Chrono Cross

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross Logo.png
Studio JapanJapan Square
Publisher JapanJapan Square
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 JapanJapanNovember 18, 1999 August 15, 2000
North AmericaNorth America
platform PlayStation
genre role playing game
Game mode Single player
control Gamepad
medium 2 PlayStation CD-ROMs
language Japanese , English

Chrono Cross ( Japanese: ク ロ ノ ・ ク ロ ス , Kurono Kurosu ) is a video game from Square (now Square Enix ). It can be assigned to the genre of role-playing games . It was released in Japan in 1999 and in the USA in 2000 for the Sony PlayStation as the successor to the Chrono Trigger game .

General

In 1996, an illustrated text adventure called Radical Dreamers was published for the Japanese Satellaview add-on for Nintendo's Super Famicom (known in Europe as SNES ) , the story of which was based on Chrono Cross. Some parts of the story of Radical Dreamers have been taken over in Chrono Cross, but Chrono Cross must not be seen as an expansion or remake , as some parts of the story are very different from each other.

Like most of the games published by Square at the time (such as Parasite Eve , Brave Fencer Musashi , Legend of Mana or Xenogears ), Chrono Cross was not published in Europe. The background is probably to be found in the technology: The game contains different characters, some of which have a different dialect . A dialect generator was programmed for the US version of the game, which, due to the relatively simple English grammar , allowed an individual dialect for each character. Because the German dialects sometimes have very different grammars and the resulting economic aspects of a German translation, first the localization and then the European introduction was dropped.

Chrono Cross is the sequel to the Chrono Trigger game for the SNES, but a different team worked on the game than Chrono Trigger . The character design was created by Nobuteru Yūki , Yasunori Mitsuda was responsible for the music .

The game sold well in the US, but sales in Japan were disappointing.

history

The story in Chrono Cross takes place in the fictional El Nido archipelago and is about Serge , who should have drowned ten years earlier, but was saved from it by a mysterious force. Through this incident the world split into two parallel dimensions ; in one dimension ( Home World ) he survives and lives on for ten years until the game starts. In the other dimension ( Another World ), Serge drowns on a beach near his hometown.

The story initially revolves around the lynx- like Lynx , who initially appears like the later main antagonist , and later mainly around Serge's (unconscious) task of breaking Princess Schala's bond with the Time Devourer . The Time Devourer is a kind of symbiote , the main opponent of Chrono Trigger , Lavos , and Schala , princess of the magical realm of Zeal , in an incident in the same around 12,000 BC. Was created. Thousands of years later, Belthasar , who was thrown far through time by the same incident and is a former guru of Zeal , discovers that the Time Devourer wants to devour all of space-time. He then sets in motion an extremely complex chain of events that guide Serge on his way to merge the dimensions again with an artifact called Chrono Cross , destroy the Time Devourer and free Schala .

While Chrono Cross uses many elements from Radical Dreamers , the stories of the two games are inconsistent. So the game designers decided that the events in Radical Dreamers took place, but in a different dimension than the one in which Chrono Cross is set. This is indicated in the game in Chronopolis , a city thrown back in time by a failed experiment, in which you can read this on a computer. Chronopolis, in turn, monitors the El Nido archipelago after the incident in order to prevent a time paradox that would endanger the existence of Chronopolis in the future.

The most noticeable difference between Chrono Cross and Radical Dreamers is the absence of the character Magus , who played a major role in Chrono Trigger . It was originally planned to integrate Magus into the game, but the idea was dropped because the developers found it difficult to plausibly establish his story alongside the other 44 characters.

The story is felt by many to be very complex compared to Chrono Trigger . Most of the dialogues in Chrono Cross have to be read very carefully in order to be able to follow the story to a large extent, in contrast to Chrono Trigger , which is very straightforward.

Game system

Similar to Final Fantasy , the game has fights that are shown and played on a separate screen, but in contrast to most of the Final Fantasy parts, the opponents are always visible on the map beforehand, i.e. not by chance.

The fights are turn-based, you can choose between light, normal and heavy blows, whereby the hit probability varies. After each successful hit, the Element bar expands, with which Elements , the game's magic derivative, can be summoned. There are no experience points, as is usually the case in a role-playing game, but the characteristic values ​​of the characters build up fight by fight, albeit within certain limits: In order to minimize excessive grinding, the strength of a character only increases up to a certain point, from which it is it becomes necessary to defeat an intermediate opponent who is important for the continuation of the story in order to be allowed to expand the strength even further.

Also unusual is the relative weakness in hit points with which some, sometimes even important, intermediate opponents are provided. Instead, particularly powerful opponents tend to use the element system skilfully against the player, instead of simply absorbing hit after hit with the sheer mass of life force represented by imaginary points. As a result, the strategic and tactical skills of a player are required more than in many similar games, in which all too often pure perseverance and patience are required of the player. Other special features of the game system are the ability to automatically heal yourself from your own pool of elements and healing items after a fight and to be able to flee from every fight, even against opponents.

You can save anywhere on the world map, or in locations at so-called Records of Fate . The ability to select and use key items in certain locations has also been added , analogous to old adventure games. This leads to a level of interactivity that many console RPGs lack.

Characters

There are 44 playable characters (plus Serge ) in the game, each of which is divided into six element categories. Each character in turn has two to three individual techniques, which can also be combined with some character combinations (so-called double or triple techs ). At some points in the game, the relationships between the characters are revealed.

"Chrono Break"

Square Enix registered a trademark with the name Chrono Break in the USA at the end of 2001 , which sparked speculation about a possible successor. On November 12, 2003 the entry was canceled, but only in the USA. In Japan, Square Enix still holds the rights to the name. It is believed that Square Enix had planned a successor with the Chrono Trigger team, but dropped it for time and financial reasons.

Web links