Chrono Cross: Should I bother?

[cmdr_zoom]

I loved Chrono Trigger, even though I only played it on an emulator. (Which wasn't fully working when I started, so I went back and played it again once it did. And it was AWESOME.) Loved the characters, the music, the story, everything. So when the sequel finally came out in 2000, of course I went and bought it. Listened to the soundtrack. (I even picked up the guide, cheap.) And told myself that I would get to playing it "soon."

At first I was holding off because I wanted to replay CT again, have the story and locations fresh in my mind as I was going through CC. I finally did that. But then other things came up, and other games, and I ended up putting it off even further. Now here we are, almost 9 years and two hardware generations later. I still haven't played it, and in light of all I've learned since, I find myself wondering - should I?

I was spoiled on the game's major plot twist long ago. I've since learned that, in fact, the PC spends most if not the entire game as the pawn of other parties' manipulations; that the beloved characters from the other game are strongly implied to have all come to bad ends, making the connections to it all sad ones; and that of this game's endings, the "best" is still serious "WTF?" material. (I wonder how much of that is due to coming from roughly the same period in Square that FF7 did, with its famously ambiguous ending - they even share the same "maybe the planet would be better off without us" guilty-environmentalist musings.*)

Heck, if I want games to be disappointed in, I've got brand new ones like Fallout 3 and the sequels to Kingdom Hearts.

So I wonder, is it worth spending 30-40 hours, even with a guide holding my hand, just to see the plot unfold to an unsatisfying conclusion amid the lovely backgrounds (and the characters who, with the passing of time, look increasingly badly pixelated) and finally hear the music in context... just to say that, in the end, I finally did it?


(* it's funny: I'm quite capable of, even prone to, making myself feel bad about anything, including existing, but I tend to reject other people's attempts to do so.)

Comments

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm going to go off on a limb here.

You see, I've played CC, I've gotten the best ending (and the chimes were a b*tch to get to line up) and yet I didn't find it nearly so WTF as much as 'the game is all about revising and remeetings'.

I'm also one who seems to have a remarkably better tolerance to these things because lord knows lately I've seen a lot of curmudgeonly mutterings all about more or less because things aren't to people's expectations, versus what the game/genre/whathave you -lets you know from the get go.-

Fallout 3, which while I've managed not to have spoiled on the specifics (so please don't), is an excellent example because you know what? The hero has generally gotten it in the end to one level or another. So I'm not surprised I've heard what I vague allusions I have, but it's not anything -new- about the franchise or game.

It's not just games to note, but I'm finding myself annoyed by the trend more and more. CC was actually an excellent game. It was for the most part consistant with what it was sequel to (which was not or at least not in primary, Chrono Trigger, which is part of the problem) and it overall did the job. Is it worth your time?

Well, honestly, looking at your qualifiers above, likely not. Because it won't satisfy if you take it for what it isn't and hold it against it.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

IMO, Chrono Cross isn't a good game. And it isn't really a sequel to Chrono Trigger.

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed it honestly, and yeah I expected YMMV. And the latter, aside from the Reveal point, it wasn't aside from tangental, yeah.