Chrono Trigger (PC) review "Let's do the time warp again!"

The world changes as the years pass, and we evolve with it. You experience the conundrum called life, and you sometimes transform as a result. You find joy, discover new loves and passions, let others fizzle out, and occasionally (or frequently, depending on your lot) meet heartache. However, there will always be a handful of people, places, items, and works that always light your heart no matter how much you or they age.

For me, one of those things is Chrono Trigger. It wasn't the first JRPG I played, but it made perhaps the biggest impact on me during my formative years, tied only with Final Fantasy VI. So you can imagine my shock when seeing this title appear on Steam, followed by the crushing blow dealt when its early reviews read "mostly negative." Steam's version turned out to be a crude port of Trigger's mobile release, complete with wonky resolution settings, crashes, hideous font, and visual bugs that created blurry patches. So I did what anyone else would have: I sent my high expectations through a time portal to the future, where hopefully Square Enix patched this puppy up enough to be playable.

Luckily, it was the right call...

In the years since its PC release, Trigger saw some pleasant, unexpected changes. Most of the bugs and the awful blurs vanished, and a more bearable font emerged. Best of all, updates to resolution allowed play on 21:9 screens and even Steam Deck--and, by extension, widescreen TVs.



Sadly, crashes still abound, although they're pretty infrequent. Mainly, they occur during the title card, where you'll see the opening cinematic freeze or the image fade to eternal black after you press a button, the main menu never materializing.

But never mind that because Trigger still stacks up magnificently. Although Steam's page displays a "story rich" tag, the game doesn't fully commit to being a playable novel like some might suspect. Instead, it strikes a hard balance between keeping the affair entertaining, engaging, and exciting while dipping into melodrama only when necessary. This isn't to say the adventures of the silent, teenage swordsman Crono and his six friends--ranging from a princess with daddy issues to a purple-haired magician with sister issues--doesn't occasionally provide a memorable story. It's just not a tremendously deep or overblown one that robs players of interaction.

Take the character Frog, for instance. The tale could have merely left him an honor-bound, humanoid Frog that wields a sword, and that would've been cool enough. However, it delved lightly into his backstory, providing you just enough to make him into more than a neat character model or archetype. At no point does the game dive so deeply into any of the characters that someone could write a lengthy thesis on them. In keeping its narrative elements brief and to-the-point, the campaign gives you more time to play, explore, and experiment. You get to power through more side quests and obtain neat items, or exchange characters to form different party combinations. You never feel like you're watching and/or reading more than interacting.



Still, story elements remain fairly strong throughout the experience. It would be difficult to spin an effective yarn that deals with time-traveling friends who discover (and subsequently work to prevent) a horrific cataclysm in the year 1999 without occasionally advancing any sort of plot or character arcs. Thankfully, instead of trying to be another novel or movie, the game plays to the strengths of its own medium by only progressing its own narrative when necessary. Thanks to that, plot beats hit more effectively. I still get goosebumps watching Frog draw a powerful sword from the ground and slice into the side of a mountain, or witnessing an act of empathy from a prehistoric party member as she offers to help her fallen archnemesis, or seeing a huge twist unfold as a major villain reveals that his nefarious objectives and motives were not quite what they seemed...

As expected, combat hasn't changed. As with so many Square games from the '90s, this one utilizes the old Final Fantasy ATB battle system. In other words, each combatant on the battlefield possesses a bar that fills up over time. When it does, that character may perform an action, be it attacking, casting a spell (called a "tech"), or using an expendable item. There's a catch here, though: allies can perform an action in any order, and each comrade's menu remains on-screen until you've selected a command. Hell, you could have one person sitting there idle during the whole scuffle while the other two do all the work.

This alteration, of course, paves the way for a terrific feature: "double" and "triple techs." You see, when two characters know specific techs, they can combine them to make devastating or life-saving combos. For instance, Crono's lightning spell combines with one of Frog's leaping stabs to create a maneuver in which Frog leaves his sword firmly implanted in a foe, allowing Crono to hit it with a shocking bolt from above. The result: massive lightning damage. However, not all double techs are destructive. Frog also knows another beneficial tandem skill in which he swallows the magical kiss from the cavewoman Ayla, then converts it into a healing wave that restores the whole troop.



The further you venture into the campaign, the more quests that become available. Some of them bear fantastic boons, such as powerful weapons or neat changes to the scenery or the in-game history. For instance, you can convert one of the deserts in the present into a forest by performing some tasks for a conservationist in medieval times. Unfortunately, in regard to the side quests, they can't all be winners. Yes, I'm specifically referring to the "Lost Sanctum" quest line that originated from this title's DS release. Honestly, I was initially excited to hop into some fresh content after decades of traversing familiar territory. Sadly, all I found was a handful of tiresome fetch quests that involve a lot of backtracking, traveling through long dungeons multiple times, and engaging in tedious, unskippable altercations--all so you can challenge a handful of bosses that are nothing more than palette-swapped assets.

Honestly, I'm glad I waited before picking up this edition of Chrono Trigger. Yeah, it's still the fantastic trip through time it's always been, albeit with a few more small kinks than usual. Thankfully, I didn't get to experience the heartache contained within the early builds of this classic's port. Look, all I'm saying is if you've been waiting for this RPG to be playable, the wait has been over for some time. Yeah, there are still a couple of snags, but that's to be expected. Stop reading and go pick it up right now. Go! Shoo! I'll write something else in the meantime...

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (April 05, 2023) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.