CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION Review

In the past, Square (or Square Enix) released a ton of great JRPGs for the Super Nintendo, with one of them being CHRONO TRIGGER; this title ended up being one of my favourite games on the system. After its success, Square followed up with a side story called Radical Dreamers in 1996. This was a shorter game that was only released for the Satellaview, an addition to the Super Famicom which allowed players to download games, although it was only available to residents in Japan. THE RADICAL DREAMERS was a text-based visual novel adventure game, not a traditional role-playing game like the other entry in the Chrono Trigger series, due to the limitations of the download service. The game never saw a wide commercial release and was never released outside of Japan, but the ROM was put online allowing for an English fan translation to be made for players to enjoy. 26 years later the game is now included with the release of CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION. Chrono Cross was not a direct sequel to Chrono Trigger but takes place in the same world and was released on the PlayStation in 1999. So this brings both The Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross together for the first time outside of Japan.

You don’t have to play THE RADICAL DREAMERS before you try out CHRONO CROSS, though you will learn more about the characters and their relationships with each other; I found it to be very interesting and a lot darker than I had anticipated. The games share a few elements with CHRONO TRIGGER  — if you have previously played it or if you have played CHRONO CROSS you will know some of the characters already.

I don’t want to spoil anything that happens in the game, especially if you have never had a chance to play CHRONO CROSS in the past, so instead I will talk about all the changes and improvements that have been implemented for this new release. Since the game came out 23 years ago, the graphics might not hold up well for some people, so you have the option to toggle between the original version of the game or the new updated version. The new version has updated 3D character models, made the fonts in the game more crisp (making it easier to read), and there are new illustrations for the people you meet on your journey. This isn’t a huge remaster of the game, just an update so everything doesn’t look drastically different — if you want to experience the game the way it was released you can still have the nostalgic feel of the original. These settings can be changed any time you play the game by going into the video options on the main menu, while here you can also change the aspect ratio to original aspect ratio, full mode, or zoom in.

Besides just the look of the game you can also switch between the original soundtrack or use the new refined soundtrack; both sound great so either way you will be happy. The intro music and the battle music are my favourites. I also appreciated that the music that plays when you win a fight is just like the music that you would hear in CHRONO TRIGGER.

One of the biggest changes to the game was changes to the battle system, besides quality of life improvements you have a variety of other options including:

• No Random Battle Function — if you just want to go through the game and enjoy the story, you can turn off enemy encounters.

• Auto Battle mode — you can have your team fight and make decisions all on their own while you sit back and watch. At any point in the battle you can take over the control and finish the rest of the battle.
• Battle Boost — if you still want to fight but want a more laid-back experience this will give you an edge on the enemy making the fights a lot easier to get through. 

My favourite new addition to the game was the ability to fast forward; even though you can run in CHRONO CROSS it still felt like the characters were moving quite slow at any point. If you want them to move faster just hit the fast forward button, you can also slow it down if there is a spot where being able to move in slow motion would be beneficial. This won’t affect the cutscenes, and the music in the game doesn’t speed up or slow down so it sounds the way it was intended to be heard — though it could be pretty funny to hear the songs sped up or really slowed down!

I really enjoyed having the chance to finally check out THE RADICAL DREAMERS and jump right into CHRONO CROSS without having to deal with ROMs; I also have a save file started on my PlayStation for CHRONO CROSS, but not having to drag out the system and find the memory cards was great, along with all the other upgrades to the game. The other benefit is that the price point for this title is not the cost of a new release; rather it is $19.99 US or £15.99 depending on where you live.