For me, rpg's are more like a story-book, as opposed to other genres that may be more like movies. As far as story telling goes, both RD and CC aren't as good as CT. The plot is forcefully made 'complex' by using cryptic language, shoddy explanations for events that occur with minimal reasoning, or even efffective purpose. Basically, all the flaws that weaken the Xenosaga series compared to Xenogears. Behind the flashy choice of words and graphics, you don't have much there, esp when you have some 40 odd playable characters with little tie in to the plot, and little effort to develop any kind of interest in them. Least Xenosaga had the character development and interest.
The flaw is how CC is a story that pretty much didn't happen – and to me, stories like that should be changed to be 'didn't happen' and just create something with events that actually matter and effect something. That's generally why I find alot of time-traveled based stories weak. Example being comparing the difference between Star Treks' First Contant, and Star Trek Generations, or heck, several episodes of Voyager that ended up being simulations or fake Enterprise, or whatever.
Granted, the 1 thing that did 'happen' in CC is schala being 'freed' from Lavos, but I think that scenario is poorly created, that it should'nt have happened anyway, or at least could've been made alot better. CC may have tied up a few loose ends, but I think their choice of ends to tie was fairly weak.
