7/10

The game is often misunderstood and criticized for its focus on having a large cast of recruitable characters. However, Chrono Cross actually does a pretty good job of fleshing out its world and the lives of the people in it, using a narrative style more similar to classic JRPGs like Dragon Quest.

So, where did the game go wrong? That would be in its main plot development, which was pushed almost entirely into the last eight hours. There is no real progress of the main plot in the first 40-45 hours, aside from teasing that something interesting may be being schemed. Then, the game suddenly tries to make sense of its plot points and connect itself to Chrono Trigger, leading to exposition dump after exposition dump, constant philosophical rambling to convey its themes, unfulfilling conclusions to important plot points, ridiculous explanations for the connections between key events, and unfulfilling writing for the plot relevant characters. Honestly, I was completely unexcited during the "development" of the actual main plot Is it at least good fanservice for Chrono Trigger fans? Well, other than unceremoniously killing some of the CT protagonists off-screen( Which didn't even matter because the game undoes everything at the end, so we know nothing about what happened to CT protagonists) and shoehorning one CT character as the final boss... It was a nothingburger of a sequel, I just couldn't care less about it being connected to Chrono Trigger,

Gameplay-wise, Chrono Cross is the pinnacle of PS1-era JRPGs. Its unique mechanics serve as solutions to common game design problems of that era, making it a game that was surprisingly ahead of its time in some aspects. The story's pacing may be far from ideal, but as a JRPG, it’s certainly a well-paced adventure in terms of bosses, combat and dungeons for the most part.

The visuals and soundtrack were good, but honestly, neither particularly impressed me. I was especially a bit disappointed by the soundtrack—the intro theme set really high expectations, but despite being a solid OST, only about two or three songs truly stuck with me.

As for the PC port, yeah it’s pretty lackluster, make sure to install mods to make everything actually HD. There is also the problem with the random crashes, I didn’t experience any of them for the first 43 hours(thou I did see a couple of glitches), but then the game suddenly started crashing when I used the menus in the overworld. Fortunately, I was able to keep progressing in the story, and the crashes eventually stopped happening.

Loved the game, but the experience was ruined by crashes. Never in my 20 years of gaming has a game crashed so often. It was a chore to finish, I only did because I loved the game itself. I'd try and play it on a different device if I played it again.