Does Chrono Cross Ruin Chrono Trigger?? (SPoilers of course)

[fxar99]

CC definitly makes everything you do in ct seem as it were for nothing;Which is why i dont even count Cross as a part of cannon. And why i couldent play thru the game a second time.

Um... Chrono Cross doesn't undo what you have done in Chrono Trigger. It just completes it. Play it a second time and think about it.

BTW, I'm tired to hear the same things over and over, that Chrono Cross sucks etc etc. If Chrono Cross isn't what you expected, then Chrono Break won't be either. That's probably one of the reasons SE doesn't continue the series. I like all the games of the series the same, because they all have their own style and each of these styles is great.

[frogrules]

I'm with you on that /i mean so many people bash CC for that.  I knw we were all at least a little disapointed, (I stink at spelling) but CC finishes a lot of the plot.  The only reason It is more confusing is because It leaves just about the same number of questions.

*Sorry If I offendid you
*Please Don't hate me.

[V_Translanka]

Until a sequal actually manages to physically erase copies of the game it's a sequal to, I shall never think that any sequal "ruins" any game. It's stupid to think so. Your perceptions of one game should not change your perceptions of another game regardless of a games tie-ins to any other games.

BOOYA!

No, it's not really a booya time, but I felt like saying it...it's fun to say!

[Kazuki]

Anybody else feel that using Crono and co. again, while being extremely boring and uncreative, would have just the same spoiling effect of CT as their (implied, at best) deaths? If they got used *again* the impact that 'Trigger and its cast had on me would have been lessened a bit.

[jorge]

chrono cross sucks. Where's time travel? MP, EXP system is gone. Schala fused into lavos look like a 6 year old kid. Where's Queen Zeal? dual/triple techs are rare and completely useless.
There's no way Crono/Guardia can fall. Crono can finish off all Porreans with a single *Luminaire, Guardia's army should be able to defend against Porre's attacks.
When Crono defeated lavos, lavos should be completely disappeared. It's funny that lavos is still alive and fused into schala and create 2 different worlds.
chrono cross battle system, story, gameplay are funny and sucks
I want to play as Crono again, just like most fans remake/sequels projects do

The porreans power is greater than lavos and can defeat Crono

[ZeaLitY]

^ Portrait of a classic Chrono Cross hater. The evidence just lays itself out for my argument against this group of fans.

[CyberSarkany]

What's the problem with this Chrono Cross haters? I still don't get why they don't like Chrono Cross just because they can't play Crono or whatever...Chrono Trigger is famous for these dual/tripple techs and inovative battle system, and CC is in my oppinion they again did a great new battle system.

[SilentMartyr]

What's the problem with this Chrono Cross haters? I still don't get why they don't like Chrono Cross just because they can't play Crono or whatever...Chrono Trigger is famous for these dual/tripple techs and inovative battle system, and CC is in my oppinion they again did a great new battle system.

They have an inability to realize that if a game has Chrono as the first word of the title that it won't be soley about what Crono did.

[urobolus]

I posted this on Gamefaqs.com, http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=196917&topic=25697050, as a sort of a 'refutation' of these Cross-haters' arguments.

"It has to come to my attention, having reviewed the consensus litany of complaints attributed to Cross-haters, that 98% of the criticism is leveled out of a spite for innovation.

Complaint One: Characters

Cross-haters often cite the 40 characters as detrimental to the story and a fatal flaw in the gameplay. However, how much does Chrono Cross really lack in the character development department? Serge, Kid, Harle and Lynx are developed just as well as, if not better than, the roster of characters in Chrono Trigger. Heck, the relationship between Kid and Serge has a heavier emotional weight than the hints-of-teenage-romance-around-the-edges plot between Crono and Marle (though I, and I'm sure most of us here, find this sort of simple, if cliched, underplayed romance very likeable).

The other 36? Many have tie-ins of equal complexity to Ayla or Frog's, where they do not play a central role in the story but have their own plots that relate to events or locales moving the story along. The Karsh-Glenn-Riddel-Viper complex, Fargo coupled with Miki and Nikki, even Radius to some extent.

The characters beyond those act as characters qua items. And here is where we run into the problem: those who don't want to think-outside-the-box will say that that isn't how you're supposed to structure a character in an RPG. But that's exactly it: that is not a valid criticism of the game, merely a spite for innovation. Cross made use of many of its characters much differently than any game that had come before it. Result? Replayability, non-linearity, and a more interesting world to inhabit. Positives. The overall criticism of this structure has never come close to validly undermining the integrity of the game on its own terms, and since the beginning has amounted to not much more than a strawman.

Complaint Two: Story and sequel/original dissimilarity

Here's where Cross criticism usually reaches fever-pitch idiosyncrosy. I'd say 85-90% of Cross haters make the following argument: "Cross is supposed to be a sequel. Yet it is not like its original. Therefore it is a bad game."

Now, if we are to step back and take an objective approach to the issue, it is easy to see that such a statement makes no sense. We are talking about an individual game here. Not half-a-game or a mini-game, but a fully stand-alone game. And in the history of criticism of any medium, one of the most basic constants has been that dissimilarity has no intrinsic value as a quality.

Similarity has some intrinsic value in that an over-abundance of similarity can lead to a lack of originality and thus a depreciation in quality. However, dissimilarity has never had any intrinsic quality. Example: Let's say the entire critical community is pumped for Back to the Future IV. Let's say Back to the Future IV comes out, and instead of being a 90-minute action-adventure film like its predecessors it is a 3-hour epic directed by Peter Jackson in the vein of Lord of the Rings.

What would the critics do? Would they subtract a star for dissimilarity? Of course not. They would look at the quality of the acting, the script, the editing, etc. If all these turn out to be nigh-perfect, would a professional reviewer afford the movie a lesser rating because of its dissimilarity from its predecessor? No. Because a movie is stand-alone and meant to be taken on its own terms. Taken on its own terms, Cross is an excellent game.

Again, the criticisms leveled at the game are almost uniformly spite for innovation: "the character designs are not like Akira Toriyami's," "the battle system isn't a level-up-via-experience-points one like the original," "Chrono Trigger's characters aren't used heavily in the game." Yet taken alone, these statements are merely declarative, and hold no value aside from being connotative of a think-inside-the-box attitude. Addressing Chrono Cross as a game in its own right, these criticisms are as empty as empty can be, as they do not criticize gameplay/graphics/soundtrack/etc., but merely dissimilarity, a property of no intrinsic value.

Furthermore, people complain the story is lackluster, lacking momentum and being overly convoluded.

However, criticisms of pace are largely unfounded; for example, what percentage of the time in CC is mandatorily spent doing something unrelated to the furthering of the plot? I'd say at max 5%. The story's ratio of action to plot relation is stellar, in fact, and easily matches its predecessor's ratio, which in essence debunks the "slow" criticism. One may choose to take a sidequest--such as retrieving the life sparkle before saving kid or fighting Dario--but these are optional. I'd say the only two stand-out dead-ends are the ghost ship and the rock-concert (an unnecessary elaboration on the quest to find the black dragon, IMO).

As for the convoluded criticism, I'd say that its convolutions may alternately take away or add to the story's force depending on taste (Xenogears fans I know generally like the way it plays out), and that is about as close to a valid criticism as most Cross-haters get.

Beyond that, almost all Cross-haters' complaints link back up to the 'dissimilarity' criticism, which has already been shown for the flawed strain of reasoning it is.

Coming to the ultimate point of this discussion, one must ask "if such is the root of the bulk of Cross-haters' criticisms, what are we to make of them?" Following from the reasoning presented in the preceding posts, we can make two concrete conclusions. A.)said criticisms are essentially unsound and occasionally invalid (check above reasoning) and B.)said criticisms are based on a disdain for innovation and newness.

Which is why, fellow board-lurkers, I find so many of the tirade's against this game, which belongs in the list of the top ten RPG's of all time (and I mean this without hyperbole and with a disdain for the overuse of superlatives, judging from all factors such as originality, gameplay, graphics, impact, etc.) so incredibly sad."

Okay, so it's a little abrasive to its target critics, but nonetheless I feel it effectively dispels many of the mindless criticisms of CC, which, if taken on its own, is one of the best RPG's on the Playstation and a worthy successor to CT.

[jorge]

In Final Fantasy: Advent Children, you can see Cloud again, main character of Final Fantasy 7. In Final Fantasy X-2, you can control Yuna, Rikku, and see Tidus again, from Final Fantasy X
there's no time travel in CC. Crono, Marle, and Lucca are not in CC. CC is really a different game, not CT sequel.

FF:AC and FFX-2 are the true game sequels
CC is just a different game

[Silvercry]

FF:AC and FFX-2 are the true game sequels
CC is just a different game

Your definition of a sequel is purposely limited to prove your point.  The plot, characters, indeed the very hunk of land on which the events of CC transpire on only exist due to the events of Chrono Trigger.  Without Trigger there would be no Cross.  It is completely dependant on the game that came before for every aspect of its existence.  If that's not a sequel, I don’t know what is.

I've said from day one post one on this forum that I believe Cross to be inferior to Trigger in every way save for graphics.  And yet even I can see that CC IS the sequel to CT.  Sure,  the 30-odd dead weight playable charters like Draggy or Greco would have been better off as NPC's. Yes, the battle system was brain-dead simplistic (which amazes me seeing as how they just ripped off the battle system from Xenogears, and that one was awesome!) to the point where it never mattered who was in your party half the time, innate element be dammed.  True, the overall plot was very ambitious, but the details got lost in the mix.  And the devil, as they say, is in the details.  The only thing that kept this game from being used as a coaster was the fact that it did tie up the biggest lose thread in the Chrono Universe for me -- that being Schala's final fate.  

Chrono Cross is the sequel to Chrono Trigger.  Like it or not, you must accept it.  That’s the frist step to letting go of your hate, young padawan.

[Tonjevic]

For hate leads to suffering, suffering, to jealousy...

The shadow of greed that is. And a path to the dark side...

[Darth Mongoose]

The reason the main heroes seem to have met with a shadowy fate (and I'm not enitely sure they did actually die) is because Chrono Cross is all about consequences.
In Chrono Trigger, the gang have a jolly romp through time, and it never seems to have anything but good consequences for them. Chrono dies, and with a bit of adventure, they manage to bring him back. Everything goes right, and it never crosses their minds to consider the implications of what they are doing. They're changing history!

Chrono Cross is the big plot twist of the series. Suddenly, after everything seeming all bright and wonderful in CT, you get slapped by this...And personally, I think you're supposed to feel it. The CT gang aren't kids any more. When they were young, running aound through time was all fun and adventure and to them they saved the world. Chrono Cross, you suddenly see the results from an adult perspective and go 'whoah...uh oh. They messed up time and space a bit, didn't they?'
I admit that CC wasn't as much FUN as CT. But it made me think a lot more. CC is a much more 'grown up' game that deals a lot with the complex nature of time and space and the consequences of actions. For this reason, had they used the Shounen Jumpy, bold drawing style of Toriyama, it would have looked wrong. CC may be bitter medicine, but you have to take it in order to experience and appreciate the Chrono series as a whole, by facing the consequences that were ignored by the naive youngsters of the first game and tying up all the lose ends.