#I've never had such a smooth and kind experience playing an online video game in my whole life

[ttngummybear]

I'm now reaching that point in the year where I start REALLY REALLY wanting a VR headset again.

[jessjustplay]

Chrono Trigger Review

February 4, 2023

According to many gamer tweets, Instagram posts, and blog posts that I've seen online, Chrono Trigger is considered one of the best JRPGs ever made.

As someone who loves the Final Fantasy series, but never played Chrono Trigger, I was intrigued. The title seemed like a classic JRPG that all gamers *needed* to play at least once in their life.

So finally, in 2022, I bought the Windows PC version of the game on Steam. I was immediately impressed!

Story

Chrono Trigger begins with our main character, Crono, a kind-hearted, quiet boy, attending a festival in town. He meets Marle, an energetic and friendly girl, who accompanies him as he explores the festival.

They decide to watch Lucca (Crono's very smart and scrappy childhood friend) present her latest invention. Marle participates in Lucca's showcase, but something goes wrong with the invention and Marle is unexpectedly teleported away.

Crono and Lucca follow along and find themselves teleported to the past. As they explore this new world, they meet new people, hear stories, and uncover the dangers that the future will face.

With time-traveling capabilities, Crono, Marle, Lucca, and their new friends embark on a mission to save the world from the destructive monster, Lavos. And so begins a great quest through past, present, and future!

Gameplay

I played the definitive version of Chrono Trigger on PC and had an enjoyable experience. There weren't any excessively long wait times, everything ran smoothly and fast.

The battle system is an active turn-based system with 3 party members. There are moments in the game where you must include specific characters in your party, but besides these mandatory moments, you are able to freely swap characters in and out.

There aren't any random encounters in the traditional sense of the word. The enemies in Chrono Trigger are fixed to specific locations that you can on-screen. (Sometimes they are hidden and jump out at you, though.) If you exit a room and enter it again, the same enemies will respawn there. It's a great way to level up if you find enemies that give a lot of post-battle points.

Speaking of points, your characters earn EXP points to level up and Tech Points that go towards learning new Technique abilities. I loved that ALL of my characters, active and non-active, earned EXP and TP from battles. It was nice to switch between party members and not worry about one of them being under-leveled.

Multiple Endings

Something to quickly touch on, this game has 13 different endings. (This scared me at first, because I didn't want to get a bad ending.) The ending you get depends on when & how you choose to fight the final boss, who you have in your party, and what parts of the story you were able to experience.

Having multiple endings is a very unique set-up and makes for great replayability. However, I finished this game once and I got the "Beyond Time" ending (which I'm assuming is the standard ending?) and I would replay this game even if I got the same ending again! All that to say, with or without multiple endings, this game is very much replayable!

Music

Composers: Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu

The music in Chrono Trigger is amazing! The battle theme is one of the best battle songs I have ever heard. You will get in a lot of battles and NOT ONCE did the battle theme become annoying. Some of my other favorites include Memories of Green, Wind Scene, and Frog's Theme. All of the music gives each location a unique vibe. There were also sound effects throughout that enhanced the gaming experience. For example, the sound of buttons on machines being pressed, seals breaking, and even the sound of wind were all nice touches.

Graphics

Chrono Trigger is a pixel art video game which is an art style I love. While playing the definitive version on PC, I enabled the high resolution graphics. They offer a softening effect, smoothing the sharp corners of pixels without actually losing the pixelated art.

Character emotions and movements are cleverly expressed. When Marle shouts, when Frog jumps with shock, or when Lucca celebrates a win are all examples of this game delivering emotion through pixelated art.

Chrono Trigger also includes anime cutscenes that further enhance the story, giving the characters MORE facial expressions and movement possibilities. Both art forms worked well together!

Overall

I am so glad I was able to experience this perfect masterpiece. Calling a game "perfect" is extreme, but in this case, I think Chrono Trigger is fully capable of carrying this accolade.

The story is easy to follow and the time-traveling theme is executed well, with easy-to-understand rules. Game objectives are straightforward, making Chrono Trigger fun to play and easy to pick up.

Although the story's ultimate perils are dark and sinister, the game was able to incorporate comedy throughout the story (thanks to their amazing cast of characters!) to lighten the mood. I'm very impressed with everything I saw in Chrono Trigger and I highly recommend everyone play this classic JRPG!

@jessjustplay

[0ffgun]

(1) Hi ollie! I don't know if this is too much of a personal thing to ask but I've seen you talk about your bf a lot on here and it seems our situation is similar. I met my partner online just before lockdown happened and we haven't met yet but we're planning on meeting up soon and I'm really excited but also really scared because I don't know what to expect and I'm scared I'll be a disappointment. I was just kinda wondering if you could share your story of when you met your boy irl?

(2) Sorry if it's a really weird thing to ask for I just want to get an idea of the experience and you seem really happy so obviously everything worked out well so it'd be nice to get a positive point of view rather than looking at all the negative stories about meeting people online. Anyway if you're uncomfortable feel free to ignore this! Thanks

Hi there anon!! Don’t worry this isn’t uncomfortable for me at all - I’m happy to talk about it! (please excuse how gay this is going to get though, once I start talking about him I really struggle to stop dsgjkls) I’ll put this under a read more because it’s probably gonna get really long because I haven’t learned to shut up ever.

Alright so first of all (and this is the most important thing EVER) make sure you’re safe. No doubt you trust your person a lot if you’re planning on meeting up with them but even so, make sure the first time you meet is in a public place and that there is always the option of leaving if there are any weird vibes. PLEASE be safe. 

And okay so before me and Ryan met up in person we’d talk on the phone for around 4 hours every night (we still do it now, we can’t sleep if we don’t talk to each other for a couple of hours first, even if it’s literally just him listening to me playing video games and making weird noises every time I die dfjgkdfl) so we were already really familiar with each other. If you haven’t done it already, I definitely recommend talking to your partner over the phone too, it gives you a MUCH better idea of their personality rather than just typing to each other all the time, and it really brings you closer too! 

Our plans to meet up just kinda poppped up out of nowhere? Like we’d vaguely talked about it and then one day poof! we were suddenly desperate to meet up. Ryan lives with his parents and luckily they were totally on-board with the idea, I’d only been thinking of going over just for the one day but then his mum was like “why doesn’t he just come on the monday and go home on the friday?” and me and Sunshine LOST it jdskgjklds we were like FIVE DAYS IS SO MUCH??? And then once we had a date in mind we were just counting down and our phone calls got more and more frantic. We’d be up until 4am just talking about what it’s going to be like and getting more and more nervous. I had this really strong fear that we’d meet up and he’d realise he doesn’t like me as much as he thought he did? So you saying you’re scared of being a disappointment REALLY hits home, I feel that so much. 

I remember the night before we met up we were literally just laying in the dark on the phone making these weird panicked squeaky noises at each other. And then it was finally THE DAY. He lives 2 hours away from me by train and honestly I was fine for the whole journey until I got onto the last train and realised it would only be 15 minutes before I see him for real and I basically lost my mind lmao.

 It’s funny, really? I’d already seen pictures of him and talked to him literally every day but then the moment I saw him at the station I really wasn’t prepared for how truly gorgeous he is? I knew I liked him but then the moment we smiled at each other and said hi and just started giggling like IDIOTS I realised how intense my feelings for him really are and I became a whole wreck. 

I wouldn’t say it was awkward at first more like it was just.. clumsy? We already knew each other on such an intimate level and yet we didn’t know how to interact in person. The first hour or so was us kind of internally flailing around and me saying “oh my god” randomly every 2 minutes and him laughing at me because of it jksgjlds. We had a bit of a walk from the train station back to his place (which was where I’d be meeting his parents too so of course I was a mess over THAT as well) and we were just walking side by side casually and in my head the whole time I was like??? HOW?? DO I HOLD HIS HAND?? Do I just grab it? Do I ask if I can?? And my brain straight-up malfunctioned and I just yelled “OKAY!” and THREW my hand out in front of him and he did the cutest laugh and then interlaced our fingers and oh god I’m never going to forget that moment e v e r. 

Meeting his parents went so well I LOVE them (me and his mum are besties now I adore her) and idk things just went SO smoothly it was more than I could have ever asked for. And then his mum was like “okay go and put Oli’s stuff away etc etc” so that we could have some alone time (she’s smooth and I appreciate that) and then we ended up just watching a bunch of kpop videos while sitting together on the floor and I’d play with his hair (he has the best softest most top quality hair) and it was just so s o f t. Our first kiss was gorgeous too like it just happened spontaneously and then we both just had a whole gay panic and just sat there giggling with our foreheads pressed together for a good five minutes oh god. Honestly, I’ve been in relationships before but everything with Sunshine is like a whole new experience and it feels like I’m doing everything for the first time. I’m like a lovestruck teenager and it’s the best, and I can’t see that changing either, I think I’m always going to be this ridiculous. Literally every time he looks at me my heart does backflips and I get butterflies. I’ve found my forever boy through a random anonymous message on the internet and isn’t that just amazing?

Oh my god I wrote more than I thought I would I’m so s o r r y I really can’t shut up about him it’s ridiculous dsjgkjsd but yeah anon seriously I really hope things go well when you finally get to meet your person - please let me know how it goes!!! Don’t just focus on the things that make you nervous, make sure you also focus on the things that make you excited too! I know that people get squinty when you say you met someone online but honestly when you know, you know and at the end of the day it’s your decision. Just always do make sure that you’re safe and never do anything you don’t want to do.