I can not explain why the nose it took me so long to replay Chrono Trigger. I love JRPGs, and I like to recall my favorites once a few years have passed, when the memories cool down and it doesn't matter so much to go back to play zillions of battles, climb levels to overcome the next boss and continue advancing through a story whose ending you know.
My first time with Chrono Trigger dates back a little over a decade ago, when emulation opened the doors of games that had never been released in Spain, but the second game did not come until this month, thanks to the Nintendo version. DS that was launched in our country. And boy, I think I just have to say that as I write this I am about to finish the third one.
A good question that perhaps a few years ago I would not know how to answer, but today I am clear. All games, even bad ones, have something that makes them special in some way. Something that stands out, the first thing you think of when they tell you their name and that makes an image of that game form in your mind, different from any other game you have played throughout your life. My first thought when talking about Chrono Trigger a few years ago would surely have been time travel. Because yes, Chrono Trigger has time travel, it is one of its main differentiating elements compared to the vast majority of JRPGs. But what I now think makes it really special is something so simple, and at the same time so difficult to achieve, that absolutely everything about it is special.
Every time we take a game and dissect it into different aspects such as control, level design, history or audiovisual section, it is practically impossible to find true homogeneity, a perfect balance. Something always stands out, for better or for worse. There is always one aspect that stands out above the rest, which we turn to before anyone else to praise or criticize a game.
Like the characters in Final Fantasy VI, the Xenogears storyline, or the battle system of Baten Kaitos. But that's not the case with Chrono Trigger if we try to dissect it. There are no ups and downs, no rough edges to iron out. Nothing weighs anything down, nor does anything have to make up the shortcomings of anything. What seems to be a utopia on paper is what, in my opinion, that "dream team" of Japanese designers achieved back in 1995.
So let's go back to time travel. When young Chrono goes to the fair in his town and sees the appearance of the first portal to the past, an adventure begins that spans no less than five different times in the same world. All of them have their own design, their characters and their little stories, five realities separated by hundreds or thousands of years.
Together with Crono, a mute avatar that represents the player in the journey, we traveled back and forth through these five ages, getting new teammates in all of them and unraveling the mysteries of an argument that little by little connects them in a brilliant way.
The starting point is quite simple: not long after starting the game, our protagonists discover that in the future a creature has led / is going to lead the world to its destruction, so they decide to use time travel to avoid it. But the task is not as simple as it seems and the plot begins to twist with constant comings and goings for different ages, unexpected obstacles and a few twists of script as tradition dictates in this genre.
The premise that the past is known can be understood and even change the future is made the most of it, and not only when going through the main development, but also to successfully solve some of the secondary missions. Travel back to prehistory to get a mineral that does not exist in the era in which we want to re-forge a broken sword, avoid the disappearance of a character saving the life of a distant ancestor in the past or leave an artifact charging with the energy of the sun during Thousands of years to collect it just two minutes later are a few samples of those little flashes of genius that abound in Chrono Trigger.
Genius that multiplies when we realize that as players we have practically the same ability to change the course of history as the characters with their time travel. While there is a base development that leads to the end, say, standard, Chrono Trigger allows us to make some pretty important decisions and even get out of the preset script. More than one of the protagonists may not reach the end of the adventure with us if we wish, and the moment in which we face the creature that is going to destroy the world is entirely up to us, which can completely alter both the duration of the game and the outcome of the plot, which has numerous and very different variants (some even border on the surreal).
This greatly favors the replayability of the title, which also has a prodigious pace in its development. Although it is not particularly long for what JRPGs are used to and can be completed in about 15 hours, it makes up for it with a high density of events. The filling is conspicuous by its absence and at each step we discover a new area, a new plot detail or we get to know our characters a little more. All of them manage to leave their mark without resorting to endless blocks of text. A solid script and the numerous situations to which they are dragged in so few hours quickly outline characters as diverse as a warrior transformed into a frog who seeks revenge, a rather abrupt troglodyte who barely speaks the language of his companions or a sorcerer who was left drag to the dark side with the idea of fighting a greater evil.
Because in Chrono Trigger there is room for joy, sadness and epic, and in case the script or 2D graphics of technologically more limited times were not able to move you, Yasunori Mitsuda enters the scene with his masterful compositions. It is, unfortunately, the aspect of the game that least justice can be done in a text like this, but it never hurts to mention the fantastic soundtrack that the game has. Sometimes it works as an accompaniment to set the scene, sometimes it reinforces the most emotional scenes and sometimes it accelerates our rhythm in the middle of a combat. In any case, the level is always through the roof, and at the end of the trip it is almost impossible not to throw back a nostalgic look and remember everything lived when listening again to themes such as that of the millennial fair, that of Frog or that of ancient kingdom of Zeal.
¿What is it that makes Chrono Trigger special then? I hope that now I have made it clear. If you like JRPGs and have never played it, do it right now. Literally. Don't wait to settle all outstanding accounts with overdue games on your bookshelf. If it cannot be through the original version of SNES, you have the reissues of PSX and DS, or else, you can also download it for PS3 or Wii. I think it is even available for some mobile phones, so there are no more excuses. Unless you don't understand English, of course, but even then there are unofficial translations circulating on the net. Be that as it may, do yourself a favor and don't miss this wonder. It may not end up becoming your favorite JRPG, but you can hardly deny that it is one of the roundest games ever created. A true masterpiece that does not need to resort to time machines, but to an extraordinary design to avoid aging.
