(Played the DS version)
I could nitpick about this game all day. It's sometimes too easy with a guide, or too easy to get stuck without one (see: me trying to fight Lavos, then reading about a sidequest I had forgotten about and left halfway done that gives you three Prismatic Helms, immediately shifting the final encounter from an unavoidable TPK to a perfectly normal boss battle). It could really do with a functional quest journal and a more usable map, so you can stop playing for more than a week and remember what's going on. The plots of certain quests can be a bit thin. But I would feel like a real dickhead if I spent this whole review talking about Chrono Trigger's problems, instead of how absolutely magical it is, instead of its lovely sprites, instead of its sweeping soundtrack, instead of Akira Toriyama's character designs, instead of how refreshing it is to play a SNES RPG without random encounters, instead of the practically unprecedented amount of narrative freedom and choice it allows, instead of how cool Frog and Magus are, or instead of the warmth of its world. Those are the things that matter. Chrono Trigger is a game that matters.
I could nitpick about this game all day. It's sometimes too easy with a guide, or too easy to get stuck without one (see: me trying to fight Lavos, then reading about a sidequest I had forgotten about and left halfway done that gives you three Prismatic Helms, immediately shifting the final encounter from an unavoidable TPK to a perfectly normal boss battle). It could really do with a functional quest journal and a more usable map, so you can stop playing for more than a week and remember what's going on. The plots of certain quests can be a bit thin. But I would feel like a real dickhead if I spent this whole review talking about Chrono Trigger's problems, instead of how absolutely magical it is, instead of its lovely sprites, instead of its sweeping soundtrack, instead of Akira Toriyama's character designs, instead of how refreshing it is to play a SNES RPG without random encounters, instead of the practically unprecedented amount of narrative freedom and choice it allows, instead of how cool Frog and Magus are, or instead of the warmth of its world. Those are the things that matter. Chrono Trigger is a game that matters.