Chrono Cross remains strange and spellbinding in new remaster

theverge.com:

Chrono Cross got off to a, let’s say, difficult start. It was billed as a follow-up to Chrono Trigger, one of the most beloved role-playing games ever created, but while the two take place in the same world, there are some big differences. Chrono Trigger was created by a superteam of developers including Final Fantasy mastermind Hironobu Sakaguchi, long-time Dragon Quest steward Yuji Horii, and Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama. It’s frequently cited as one of the greatest games ever made. That all-star team didn’t continue on with the series, and though Chrono Cross was largely well-received at launch, its legacy never reached the same heights as its predecessor. It’s always been that weird follow-up with parallel worlds, a confusing story, and far too many characters.

Which brings us to the new remaster on the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC, and PS4. Dubbed Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, the release is a fairly light update to the PlayStation-era version, with upgraded visuals, some quality-of-life features, and the inclusion of a long-lost text adventure. In terms of scope, it’s similar to the remaster of Final Fantasy VIIIthat Square Enix released a few years back. And just like FFVIII, Chrono Cross is an often-disparaged follow-up that could do with a second chance.

Chrono Cross isn’t a direct sequel to Trigger but rather a sort of spiritual successor that takes place in the same universe. The core conceit of the game’s fantasy world is the idea of parallel worlds. At the outset, protagonist Serge finds himself in a nearly-identical version of his own world with one key difference: in this one he died at a young age. The story then gets extremely strange and convoluted from there, involving everything