Flawed Perfect Heroes — “Chrono Trigger”
Much has been written about Chrono Trigger, and I admit, I was hesitant to pick up the game and give it a go because of the enormous expectations I had. Chrono Trigger is considered one of the well-rounded RPGs, and possibly, the most satisfying story-driven game ever created. Created by the old Square company, it combined three of the most famous multimedia artists of the genre, Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy), Yuji Horii (Dragon Quest) and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball). Masato Kato, the writer of some Final Fantasy classics, joined this dream trio as the story creator.
On the outside, Chrono Trigger already looks like a fascinating game. Having reinvented the genre of JRPGs when it came out in 1995 for the SNES; It featured 14 possible endings, an abundance of side-quests, time-travelling, a New Game + mode (a first in the genre) and no seamless transition from navigation and battle settings. Furthermore, it has a tapestry of intricate stories and seven complex and inviting characters that form a truly satisfying ensemble when you look deeper.
So I picked up a copy for the SNES and dived right into it, knowing nothing of its story and the characters. At first, it felt like a very typical RPG with gorgeous sprites and the vibrant colours of the SNES, which still make my jaw drop after all this time. This game might have been the crown jewel of one of the most loved consoles of all time, and as such, it didn’t take long until I had fallen completely in love with it.
I was trying to pick up a character to dive deeper into and felt that wasn’t the right approach for this game. Simultaneously, there are so many characters and storylines that I didn’t want to quickly skim what made the character resonate with me as a player. Nevertheless, I decided to base this post on the main character, Chrono, the villain Magus and probably the most iconic character in the game, Frog (which, as the name implies, is a talking frog).
Chrono behaves very much like the silent protagonist we’re used to playing in this sort of games. He surrounds himself with enough characters to depict his different emotions and conflicts. He relates to the player in the same way Cloud from Final Fantasy or any other RPG character. The point of Chrono is for the player to feel apart of the world, to fall in love with the pretty side-character, to overcome their fears and grow strong. As much as this approach feels a bit dated now, it works very well on a game bursting with exuberant characters. I felt like Chrono and enjoyed his quiet, resolute approach in the most critical plot points, making the character much more relatable when the decision falls in the player’s hands.
Before Chrono heads off to fight the (first) bad guy of the story, he meets a talking Frog that borrows from the human turned frog sort of cliché but does so in a charming way, not reducing the character to joke, but rather as a pretext of a deeper and more intricate backstory. When Frog is introduced, he is a master swordsman who speaks in a Shakespearean dialect and has a blood feud with Magus. This already tells the player this is no ordinary prince turned frog situation. Although we meet this character at his mid-point, through the innovative use of flashbacks, plus the unique abilities of having time travelling as a plot device, we meet Glenn, a young squire who’s childhood friend is killed by Magus. The event led to his transformation into an anthropomorphic frog and fuels his quest for vengeance. Chrono helps Frog locate the mighty sword Masamune for him, not Chrono, to fulfil his destiny and slay the evil mage Magus.
Chrono is a participant in this quest but not the protagonist of it. He helps Frog retrieve and repair the Masamune and picks the “hero” up during his darkest hour, but ultimately is not responsible for the story and its conclusions. Having confronted his fears and his guilt, Frog is ready to defeat Magus and avenge his friend.
But wait. It turns out Magus is not the black and white villain we know from Frog’s story or come to expect from RPGs in the 90s. He has his backstory, too, as a young mage whose mother thirst for power led her to strike a bargain with a powerful extraterrestrial entity called Lavos, set to destroy the whole world sometime in the future.
We have our second character arc, a boy who lost everything, including his family, to the villain of his storyline and goes on a quest to defeat Lavos and search for his lost sister, who’s presumed dead during a cataclysmic event.
Suppose Frog is the righteous protagonist, bound by honour and a sense of duty. Magus, instead, is a sour, reluctant protagonist who believes the ends justify the means. These two storylines clash because… well… time travelling! Yet, this device is not what is motivating the story but rather explaining how these characters with different journeys got weaved together. We, as Chrono, are just trying to navigate the world using our moral compass to justify our character’s actions. We can be just as righteous as Frog or pragmatic as Magus.
And what happens to these characters? When both storied reach the end of their mid-point, the climax ensues for Frog. In a twist in the story, we lose control of Chronos and are forced to use Frog as our main character, effectively reaching his third act. We meet Magus, who failed his quest to defeat Lavos, and are presented with a choice: fight him and avenge our friend, or let go of our grievances and team up with the complex character. The choice is entirely yours and will indeed affect the rest of the story.
Chrono Trigger is an insanely satisfying ride through time, with a bunch of colourful and complex characters and a variety of things to do that oozes charm at each twist and turn. Besides these characters, we are also presented with a robot struggling to come to terms with its purpose in life and the deterministic essence of its nature. A female scientist whose brilliant mind and inventions are only just one side of a character riddled with guilt for an accident that wasn’t her fault. And even a pre-historic, dinosaur-fighting bad-ass whose only desire is to be strong for her tribe.
So, these are my thoughts after some thirty hours of gameplay, just a couple of days after beating the final boss. If you never played Chrono Trigger, do yourself a favour and get involved in this charming, gorgeous adventure; I can assure you, it’s well worth your time.
