Chrono Cross is an Rpg set in the island archipelago of El Nido. You follow the adventure of the silent protagonist Serge. The plot begins with as all Rpgs do, with a simple quest in an uninteresting village. Serge soon finds himself through a series of events in an alternate dimension, where he was never born. He quickly tries to figure out what's going on when he is attacked by a couple of knights. A bandit by the name of Kid shows up to help him and that's where the story begins.
The combat system of the game is the most unique I've seen. It revolves around percentages and attack strengths for the physical combat. Heavy attacks can have fewer performed yet do more damage and are less likely to miss. If you hit them with a Light or Medium attack first however then it will increase your odds with the heavy attack. It sounds very complicated but once you start you'll pick up on it in no time. The other half of the battle system involves an element grid. The spells you acquire and attribute to your characters are set into seven or eight tiers with tier 1 sucking and tier 8 being quite powerful. As the battle goes on you will attain access to your higher allocated spells. After use however your grid will subtract the strength of the spell you used from the current tier you have accessed. Again it sounds quite complicated but is very easy to utilize and get the hang of.
The characters in this game are the core of this game. It is possible to unlock at least 30 of the possible 45 characters in any given play through. Each character has it's own skills and is attributed to a different color on the element grid. Almost all of the characters are unique and interesting, and most have an interesting speech peculiarity.
All three of these qualities come together to create a very interesting and memorable games that will keep you going through the fairly long game covering two disks. The game does have downfalls as sometimes the pacing can become fairly slow and tedious. It is also quite unfortunate that due to certain circumstances that I will not reveal, many of your favorite characters will become significantly less powerful then your newer ones. Anyways This game is definitely worth a play. Provided you can find a copy.