Chrono Cross is back. It’s been decades in the making, but one of Square’s most unfortunately maligned titles from its PS1 silver age is now finally getting the treatment it deserves. A bunch of new people are likely about to experience the adventure of Serge and Kid for the first time – and that opens a twenty-year aged can of worms all over again.
Chrono Cross got an unfair rap back on the PS1. For a start, it didn’t release in Europe at all. Given its predecessor never got a European release and Final Fantasy was only just becoming truly international at the time this came out, it skipped Europe entirely. But even in North America and Japan, things weren’t plain sailing.
The game’s creators know it, too. In an internally-conducted Square Enix interview that was shared with media as part of the remaster’s review package, one simpering question asks the creators of Chrono Cross how it felt for the first game to be “so well received” – a wild misreading of the situation at the time, likely based on a few arguably over-hyped and over-inflated review scores that some outlets and writers have quietly disowned since. Even in text, the amusement in the answer from Masato Kato (Chrono Cross’ original director and key staffer of the original Chrono Trigger) is clear.
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