What Makes Chrono Trigger so Amazing

In recent months, I've realized that if I actually want to consider a career in game design (a real career, not the sort people who go into game design programs outside of DigiPen wind up in), I need to consider what makes a good game. Chrono Trigger has been my favorite game probably since my first hour with it back in...oh...1998? It makes as good a starting point as any.

For those of you reading who are video game dorks of my magnitude (of which there are few), I think that the simple reminder that it was worked on by both Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yuji Horii should really be enough. Most of you don't know what that means, though, so I'll go into some depth.

Hironobu Sakaguchi is the father of Final Fantasy. I'm sure that most of you have at least passing familiarity with that name if nothing else. The Final Fantasy series is the global de facto series for Japanese Style Role Playing Games. Epic, cinematic stories of a small groups struggle for personal freedom and the fate of the world are what really defines the Final Fantasy series.

In this case, the important aspect is the personal one. In order to involve the players in the game, the Final Fantasy series has, starting with entry 4, tried to emotionally attach the players to the characters they are in control of. Everything is about the tribulations of the protagonists, and if they didn't have their own reasons to be on their quest, nobody would do anything about the world's crisis (granted, the world would rarely be in its sad state of affairs without the player characters' actions in the Final Fantasy series, either).

Yuji Horii, on the other hand, is the creator of the Dragon Quest series. Even more popular in Japan than Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest takes a vastly different approach to story telling. With few exceptions, the characters in Dragon Quest games take a back burner to the world the games take place in. As you explore the world, you get to know its citizens as you help them to put their troubles to right. While the plot may have reasons for you going to each place, as soon as the next town needs your help, the overarching quest takes a back seat to the immediate needs of the world's common folk.

Slowly, trends emerge and it's made apparent that whatever being or force you were out to put to rest is the same one responsible for everybody else's troubles, but you as the player want to beat him not because of your characters' vendettas, but because he, she, or it is posing a menace to a world that the designers have shown you is worth saving.

Simply put, Chrono Trigger combined these elements. The cast is colorful, fleshed out, and ingrains itself within you. Each member has his or her reasons for wanting to be a part of the journey, but each character's personality and goals are also deeply ingrained in a place that you have visited. Their quest isn't for their own behalf, so much as that of their time. While they have their own personalities that you grow to care about, they aren't out to save the world to fulfill a personal grudge, they're out to do it for the people and places close to them. Because of this, in caring about the characters, you necessarily come to care about the world that is so dear to them.

There was no way this game would have been a failure, even without the joint direction of these two incredible individuals. An amazing score that first introduced the considerable talents of Yasunori Mitsuda to the world at large, an innovative combat system involving combination attacks and area of effect attacks that others have been failing to improve on ever since, one of the first uses of the New Game+ concept along with over a dozen endings to make said New Game+ worthwhile, and some of the best art of the SNES era would have easily cemented its place as one of the great games of the 16 bit era. Ultimately, though, its success and legacy as an RPG can't be contributed purely to these superficial facts.

What makes Chrono Trigger the enduring classic and the gold standard to which modern J-RPGs are still compared is is the simple fact that, by working together, Horii and Sakaguchi make you care about the whole package more than you knew a game could. And it is in your love of these characters and the world they so desperately want to preserve that the incredible bonuses become even more awe inspiring.