Chrono Trigger

Some games just ring little bells inside hardcore gamer's minds. No, I'm not talking about household names like Mario and Link. I'm talking about game titles. I guarantee you the average gamer, depending on his Genre preference and opinion, will at least perk up when he sees the following game names:

- Super Metriod
- Devil May Cry
- Half Life 2
- Gran Turismo 4
- Dead or Alive 3
- Onimusha

See? Your brain is hardwired to it, gamers. Just like the words Free, Sex, and your own name. I could sit here and type a article about Devil May Cry Free Sex Games Online with Gran Turismo 4 and I guarantee one of you would go "HOLY CRAP MAN!"



In any case, back to the topic. Chrono Trigger is a household RPG name. Why?

Well, first of all, let's talk about an insanely smart move of combining popular company Squaresoft with an RPG with art direction by Akira Toriyama, maker of the then-and-now insanely popular Dragonball Z. Let's talk about breaking out of all the other RPG engines and creating a realistic, graphically outstanding game with complexity and over 60 hours of gameplay.

Let's talk about moneytrees.

Chrono Trigger starts out with you ("Chrono"), waking up one day in your ordinary little house, the day of a big fair. Long story short and no spoilers spoiled, something wrong happens- and the tomboy-ish Marle, princess of your country, is sent back in time. Oops.

Anyway, the story starts out as a proverbial pebble in a landslide- if that seems like the whole story, you're wrong. The story literally snowballs itself into a huge, extremely detailed and interesting, yet easy to grasp concept that's so good, I won't spoil it for the rest of you. Through this, you meet up with many interesting (But Akira Toriyama-esque) characters, such as Luca, Chrono's childhood friend, and Robo, a killer Robot from the future. Slowly but surely, you become the only people to save the world.

The game itself is outstanding. Many people do not understand how this game really showed up Final Fantasy 6 technologically. While FF6 retained the Final Fantasy system of battle, Chrono Trigger showed them up one by turning the game into almost an instant action game, destroying the cut-and-paste random encounters we experience even today in video games. Enemies walk around the screen, and if you touch one (Or get near one), you battle. Simple, but very interesting.



The second great thing about this game is the ambiance. From the past to the present, each world is greatly different, but there are enough similarities in towns, people, and even land mass to realize how well this was thought out. I would not be suprised if you did side-by-side comparisons of all the world maps, you would find some very interesting history-behind-the-game in Chrono Trigger. Each level is greatly designed, and at no point will you feel like you're walking through "Just another hallway area". Because of the active battle system, big areas to force you to walk though for random encounters arent needed, so the game can get to what's important: Getting in, getting out, levelling up, and continuing on. Great!



Something has to be said for the music and graphics in this game. The graphics, while 2D and somewhat simplistic in today's standards, are amazing even for the SNES. The levels are crisp, clean, don't feel like they're tiled, and overall are a blast to be in. The "Tall" structure, as opposed to Final Fantasy 4, feels more realistic, and the general atmosphere makes it worth the looking-around. The music cannot be described easily, it just is another notch in Squaresoft's list of game music tracks to own or die.

This game, now packaged in the "Final Fantasy Chronicles" collection along with the great-but-overshadowed Final Fantasy 4, is a definate pick up for the price nowadays. If you don't pick this up, or have never played it before, you are missing out on a huge piece of gaming greatness.. no, a huge piece of gaming history. Get it, immediately.

5 star(s) out of 5

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