Chrono Cross: What is Radical Dreamers?

gamerant.com:

Whereas Chrono Trigger is often considered a genre-defining JRPG, the game's successor is rarely looked at by fans in the same light. Though developed by a similar development staff at Squaresoft, Chrono Cross was purposefully designed as a vastly different game in a similar world. Though the game was contentious at launch for largely steering away from Chrono Trigger's design, the 1999 JRPG on PlayStation gained a cult following among JRPG fans that continued to grow, as fans came to appreciate it as a standalone Chrono game. The Chrono Cross remaster reveal excited many fans this week, but the addition of Radical Dreamers did confuse some fans.

While North America did receive Chrono Cross almost a year later in 2000, Radical Dreamers was not a known quantity outside of Japan, but it was a formative story that helped shape Chrono Cross' narrative and world into the JRPG it would become. The game's general narrative progression, themes of parallel worlds/altered dimensions, and interwoven character development stemmed from the foundation that Radical Dreamers had laid back in 1996 on the SNES. However, Radical Dreamers was not another Squaresoft JRPG developed in between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. Rather, it was a standalone title that would directly inspire Chrono Cross.

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Exclusive to Japan, and released for the SNES (via the Japan-exclusive Satellaview modem peripheral), Radical Dreamers was a visual novel published as a spin-off from Chrono Trigger. Players take on the role of Serge, just like in Chrono Cross, and team up with Kid and Magil (an alternate version of Guile that was actually Magus in disguise) to become thieves. Kid had already become a legendary