Game Review: クロノ・トリガー

[dorchadas]

How do you review the perfect game?

Chrono Trigger is the game I've beaten the most times, starting back in uriany's basement in high school. He introduced me to the game and showed me how it worked, and then watched me play as I went through the game once, tried out New Game+, and eventually found all of the secret endings. The slow way, too--every time we'd play through the game, get to a secret ending, and then do another New Game+ and start from the beginning. We played through over a dozen times to get all the endings, and I've played through it more since then, making Chrono Trigger the game I've beaten the most in my life. The most recent time was over a decade ago when the DS port came out, and now that it's the 25th anniversary and I speak Japanese, it was time to go back to the original and experience it all over again.

Well, almost the original. I played the Steam game in 4x3 mode, in a small window to avoid any distortion or bad scaling. The port was based on mobile phones and was legendarily bad when it was released, but a series of patches since then made it look pretty close to the original. I usually play old games in an emulator with as accurate graphics as possible and then edit the resulting 240p images up for posting here, but all these images are direct screenshots. As you can see, it still looks amazing.

It's all still amazing. I make no pretense of being objective here.

A boy, a girl, and an adventure across time.

Chrono Trigger was the result of circumstances that will probably never be repeated--a "Dream Team" of RPG developers at the height of their prowess, all working together to make one of the greatest JRPGs ever created. Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi Hironobu, Final Fantasy composer Uematsu Nobuo, Final Fantasy producer Kitase Yoshinori, Dragon Quest creator Horii Yūji, and mangaka Toriyama Akira, building on ideas from the project that also spawned Secret of Mana. The main twist for Chrono Trigger, though, would be time travel. Time travel is one of those plot points that can warp the entire plot around it, but Chrono Trigger mostly uses it as set dressing. Crono and his merry band visit the same world in different time periods, variously the Present (現代 gendai) of 1000 AD, the Middle Ages (中世 chūsei) of 600 AD, the Future (未来 mirai) of 2300 AD, Primaevil Times (原始 genshi, Eng: "Prehistory") of 65,000,000 BC, the Ancient Civilization (古代文明 kodai bunmei, Eng: "Antiquity") of 12,000 BC, and the End of Time (時の最果て, toki no saihate).

And the End of the World (世界崩壊 sekai hōkai, Eng: "Apocalypse").

In a lot of JRPGs, after the main character is awakened from oversleeping, have some catastrophe occur to the starting village in order to motivate the protagonist to a life of adventure. Chrono Trigger achieves this by instead destroying the entire world--when the party first arrives in the Future no era name is listed and they aren't sure where they are, and it isn't until they find a video record of the "Day of Lavos" that they realize the truth. They activate the video and see a green world, inhabited by a technologically advanced civilization, and then the earth quakes, fire rains from the sky, and Lavos emerges and annihilates almost all life on the planet. The survivors live only thanks to slowly-failing technology they have no hope of replicating. Humanity is doomed.

And having seen that, the party decides to save the world.

"Long ago, the mighty sorcerer Demon King created Lavos"

I can't even write about that without my eyes tearing up, because I'm a sucker for a hope-pulled-from-hopelessness plot. Stoic silent protagonist Crono, scientific genius Lucca, and tomboy hidden princess Marle in the ruins of an ancient domed city, watching the screen as it fades into static. Lucca stares in shocked silence and Marle cries helplessly until she realizes that in their first adventure in the Middle Ages, they changed history. Marle's resemblence to her missing royal ancestor resulted in the Kingdom of Guardia calling off the search, leading to the death of her ancestor and her own nonexistence. When her ancestor was saved, she reappeared, and if a small group of people can affect time like that, why can't they save the world?

I didn't realize until literally this playthrough how well-put-together the plot was, because playing in Japanese forced me to read every single word of the dialogue rather than just skimming it and breezing through since I'd played it so many times before. Returning from the post-apocalyptic future to the present, the party arrives in Medina, the village of the Fiends (魔族 mazoku), who hate humans due to losing a war four hundred years previously. In the town square, the Fiends praise the Demon King (魔王 maō, Eng: "Fiendlord") who led them in war and lament that his summoning of Lavos failed to destroy humanity, and that cements the party's plan. The first half of the game is focused on the confrontation with Magus, searching the Middle Ages for the sword Grandleon (Eng: "Masamune"), bane of sorcerers, and then traveling to Primaevil times to find the Dreamstone needed to fix the broken sword. When at last they battle their way to the Demon King's hidden stronghold and confront him in his chamber to stop the ritual, he tells them that they're on a fools' errand. He only summoned Lavos, not created it, and when the party is hurled into the past after the battle, they witness the truth with their own eyes.

Lavos comes from beyond the stars.

Lavos is older than humanity.

In the depths of the earth, Lavos waits dreaming.

I'm playing up the cosmic horror of it, because Chrono Trigger doesn't at all even when it's revealed that Lavos is merely one member of an entire species that uses planets as incubators for their young. The only real moment of despair is in that tiny room in the future, before the main theme kicks in and the JRPG protagonists do as protagonists do. I'm glad, because without that sunny optimism the game would be more like Darkest Dungeon, and Crono and his friends are confident they can change history because they've already done it.

In Primaeval times, fresh from the defeat of the dino-people (恐竜人 kyōryūjin, Eng: "Reptites"), the party finds a time gate in the ruins of the dino-people's stronghold, destroyed by the fall of Lavos from the heavens, and looking for some way to defeat it, they enter. They arrive in what was originally translated as "Dark Ages" and as "Antiquity" in the DS re-release of the game, but whose Japanese name gives the game away immediately--the Ancient Civilization.

Where all your dreams come true.

Zeal.

Zeal is really the center around which all of Chrono Trigger revolves. It's the only time period where the date doesn't give it away--if 1000 AD is the present, then 600 AD is knights and kings and 2300 AD is robots and mutants, but isn't 12,000 BC just as much cavemen as 65,000,000 BC? At first it seems it might be when the party arrives at a frozen wasteland, but while wandering they find an advanced facility that transports them above the clouds in a beam of light to Enhasa, the City of Dreams. There, one of the first NPCs is the item spirit Doreen, who says:

ここは永遠なる魔法王国ジール。すべての望みのかなう場所……。だけど、そのだいしょうがどのくらい高くつくかは知らないけれどね……。
"This is the Eternal Magical Kingdom of Zeal, where all of your dreams come true."

"But at what price?"

The people of Zeal speak openly of Lavos as their benefactor--their magical power used to come from the natural cycles of the planet, but they discovered Lavos sleeping beneath the ocean floor and realized that Lavos was even stronger than the four elements of Fire, Water, Shadow, and Heaven (天 ten, Eng: "Light"). Lavos's power sustains their civilization, raising their floating continent above the clouds and powering the magical machines that provide for their every need. Those without magic are outcast to the surface, forced to live in squalor and enslaved to work on the Ocean-floor Temple (海底神殿 umisoko shinden, Eng: "Ocean Palace") that will replace the old method of drawing power from Lavos--the Demonic Vessel (魔神器 majinki), or, as it's called in one of the best localization choices I've ever seen: the Mammon Machine.

Zeal's plan to achieve immortality and everlasting glory is doomed, obviously, because Chrono Trigger doesn't begin in a hypertech magical paradise ruled by a god-queen, and Zeal's fall reverberates across the other time periods as the Demonic Vessel's activation in the Ocean-floor Temple tears open time. Jakki (Eng: "Janus"), kind-hearted son of the Queen, is hurled forward to the Middle Ages, where he is found by the descendants of Zealian prison guards now called Fiends and raised to become their Demon King. The three Sages (賢者 kenja, Eng: "Gurus") of Reason, Life, and Time are thrown across history, with one of them arriving in the Present and eventually reforging the Grandleon that he had originally made back in the Kingdom of Zeal, one lost in a post-apocalyptic nightmare future, and one at the far end of time. And Sara (Eng: "Schala"), the Queen's daughter, remains behind as the temple collapses, using the last of her power to teleport the party to safety.

Those of the party who are left alive.

"Turn back while you can."

I'm not sure how I missed it originally, but Zeal is very clearly Atlantis, with a fantastically advanced floating continent brought low by its own hubris. When the Demonic Vessel is activated, Lavos briefly awakens, and as fire rains from the heavens the magics that keep Zeal aloft fail. The floating continent crashes into the sea and a tidal wave sweeps the land, drowning almost all of the People of Light (光の民 hikari no tami, Eng: "Enlightened Ones") and the magicless People of Earth (地の民 chi no tami, Eng: "Earthbound") and the loss of the Demonic Vessel strips the People of Light of their magic. The Demon King, once the kindly Prince Jakki of Zeal, who had dedicated his entire life to destroying the creature that brought his homeland down, attempts to confront the awakened Lavos and fails. It is Crono, battered and weak, who forces himself forward and raises his sword one more time to save his friends, and at the Queen's command, Lavos annihilates him.

I remember the wonder I felt at discovering Zeal, a wonder that still persists in how much I love floating continents to this day, but I don't remember my reaction to Crono's death and at this point I've known about it for decades. I learned recently that the original plan was for Crono to stay dead, perhaps as a lesson on the price of meddling with history, but Square execs overruled that decision. I think that makes a better game, because Chrono Trigger is about hope, about people who have the ability to fix their mistakes and to make the world a better place using their powers for good. Leaving Crono dead in a game where Marle already had her existence erased and restored would have been out of place, and that's why there's a quest to bring him back to life. Or to prevent him from dying, since this is a game about time travel--after pulling Crono out from Lavos's grasp and putting the doppel doll in his place, he never actually died. I've always wondered how he felt about it, since as a silent protagonist, Crono has no lines. When Marle is erased from existence and brought back, she says:

こわかった……いしきがないのに、冷たい所にいるのがわかるの。死ぬってああいう感じなのかしら？
"I was scared...even though I wasn't really aware, I knew I was somewhere cold. Is what what dying is like?"

Did Crono feel something similar, or since he never technically died, was he just confused why the rest of the party was so emotional on seeing him? I wish I knew.

An extinction event.

I wish I knew more about Lavos too, but only some of the time. Lavos is one of the most memorable bosses in any game for me precisely because of the mystery around it. Dagoth Ur in Morrowind or the villains in Trails in the Sky are all memorable because of what they say, but Lavos only shrieks. Some fans are convinced that Lavos is just a parasite, but that seems pretty unlikely. Even ignoring the comment in the final battle that Lavos has been harvesting all life on the planet for its own ends, Lavos crashes down directly on top of the dino-people's citadel. It apparently makes a deal with the Queen of Zeal, since it spares her life even as it destroys her kingdom and later on, the party meets her and she says that Lavos has granted her immortality. Lavos destroys Zeal because their sorcery and super-science are the only things that could possibly challenge it, and then goes back to sleep so humanity can grow and spread more before the harvest.

I actually think the most horrifying possibility is that Lavos is sapient but animalistic. Lavos is incredibly intelligent, so powerful that it can destroy the future civilization in a single day of fire, and capable of manipulating the course of life itself, but it has no goals or dreams other than base animal ones. Lavos falls to earth, Lavos sleeps, Lavos eats, Lavos dies, and its children launch themselves into the void of space to continue the cycle. It has no other aims, nothing but urges that it uses its incredible personal power to fulfill. It's almost at Blindsight level, where the very things that make us human--our hopes, our loves, our dreams, our art and stories--are a cosmic waste of time, and render us noncompetitive in a universe filled with thirsting gods.

At least, that would be the message if Chrono Trigger were a darker game. The protagonists win, of course, and change history so that Lavos dies when it rises in 1999 AD and the apocalypse never occurs. But there is one seed of that darkness that remains. If you lose to Lavos, instead of a simple game over, there's a cutscene of the future, where an operations director in one of the domed cities watches as reports come in from all over the globe of destroyed cities, fires raging out of control, and death on a massive scale. And as the game cuts to a shot of the planet from space, explosions from Lavos's attacks still blossoming like raindrops in a puddle, the screen darkens and Lavos shrieks as six words appear:

BUT...
THE FUTURE REFUSED
TO CHANGE

It's hard to get more motivating than that.

You never really get over childhood trauma.

I've spent this whole time talking about the big picture save-the-world plot, and while I don't think that Chrono Trigger is as good at character moments as Final Fantasy VI is, some of the interactions remain in my memory even decades after I first played it.

The most memorable is Frog, the squire turned humanoid frog turned hero. Glen and Knight-Commander Cyrus team up to defeat the Demon King but their strength proves inadequate--Cyrus is burned alive by the Demon King's magic, and rather than kill Glen, the Demon King transforms him into a giant frog. When Frog later fails to prevent Queen Leene from being kidnapped and has to team up with the party to save her, he loses the last of his confidence and retreats to a squalid hole in the ground. Only when the party presents him with the restored Grandleon--Cyrus's old weapon--does he think that maybe the Demon King can be defeated after all, and as he stands before the magical barrier barring the way to the Demon King's stronghold he holds the Grandleon aloft and shouts:

我が名はグレン！サイラスの願いと、こころざしそしてこのグランドリオン……今ここに受けつぎ、魔王をうつッ！
"My name is Glen! Cyrus's hopes and ambitions, and the Grandleon...I now lay claim to them, and I will slay the Demon King!"

There's even a follow-up quest later with haunted ruins and the ghost of Cyrus.

Each of the characters has their own storyline, though some get more development than others. Marle, aka Princess Mārudia (マールディア, Eng: "Nadia," once again showing the strength of localization) repeatedly clashes with her father over her desire to live a life outside the confining walls of Castle Guardia. Lucca ruminates on the accident where her mother lost her legs and has a closer relationship with machines than with most other people. Even the Demon King has a moment that really sticks out for me--hurled back in time to the Kingdom of Zeal after his abortive summoning of Lavos, he disguises himself as a "prophet" using his memories as a guide for the future. When the Demonic Vessel is moved to the Ocean-floor Temple and the Queen demands that Sara and Jakki attend her, she sends the prophet, and when the party tries to stop Sara and the prophet steps forward to destroy them for interfering, suddenly Jakki throws himself in front of the party. The prophet pauses, looks away, and then lets the party go. What could have been if kind-hearted Jakki hadn't been torn from his family and raised to be the Demon King?

None of this is as good as Celes working through being an imperial general and then being the lone survivor after the apocalypse, but they stick in my mind all these years later.

Prepping a Heal because I know Dark Matter is coming.

I've spent this whole time talking about the story, which is ironic because Chrono Trigger is pretty short for a JRPG (I beat it in 30 hours playing in my second language), but in contrast to the previously-mentioned Final Fantasy VI the systems are also great. Chrono Trigger has a soft class system with each character distinguished by their elemental affiliation and their Techniques (技 waza, Eng: "Techs"). With four elements and seven characters not everyone is unique, but the designers still found strong points of differentiation. Crono is Light-aspected and wields a sword, so he starts with sword techniques like 回転斬り (kaitengiri, "Spinning Attack," Eng: "Cyclone") and 鎌鼬 (kamaitachi, a reference to this yōkai, Eng: "Slash"), and when the party learns magic from Spekkio the God of War at the End of Time, he gains lightning-based spells. And Life, because of the Light aspect. Lucca is Fire-aspected and her early Techniques include 火炎放射 (kaen hōsha, "Flame Emission," Eng: "Flame Toss") and 睡眠音波 (suimin onpa, "Sleep Sound Wave," Eng: "Hypno Wave") and she gains fire spells and Protect. Frog and Marle share the elemental aspect of Water, but since Frog has water spells and Marle has ice spells, as well as Frog being a knight and so having sword attacks and Marle's Techniques being almost entirely magic, they play very differently. As a robot, Robo has no elemental affiliation and can't use magic but has Techniques drawing on multiple elements, and since Ayla was born in Primaevil times before the advent of magic, her attacks likewise are physical.

But the really interesting part is the combo Techniques. Any two characters in the game (except the hidden character) can combine their power to create a new Technique, like Frog and Crono's エクッス斬り (ekkusu giri, "X Cut," Eng: "X Strike") where both simultaneously attack with their swords, or Marle and Lucca's 反作用ボム (hansayō bomu, "Reaction Bomb," Eng: "Antipode"), which combines fire and ice into a single attack. The tactical considerations thus extend beyond each character's abilities in themselves to how well they synergize with other characters, and it allows double Techniques to cover holes in any character's own set. Marle is the strongest healer in the game but doesn't have a multi-target heal--unless she's partied with Crono, which allows them to use Aura Whirl. Ayla's damage is all physical, making her very weak against magical enemies, but put her with Crono and she can use 雷噛み付き (kaminari kamitsuki, "Thunder Bite," Eng: "Volt Bite"). Party makeup thus involves considering two characters' combined powers as well as each character's individual capabilities, and a single character's weakness might be covered by their double Techniques. When people remember Chrono Trigger's combat, Techniques are what they remember.

I'm sure they're friendly.

Chrono Trigger was the first JRPG I played that had enemies visible on the field instead of sudden random battles, and much like with Earthbound's auto-winning battles with weaker enemies, it's an innovation that I'm amazed every game after hasn't copied. There are some surprise attacks, but they're triggered by walking over specific spots and it's often possible to avoid them. On the other hand, fighting all the battles throughout the game means that you'll be strong enough to take on every boss when you get to it, because characters not in the party also gain experience--though not Tech points, so mixing up the party is a good idea. I went through the game and did all the sidequests and not once did I need to stop somewhere and grind to keep going.

If there's a problem with the battle system, it's that there's no way to reposition your characters. A lot of Techniques affect everyone near the character, or target enemies in a line, or otherwise are affected by the battlefield state, but the only way to take advantage of this is to wait for the enemies to move around and hope they get into a good position. I remember the first time I played the game I thought there had to be a way to move because otherwise why make all these Techniques reliant on positioning, and I kept pressing buttons and even scoured the manual looking for the way to do it. Now after so many playthroughs I'm used to it, but there were still times I'd try to use Techniques like Robo's サークルボム (sākuru bomb, "Circle Bomb," Eng: "Area Bomb") but there would be no one nearby. Moving would make more Techniques useful instead of just incentivizing me to spam whole-screen AoE spells all the time.

Triple Techniques are also a bit odd. Every Triple Technique that doesn't include Crono requires one of the characters to equip an item in their accessory slot, and putting a gold earring in there for ¼ MP consumption is far more valuable. I didn't use a single Triple Technique this entire playthrough and I don't feel like I missed anything, even when they have great names like Grand Dream and Dark Eternal.

You can change fate.

Chrono Trigger isn't technically the first example of New Game+, as games like Zelda 2 allowed you to continue after winning while keeping most of your items, but it is the first game to use that term. Since Chrono Trigger is all about time travel, it's possible to travel to 1999 AD at nearly any point and fight Lavos, and beating it before accomplishing different tasks results in different endings. Fighting Lavos after gaining the Grandleon but before defeating the Demon King shows the Kingdom of Guardia preparing for war and Frog marching forth himself into the Demon King's castle to confront him, and defeating Lavos after going back to Primaeval times but before decisively defeating the Dino-people results in the Dino-people winning their war against the humans and a future Guardia where everyone is a Dino-person! There are thirteen endings (twelve in the SNES version), and while it's possible to get them all in a single playthrough by just resetting after seeing them, the reason I've played through Chrono Trigger so many times is that uriany and I would go through another New Game+ and start over after each new ending. I think by the sixth or seventh time, every single battle in the first half of the game would start and end with Crono casting a single spell. Most of my memories of Crono Trigger involve Crono rising into the air, light gathering around him, and then all the enemies dying, so having to actually fight this time was a pleasant surprise. Strategy doesn't matter when one spell wins every battle.

There's an additional ending in the DS and later releases that tries to tie Crono Trigger more into Chrono Cross, the controversial sequel, but I didn't get it and I have no plans to. Chrono Cross is a great game but it's a terrible sequel to Chrono Trigger that goes out of its way to spit on every notable point and character in the first game. I'm not sure if it's because Chrono Trigger story writer Katō Masato was annoyed at Square for shutting down the idea of a tragic ending to Chrono Trigger, but basically every single character from Chrono Trigger dies before Chrono Cross starts. Lucca, the fire aspected character, literally dies in a fire. Crono and Marle die when Guardia is invaded. Robo survives Katō's murder spree only to die offscreen in a single line of dialogue. Even side characters like Johnny, the motorcycle-esque robot who loves riding the ruined highways of the post-apocalyptic future, show up dead in the background for no obvious reason.

The message of Chrono Trigger is that with enough effort, you can change your fate and make a better world. The message of Chrono Cross is that even trying to make things better actually makes them much worse, you fool, you simpleton, you utter ignoramus.

"Many times grandpa, have healthy children! Otherwise it'll be a big problem for me"

Fortunately Crono Trigger doesn't need a sequel. It's a fantastic one-and-done game, a whole adventure across history in less time than Final Fantasy XIII takes to let you use all of your basic abilities. It has enough characters to provide party variety but not so many that anyone ends up left out of the story progression. The Techniques provide plenty of battle strategy and prevent every battle from degenerating into Spam-A-to-Fight. It's only maybe 25 hours long on a first playthrough and far less on New Game+. There's so much that's done right with this game and even imitations by Square-Enix itself never measure up--I Am Setsuna and Lost Sphear were okay, I guess, but they were no Chrono Trigger. And neither is Crono Cross.

But Chrono Trigger still exists, and now that it's on mobile phones and Steam everyone has access to it forever. The gameplay and story still hold up, and the music and graphics are beautiful even today. Chrono Trigger is the most-remixed game on OC ReMix, beating out even Final Fantasy VI or Ocarina of Time, and Sara's theme even gets sampled in hip hop. I cannot stress this enough--if you haven't played Chrono Trigger and you like RPGs at all, play it. It's so good.

Though I admit, hopefully at the 50th anniversary it won't still be the best JRPG ever made. Good games are always good, but something better than Chrono Trigger? I hope I live to see it.

See also: My post about the Kingdom of Zeal or this post about the Mammon Machine.

Comments

[corvi]

Your thoughts on that would be something I'd like to see a post about sometime, if you ever feel like it. I've enjoyed your TTRPG worldbuilding thoughts.

[dorchadas]

I was already thinking of writing a post about my ideal RPG (mechanically), so maybe I'll do that too!

Mostly being the GM means I get a lot of time to think about worldbuilding.