In 1995, Chrono Trigger debuted on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The delightful game, featuring a great soundtrack, lovable characters, colorful designs, and intuitive combat became an instant success for publisher and developer Square. Captivated audiences had only one complaint: How could such a great game have such a diluted plot?
Forums were packed with confused fans. Videos longer than the entire game itself dedicated themselves to solving the many inconsistencies and contradictions within the convoluted plotline. Fans eagerly anticipated the next major release, Chrono Cross, which debuted in 1999 and was based on the Japanese adventure game Radical Dreamers, set in the same universe. Hopeful for some clarity, people completed Chrono Cross only to get an equally nonsensical story with eleven or more different endings that were even more confusing than the first installment.
Updated on May 1st, 2022 by Hodey Johns: Chrono Cross has been in the headlines for some less-than-ideal reasons. After getting removed from the shop on older devices, the remaster was supposed to make the game look and perform better but it doesn't, regressing for the game's release on the PlayStation 1. And that's truly not fair to players who love the title for legitimate reasons. The plot and endings might be confusing and broken, but the gameplay and characters deserved better. What this game truly needs is a remake to iron out everything while still capturing the moment. This list has been updated with more observations from fresh eyes that are playing the game for the first time due to the remaster.
10 A Parallel Universe To A Universe Of Parallels
Chrono Trigger was coherent enough that, even with a few plot holes, fan theories were able to glue the pieces together well adequately to create some semblance of an understandable universe. Then Chrono Cross came along and messed all of their hard work up, leaving little room to debate which game was better.
When it was pointed out to the developers that none of the endings made one iota of sense in the universe of Chrono Trigger, they were quick to suggest that the game must have been in an entirely different dimension. So much for honoring the source material.
9 Serge's Illness
There will not be any contention about how basically anybody would have been a better protagonist than Serge. No one would disagree. The only way Serge even gets to compete is when he's gathering shiny things.
The silent protagonist is not a new theme for video games, but in other games, the silence is assumed dialogue from the main character. At the end of Chrono Cross, the cast is begging for any human reaction at all from Serge, but there is something wrong with him that is never disclosed or discovered. He either cannot speak or does not want to speak and it is never explained why. It's one of the few instances where the NPCs join the audience in confusion.
8 Lynx's Body
This might be the most easily identifiable problem with the endings. Serge and Lynx switch bodies randomly. Some of these endings besides the true, canonical ending can be initiated before Serge gets his body back from Lynx and/or Lynx gets his body back from Serge. Yet they occasionally swap back and forth in the portals without rhyme or reason.
Is dimensional changing some kind of cosmic dice roller to see if the characters stay in their bodies? Since players are fixed on an outside perspective, they don't have the benefit of knowing which character is which. It does make for a shocking plot twist. But without any rhyme or reason, it's more like a jump scare than a phenomenon with a rational explanation.
7 Ghost Stories
So if this game's ending only makes sense if it's in a universe unrelated to the universe of Chrono Trigger, what kind of cosmic shift happened to make the ghosts of Crono, Marle, and Lucca appear? And how did they find out that Belthasar planned to empower Serge?
Even if the universes were to merge a little bit despite what the developers explained, there would be no way for them to know about the Time Devourer. Go through all of the awesome side missions, there isn't a good explanation no matter how deep players dig.
6 Schala's Survival
Speaking of the Time Devourer, how is it supposed to come to exist again? Apparently, this entity is the result of Schala fusing with Lavos. But how did such a thing even become a risk? Schala's pendant is passed along to Marle.
It is assumed that Schala survived the collapse of her palace with the power of transportation from that same pendant. Just throwing random powers onto this item might make it one of the game's best accessories, but it hurts the immersion and makes the concept not believable without more explanation.
5 Kid's Origin
So the player meets Kid. Kid is not a kid, but she's clearly not an adult yet. So this misnamed teenager enters the story, that's not a problem. But then the cast of Chrono Trigger, dead for a long time now, reveals at the end that Kid is a clone of Schala, part of a project creatively called Project Kid.
So if she's not old enough to have ever met these characters, how did they know? And why do Schala and Kid look nothing alike? Do they even know what a clone is? Maybe it's one of the powerful weapons she wields that forces others not to ask more questions but the audience will certainly be wondering why this happened.
4 Magic Diary
With all of the incredible time and space-altering effects, fans of the game rightfully wonder what the heck is behind it all. Is it the pendants that transcend the universe? Is it the portals? Is it powerful beings like Schala and Crono?
Wrong, wrong, wrong; it's Schala's Diary. Yes, in multiple endings of the game, Schala laments that Serge won't remember anything, writes what she always wanted to have happened in her diary, and makes it so. So why didn't she just do that to begin with? Without any real danger, it's a slap in the face to all of the trials that are overcome.
Beyond being very unsatisfying, it makes no sense that Schala would wait for so long or show any emotion at all, knowing she has complete control to do whatever she wants.
3 Merging
Science fiction video gaming has mused on the concept of fusion between two living entities before. For example, Half-Life 2 used creativity to merge two entirely different dimensions and at least attempted to explain how this happened.
Chrono Cross makes no such effort. After fusing with Lavos for some reason, Schala then merges with Kid. Seems hardly fair to replace the personage of Kid, who had her own separate personality and style, but those are the breaks in a world when some lucky people can just hijack anybody's body that they feel like taking.
This hybrid entity makes for one of the game's best companions for the party, but it still doesn't explain what makes the merger occur. Like a bad, low-budget horror movie, it feels done not because of any tangible reason. It's just "freaky" and gamers should revel in that.
2 Kid: Married But Looking
In some endings, a portrait of Kid shows her in a wedding dress married to someone. And those same endings then proceed to show Kid wandering around looking for somebody. So wait... Did she find Serge like she promised to do and marry him? Or is she still looking for him and married some poor sap to tide her over in the meantime while she searches for her true love?
After investing so many hours to beat the game, this fate is important for gamers to know. No implication matches the characters. If Kid married Serge, why is she looking for someone else? If not, why didn't she wait at all?
1 This is... Earth?!?
As Kid wanders around the modern-looking cities at the end of the game, players will begin to notice the area she's in is Earth during the player's current time period. That's right! As if it wasn't enough to mess up the plots for two different universes with a bundle of parallel universes, they practically broke into the gamer's world as well.
Truthfully, the developers put very little work into trying to make sense of any of this, and attempting to resolve the ending to this game will result in committing more brainpower toward cohesion than the writers ever did. Is there some kind of value in the setting being earth? It probably should have been left out unless there was some message involved. It's art for the sake of the art, abandoning any moral or story in its wake.
Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition was released on April 7th, 2022, and is available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.