The battle system essentially perfects turn based combat with a stamina bar that creates tense, fast-paced battles, and all this to one of the most catchiest tracks in any JRPG. I love the fact that you can escape any battle, and that not only includes bosses, but its’ final boss, the Time Devourer. When battles are completed, you have the option of healing your party members automatically without using consumable items. Enemies are also visible on the map so you can avoid random combat. The elemental system is a thing of beauty, adding a strategic element that verges on poetry in the final climactic, “Chrono Cross,” to beat the whole game.

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One of the most powerful battles starts the second act. You face your archvillain Lynx, whose visual style is inspired by the Aztec god of fate, black magic, and chaos. Just as you think you have defeated him, he swaps bodies with Serge. It’s another “cross” that changes the flow of the game in a completely unexpected way and is somewhat reminiscent of the John Woo film, Face/Off. Like the film, it opens another dimension to your humanity when you realize how it is that people treat non-humans. “The only thing pure in this world is enmity,” the new Dark Serge states.

You wake up in what looks like a Vincent Van Gogh painting. The art is impressionistic, a revisualization of the world you thought you knew. And in what seems a recurring motif, it’s Crono from Chrono Trigger who reveals that Lynx is actually your father, Wazuki, corrupted by the super computer FATE. You swapped roles with your father so that the inter-dimensionality takes on another layer of complexity in a multi-generational jump.

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Image for article titled Chrono Cross Was A Bad Sequel, But A Brilliant Game

The philosophical implications are fascinating to ponder as well. Constantly, you are accused of your father’s sins (e.g. the dragoon, Radius challenging you to combat), even though you are trying to weave your own destiny (Radius acknowledges there is no malice in your attacks and ends up joining you). Part of the redemption lies in undoing Lynx’s actions by becoming him and then reclaiming your own identity after a long struggle.

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In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, this stage would be identified with the “Atonement with the Father.” As Campbell states: “For if it is impossible to trust the terrifying father-face, then one’s faith must be centered elsewhere (Spider Woman, Blessed Mother); and with that reliance for support, one endures the crisis—only to find, in the end, that the father and mother reflect each other, and are in essence the same. The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands—and the two are atoned.”

It’s only in a warped atonement that you can find your self again, but that’s the only way to become the “master of two worlds” and to right the many wrongs executed over the ages.

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Just as Serge freed himself, I’m no longer bound by the ghost of Chrono Trigger, instead, able to take Chrono Cross for its individual brilliance. In any alternate dimension, that’s a good thing.