Game Review - originally written by Gideon Zhi (founder of Aeon Genesis Translation Group)

Radical Dreamers is a visual novel set in the Chrono Trigger universe. It is a pseudo-sequel to Chrono Trigger itself, and is commonly referred to as the game that inspired Chrono Cross. This is true to a very great extent, but if you're expecting CC on the SNES or anything even vaguely similar to CC, then you're going to be sorely disappointed.

RD plays very much like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. Text is displayed for a while, and eventually you will be prompted to make a choice based on the text. You navigate the mansion that way, you fight battles that way, and in fact, you do -everything- that way. So if reading isn't your thing, then you're not going to get much enjoyment out of the game. If you like to read, however, you're in for a treat.

At the core of any novel - whether it's pushed as a paperback or hardcover book, a PDF file on some website, or a game like this one - is its story and its writing. Demi's team has gone through great pains to ensure that the writing is second to none; in fact, you could probably pass this off as a major literary work. I can't imagine how many pages it would be if it were printed in book form.

The story is a good one as well, one that Cross fans will be familiar with. It follows Serge, Kid, and Magil through Viper Manor in their quest for the Frozen Flame. They go through a number of interesting rooms, encounter a number of fearsome beasts, and meet a number of interesting people. There's the development of a relationship between Serge and Kid, there's the mysterious past that Kid wants to get revenge for, there's the ever-driving hunt for gold, gold, and more gold. On the whole, it's quite a good read.

Combat, as I mentioned, is text based like the rest of the game. Serge does have “health” and you can “die”, and the results of your actions won't always go the same way each time. Each time you get hurt by anything, the game lowers Serge's health a little, and eventually the text accompanying his state of being will alter as well to give you an idea of how badly injured he is. The whole system is nothing really groundbreaking, but it can work against you if you have incredibly bad luck. The game isn't very long though, so hopefully, health won't be an issue.

Graphically and aurally, the game ranges from decent to good. There are a few truly beautifully done areas in the game (most notably the study) but while most of the graphics aren't really anything groundbreaking, they certainly suffice and get the point across. The sound and music fare about the same. Many of the tunes in Radical Dreamers were remixed for use in Cross, so some of them may be familiar while others probably won't. Again, my favorite theme has to be the one that plays in the study.

All in all, if you like reading and you're a Chrono fan, give Radical Dreamers a whirl. It'll fill up an afternoon, anyway, and even if you've managed to get all three endings to the main scenario, there are still six or seven other sub-scenarios that you can read through once you've gone through the main for the first time. I haven't played any of them, though, so I can't say much about them, but I thoroughly enjoyed the main chapter.

It's a neat text-driven adventure.
Storytelling is very straightforward and simple.
The narration includes pictures, some animations and some tracks. This is done to make the experience more engaging than reading a book. It's extremely short and can be cleared in less than two hours.
Nowadays this type of interactive experience has evolved in every aspect possible. This is the reason why Radical Dreamers: Le Trésor Interdit feels dated. It is a good product in view of the context it was released in, but it definitely lacks the features of a cult classic.
I rank it higher due to its contribution to the 'Chrono' series. It expands the lore in a fascinating way and gives familiar characters more spotlight.

Uma visual novel bem envolvente, imersiva e com grande senso estético. Suas conexões com Chrono Trigger são apenas um pequeno detalhe; é uma obra bem fechadinha e fácil de apreciar mesmo sem a experiência do outro jogo.

Além da, hum, chamemos de "campanha principal", há vários finais e caminhos alternativos disponíveis após se zerar o game "normalmente" pelo menos uma vez. Alguns são absolutamente hilários, outros apenas absurdos. Todos são um pequeno deleite narrativo.

E a trilha sonora é foderosa.

Curiosa propuesta cuanto menos... Una especie de aventura gráfica con toques roleros que termina siendo bastante entretenida; aquí le juega a favor su corta duración para no hacerse cansino ya que termina teniendo poca variedad de situaciones y escenarios.

Es tan curioso que es el único juego de la "saga" Chrono que tiene un protagonista con una personalidad definida y que habla, además una personalidad bastante atípica para lo que suelen ser los personajes del jrpg y lo que te esperarías que es Serge viniendo de Chrono Cross. Porque sí, recomiendo jugar Radical Dreamers después de Chrono Cross, aunque su lanzamiento fuera anterior te "spoilea" una revelación bastante clave de Chrono Cross, casi que la más clave de todo el juego y que le da sentido como secuela.

Cuenta una historia bastante entretenida, con una narrativa que no está nada mal y aunque no me haya parecido un gran juego mola bastante jugarlo después Trigger y Cross y ver un juego del mismo universo tan diferente, con sus referencias, sus diferentes finales, etc. La verdad que lo recomiendo para fans de la saga Chrono, sobre todo para jugarlo en tercer lugar y cerrar la saga (espero que hasta ahora) con este interesante expermiento para satellaview.

Interesting mainly for it's connections to Chrono Trigger, which are kept subtle enough to let to this story breathe. Other than that, it's a pretty unremarkable adventure game about a stock rpg party and their tiny quest.

There's a few simple puzzles, some pretty interesting side stories for minor characters and then it ends. Not a bad time.

The combat sequences are all very fun the first time around, but don't have enough variation for the amount of times they get reused. Had they not repeated themselves, they would have had a much stronger impact on me.

I love this visual novel so much and very happy it finally got an official release outside satellaview. I would recommend playing Cross before reading it though as it gives away some of the major twists for Cross.

Both the fan translation and the official translation are outstanding and have their differences with some quotes and jokes, but gets the same story perfectly across painted with strong imagery alongside a good blend of humour, suspense and tearjerker moments.

On the gameplay side of things Radical Dreamers sports an health gauge not visible to you despite being occasionally expressed through text and an affinity gauge with Kid. Otherwise the novel's interactivity is built on exploring Viper's Manour by picking routes throughout a very consistently structured maze.

Just make sure to save a lot to avoid dying from some of the random encounters and Kid's affection rate depending on most of your choices can take you away from the true ending if you piss her off too much.

A very solid 2-3 hour read with incredible music and ambience fit for a rainy day or dark nights.

really wanted to like this one, but nope, sorry, it's just boring as fuck. and i say this as someone who's read some decently long VNs before, this honestly would have worked way better if it was just linear instead of making you walk back and forth through the same 3 boring hallways trying to find the one item you need to progress. and also the "combat" sucks ass too, basically every instance of it is totally unnecessary and they only serve to pad the runtime. every attempt at shoving what one might be able to call "gameplay" into this is a massive fumble and the game woulda been better without it.

i died at the circle of light (place within like 20 minutes of the end) cuz i picked the wrong option (didn't even know you could die in this game up to this point) and the game just unceremoniously kicks you back to the veeryy start. safe to say i wasn't gonna go through the past 2 hours of slow text scroll and bullshit again (oh yeah, this game doesn't have a skip/ff option like 99% of other VNs do) so i just pulled up a longplay and watched the rest.

i'm glad I didn't play through it again since the ending is certainly not bad but still feels really derivative and trite imo. i feel like the whole game was building up to something and the ending just doesn't deliver anything all that resonant. sure, some vaguely "cool" things happen, but unless you wanna get really artsy (something I don't think this game was going for), there's gotta be some sort of catharsis and the story just does not deliver in that aspect. the last like 5 minutes of dialogue feels so generic, if you told me it was plucked right out of another RPG i'd believe you. the game clearly wants you to care about its leads but doesn't try like at all to make that happen, aside from just giving them basic character archetypes and hoping you like them.

maybe play this if you like reading the same 5 boxes of text over and over again? actually don't, don't do that. it gets points though for the music, which is pretty good all things considered

Gonna be honest and say that I really don't care much for Chrono Trigger. I loved playing through it when I was 14 or 15 years old and then forgot about it very shortly after beating it, which to me speaks to it being a piece of media that is very impressive on the surface but ultimately doesn't have a lot to deliver on otherwise (of course this is coming from someone who hasn't played it all the way through in close to a decade). It's a nice cast of characters, it's well-paced, beautiful score, yada yada yada; people talk about it being a "perfect" game but I don't care much for "perfect" games, just as how I don't care for "perfect" films. Raw, wildly ambitious projects mixed with deeply personal narratives that are also very flawed (i.e Xenogears) are far more interesting and important to me than a game that's really well-designed and whatnot.

Radical Dreamers strikes me as the kind of project that holds in that same vein; though it's essentially a side-project, it also holds measurable ambition within it that's bursting from the seams of its visual-novel structure (and all on an add-on for the SNES no less). The repetition that comes with going through the same dialogue/multiple choice screens is a bit annoying but also somehow comforting, you gain a very intimate knowledge of the castle's layout despite it being conveyed through text, and the hints of the larger world outside the confines of Viper Manor speak to a desire to render that world, these feelings of loss and a desperate flailing against death, in a manner that the SNES could not convey and would eventually be made manifest in Chrono Cross. The writing itself is wonderful; this is the first VN I've ever really completed and while I don't care for its connections to Trigger it was the characters and the sulky, gothic tone and design that kept me interested. The ending is genuinely mind-blowing in the way that all my favorite pieces of art are, a wistful reflection on time stretched before you, contextualized by a moment where you broke into a dude's mansion to impress a girl you liked. Those are really the only important ideas for any piece of art to tackle: love, death and time, so all of that makes this a special game in its own right. May expand my thoughts on this here as I think on it.

If you took my average rating across a video game series, the Chrono franchise would easily be on top. Chrono Cross, flaws and all, is still in my top 10 favorite games, and I still consider Chrono Trigger the best game ever made. Unknown to most fans though, there is actually a third Chrono game, which for many years remained somewhat obscure, until the Chrono Cross remaster brought into greater consciousness. Radical Dreamers is technically the second game in the series, released for the Japanese-only Satellaview SNES add-on, and previously only available in English via a mid-2000s fan translation. The game features three characters -- Serge, Kid, and Magil -- as they attempt to break into a manor and steal the treasure inside. For most of its playthrough, Radical Dreamers seems to have nothing at all to do with Trigger, only dropping vague references, waiting until the end to reveal that the entire game is meant to answer the open fate of one of its characters. For those who have played Chrono Cross, this plot will sound incredibly similar. Indeed, dissatisfied with how Radical Dreamers turned out, its plot would be reused as the basis of Chrono Cross, so far as to reuse much of this scenario in that game, when Serge, Kid, and a third party member break into Viper Manor near the beginning of the game. Somewhat ironically, I think the characterization shown here is much better than we got in Cross, as Kid and Serge actually have a relationship, and the connections to the first game are much more solid (Magil has a heavily hinted upon connection to Trigger, while his modified Cross version Guile is a completely discardable character). The game itself is a visual novel with some exploration and light combat thrown in. It's somewhat engaging, and the music is excellent, but I can see why the developers wanted a do-over. There's a hidden and somewhat arbitrary health and relationship stat which will determine how the ending goes. In addition, it carries on the tradition of silly alternative endings, but those are probably best viewed online. I think if you're a fan of the series this game is worth playing, simply to get some additional insight into the development of Cross, and to spend more time in this world. Besides, if you know where to look while playing Chrono Cross, you can find out that this game is not entirely forgotten.

Nao sou muito de jogar VN's,mas eu gostei.
Chrono Cross foi meu primeiro jrpg e continua sendo um dos meus favoritos e assim como o jogo base,essa VN continua com uma ost muito boa.
A historia tbm é legalzinha,uma coisa q fica clara nessa Vn é o tanto q o Serge é apaixonado pela Kid,maluco fica ate bobo quando ver a loirinha de olho azul.
A gameplay é aquela tipica de vn's,vc tem opções de onde ir e quando tem algum combate vc tem q escolher rapido alguma opção.
Eu peguei o primeiro final,é q o final bom,mas nao pretendo ir atras dos outros.

You probably don't often hear the word "stunning" used to describe a visual novel, perhaps less so a late 90s SNES image-light one, but that's exactly what Radical Dreamers is; it's compelling and visually appealing in equal measure, captivating and brisk. It's still incredible to think that we got an official localization of this a solid 25 years after its initial release -- having been a Satellaview exclusive, the game was all but lost to time -- but as someone who grew up loving Chrono Cross to pieces it was well worth the wait.

Of course, that Chrono connection is a huge driving force for chasing this one down in the first place. Radical Dreamers is writer Masato Kato's in-universe follow-up to Chrono Trigger, albeit much moodier and more pensive. Without spoiling much at all, it isn't very clear that it's related at all from the onset. Much of the story and characters are instantly recognizable to anyone who's played Cross, and for good reason -- Kato was dissatisfied with the end product and ended up rolling a ton of RD's elements into production of Squaresoft's PS1 classic, right down to key pieces from Yasunori Mitsuda. Hearing the original versions of stuff like "Gale" and "The Girl Who Stole the Stars" makes sense when you realize you're accompanying Serge and Kid on an adventure through Viper's Manor, but they were surprisingly no less affecting in a new setting than their Cross counterparts.

Aesthetically, Radical Dreamers is a proper treasure -- although there are very few graphics to speak of, the game's beauty lies in its prose and presentation. It's a clean game with no excess, very simple screens and choices to make, and not a ton of mechanics to track. You're really only tasked with keeping some kind of mental tabs on Serge's fortitude and Kid's affection, both left sort of vague outside of more general "you look okay" or "I'm pissed at you" kinds of statements. It's the sort of gameplay integration that leaves players to infer via text what works and what doesn't without any real kind of UIs or menus to speak of, lending to Radical Dreamers' clean presentation. Humorous dialogue is peppered throughout the heist, and even perilous sequences are described in crunchy detail. It's all punctuated by beautiful image accompaniments that range from the mundane (hallways, stairs, spooky doors) to the majestic (blood circle, final sequence), taking on a richly suspenseful tone.

All things considered, it's a fairly short campaign (the initial run only took me about 3 hours and the alternate endings seem considerably shorter) so it's definitely the kind of game I could recommend for a lazy Sunday afternoon or even just some bedtime reading. It's even included alongside the remaster of Chrono Cross, so you don't have to exert any extra effort to pick this up alongside a masterpiece RPG. Definitely give it a spin if you're up for a quick, fun read.

People, you can save the game when you press Y while going through the hallways.

An interesting text adventure which feels rather generic for most of the playthrough, though in its short lenght it does plant clues for some interesting backstory for the few characthers roaming around the castle, which comes around really well at the end with a beautiful, hallucinogenic finale, though it's left open, I believe to lead into Chrono Cross. Oh, and the characthers don't travel in time to solve their traumas like in the prequel.

"She lived on, enduring a much sadder fate... Running from her past and fearing her future, she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up in the surging waves of the vortex of time"

by kato’s own admission, radical dreamers is an unfinished bastard child. developed in just three months and released on the ill-fated satellaview, its no grand revelation to say that it made an unremarkable blimp on his career and the general public. the game has yet to see a rerelease in over two decades and it’s a miracle it isn’t lost media entirely. even acknowledging less-than-legal outlets, it’s only perceived as that weird, nonessential, complementary work to its bigger brothers. i’d be posing if i didn’t make it explicitly clear that i came to dreamers for those same, enigmatic qualities - if not for the irrevocable attachment it has to a game many hold close to heart i feel as if the western world may have passed it up entirely.

but i don’t say any of this begrudgingly, it makes it fascinating even, how dreamers takes advantage of our nostalgia for trigger. radical dreamers was drafted hot off the back of trigger’s release, a period where kato was in an emotional slump. thusly, dreamers exists far removed from the juvenile enthusiasm characteristic of his past works. if trigger was a game about how opening up about our personal background and motives to loved ones can allow us to, collectively, strive towards a more brilliant future, radical dreamers is that future. a future where not everybody got to realize their desires and the indifferent thread of time has cursed them with regrets and woes regardless of their achievements. for the better part of its runtime, you’re trudging through rugged corridors after rugged corridors aided by people with baggage too heavy and complicated to plainly clarify, complimented by an ambient to downright melancholic mitsuda score. the manor is an emotionally draining hub, tasking you to backtrack through samey halls and text crawls you’ve seen three times over only to be met with characters wallowing in regret and cynicism once you finally reach your destination. made worse with some only being here to reinforce the notion that there’s no future for kid nor her gang of drifters - a pessimism that she long since deeply internalized.

yet, despite the burden this milieu is actively afflicting on kid’s already vulnerable psyche, she still finds a way to banter with the party every opportunity she gets. never getting a chance to sit down and process her emotions being surrounded in a never static environment, she attempts to make the best of the cards she was dealt and drifts on towards her ultimate objective - not knowing rather it will result in some final emotional catharticism or rather it’s even accomplishable. it’s not sincerity coming from a place of previously reached self-actualization a la trigger, it’s coming from a place of accepting the regrets of yesterday and fears of tomorrow in an earnest pursuit of that final, personal pillar. even surge never quite stops fawning over kid whilst submerged in the bleakness, and while magil never comes around to the two he still holds that fundamental will to live. the aforementioned chrono trigger links don’t ever dare to steal the spotlight from dreamers’ established mood and themes, instead opting to recontextualize what we know of these characters and their tribulations. it’s the only sequel the kato of 96 could have envisioned, a sequel that firmly stands as its own being, sometimes recounting nostalgic yet somber memories of days gone in a yearning to find solace in a future unknown and soon to arrive.

in some parts, it feels like radical dreams was meant to be abandoned, with the narrative being framed as the ramblings of a distant relative, lost and deceased. it’s a dream cast ashore, its vestiges dismantled and lifted to realize aspirations of greater prestige. but, i just can’t help but marvel at what kato perceives as some pebble, a pebble crafted with so much passion, so much emotion, so many dreams only for it to be simply forgotten.