I swear every single time this game tried to go all "HUMAN BAD, NATURE GOOD" cracked me up, not because I disagree with environmentalism or anything, I just think they did this in an incredibly silly and heavy-handed way here. It's weird because Chrono Cross was released by the same company that made Final Fantasy VII, that game also had environmentalist themes except they were much better handled and more relevant to the plot compared to Chrono Cross' story being this convoluted mess that tries to be a lot of different things but doesn't excel at any of them in particular.

That being said, I do think there are some good isolated moments in the story, the battle system is fun and the sheer atmosphere evoked by the gorgeous art coupled with one of the most beautiful video game soundtracks of all time make this worth playing at the end of the day.

After giving Nuts & Bolts more chances than I should have and always losing interest on it halfway through, I'm thoroughly convinced that Rare's meeting that led to them making this game went something like this:

"ello mates, how about we make THE most boring video game ever and put Banjo and Kazooie in it just for shits and giggles?"

"Oi lmao that's a bloody fantastic idea mate, count us in!"

I appreciate the better controls and the fact that the kill 'em all missions now feel like they were designed by a sane human being, but eh, it's still largely the same game but more polished. My issues with Shadow the Hedgehog are mainly its bland level design where 90% of the time you'll be just holding forward and spamming the shoot button, and the utterly nonsensical story that gets even more confusing when you actually make use of the choice system instead of just following a linear route where you're always doing evil, dark or neutral missions all the way to the end, none of these things are really addressed in this version.

Credit where it's due, I do enjoy a few stages where this mission system is well used, like Lava Shelter, where doing the hero or dark mission will lead you to wildly different paths in the actual stage, with your actions even altering the layout by making the stage more or less flooded by lava. Why isn't the rest of the game like that instead of the same "kill 50 enemies" missions plastered all over the place?