I, too, am a Black Sigil enthusiast, in that I recognize and appreciate what they're trying to do. I have to say they did an amazing job considering how small the team was, what their budget was (nothing) and that they're from Canada, a place you don't hear often enough when it comes to game production. I'm impressed with it, but not finished playing yet. Still, I think this is a great idea for a thread! Touting games that are similar to Chrono Trigger in some way or another.
The obvious games that come to mind come in two categories:
Games of the Era of CT and Games that have been Influenced by CT
Games of the Era: (SNES mid 90s)
The Final Fantasy series - Specifically FF3 (sturdy Square RPG, can't go wrong)
The Mana Series - Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 (active battle system, weird menus, cool gameplay)
The Dragon Quest series - Specifically the character art, the PSX and DS remakes, and newer titles (DQ8,9,etc) (from the Enix side, and character designer Akira Toriyama has been on just about every game, so it feels familiar with CT before you even start playing)
The Soul Series - Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma (beautiful designs and music, complex stories woven into the time/space continuum)
Zelda - A Link To The Past (counts as an RPG, critically acclaimed, etc.)
Edit: What I find interesting is that story art and music aside, if you look at the programmed features, the way the game plays, it's really settled itself in the middle of a spectrum that goes from dragon quest (totally menu based battle) to earthbound (menu based but with interactive literary feedback in battles) to final fantasy(see the characters during battle) to secret of mana(see and move characters in an interrupting "battle mode") to illusion of gaia (I don't recall very much except you could change into 3 forms and it was an active system, to zelda(no distinction between in & out of battle, all happens onscreen, gameplay uninterrupted). CT falls right in the middle between FF and SoM. That itself is the game's saving, almost genre-bending grace. People who like active battle don't have to wait, people who like menus get menus. The duo/trio techs and memorable enemy AI are just icing on the cake.
feel free to add more...
And Games that have been Influenced by CT: (post 1995)
Obviously RD and CC, being sequels
Xenogears is the PSX game that, from what I gather, was intended to be a Chrono sequel early on, but they scrapped the idea and used the engine for a "new" story, which became the first of the Xeno games. It's a great game in its own right, but the sprites on 3D environment really let your mind wander into the Chrono game that would have been. It also had Mitsuda and Kato working on it, so in my mind it is part of the Chronoverse.
[youtube]qqQc-Lkyy-o[/youtube]
Black Sigil is what happens when you take the characters from CT, the battle system and encounter rate from FF (but with a moving gimmick that shows off as many battle sprites as CT) towns from SoM, and put it all into a portable RPG that was meant to be released ten years ago, minimum. If it was released ten years ago, or even twenty, it might not have even turned heads. But the fact that it is SO specifically stuck in 1994-1996 Squaresoft mindset TODAY is noteworthy. As a DS title, it falls a little short, as the touch screen aspects are not very well done. As a Chrono spiritual successor, it's nostalgic and the story is fun.
[youtube]S5ZFI_XRNyA[/youtube]
Radiant Historia is what happens when you take PSX style graphics and decide Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger weren't enough, but combining them would be a good idea. What you get is a very stylized and attractive (though aliased, jagged, and a tiny bit nauseating at first when in motion) world where you play as a morally ambiguous character with a book that lets you go back in time to established points, and even switch from one timeline to another as you make different choices on the same decision. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but the battle system is clever, engaging, and (best difference between this and Black Sigil) FAST.
[youtube]xD9FevMw1_o[/youtube]
XenoBlade is an as-yet-unreleased in the US game apparently only tangentially related to Xenogears, but if you look at the footage, the battle system is unmistakably taken straight from CT and put into a lush 3D environment, exactly what everybody's been asking for ever since games HAD lush 3d environments.
[youtube]q3PDz8I2_aE[/youtube]
I'm not putting up youtube links for the games of the era, you should know them!
