Description
Serge is a young boy from a fishermen's village. One day, while strolling on the sea shore with his sweetheart, Serge suddenly disappears. He comes back to senses several moments later. Everything seems just the same as it was before, but when Serge visits his home village, nobody recognizes him. He hears from people that he has been dead for ten years. Serge begins to realize that he is now in a parallel world. His first and only wish is to find a way to return home, but, in order to do that, he must understand what has caused the existence of parallel words, allowing inter-dimensional travel. His quest will also reveal to him the truth about his own existence.
Chrono Cross is a Japanese-style role-playing game, and a sequel to
Chrono Trigger. The game's story is not directly connected to that of its predecessor, though there are sub-plots and characters that refer to it. Combat in the game is turn-based; like
Chrono Trigger, the game has no random battles, and enemies are always visible on screen. During battles, Serge and his party members can perform three kinds of attacks: weak, medium, and strong, which tend to miss more frequently but inflict more damage. Actions in battle deplete a certain amount of stamina, which recovers as other characters act. There are also no character levels in the game: instead, the characters get their parameters increased directly after each battle.
All magic spells, character-specific tech attacks, and consumable items are grouped into six elements, which are divided into three pairs with opposing properties. Each player-controlled character and enemy has an innate element, which enhances the power of spells categorized under it when used by said character, but also weakens his or her resistance to the opposing element. Battle fields may also be marked by a particular element, granting bonuses to attacks based on it, and reducing the damage caused by the opposing one. Player-controlled characters have differently shaped grids which allow the player to allocate purchased or found elements there. When the character participates in a battle, the allocated elements act as equipped spells, and can be cast until their amount is depleted.
Though most of the plot progression is linear, there are several sub-quests that are not required to complete in order to reach the game's ending. The game features many recruitable characters (up to 45, though not all of them can be recruited in one playthrough), several different endings, and the ability to play the game again with the statistics and items from the previous play.
Alternate Titles
- "クロノ・クロス" -- Japanese spelling
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
There are no reviews for the PlayStation 3 release of this game. You can use the links below to write your own review or read reviews for the other platforms of this game.
The Press Says
There are no rankings for this game.
Forums
Trivia
Development
The base ideas for
Chrono Cross came from an SNES Satellaview game called
Radical Dreamers. It was basically a text adventure game, using a story related to
Chrono Trigger. Kid, Serge, and several other characters had their start in that game, though they weren't exactly the characters as found in
Chrono Cross.
Endings
Chrono Cross has ten different endings. However, only two of them are available the first time you play the game. After you complete your first game, you can start a new game with all the inventory from the previous one, and eight more paths to various endings become available.
Japanese version
In the Japanese version, Lynx, one of the main characters of the game, is called Yamaneko. Yamaneko is literally "mountain cat", and means... well, a lynx. Another important character - Harle - is called "Tsukiyomi" in Japanese version. "Tsuki" is "moon" (quite logically, since all her special attacks based on moon energy, and also for another reason, which would be a big spoiler to tell).
Magus
Magus from
Chrono Trigger was originally planned to be included in the game. However, with over 40 playable characters the designers didn't have the resources to include scenes that would fully explain his presence and develop the character. They based the character Guile on work already done on Magus, which is why the two look alike.
Music
The victory fanfare is actually a version of Lucca's theme in
Chrono Trigger.
Mythology
Like many other Squaresoft games, "Chrono Cross" contains a lot of educational material, mainly in the sphere of mythology. For example: Klotho, Lachesis, and Athropos, the three aspects of Fate, who reign over the life of the humans, are an exact reproduction of the three Moiras from the Greek mythology, with accurate names and precise descriptions.
References
In the US/Canada version of the game, after completing the game once players may encounter a battle with three characters returning from
Chrono Trigger-- Slash, Flea, and Ozzie. These characters are (obviously) named after rock legends-- Slash of Guns 'N Roses, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Ozzy Osbourne. They are also a mistranslation-- in the original
Chrono Trigger, they were named after condiments (Mayonnaise, Vinegar, and Soy Sauce). However, thinking that the joke would not go over well, translator Ted Woolsey changed the names. This presented a problem in the translation of
Chrono Cross, when translator Dana Kwon chose to maintain continuity between the games. Thus, the character of Slash (a musician in the style of J-Goth artist Gackt) from
Chrono Cross became Nikki, a reference to Nikki Sixx.
Technology
Because the game's 40 playable characters all have different speech patterns, a sub-program was created specifically for the game to generate the different speech patterns around the line, rather than code in every line for every character.
Title
The old Greek word "chrono" means "time", thus the name of the game that has a lot to do with time (for example time traveling and such).
Awards
- Game Informer
- August 2001 (Issue #100) – #55 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll
Information also contributed by
Joshua J. Slone,
MegaMegaMan,
Tiago Jacques,
Timo Takalo and
Unicorn Lynx
