usgamer.net
Another day, another top RPG list where Chrono Trigger ranks #1. And having recently played it for the first time, I don't get it.
Combat is just boring. Enemies pose no threat and deal a fraction of the damage the player character is capable of dishing out. There's almost no interesting spells or status effects, almost every ability simply deals damage. Dual/triple techs are just boring variations on the same 'do tons of damage' or 'heal tons of HP' template. ATB just encourages mindlessly bashing the attack button as soon as possible to prevent enemies from getting hits in.
There's barely any exploration, it's a time travel game that is paradoxicallty completely on rails. Your only choice is how soon you want to end the game by teleporting to Lavos, and even that is realistically only a choice on New Game Plus.
It has incredibly shallow writing. Not a single character has a distinct voice, apart from Frog's heavy-handed Ye Olde English shtick. Everyone is a cliched archetype, the rebellious princess, the geeky scientist anime girl, the noble knight suffering from a curse, etc. We don't even know a single thing about Crono, ostensibly the main character. What does he do for a living? Does he still go to school? Where did he learn swordplay? That's how barebones the narrative is.
The multiple endings are even shallower than the overall narrative: they're either superficial variations on the same happy ending, or even worse, easter egg/joke endings. They're completely pointless and contribute nothing to the game.
Time travel is not even used in any meaningful way: instead of traveling back in time to prevent Lavos from becoming a threat, the characters travel forward in time to face him at the height of his powers and beat him up. The doom of all mankind, that destroyed a sci-fi civilization with advanced weaponry, can be punched to death by three teenagers. How does that make sense?
