Video: Digital Foundry's Technical Analysis Of The Chrono Cross Remaster

Something of a disappointment, unless you weren't expecting much from Square Enix then it's pretty much exactly what you expected.

No wonder that KH1+2 were cloud versions on Switch considering SE didn't even care to get a PS1 game to run properly on PS5

Wth happened to Square Enix?

They just really don't even try sometimes. People with too much spare cash will still buy it and they won't see a mistake when looking at the numbers and do it again and again unfortunately.

When a games publisher doesn’t care, it always shows. Especially in today’s pitch it n’ patch it landscape.

Man, if they actually took some time to actually make these remasters/ports half-decent, I'd be happy to support them. But this is just sad.

There's no real legit way to play this on Switch, but they should patch this issue ASAP

I'm glad I don't like squenix games, the company seems to disappoint their fans constantly

Definitely a monkey paw wish to have Chrono Cross get attention again. At least the Blu ray anniversary concert was phenomenal. I bought a physical copy to support the game I love, but it's going to be a purely decorative piece and I'll play the original or Vita copy when the mood strikes.

SE wanted the "remaster" to be as loyal as possible from the original, including the fps disparities 😂

I’ve been playing the Xbox version and my son’s been playing the Switch. The frame rate is definitely a bit janky, but honestly it’s not a deal breaker for someone like me who was used to the original being all over the place. Would I like a better frame rate? Yes. Was it still worth it to get? For me, yep. Maybe not others though. Hopefully a patch or two will smooth it out.

@mariomaster96 Square-Enix is just the name that binds numerous development teams together. Whatever a team works on and releases is billed as a Square Enix game. That’s why their releases run the quality gamut from lauded to horrible. I found this on google so mind potential accuracy questions: https://squarebd1.wordpress.com/all-of-square-enixs-business-divisions-detailed/

This post is not meant to defend them; in a way, it’s meant to highlight the jankiness of the company.

There's something oddly comforting knowing that Square hasn't changed its approach to remastering games at all. Still makes it a bit disappointing though.

The Chrono Trigger Steam release was mostly negatively reviewed at first before they spent the following year updating the game. That port was even worse because it didn't have the classic 16-bit look as an option on launch hahaha

@mariomaster96 Bad management. Bad business models. Out of touch Presidents.

Been "playing" the PC version and yeah, it gets into borderline unplayable territory.
The emulator they are using either can't cope with their asset injections (a.e. inserting the new 3D models in real time rather than modifying the game itself) or is horribly outdated.
It starts chugging once too many entities are on screen, even in the overworld.

And while the original game pushed the PS1 quite heavily and some skills got even the original hardware to skip some frames here and there, this release is just sad...

Relatively early in the game, you get into encounters with up to 5 enemies. In these encounters, it chokes so bad that the game drops inputs, meaning you have to hold a button for a bit so the game registers it properly.

I do hope square fixes this asap. As it stands, i'd go so far as to call this thing unsellable.

@FishyS Well, it's not jumping between 10 and 60, i can tell you that The game/wrapper/emulator/whatever outputs 60 frames, but internally, the game runs (or should run) at its originally intended 30 (15 in battle, and no, that's actually common for the system).
The issue is, that it's dipping even below that. 20 instead of 30 on the overworld, ~10 in battle.
And this snowballs. Frame pacing is off (good frame pacing makes even low FPS look smoothe), input is delayed, screen updates are stuttery and the game chokes while switching from battle to the overworld (a.e. going bact to 30FPS internally)

I have a somewhat high tolerance for it, so i, personally, don't find it headache inducingly bad, but it's nothing i'd call playable, let alone sellable.

Well it will be the first and only version available in Europe so we can’t be too picky

It's almost worth taking tv OUT of game mode and putting motion enhancement in (smoothing by frame insertion). make it FEEL like a higher fps game.

I will still get and collect this game and put it on the backlog to get to.

@mariomaster96 What happened is that Square have stated that they lost the source code for Chrono Cross years ago. Which left them with little choice but to use the PS1 version as a base for the remaster. They’ve had to go through a fair bit of bother to get the game onto current systems, including putting together a self contained emulated version that also incorporates native code to allow for the addition of the new character models, new artwork, upscaled backgrounds and newly translated visual novel.

@Einherjar Unfortunately they didn’t have much choice but to go with asset injections. Considering that they no longer have the game’s source code, they can’t just go in and add a bunch of stuff directly to the game.

@admeister Well, they can. The emulation scene does stuff like this all the time.
It's just a complex process and this release showed that they wanted to put as little time and effort into it as possible, which is a shame.

Emulation has come a long way. Even without the source, it would have been absolutely possible to release a perfectly running game.
Square simply decided not to do so.

They did put some effort into it, having to remake all those backgrounds must have taken some work. But... it does not hide the fact that they did cut corners, way to many. I was super hyped for this but the game not having the original soundtrack as an option killed it for me, I'm just gonna go back to playing the PS1 version instead.

I mean, I keep my expectations pretty damned low for SE games, but even I'm surprised by just how bad this port is.

@Einherjar Something interesting though is that the remaster runs exactly like the PS1 version when you switch to the classic graphics mode. Actually runs a little better in some areas. So, they did in fact release a perfectly running game. If all you were wanting from this re-release was to be able to play the game on current platforms, then this new version is perfect. It even comes with some useful new features.

It’s only when the new graphics come into play that we see any issues. It just seems that when the new graphics are enabled, the asset injection they’ve implemented due to not having the source code is causing some slowdown in some areas. Maybe the emulation is actually too accurate in fact, it’s like the performance you’d expect to get if you tried running the game with these higher quality assets on a PS1 console.

@Chibi_Manny The game does use the original soundtrack. There was a rumor going around at one point that it had been changed, but that was untrue.

@admeister Well, based on DigitalFoundry classic graphics do in fact make a difference, but it is still very inconsistent and not on par with the original hardware.
Regardless, it is a broken release that shouldn't have been put on sale in this state.
I'm sure that we will see a patch or two, just like Chrono Trigger did before it (on Steam), which also launched in a laughably bad state.

@Einherjar Digital Foundry said this about the classic mode’s framerate compared to the PS1 version “at least it’s on par, if not a little bit better”.

@admeister Then my bad, i must have misremembered that. Sorry!

The frame rate sounds bad, but I’m more annoyed by the look. Like they said, you can tell it was made with a certain vision and goal back then, and in the “remaster” it all falls apart. It’s a problem other HD versions have too (Twilight Princess doesn’t look right in HD either), but here with the disconnected pixel and polygon layers it’s worse than ever.

I played it for about an hour and lost interest. I didn’t purchase this game for beautiful graphics or frame rate. I purchased it for a story and gameplay. I found it feasible. It is just $20. That Speed thing needs work though

Damn, yet another remaster I was really looking forward to but will sadly be leaving on the digital shelf. It's really disheartening that so many are coming out of the oven half-baked at best.

@admeister No, unfortunately it does not. It is confirmed that the remaster is only playable with only the new soundtrack. Any classic soundtrack would be on the Radical Dreamers part of the game.

@Chibi_Manny There is no new soundtrack. I’m playing the remaster right now, it’s the same as the original version. The remaster simply features cleaned-up versions of the original music with small adjustments to noise compression and equalization. This has been confirmed by the game’s composer.

@jcboyer515 This is the only legit way to play it, yes, unless you want to mod it