Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Shows Off Optional Upgrades

It's nice that they're allowing people to go back to the original look. I'm not a huge fan of this AI upscaled look personally

Is there an option to use a good frame rate? lol

Oh wow look, it’s that ‘low effort port’ showing off the noticeable differences compared to the original. The way this remaster has been treated by journalists is frankly laughable.

well that doesn't look bad now. Now if they can only improve the framerate and make it more stable...

I honestly don't see much difference between the pictures.

@BloodNinja 😂 I'm sure they won't release a 20+ year old game with a (still) busted framerate....right...?😅

For the people who complain that this should be a remake, not a remaster, no, we need a remaster.

People demanded FFVII Remake for years and it was a disappointment, even for the people who liked it, it is not a replacement for the original FFVII, the original needs to be preserved and sold.

And the original had very little release outside the original PS1 version, now it's coming to everything.

@BloodNinja the trailer shows 60 fps but also the framedrops that were in the PS1 version

@nessisonett actually it is much better than FF8 Remastered...the 3D models are faithful compared to the FMVs, the backgrounds were improved with a better filter, the game runs at 60 fps (at least)

@victordamazio the original game was not even released in Europe, so this is for the first time it is coming there

@nessisonett To be fair, that was just one NL journalist mistaking his own opinion for the common opinion right after it was released. I've been keeping an eye out for a soapbox article from him about Chrono Cross, but I don't think it's happened yet. Maybe closer to release.

The filter toggle is a really cool feature I wasn't expecting. Definitely picking this one up.

My biggest complaint about the game, aside from getting lost and having no idea where to go next, was the in game economics- I could never afford to keep my characters properly equipped, at least not without hours of tedious grinding.

It's not much of a toggle when there's little to no difference.

@dustinprewitt

I never saw a need to grind. Equipment isn’t really all that important early in the game. Elements are far more important.

@bluecuban The image comparison looks pretty noticable to my eyes.

The girl's even wearing a different color hairband in her character art and the background/environment graphics go from smooth to chunky.

I think anyone who played the game originally on PS1 would appreciate this feature more than newcomers.

@TheRedComet Grinding in Chrono Cross is basically pointless. The game implements caps on stat increases after a battle and the gains you make are minimal. It is for sure more about maximizing your elemental uses and managing your stamina.

For those curious Resonant Arc released a video on Chrono Cross years ago that gives a full breakdown. Be aware of spoilers and he does warn you and provide timestamps to avoid them : https://youtu.be/NKBiOQrXSj0

Really excited for this remaster, if just for the better looking models and the kick off it will start mod support wise, but I really hope they fix some of the originals bugs. At the very least, fix the character stat bugs which made certain characters (Pip) useless.

@victordamazio
I’m really happy it’s a remaster because I never played it before. Same with FF7 I never played it before they released the remastered version. I played both FF7 remastered and remake and the remake version is definitely not the version to introduce new players to FF7.

I can't even pretend I see a real difference besides in Leena's face in the text box. The rest is so minor it falls into "why even bother calling it a remaster" territory.

A quarter-hearted attempt to upgrade something with the word Chrono on it only for it to end up tasting bland? Sounds like they wanna go retro and recreate the original release: too bland to even produce wet fart noises in lieu of a game review.

@Astral-Grain, sorry, I meant more there's little difference in quality. Yeah, there is a difference between both versions, but it doesn't stand out as something that I would call an "upgrade" or similar.

It feels like a different style from the same generation.

Wait so the BG is pixelated but the characters aren't!? That looks terrible.

@Don

Seriously, the Remake, like Tim Rogers says on his 3-hour video, is actually a sequel in disguise. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but many of the plot beats in — and much of the narrative meaning of — the Remake hinge on your familiarity with the Original. I'm not talking about fan-service-y winks or call-backs, but the whole point of entire scenes and episodes, with virtually no context for newcomers to understand what the heck's going on. I know plenty of newcomers enjoyed it anyway in a bewildered End-of-Evangelion-y sort of way, but they're still missing a lot.

Liking the look of this update - the Final Fantasy remasters have all been pretty rough so I'm glad to see SE giving the option to turn off the updated fonts and graphics. Like the N64, I don't tend to think PSX stuff looks great when upscaled to 1080p, especially when their original SD prerendered backgrounds are the only extant art available.

All of that said, I saw folks here in the comments indicating that this game runs at 60fps. That certainly wasn't the case in the original release and the trailer footage for the remaster is similarly running at 30fps. Most of SE's original source code from this era is lost, so upgrading past the original game's framerate is generally impossible since all animations are locked to that in the only still-existing ROMs. Is there any other information that suggests the remaster is running at 60fps?

The new character portraits are quite lovely!

Yes, options are always nice! I was on the fence, but now I'm a lot more tempted to buy it!

man forget all what i said about square enix remaster! this is the gold treatment, retero games should get

I honestly can't tell the difference >.<

@PharoneTheGnome How can you not? The pixels on the left are countable.
Anyway, this is the best version of this game we are likely ever going to get, at least in the next decade if not more, so more than happy to play it.

I'm more curious about the supposed "sound quality" upgrades. The audio in the original is an A+, not sure what needed to he changed.

I am really tempted to buy it.

There is something not quite right about playing old games with their original look on the latest state of the art console.

Legend of Mana or Trials of Mana got it right'ish.

I am glad to see this remaster even if it's not all that people wanted. The price is fine too. I don't understand why Chrono Trigger wasn't released in one form or another to go with this.

I wouldn't be surprised if it came to NSO around the time of this release. I also wouldn't be surprised if it didn't come to NSO.

@ComplaintKiller I've only seen positive comments about Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition. They've implemented a lot of features to allow you to play as vanilla or enhanced as you want. This is like how in the Halo remakes of 1&2 Microsoft lets you switch between the "original" and remade games during live gameplay. It is great for newcomers and returning players!

@ComplaintKiller Corporations don't care about consumer complaints, they only care about sales numbers.

@Crono1973 I'm still hoping for Xenogears because that game could use some quality-of-life features. And if Square Enix can get in contact with Monolith Soft to get Takahashi to help supervise adding in the cut dungeons and story beats that would be AMAZING! I mean they did it before with Chrono Trigger DS.

As for Chrono Trigger... I think Square Enix would probably rather resell us the Steam version. Maybe, Nintendo can squeak the wheel and we get it on NSO.

Okay, so when is SE going to re-release Brave Fencer Musashi, Vagrant Story, and the Parasite Eve games>

@Wexter The Steam version is fine too. I shouldn't care either way, I have it on the SNES, PS1, PSP, PS Vita, DS, Wii VC, Steam, IOS and on my SNES Classic. I guess you could say that I am covered for Chrono Trigger. I just expected something similar to Collection of Mana when they finally announced this game. We knew it was coming months ago thanks to that NVidia leak, also Final Fantasy Tactics remaster was leaked so that should be announced soon too.

I’d prefer a scanline filter to that smoothing on the backgrounds. It’s a pity they didn’t try AI upscaling the backgrounds.

@ComplaintKiller Thank you. People simply think they know a lot when they don't understand anything at all. We should be grateful this is even getting ported at all.

@PanFriedSoup Well, judging by their rerelease spree, they will definitely be releasing those games as well, too. They have a good track record at this point. If we get lucky, some of them might even get a full remake.

Waiting for the inevitable physical version.

@victordamazio speak for yourself. I loved the remake and think it's amazing. It improves upon the story and makes it much better and even nods toward people who expected it to be 1:1.

The original stands up ok. It was amazing for it's time but it doesn't compare to the remake.

@StarPoint Not even AI upscaled, it's just a smoothing filter.

@lordzand He is actually speaking for a lot of people. The remake was an intense disappointment, and I am not talking about the story or combat changes they made, but from an actual basic game design standpoint. The combat was the only passable element in that regard.

You say it's better than the original, but how can that be true when the content essentially boils down to just constant unnecessary filler with no rhyme or reason to any of it, and the level design consists of constantly running down corridors, or following someone really slowly?

The original had variety and little to no fat. This is 90% fat and 10% substance. It constantly disrespects the players time. I am definitely not going to play it ever again because of that reason. I won't even bother getting into the completely unnecessary story changes, it fails on a basic level as a game before we even have to worry about any story beats.

That's all we want, thanks! Keep your remakes to yourself; just a nice port of the original with an optional layer of polish sounds absolutely perfect.

On first look, I prefer the original's unfiltered art

@Wexter Xenogears on Switch would be a dream, though I'm not sure if it would be better or worse with a "remaster" treatment since the sprites are all 2D and I like the original crunchy look of them.

Though honestly, the art style is pretty much the same as the Live a Live remake and even Triangle Strategy with the whole 2D sprites over 3D environments.

If you could only have one, would you want a Xenogears Remake (similar to Live a Live) or Xenoblade Chronicles X Remaster on Switch?

@lordzand I prefer the original Final Fantasy 7 too.

Really doesn't look that bad. I never did beat this as a kid, so maybe now is the time.

Ah yes nothing like getting excited for super old games you can buy again for full price.

The font sucks, like their worst "HD" font so far.

@UglyCasanova $20 is full price to you? that's less than I paid for a NIB copy of the ps1 game shrinkwrapped ($25, for reference), and that didn't even come with Radical Dreamers

Then play it on the PS1 at its horribly pixelated 480i glory if you haters mitch and boan about it.

@UglyCasanova It's $20, not $50 (which I assume was the price for the PS1 game in 2000).

@UglyCasanova
Chrono Cross never was released in Europe and Radical Dreamers was previously Japan only...also it was on the Statellaview so even if you lived in Japan most people haven't played it in 25 years.

@JungeRoemer Chrono Cross is a remake of Radical Dreamers
Chrono Cross was inspired by Radical Dreamers which was a text based game released ONLY in Japan and only as a download. You are really stretching 'remake' here.

@JungeRoemer Not really. Radical Dreamers was never completed as Masato Kato was very disappointed with it. To the point he openly vetoed it being added as a bonus on Chrono Triggers' PSOne release. Chrono Cross is more a completed if a radically different version of Radical Dreamers. Chrono Cross has been referred to by the dev team as a spiritual successor to Dreamers, a pseudo-sequel, a completed version of Dreamers. I would not call it a remake of Dreamers as the devs don't even call it that and if they have it was with a very loose definition of remake.

Oh I really like it when they do this. Super fun to switch between old and new graphics!

@Crono1973 Square Enix won't put their games on NSO as they want money, putting it on NSO means they don't get money. If Chrono Trigger is coming to Switch it'll either be a remastered, remake, or part of a collection.

@BeefSanta I'm curious as well. They mentioned on the ChronoGame twitter that Mitsuda is involved with refining the soundtrack. After hearing how he handled the music for the Chrono Cross 20th Anniversary concert, I'm optimistic.

@NF6429 Just wanted to say that I appreciate your avatar.

I'm still shocked, like many others, that they didn't fix the frame rate. It really shows how little work Square wanted to be put into this.

@Troll_Decimator @victordamazio I loved the remake, thought the battle system was great and the story for the most part was really well told.

It's not a remake, if you've finished the game you realise its clearly not a remake, its a sequel. If they'd positioned it as that, I don't think they'd have received half the criticism they did.

I'd say it's easily the best final fantasy game since the PS2 era, and my friend who'd not played FFVII before loved it as well. Guardians of the Galaxy received universal praise, and FFVII Remake is arguably better in every single way including pacing.

@JungeRoemer FF7R was pretty average. They just increased the original Midgar section with tons of generic sidequests and boring hallways....

@JungeRoemer You are totally wrong. Radical Dreamers is a text-based adventure that serves as a prequel to the events of Chrono Cross.

@Wargoose Look, as I said, I have no problem with the changes, I didn't like them enough to justify it, but that is not the issue with the game. Its level design and pace is the problem. Too much filler content. I have no intention to replay it, it's a crawl. They tried to inflate the runtime too much with pointless detours. It would be much better if it was 10 hours long. The original game was banger after banger, no filler.

I do agree that it's the best FF since PS2 days, but that says more about FF 11-15 more than this game. It isn't bad, but "not bad" is something that should never go next to FF7. The original is a stone cold classic masterpiece.

@Migoshuro Thank you. Le Samouraï is one of my favourite films, Glad to see other know of it. Respect shown to yours also, Jim Carrey looks sharp with the Fedora in The Mask.

@Troll_Decimator you mean the filler that was already in the original game which was about walking down corridors and a cave every once in a while.

Seems like you should leave off half your name.