Chrono Trigger – Review

	Available On: Nintendo DS Format Reviewed: Nintendo DS Publisher: Square-Enix Developer: TOSE Players: 1-2 Online: 0

13 years. That’s how long it has taken for the time-travelling SNES classic, Chrono Trigger, to see the light of day in any shape or form in Europe. Now, a decade and a half on, the game has finally been released for the Nintendo DS, with brand new exclusive features including a dual-screen presentation, optional touch screen controls and, new dungeons, endings and so on. But the question is has it been worth the long, excruciating wait? Is it seriously worth shelling out £30 of your good old hard earned for such a damn old game? Or will you end up wanting to turn back the clock yourself after taking the plunge? Head inside for our full review to find out.

At first glance…nah, scratch that, first play, you would be forgiven for thinking that this is just another RPG. Well, technically it is, but there’s something that makes Chrono Trigger stand out from the rest, and that’s the time travel. Not that time travel is a feature never before seen in a role playing title, but the way in which Chrono Trigger deals with it is certainly different. You don’t just travel to one or two set points in time, but several. And eventually you can go between them at your own will. Personally I’ve always loved the idea of time travel, and Chrono Trigger has it in buckets.

Another feature that sets the game apart from RPGs of the day is its battle system. It uses the Active Time Battle system which, simply put, is a mixture of turn-based and real-time combat. You select your move, whether that be to inflict a melee attack or a magic attack on your selected enemy, use an item or whatever, and once your move is over you have to wait until a counter located on the lower screen fills up until you can go again. While it’s filling up your enemies have the chance to attack you, however, this doesn’t mean you are stuck awaiting an attack until it does so, because the other members in your party also have counters that move at a different pace, so you can have them attacking at different points.

All of the in-game skirmishes take place on the map rather than on a different battle screen, which certainly makes the game flow a bit better than your standard RPG. Back when the game was originally released the battle system was highly praised, and I have to say that it does work very well and makes a nice change to the usual format. But just in case you prefer your, ahem, ‘good old fashioned’ turn-based combat, then you can switch to that in the options, which is a nice touch on Square Enix’s part.

The game begins in the year 1000AD, and puts you directly in the boots of young Crono. The millennial fair is taking place, and as you wander the fairground you stumble across a girl named Lucca and her Father demonstrating a new transporter device. In a somewhat predictable turn of events, things go a bit pear-shaped and a portal opens up. Naturally, you end up going through this portal, and soon find that it has taken you back in time to the year 600AD. From this point things start going pretty crazy. It isn’t too far into the game before you find yourself off into the far future, back again and so forth.

The plot and character development is definitely one of the game’s strong points. It does take a while to really get going and take shape, but as the game progresses the story gets increasingly interesting and involving. And there are even multiple endings (Of which a few are brand new and exclusive to the Nintendo DS re-release), so chances are something totally different will happen when you beat the game a second and, if you are really in love with it, maybe even a third time. Fourth, however, is probably overdoing it a bit.

Although Chrono Trigger has been updated and re-released on the Nintendo DS, absolutely no changes have been made in the graphics department. This might come as a disappointment for fans of the upgraded Final Fantasy games on the DS that have featured fully-fledged 3D graphics, but Square-Enix have seen fit not to mess around with Chrono Trigger, which is fair enough. The graphics are obviously dated now, with the sprites and environments all looking very mid-90s. At points during the adventure things can look a bit ugly, but for the most part the game looks just fine.

To put it bluntly, in the end Chrono Trigger is a 13 year old SNES game, re-packaged into a pretty DS box. But, as you will know, there are a number of games that still remain fresh many, many years after their original release, and Chrono Trigger is one of those games. It doesn’t bring much innovation to the table in terms of gameplay in this day and age, but at the same time it feels like you’ve never played anything like it before, on the DS or otherwise. In all honesty, Square-Enix could have simply ported it to the Virtual Console rather than charging £30 for a DS version, but they’ve made that decision and to be honest, who could blame ‘em. Those sly dogs know how damn great this game is.

If you popped a Final Fantasy game and a Dragon Quest game into a blender and added in a few tea spoons of time travel, Chrono Trigger would probably be the end result. Granted, the re-release on DS doesn’t utilize the DS’s stand-out features to any real extent, but then, simply put, it doesn’t need to. If you have any interest in RPGs at all, I thoroughly recommend you Chrono Trigger. Oh, and to answer the question I begged at the very beginning of this review on whether it was worth that 13 year wait…You betcha.