It’s the year 2001. It’s spring. I’m in the gaming room of one of the houses I once lived in, playing Final Fantasy V. I had only recently begun playing role playing games. Sadly, though, I was already beginning to think less and less of these type of games. I mean, come on, where’s my beloved Ryu? Or Ken? Or my missile-carrying vehicle? RPGs were simply much too dull and slow-paced, I thought, unlike my then preferred Street Fighter and Twisted Metal games. Dear God, what was I thinking…?

Soon, a friend of mine came by, who was and still is a big RPG fan. He was carrying a few copies of RPGs, one of them being his favorite. He lent me this favorite of his, for he wanted to share his love for these type of games with me, knowing that FFV – which he had also lent me some time before – wouldn’t be much to my liking. This game… well, let’s just say it turned out to be one of those games that you immediately love. Just the intro movie was epic, and the dream in which the game began gave me a sweet taste of what was to come. Right then and there this friend of mine became my savior.

For those of you who still don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger’s official sequel. The Chrono series, while not as popular as, say, the Final Fantasy series, has been the subject of constant praising and bashing – most of the negative criticism befalling on the supposed “sequel”. It’s kind of sad, really.

Some of CC’s accounted for flaws include extremely poor character development and, consequentially, a very low level of character arc. There are also many plot holes – a great number of them even senseless. Moreover, the battles are much too easy, with only a mere few that can actually be considered “challengeable”.

In addition, the usage of elements becomes unnecessary and even pointless about half-way into the game, seeing as how you can basically defeat most foes with just your physical attacks. That said, I agree with someone who once said you can just press X throughout most battles and easily win as such, and if you do change from the Weak, Strong, Strong routine, it’ll most likely be for the sole sake of variation.

There’s also a bevy of unexplained, or just unelaborated plot elements – e.g., Guile’s not being Janus, yet still including Lucca’s letter mentioning that Janus should be watching over Kid by then, thus giving the player reasons to believe Janus has some sort of influence or role in the game, which we soon learn he obviously doesn’t – some of them even directly contradictory to Chrono Trigger’s plot. I’ve always said, and still maintain, that I truly don’t mind when certain things/occurrences/issues are left to the player to figure out and reach his/her own conclusions, as long as there’s some sort of in-game basis to go by. I’m not asking for concrete or absolute evidence, not at all, but at least to offer the player with something which would allow us a little more than just mere baseless speculation or blind assumptions.

Furthermore, there are over forty characters, and only a handful of them have back stories, which is the foundation for actual character development. What’s worse, a few of them don’t even have real character traits, and less still change throughout the game. Now, this begs the question: why are these characters even in the game to begin with? Or, if anything, why are they playable “characters”?

Some may argue that it’s for the sake of variation, or better yet, choice. It’s ridiculous enough to recruit a guinea pig, or a vegetable, or a little girl with an axe twice her size for your party – let alone one which you have no clue so as to how in the blue hell she survived in such a perilous place to begin with – so why push it even further with not even giving said ciphers personality? Or, at the very least, some sort of elaboration as the story progresses? What was it, laziness? Idiocy? Or as a friend of mine put it, were the creators just smoking crack when doing said characters? Whatever the reason, it’s utterly inexcusable.

Do notice, the aforementioned case only applies to characters who seem to have been thrown into the game by utter mistake, like Leah, to name one out of the many – they were probably thinking about Tarzan, decided to give him a daughter, and accidentally placed her in the wrong game. Now, characters like Fargo, Van, Zappa, Doc and a few others, on the other hand, were at least given good and interesting, and even touching back stories, and were approached in a much more refreshing – and as far as I’m concerned, innovative – fashion. They were given a much greater degree of depth, mostly thanks to the multiple dimensions. And not just them, but many others as well – not all necessarily playable characters, mind you. In other words, we’re able to see how certain characters turned out to be in both worlds. The dissimilarities in each character’s personality and general attitude, brought about by the different environments. We get a clear insight of the various possibilities of the much-too-famous “what if” – easily one of the most popular questions when looking back to our past. How the circumstances we face and the decisions we make define our future. How even the slightest overlooked detail can be more important than you can fathom. How’s that for a deep, even convoluted, and oh so infinitely real a concept? It’s not everyday that we see these sort of issues put into play in video games, and it’s quite sad to see that when they are finally implemented, we’re seemingly not able to appreciate them – myself included.

On the character arc bit, it’s true. The Chrono Cross cast is practically devoid of change. But, is change truly necessary for all characters? Let’s take Glenn, for instance. By the time you meet him, he has already come to gripes with himself and with his father and brother’s death. He’s already a full-blown character; change in his persona really wasn’t necessary to begin with. Or Van. What would you have changed about his personality? For someone his age, he’s awfully mature – something which many characters far older than him lack – and he has a distinct outlook on life, although somewhat pessimistic. But, what did you expect? A character all jolly and glad of being extremely poor and owing so much money to a self-centered bitch? Glad of having lost his mother a few years back? Occurrence which also caused his father to become a completely irresponsible, and probably even overly-optimistic wuss that doesn’t do much of anything – save for painting, yet is moronically picky so as to whom he sells his paintings to. You see, the point is, while the importance of character arc is rather great for RPGs, for it often adds profoundness to the character in question, it’s not always an essential element for all> characters.

You know, it’s funny. Chrono Cross actually has a really good plot. Maybe not great, but good nonetheless. The problem is, in essence, that the story’s layout was, well… considerably awful. Think about it. What’s the point of running around throughout the game fulfilling but tedious, menial tasks, when in truth, few to none of them really do much to further the actual story? The course of the story lacks any sort of consistency. You’re initially thrown about doing one thing, and then you suddenly jump to a whole new different scenario, which originally had nothing to do with anything throughout the game. Furthermore, you get smacked across the face with a great portion of the whole story at the very end of the game by the three little “ghosts” – or sprites, or specters, or however else you wish to call them. And I don’t even want to delve into questioning how in God’s name they gained such detailed knowledge of such a broad and complex situation. Another good example of this is Lavos (Lavos Spawn/Time Devourer), who was utterly unbeknownst to the player from the very beginning up to the very end. Watching all these things come into play, straight out of the blue, would lead you to believe that they were simply thrown into the game haphazardly, just so to hurry and wrap it up. As I’ve said in the past, it’s like watching the ending to a whole different game. It had so much potential, it really did, but for whatever reason it wasn’t taken advantage of. Bad move, creators, bad move.

Anyhow, ironically, I still haven’t presented my stance on Chrono Cross. You might find this surprising, what with everything I’ve stated about the game thus far and the style in which I wrote it, but it’s actually one of my favorite games. In fact, I practically love it. Yet, as paradoxical as this will undoubtedly sound to some of you, I tend to argue for both sides – I criticize Chrono Cross as much as I defend it, depending on how I see fit under the given circumstances. It’s quite simple, really. I like the game, but I don’t let that stop me from seeing its blatant flaws and inconsistencies. In that very fashion, I don’t allow the game’s many flaws to stand in the way of enjoying and appreciating many of the intriguing controversial and thought-provoking issues, as has been evinced by our constant debating over it and the subsequent blatant division of beliefs and groups – AllRPG forum goers should know best, from once having a dominating CC fan base, to eventually breaking up and dividing into Pro-CC and Anti-CC groups, with the happy mediums watching the many battles ever so intently. Fortunately, we were able to break the mold, thanks to some of the most persistent and unquestionably educated RPGers online that I’ve ever seen.

In any case, keep in mind that what I’ve stated in this article hasn’t just been for the very heck of coming up and saying it, but rather that I’ve been trying to take as much of an objective view on the issue as I possibly can – as far as the arguments presented go, at any rate. You see, every coin has two sides to it, and in this very case, it was my intent and purpose to bring them both up vis-à-vis, as I hope was clear to you, the reader. I was enlightened on Chrono Cross’s various flaws, yet I wasn’t biased to disliking the game because of them. As a matter of rather simplistic fact, they made me like the game even more. If it weren’t for that reason, we would see the average, every day discussion we have over the Final Fantasy games, which in my opinion aren’t nearly as intense as those held over the Chrono series.

Believe it or not, Chrono Cross was able to get a tight grip on most of us; it absorbed us. Were it not so, we wouldn’t have gotten so into the game’s plot. We wouldn’t have analyzed the characters in such a detailed manner. We wouldn’t have spent the last couple of years debating over it; forming groups over it; coming up with theories in an attempt to explain some plot elements or plot holes found in it. Or convincing others to understand our righteousness and uber-knowledge on the Chrono series. Heck, you wouldn’t still be reading this article if you weren’t somehow drawn to it.

I’m not saying you like the game because of these things. By all means, no. I’m simply pointing out how we’ve been so into it thus far, and how for that reason Chrono Cross has accomplished a very positive end. It managed to be a part of us. It made us bend all our mental prowess to it on many occasions, just so to try and figure certain things out. It made us invest hours upon hours on it, and on various instances we learn something new, or just come to a realization. Yet there’s always something else. It’s never all said and done. There’s always that other thing that needs examining. There’s always something either uncovered or unfinished that begs for discussion. It’s in essence the very controversy brought about by Chrono Cross that has kept it alive for so long, both as a game and as a very part of us. Therein lies one of Chrono Cross’s greatest aspects, however it is you decide to look at it.

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