After rumours and more years besides of fan hopes, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is on the way and arrives very soon, on 7th April. On the surface it'll be the game that many remember and treasure, though Square Enix is adding some optional modern touches to models, backgrounds and even the fonts.
As you can hear in the video at the top of this article, too, Square Enix is bringing some new songs and updated arrangements to the title. Even if you're not actually familiar with the game the music sounds fantastic; it's well worth a listen.
Square Enix has been in a generous mood with its music recently, uploading multiple soundtracks to YouTube.
Are you planning to pick up Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition soon, and do you have a favourite music track from the game? Let us know, as always, in the comments.
Comments (34)
Nooo! I wanna hear it when I'm actually playing it. So that I may turn it off in favor of the original arrangement.
@Erigen Then don't press play on the youtube video
I am SO looking forward to this release. Never played Chrono Cross, but all the hype for this game makes me so excited.
(still a little mad at that "boy does it look rough" article NL did on CC previously...)
Wait… they are making a remake and it is coming to Switch?!
https://youtu.be/3L6p1sAEehM
This is my favorite videogame song ever.
The music in this game is crazy.
@ThomasBW84 Yasunori Matsuda
Simply...a legend.
Oh boy, that’s one hell of a glow up. It was already one of the best soundtracks of all time but those arrangements are even better!
I'm not impressed. I prefer the original soundtrack. It's already a masterpiece. I don't feel that CC vibe from the songs
@Wiss2wiss Remaster, but yes! It's out April 7th and also includes Radical Dreamers, the formerly Satellaview-exclusive game that was sort of a proto-Chrono Cross in terms of its plot.
Wow, I'm actually not feeling these remixes at all.
They couldn't just use the orchestral remixes from any of the last few concerts or albums they released?
I'll stick to the original OST, which still hits me in the feels.
I'm glad is optional, because I prefer the originals.
Is Mitsuda making these rearrangements?
@ReaperMelia this was my favourite childhood game! I am definitely getting it and I can’t wait to discover how much of the story I actually understood back then. I hope they make a sequel one day
@SuperCharlie78 - Very much same! Possibly my favourite song period, not just videogame.
@Friendly - Temper your expectations. The absolute best part of the game is the music, which is absolutely marvellous, but the game wasn't the best thing ever. It's actually very surprising they touted it as a semi-sequel to Chrono Trigger because the games share pretty much nothing in terms of feel, style, vibe... I am also afraid it won't have aged gracefully.
So don't expect a Chrono Trigger 2, nor a life changing experience, and you will probably enjoy it a lot more.
Remade soundtracks like for the Mario & Luigi and Crash remakes tend to not bother me since the differences are so minuscule but these really don't do it for me at all. Even if the original wasn't such a high bar, these new tracks are so different that they don't even seem fitting!
Fossil Valley especially, that was such a powerful and adventurous theme in the original game and this new version gives off a completely different vibe.
@Diggaloss The remastered version had both the original soundtrack and the rearrange versions just like Trials of Mana so you're not missing out on anything. If you don't like the new ones you could always switch to the old ones.
@Erigen pretty sure these tracks are not in the game.
@Daniel36 I'm going to disagree. The game is a sequel to Trigger while at the same time it isn't. The game continues SPOILERS the Schala story from Trigger. That and we get more information about what happened after Lavos was defeated in the future and how certain events in Trigger changed the present world in Cross. However, none of the principal cast from Trigger really show up more mentioned. END OF SPOILERS The director has always been coy about if it is a sequel or not.
I think the story is fantastic about themes regarding identity, adolescents, gender and I think resonates more with audiences now than in 1999/2000. The story can be a bit hard to follow in points and gets a bit... um... Xeno-y? This makes sense considering his (Masato Kato) ties to Xenogears and Monolith. The combat is also highly unique and amazingly deep. I think this game is amazing! But, if you're looking for a traditional sequel to Trigger then yeah curve your expectations.
EDIT: Not sure if my spoiler tags worked.
@Wexter Yeah spoiler tag worked. You clearly know more about both games than I do. I must admit, it's been so long since I last played Trigger that I didn't even remember the character in your spoiler. I hope they will release it on Switch since I really want to replay that one.
But that's the thing, you are clearly passionate about it, so you will have a love for the game that you simply cannot get if you play it for the first time now. Going into this game for the first time and expecting great things, you are setting yourself up to be put off by the "Xeno-y" story and somewhat obtuse, if perhaps unique and highly deep combat system, which I for example personally hated.
So my comment was a heads-up for newcomers to not expect too much. The less you expect, the more pleasantly surprised you will end up.
I might get it eventually anyways. I've hated games in the past that, upon replaying some other time, I fell in love with because it finally clicked the second time around.
That, and the music... Oh my goodness the music. The shore bordering another world can bring me to tears if I allow it to.
@EarthboundBenjy
...yeah, really wish they had followed that up with a poll to see what readers actually think...
As much as I like these arrangements and would enjoy them as an arranged album, they have a totally different vibe from the original versions and I'm not sure how well they'd fit during actual gameplay.
@Daniel36 Very fair. If it's been a while it makes sense why you'd forget about that plot point. It was rather late-game in both Trigger and Cross. I do recommend giving the game a second chance at some point. But, completely fair if the battle system did not click with you. It can be a love it or hate it. Not as much as Final Fantasy XIII's but I know people who cannot stand the stamina system and how the magic system works.
I do appreciate how non-grindy the game is. It is fairly easy to never have to do unnecessary enemy encounters! This is very nice considering other Square Soft titles at the time.
The new songs are okay, but you can't mess with the perfection of the originals.
Not one of these is good.
The Laziest port of all time.
@CactusMan
That's actually my all-time favorite piece of video game music - and one of many from Chrono Trigger and Cross that I made into music levels in Mario Maker 1 and 2.
@Daniel36
I actually agree with you completely - particularly about them not sharing the same feel, style, and vibe. There are certainly things I love about Chrono Cross, but when I first finished playing through the game in 2000, that's the one feeling I couldn't shake - to me, it FELT almost nothing like the game it was the sequel to. (And yes, the back of the case says it's the sequel, so that's what it is.) I didn't need it to be "Chrono Trigger 2", but I was hoping it would at least feel like the first game. Also, I have played through the game multiple times since then, when I was no longer expecting it to feel like Chrono Trigger - most recently in 2016 - and I still come away from it feeling the same way every time. (The over-the-top complexity of the plot that tests the limits of my suspension of disbelief doesn't help, lol.)
I'll probably still pick this up at some point - even more likely if it gets a physical release. The music is stellar, and I do enjoy some other aspects of the game as well.
@Wiss2wiss no they are making a remaster
@SuperCharlie78 Great taste! Its my fav vgm ever too right after corridors of time.
@Rocky2418 I agree with most of what you’ve said, they should have made it a separate game unrelated to trigger, trigger’s just untouchable peak imo, but don’t you think cross’s vibe was phenomenal as it is? Forget the plot, I’ve never experienced games as immersive as the chrono games, mitsuda’s music does wonders man, whether it’s a great game or not, my fav VGM composer
@Rafa78 nope.
@Rafa78 You can say a lot of things about this port, and about SquareEnix in general, but calling this a lazy port is a bit unfair.
It has the option between updated or original visuals AND music, you can adjust the difficulty by removing random encounters, it even has a previously untranslated additional text game Radical Dreamers included, and it only goes for the very fair price of 20 bucks.
That won't change the fact that this game is an acquired taste, but a lazy port this is absolutely not.
@Mahhayo
I guess for me, the plot and characters are key aspects in an RPG, so I can't just forget something as big as my issue with the plot. And on the characters side, to me having 44 playable characters made it feel like they were just things to collect, rather than people to know and care about (aside from some, like Serge and Kid). As opposed to a small, intimate group of 7 that were all inexorably tied to the story and experience of Chrono Trigger. But hey, I know that some people preferred the endless variety of characters in Chrono Cross, and that's fine. Overall, the game never really struck a chord with me, but I'm glad that it did with others.
And yeah, you'll get no arguments from me over how phenomenal the music is.
@Daniel36 Lazy comments about lazy ports are the laziest of all
@Daniel36 Well, the game was released, and guess what? A lazy port.
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