Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition review: A classic game with a flawed release

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition has arrived, bringing back a classic RPG to the mainstream again.

Chrono Trigger is well-documented as one of my favorite games of all time, but the direction of Chrono Cross bothered me as a younger man. I grew to like the game and appreciated the various changes made to the combat and magic systems.

The story is grim and often sad, but I appreciate it in my RPGs. However, while I’m most pleased with Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, there are some problems worth mentioning.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a classic brought back to life

As a remake, the focus will be on gameplay and visuals since the mechanics of the game have not changed since the original PlayStation release.

But in summary, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a tale of a pair of parallel realities and focuses on the main character, Serge. In one reality, he is alive and well, but in the other, he dies young.

The hero sets out to discover the truth of why his world diverged into two separate realities and evade Lynx, the primary antagonist, who is trying to capture him. Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition brings several boosts and upgrades to the game as quality-of-life changes.

A few boosts make combat more straightforward and faster or even slow down the game. Some events require precise movement, so slowing down the game can have its merits. The game seems to have some pretty significant framerate drops in combat and the overworld.

I saw these in my playthrough as well but had a tough time documenting them, except against Karsh. The framerate drops were rare, but they happened and were admittedly brief. There's no telling why they happen, but it is something that can likely be fixed with a patch somewhere down the line.

Character designs were upgraded with new models, as well as upscaled backgrounds. Fans can also play Satellaview's exclusive visual novel, Radical Dreamers, for the first time. But how does this all come together in one package? Is it worth it?

The actual gameplay is exactly as I remember it

The game itself plays excellently. The framerate drops did not happen to me very often on the PlayStation 5, but that may vary from player to player. Unlocking characters, sneaking around, getting into combat, it all felt great to me.

The quality-of-life boosts were also helpful, and I don’t shy away from using that kind of thing. Grinding and farming items can be tedious, and having a button where I take no damage from enemies can be nice.

Being able to speed up and slow the game down was neat, but I didn't use it all that often. The boosts I used the most were auto-battle and no damage. This was to get through fights I didn't want to deal with or when I was farming items for use later.

This part of the game shone for me. It's a classic game, and the gameplay just felt flawless. While the actual game itself was fantastic, some of the remastered elements of the game were weak.

Don't skip out on Radical Dreamers, either. It's a great visual novel for fans of the Chrono franchise, and like the first time it's been available outside of piracy, it's fascinating to ‌experience it first-hand.

The remastered elements could have used a little more work

I will say that I loved the character models. They all looked terrific. I like the game's visuals, but some ‌of the backgrounds look blurry and almost distorted. The character models look sharper than the backgrounds, making them pop even more.

While not as sharp as I expected, the backdrops are prettier than they were on PlayStation (Image via Square Enix)

The character animations were occasionally jerky and awkward. This may have been part of the frame rate issues the game suffers from. While I like the visuals for the game a great deal and the near oil painting style the backdrops offer, they often looked pretty blurry to me.

I played on the PlayStation 5, but I assume this will be the same on PC. However, the power of PC modding is serious, and I imagine many of these problems will be fixed by players through modding the game on Steam.

I would say the music is exceptional, though. The remastered soundtrack is beautiful and genuinely took me back in time to when I played Chrono Cross for the first time at my best friends’ house.

So while the game’s presentation was a little weak, I still enjoyed it and could overlook some of its flaws. I am grateful that the framerate issues other people were having seldom happened to me.

In Conclusion

Despite the game's flaws, I do find myself enjoying Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition (Image via Square Enix)

For a 20-dollar remake, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is not too bad. I was very disappointed by some of the backgrounds' blurry, unclear nature and the occasional framerate dips the game did.

I feel disappointed by the game when I stack it up with some of Square Enix’s other remasters, such as Final Fantasy X/X-2. For the price, it’s not a bad pickup, but I suppose I was expecting a little more care and work being done. It very well might have been problems with the game engine itself that led to these issues, but I’m no expert on that.

It’s not a perfect release. However, I still enjoyed playing Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. I will continue my various playthroughs to get as many endings as possible.