Chrono trigger is a game I’ve already played! A couple years ago in fact, but it did not do it for me at all. However, after becoming a huge dragon ball fan last year and hearing about toriyamas passing I thought I’d give chrono trigger a second try because I always thought it looked great visually and I figured it could be my tribute. Well apparently toriyama (and the fine folks at old square) does it again because this game actually rules pretty hard. This combat is excellent, the battle positioning and having to play around that, the animations and most of all the tec/part chemistry makes even dumb grunt fights feel pretty engaging and undoubtedly entertaining, it also helps that all the moves are cool as shit. There is not many satisfactions greater than watching chrono melt a couple imps with Luminaire. This game overall looks excellent also, doing a great job of separating all the times periods not merely by architecture but also environmental tone like how they make 600AD gloomy and cloudy and they make the future ashen and shadowy. On the note of sensory presentation this music sounds awesome. Every battle gets you into it immediately with that katana-unsheath-sound and the bass line coming in. All the music in this game is excellent and reeks of 90s SNES charm. While I wouldn’t call it ambient, the music accompanying the various over worlds in this game is perfect. It doesn’t compromise the games style ever but still makes the player feel like the sound is appropriate with their environment (corridors of time is the best at this for sure). The story is a mixed bag in my opinion however, some aspects are interesting and I like the idea of how time travel is done here but, first off, I never really like time travel, and second off, it’s nothing mind blowing or shocking narratively. The most I can say about this game stories are in its characters which I will talk about now. They are not super strong to be honest. In terms of using them and whatever, no character is lame but writing wise is different. Chrono is actually awful, he looks super cool for sure but he has actually nothing, even the dialogue you can pick for him isn’t doing him any favours. Luca and Ayla are pretty weak and basically have nothing except Luca and her mom (maybe) getting crushed by some big dumb machine. Robo is sweet and whatever but his story is nothing insane, still good tho, he’s the worst of the good. Marle is probably the most charming and I like that. The only two GREAT characters are Magus, who is very twisty and fairly layered (also cool as hell) and frog who is just the complete goat writing and all. Chrono trigger is an excellent classic RPG that I’m glad I revisited. For how long it takes and for how much effort the devs put into it (especially with the quadrillion endings) I would recommend it to everyone if only for its amazing presentation and perfection of SNES era combat. Please play!