Why Chrono Trigger is the Best RPG of All Time

Yeah, I’m breaking out the massive banner picture for this one. A couple years back, my younger brother and I bought this game for the DS because I thought the soundtrack was awesome, and I liked it. I didn’t really play much of it (only got a couple hours in and stopped because of all the usual life constraints), but thought it was a great little game. Recently, I decided “why not?” and decided to restart it and check it out again. It is not a great little game. It is unequivocally the greatest RPG I have ever played, and I say this as someone who has spent a sizable chunk of my life on everything from Final Fantasy to Mass Effect to Elder Scrolls. It is the best RPG of all time. The things that this game did when I was only two years old are astounding – it’s basically a modern RPG.

Judging from the amount of awe with which it is spoken of by the old guard of gamers in forums across the net, one would come to the conclusion that Chrono Trigger is no less than a very gift of god entrusted to mankind so we can view it with extreme awe (regular awe just wouldn’t do it justice). Oddly enough, this isn’t too far off the mark from what it actually is, although you might want to hold off on organizing a cult around it. The general gist of what you tend to hear on these forums is the argument that “RPG’s were best in the 16-bit era, Chrono Trigger was the best of them, and they’ve never reached that pinnacle”. I tend to laugh these people off just as much as I laugh off twelve-year olds who state that the best story ever told in a video game is that of Call of Duty: Black Ops (which is especially disturbing seeing as even within the Call of Duty series, Black Ops has the worst plot).

Turns out I owe these random elders of the internet gaming culture an apology, because they were right. Chrono Trigger is breathtakingly original, used game elements that were so far ahead of their time that we’re just getting around to implementing them in modern RPG extravaganzas now, and essentially feels like a revolution of the entire RPG genre (western and Japanese), which is especially funny seeing as it came out in 1995.

The developers decided to drop the whole illusion of a large overworld in favor for giving you one fairly small world that you can interact with at several different points in time (from prehistoric up to a post-apocalyptic future). The sidequests of the game (and in fact the main plot) all involve going back in time to change events in future periods, and depending on what you tweaked with and how, the game plays out differently (and accumulates in one of sixteen different endings). This was the original RPG where you get to make choices that actually change the plot, which is now an expected staple of the genre.

On top of this, the central plot itself is extremely intriguing and gets to be downright legendary about halfway through. It revolves around the hero Crono (the one with the typical Akira Toriyama hair up on the left in that top image) joining with a group of bizarre and colorful characters to go back in time to stop the cosmic eldtrich horror-parasite Lavos from destroying the world. It sounds like fairly typical fair, but it gets to be oh-so-much-more at that already mentioned halfway point. I’m simply shocked at the quality of it all, and refuse to spoil anything. Suffice to say an odd amalgamation of multiple time periods is far more interesting than the usual strictly fantasy or sci-fi affair.

And this isn’t even to mention the actual battling, which involves fighting visible enemies in the on-screen environment (no battle window) through a means of tag-team tactical combat. It focuses far more on intelligence, and there’s no need to grind (if you’re ever dying over and over again to a boss, it’s because of your items or tactics, not level). This is a far better take on the usual RPG fighting fare, which tends to get stale. It’s always active and exciting in Chrono Trigger.

There’s just so much more beyond all of this, too. It constantly subverts the usual RPG tropes (both story and gameplay) into things beautiful, brilliant and downright new. The sense of constant freshness completely permeates Chrono Trigger, and it just. Plain. Doesn’t. Get. Old. Even when you’ve finished the game with one ending, you can restart right away with all of your abilities and level in a new game + just to mess around and tinker with everything to get all the other endings.

In conclusion, Chrono Trigger is an absolute legend and the best goddamn RPG I’ve ever played, and I feel bad for only discovering it now. And I know I’m not the only one out there who’s heard of it but never played it – I urge everyone to give it a try, regardless of what genres you usually play. It’s a true SNES classic and I can’t possibly give it a higher recommendation.

Oh yeah, and its 17th anniversary was a couple days ago, so this is totally a legitimately important article and not random.