Truly this game is one of the best video games I have ever played in my entire life! But why? Well read my review.
Genre: Role-Playing
Release Date: August 15, 2000
Truly this game that I am reviewing right now is one of the best video games I have ever played in my entire life! But you are wondering why this game is so great? Well you will find out in my review and I hope after you read my review you will understand why this game is so awesome!
This is a standard Turn Based RPG with some twists and turns on the gameplay. When characters in some of the other RPG's they just attack and either land the attack or not. In Chrono Cross there is different ways to attack. There is a 1, 2, 3 type of system where as 1 is a weak attack and is more accurate, 2 is an average damage attack and average accuracy, and 3 is a strong attack with not so much accuracy. When you land an attack with 1, 2, or 3 the accuracy for all three attacks increase so you can do a 1 attack and a 3 attack will be more accurately. Plus the animations for the attacks for each one has different animations for each but there is only two for 1, 2, and 3 so there is a total of six animations for regular attacks. The sounds when you hit a critical attack sound pretty awesome to me.
But you can only do a total of seven attack counts. You're saying what are you talking about? Well your characters all have stamina and when you use an attack let's say 2 it will go from 7 to 5 but as well (if you land the attack) your Elemental Level grid will go from a 0 to 2 (will explain in a second). But when your stamina goes to zero or past zero your characters turn is over they can't do anything until their stamina has reached one and higher. Defending can increase other characters stamina or plainly when people (you and the enemy) do anything attack, defend, and using elements will increase the stamina. So there is to be more strategy when dealing with bosses of not trying to get the enemy having more turns than you since you used up all your stamina so be careful and think before you act on anything in this game.
When you use a level 1 attack (using for example) and it lands a hit on the enemy you will notice you go from Lv 0 to an Lv 1 that is your elements in your Elemental Grid being able to be used for battle. Now to explain more of this. The elements you get in the game you would expect to gain them through leveling up. Well your elements can equip them like armor and weapons. Basically kind of like Final Fantasy VII's material system except your stats won't go down when you equip them. Your characters have a level system to equip their elements 1-7. But before I get more into that let me talk about the elements level system first to explain more of the equipping elements system. All the elements have a certain level to them 1-7. 1 being the weakest elements and 7 being the strongest elements. Now to explain more of both the element and equipping element system. Now when you equip a level 1 element in a characters level 3 Element Grid the spell well have will get an extra +2 power. That means the spell is stronger but takes more attacks to be able to use it though. But if you put a level 7 element into a level 1 spot it will be a -6 which means it is weaker but it takes less attacks to use the element though.
There are many types of elements there is Techs, Traps, Offensive, Defensive, Field Effect, Modify Field, and Summons. Techs are special attacks for the character and can be obtained from Stars (will explain later) or from doing side quests. Traps are elements that can basically trap an enemy's element that you have set a trap for. For example of you use a trap for Inferno you can only trap the element called Inferno and that's it. Trap elements can't be moved into other spots in a characters Element Grid so it is a level 5 trap it can only be at the level 5 spot. Offensive elements are the elements that do damage to an enemy, doing status effects like poison and burn to an enemy, and lowering the enemy's states (like attack and defense). Also offensive elements can modify the field to your advantage. Defensive elements are your average healing spells and raising your characters states. Field Effect elements is where you can change the fields element color changes for your advantage/disadvantage for example if you us Redfield it will change all three elemental color to Red. Modify Field elements is the elements that can change elements. Summon elements are what they say they are people or creatures that get summoned for use in battle. But in order to use a Summon elements you need to change all the Elemental Fields color to match the Summons color. But you will lose a set number of stars depending on which summons you use. In battle you can only use an element once so make sure you just don't randomly use them make sure you use them sparingly and you should be able to get through many battles just fine.
For some people who can't figure out what the Elemental field is all about I will explain it a little bit more for you. When you use an element let's say for now Blue (water) on the top left corner blue will fill up this is the Elemental Field and the Elemental Field can only have 3 colors filling up. That is where the elements can have advantages and disadvantages. Once you fill it up will all Blue anybody with Blue will get a power up of attacks and Blue elements.
Since I have been talking about elements for a little while let's talk about all the elements. Blue, Red, Yellow, Green, White, and Black. Each element does more damage to the other and vice verse. Blue Red, Yellow Green, White Black.
Now when you defeat a boss or a certain person/creature you will get a Star. Now you'll ask what they for are. Really only using for Summons and when you hit a certain amount of stars you will get more some Techs for your characters. Also you get more grid slots for your characters Elemental Grid as well so you can equip more elements.
There is no level system in this game on your characters. After battles (most of the time) your characters stats will just go up. Which actually works really well by making characters no just get boost in everything every single time. They get boost on stats evenly and even characters that aren't in battle get their stats up as well so there is characters that are up to your needs when you switch characters out for new ones.
Weapons, armor, and accessories are made not bought. With materials you obtain through finding treasure, winning battles, and so forth. You can trade a certain amount of elements to trade for materials though so you can make better equipment quicker.
All I got to say about the story is that it is one of the best stories ever told in a video game and is never dull for even just a second in the game. Plus all of the cinematics are beautifully made and make the story being told more in depth.
Now let's talk about characters. There are 40+ characters in this game. You think that almost all would be boring, not even good in battle, or plainly just useless. In the case of Chrono Cross characters that isn't true. Each characters comes with their own goods and bads but mostly good. When you see the characters you will be happy that you have them in your party. Even all of the characters have their own type of dialogue. Having accents or a way that they talk in the game. For example Kid is an Australian girl; Harle is a French woman, and Zoa IS ALWAYS TALKING LIKE THIS. There are paths in the game that will also decide what characters you will be getting in the game which I think is pretty cool.
What really impresses me when playing this game (the first time the most) every single time is the different types of bosses, side characters, and enemies there are in this game. It just sometimes amazes me.
Your thinking that's great and all but how much more is there to this game. Well there is more lot's more! Once you go through the game which your first time through would be 40+ hours there is a feature in this game like in Chrono Trigger called New Game +. That is where you start over the game basically with all of your elements (except Summons), weapons, armor, accessories, everything that isn't an object that deals with the story (like the Mastermune, Chrono Trigger, etc...) But the characters you obtain from your game won't be back you got to obtain them again but there is a way where if you took a different path this time around you can actually obtain almost every single character in the game! So if you want to find that out I recommend finding a guide on gamefaqs.com for that. Continuing on there is more side quests in the New Game + that are opened and/or easier to do in going through the game in New Game +. You basically get 5-10 hours of more stuff to do. Plus if you missed your chances or even trying to get all of your characters techs and weapons that's going to probably take you going through the game 3 times (not counting beating the game once). So that's probably around over 60 hours! This game probably has the biggest Replay Value in the history of video games and it's a Playstation game might I add! Plus going through the game again and again never get's old even compared to today's video games.
This game is just so good that I am HIGHLY RECOMMENDING THIS TO EVERYONE! I don't care if you don't like RPG's you must at least give this game a chance. You can actually get this game brand new still for $15. So if you want to know where to get it just PM and I will give you the link to it. So to end this big review is this game is truly one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life time and even when I am 70 years old I am still going to be playing this game!
(I might have forgotten to talk about other some stuff about the game. If any of my info is wrong or you don't have a clue what I am saying PM me about it and I will try to answer and fix it as soon as I can and I hoped that you liked my review)