Left feeling a bit empty after playing it for the first time a few months ago(why did I wait so long?) I am afraid no JRPG will be able to surpass it. Would love to have a discussion about similar games that reach the same quality level (Note: I have already played Final Fantasy VI ).
I played CC.
Sure, the story is connected - Kid being raised by Lucca, the Time Devourer being Lavos, Guile being strongly hinted to be Magus, all that thing. But the loads of characters make you look at the big picture, instead of focusing on their individual personalities; the theme (dimensional travel vs. time travel) is different; and the battle system is nothing alike. Those things are actually improvements, but at least for me, they make it that CC doesn’t scratch the same itch as CT.
And there’s always that lingering melancholy in Chrono Cross that is at the same time beautiful and completely unlike the “happy” Chrono Trigger.
That’s why I say that it’s a great game, but an awful sequel. It doesn’t have the elements that make you say “THAT is Chrono Trigger 2!”, but it’s fun and in certain aspects better than CT.
In fact one of the goals as stated by the team was that they very explicitly did not want to pump out “Chrono Trigger but it’s got a 2 at the end of it”.
Yup. In other words they didn’t want to pump out a sequel. Even then that’s what plenty people expected from CC, since it’s “part of the Chrono series”, and then got disappointed and an otherwise great game got this “but what about CT…” stigma. (I remember the outrage back then. And the kids distorting it into a SNES vs. PS fight.)