 Is there a more hyped game out there than Chrono Trigger? Since coming out in 1995, this game has now received almost 20 years of rave reviews. So if you've never played Chrono Trigger, I can understand why you'd be skeptical. After two decades of hype, can Chrono Trigger live up to the insane expectations? I can answer that. Yes, it can. Ah, that's that. What? You want an actual explanation? That was fine. Okay, the underlying brilliance in Chrono Trigger is in how it gains momentum the more you play it. It's so easy to get sucked into this game because the story is told so well. Basically, Chrono goes to a fair to check out his friend Luca's new invention. On the way, he literally runs into a princess without knowing who she is yet. She ends up getting caught on the wrong end of a failed Luca experiment and sent back in time 400 years. Whoops. Chrono of course volunteers to go get her, triggering a domino effect that sets the whole story in motion. And that's just the very basic start. I won't get too into detail. But the story just keeps building and building to the point that you want to keep playing just to see what happens next. And now once is there a moment as player that you say, well now what do I do? It's always intuitive. And just as an aside, if you've never played this game before, just wait until you get to the Zeal Kingdom in 12,000 BC. The music, the atmosphere, and the presentation are just incredible. You just want to hang out there forever. Anyway, eventually the game splits off into several different side quests, but it remains very straightforward in telling you what to accomplish. Balance is the key word here. Balance between linear and open-ended storytelling. That's the best way to describe why this game is great. Everything is balanced so well. The enemies are never too easy or never too tough, and there's no need to level grind at any point. As you level up and gain experience and learn spells, the enemies match your strength. So it's good balance difficulty. Not that this game is hard at all, but it's not exactly easy either. The boss fights in particular are perfectly done. Each one feels like an event, and not like Final Fantasy VI where more often than not, it just seemed to say, well, here's another boss for you, you know, out of nowhere. Magus, Black Toronto, and Lavos in particular are really built up as big deals. For example, I really like how you have to take out Magus' underlings, like Slash, Flea, and Ozzy before you face it. Instead of accumulating just strength and experience points like most RPGs, Chrono Trigger rewards you with combo attacks with your teammates. Some of these are flat-out awesome and powerful as hell, like Ice Sword II, Falcon Hit, Delta Force, and Arc Impulse, or what I refer to as the Finish Flag attack. While some are just laugh-out-loud funny like the Pollozo dance, which is this spastic, nonsensical spell involving a stuffed animal, or Frog Flare, which is a giant, exploding frog that looks like something out of Monty Python. Accumulating these attacks is really fun, and it keeps the momentum of the game going. It also contains one of the most ingenious inventions in gaming, the New Game Plus option. So after you finish the game, you can go back in time as often as you'd like with the same stats, gear, and weapons, and try beating the game from a different point in the timeline. There are 11 different endings you can achieve, and most of them are well worth it, especially the one with the messages from the development crew. So that gives it replay value out the ass. The characters themselves are a strange dynamic group, and they're all distinctly different. Some are cliched, and some not, at least not yet. But there's the silent hero, the runaway princess, the nerdy tech geek, the robot, the cavewoman, the talking frog, and in a neat twist, you can play as one of the main villains for a good chunk of the game. Each character has at least a couple laugh-out-loud moments, even the ultra-serious Magus. You got whacked because you're weak. I love that. One particular aspect I don't think can be overstated is the main villain, Labos. Rarely in a game, especially in an RPG, does a boss actually come across as invincible. Labos is like the Terminator. It barely says anything. You can't reason with it. It can't be stopped, and it won't be stopped until you are dead and everything is destroyed. And by the way, it lives in the center of the earth, draining its life for all it's worth. The final battle music is absolutely perfect, and it gives me chills to this day. And I've finished this game like 30 times. Chrono Trigger was released very late in the Super Nintendo's run, so that allowed programmers to maximize everything that the Super Nintendo hardware was capable of. And I'll be damned if it didn't succeed doing that. This is about as technically advanced in terms of overall length, visuals, and sound as any Super Nintendo game gets. So yeah, Chrono Trigger is definitely the total package. It's got a great sense of humor. It's never boring. You truly never know what's going to happen next. There's a crazy amount of depth in both the story and the characters, and with the items and the gear. There's tons of replay value with all the endings, and especially in the DS version with all the bonus content. The music is top-notch with memorable themes created for each major character and for certain events in the game. All those factors add up to one thing, and that's that Chrono Trigger is the best game the Super Nintendo has ever produced. And yes, it does live up to the hype.