Chrono Trigger was one of the first role playing games that I ever finished entirely. This may be the reason why it became my favorite game of all time, but there is much more to it than that. Like every good game Chrono Trigger is good in many aspects. Graphics, Sound, Value, Characters, Story, Gameplay, and most likely even more contribute to the sheer greatness of this game. I will now go into certain categories in depth.
Story: One of the main brilliant points of Chrono Trigger is the story. Like most RPG's it has its basic cliche points, but they are outweighed by most of the other plot points. The game starts out as Chrono is going to visit his friend Lucca ac the local fair. On the way there he bumps into a princess unknowingly. One thing leads to another and the princess is lost in time, and Chrono must go rescue her. Before you know it you are on an epic quest to stop the destruction of the world at the hands of the evil parasite lavos. The games story in my opinion never has extremely dull moments. The excellent story is complimented by the diverse cast of characters. On your travels you will encounter a magician, robot, frog, and even a cavewoman. The game lasts for a very long time and the story will keep you interested.
Sound: The sound in this game is exceptional. It has very catchy music. This is the first game I ever bought the soundtrack for. The music compliments almost every environment in the game that it is paired up with.The music was wonderfully composed to fit the game. This isn't saying a whole lot, since most Squaresoft games back in the day had great music to go with them.
Graphics: The graphics in this game are nothing compared to what most people in modern times expect from a game, but for the year 1996 they were pretty good. The sprites were well drawn and colorful so that they catch the eye. The environments were all well drawn, but it was easy to tell when an environment was the same as another just with a recolored chipset. Every visual element in the game matched up, so it actually looked like everything in the game was from the same world. Since the game goes through time the progression of the continent was done well, and you could see just how things had changed from era to era. So in the end the games graphics looked good for its time, but weren't anything super amazing,
Gameplay: This is where the game really comes into its own for me. The turn based RPG battle with the ATB system. Like all games with the ATB system you go into battke, wait for a bar to fill up and once it's done you can make your moves. Chrono Trigger has very well done battle animations, and cool attacks. Every weapon would look marginally different than the one that came before it. There was nothing too different about Chrono Triggers ATB, but it was still fun. Battles would give you EXP and TP. EXP would gain your characters levels nso that their base stats would rise, and TP would make it so that they learned more attacks called techs.. The techs could be chained together with certain characters so you could get dual and triple techs. Like most games Chrono trigger only allowed for 3 people in battle at a time, but it was very easy to switch characters out. Chrono trigger was one of the first games that I can recall to not have random battles, and let me tell you that is a godsend. When you see an enemy running around you can actually avoid it. You don't have that constant sense of random battle looming over your head. Chrono Trigger is one of those games where you will want to continually level up your character because it is a lot of fun to see them get stronger and to see what attacks they are going to learn next.
In conclusion I think Chrono Trigger is the best game ever,a nd I would reccomend it to anyone. You may not have gotten a good impression of it from my terribly written review, but I assure you it is a great game. If you ever get the chance to play Chrono Trigger I reccomend it on the SNES. The SNES was where Chrono Trigger was born, and you have little if any load times. The playstation version even though it has its cool special features, has unbearable load times in between every screen. As great as this game is, it is not for everyone. If you don't like rpgs, or don't want to invest a lot of time in a game this is surely not for you. However I reccomend you rethink your position and pick this game up anyways!
