the world. And after that it's one long time-travelling trip back and forth to gain enough knowledge and power to stop the end of the world.
The big question that comes to mind is, why aren't there MORE time-travelling RPGs other than this and Dark Chronicle?
Gameplay - Well like all good RPGs there are the three screens of field, world and battle. You know how most of this goes so let's go over what's different. In the field you walk around and interact with other characters, occasionally examining anything odd, sparkling or unfriendly such as an enemy. When an enemy fights you, instead of all that swirling Final Fantasy screen mess, you stay in the field, take up positions and draw out your weapon. No transitions, no nothing, you fight where you stand. See this is the way Final Fantasy XII should have gone right but alas let us not think on that too much.
When in battle you can either attack, use technical skills or use items, simple stuff. Technical skills are either special attacks or magical powers, both of which are in the same window for easier access. But the really interesting thing Chrono Trigger brings anew is combining skills. After your characters level up enough with certain other characters, they can actually create Double or even Triple Techs.
This is when two or three allies combine their skills into one even more powerful attack if they have enough MP to do so.
The abilities range from powerful magic skills such as combining Fire and Ice spells together, to healing everyone by combining Water with Chrono's Cyclone, to physically powerful attacks by the combination of Chrono's Cyclone with Fire.
Of course they only work if the characters needed for the attack are all ready and waiting for their turn, and you'll be noted of this when instead of Tech, the battle command says Comb. And no it's not to comb over Crono's wacky hair because all Japanese RPG heroes need crazy hair to save the world. It's like a pilot needing the right kind of voice to fly a plane. It's not essential but it damn well helps everyone else around you.
(Skeletor never knew true fear until He-Frog came along.)
That's not all though, because as this is a time-travelling RPG, naturally things are changed in the future by your actions in the past, of which you can go to seven time periods. 1000 AD, 600 AD, 12,000 BC (I like to think Before Crono but that makes no sense so let's ignore that), 2300 AD, 1999 AD, 65,000,000 BC and End of Time. Doing all this is so you can do sidequests, finding the characters and villains naturally, and you only at first time travel by going to specific time gates, but later in the game you obtain a flying time machine called Epoch.
And it gets more fun than time travel and developing combinations with characters. This game has THIRTEEN unique endings. That's right, thirteen. It all depends on how and when you reach the final battle against the final boss. Meaning this game has a huge amount of replay value for an RPG. And when I say unique endings, I don't mean characters being paired up in different ways to have one long actual ending. I really mean THIRTEEN INDIVIDUAL ENDINGS ranging from dead serious to jokey.
That is awesome and SHOULD be in a time travelling RPG. The game even has a New Game+ feature to have the same character levels, techniques, weapons and money you ended the game with, and has since been reused by Squaresoft in their later games of Parasite Eve, Vagrant Story, and Final Fantasy X-2.
Graphics - The biggest thing about Chrono Trigger's graphics is the fact that all the characters were originally designed by Akira Toriyama legendary creator of the Dragonball series and has even worked with game creator Hironobu Sakaguchi once again with Blue Dragon. The style is easy to see it's Toriyama's work in sprite form, especially the little imps, those guys are just tiny ball-versions of Piccolo, which is rather funny to think of. Battle scenes are well portrayed particularly when in some moments the game takes on a fully side-scrolling perspective rather than the usual overhead view, and still carries off the battle graphics superbly with flashes and strikes aplenty that while aren't at Dragonball level, are still impressive to see.
(Benjamin Franklin was 1152 years too late on the whole lightning thing.)
- Deservedly so, Chrono Trigger has been hailed as having one of the greatest videogame soundtracks in history by the master trio of Yasunori Mitsuda, Noriko Matsueda and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, Mitsuda especially bringing forth a masterpiece set of music ranging from the tech-punk sounds of 2300 AD's scrapyards to the F-Zeroesque jet bike scene to the tragic song of Schala's Theme. A grand mixture ranging from mystical new-age to punkish techno brings out the full emotions of the many scenes of history in this game, so much so that it has been remixed many a time enough to make a full album of them, which it has.
Chrono Trigger, while greatly respected by many, is sadly underrated forever lying in the shadow of the Final Fantasy monolith, and it appears not even the company themselves have enough faith in it. Why do I say such a thing?
Because Chrono Trigger has NEVER been released into Europe. I shit you not, this game that should be hailed greatly moreso is only being reviewed because of an emulator and having a few American friends who unjustly slammed this dedicated reviewer down for never playing this. Even when it was being re-released onto the Playstation in a slightly shittier form and despite the large clamouring of fans in Europe, there was still nothing.
Squaresoft, how could you not have enough faith to translate out a time-travelling RPG? This concept is universally awesome and with such a soundtrack, a story that doesn't take itself too seriously yet brings out enough emotions to feel for the cast, and with multiple endings (an RPG that even HAS multiple endings is a damn rare thing to respect) should make this one of THE greatest videogames ever made, this game is greater than three Final Fantasies alone. I won't say which ones they are, I'll leave you to decide that.
(The Land Before Time meets Planet of the Apes.)
"Videogames are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n' roll." - Shigeru Miyamoto
Hail Slither, The Eternal Champion!