![]() Serge, a young adventurer from a small fishing village lives a life of fighting monsters and helping out the townspeople, with simple turn-based battles that eschewed the popularity of ATB-style systems. The irony is that, at first glance, it seems fairly typical-even quaint. But for all its subversive quality, it holds strong to the unique charm and vibrant aesthetic of ‘90s JRPGs, striking a careful balance between pushing the envelope and capturing what people love. It puts clever twists on foundational JRPG ideas and mechanics, with a story that goes in some fascinating directions and pushing boundaries of the way videogame stories can be told-arguably even more than Chrono Trigger before it did. Even playing it for the first time in 2022, it feels original and unique I can’t imagine how ahead of its time it would have felt when it first came out more than 20 years ago. It doesn’t take long to see why Chrono Cross has the reputation it has. Case in point: Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is the first time one of the most acclaimed-if divisive among Chrono Trigger fans-PS1 JRPGs will be officially released in Europe. Local releases of Japanese games-even those that got an American release-were much rarer, and a huge number of beloved games just never made the jump. ![]() In Europe (and by extension, Australia and New Zealand), the situation was a little different. The genre had been steadily growing in the West, and the runaway success of Final Fantasy VII in particular opened a whole lot of doors for localising games… at least, in the States. The late ‘90s were an odd time to be a JRPG fan outside North America or Japan.
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