Unlike a traditional RPG, though, the fact that Radical Dreamers is pretty much devoid of actual graphics kept everything to the imagination of who was playing it. It introduced players to characters like Chrono and Kid way before Chrono Cross came out, and had them invade Lynx’s mansion, just as the opening to that game showed. Radical Dreamers is basically a text adventure game set in the Chrono universe. And that’s even more the case thanks to the first official localization to Radical Dreamers ever, a game that up until now was locked behind a long dead Japan-only download service for the Super Famicom called Satellaview. Not to touch on spoilers for an old game – if you’ve never played Chrono Cross and have yet to witness it, you definitely should – it’s safe to say that it definitely went in a different direction than what was expected from a sequel, even more so to a classic such as Chrono Trigger. I for one always had trouble getting into the combat back when the game was out originally, but now, having replayed a fair chunk of it, I grew to appreciate it more.
Not to mention the fact that it was powered by a very complex combat system dealing with elemental colors, hit percentages and combos, Chrono Cross proved to be a genre-defining release, but not without a percentage of players feeling a little betrayed. If you’re really Guile, where’s your flat top, hm? So when it proved to be a very different game than Chrono Trigger, shaking up the story in some very unique and untraditional ways, people freaked out. Coming in hot on the heels of other heavyweight Squaresoft games at the time, it had a tall order ahead of it, following up the success of the most beloved SNES game the company released. Without a doubt, Chrono Cross was one of the first PlayStation’s top RPGs.
The end result is a game that still feels very much like a twenty year-old RPG, for better or for worse. Now that Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is finally out, fans eager to replay the PlayStation classic and dabble in its newly translated pseudo prequel might find themselves slightly disappointed.Ĭhrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers is a remaster in the vein of Square Enix’s previous rework of Final Fantasy VIII, wherein they upped character model quality, applied an A.I-controlled filter over the pre-rendered background graphics, and added some much needed (but still totally optional) tweaks to gameplay.
So the announcement a couple of months back that it was finally going to be remastered came as a pleasant surprise, even more so due to the fact that it would include a previously unreleased outside of the Japan entry in the Chrono saga, Radical Dreamers. It’s kind of shocking that even though Chrono Trigger is such a beloved RPG and has gotten a number of re-releases, its sequel, 1999’s Chrono Cross hasn’t up until now.
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