Heretic-Gamer

Name: Chrono Trigger

System: Nintendo DS/DS Lite/DSi

Developer: Square-Enix

Release Date: February 6, 2009

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Looking for a good RPG to keep you occupied this summer? Well if you’re the owner of some sort of Nintendo DS, you’re in luck. Among the tons of other quality RPGs you can find on the system at this point in its life, a port of Chrono Trigger to the Nintendo DS is one of the best.

Overview:

Chrono Trigger, if you are familiar with the original in any way, is heralded as one of the greatest games of all time by Gamespot, IGN, and others. Simply put, this game remains near flawless to this day. It’s epic, exciting, fun, challenging, and interesting. Before I start to go crazy about this game however, I should point out the specifics of the DS version for those of you thinking about picking up this remake, especially if you’ve had the game before. If you haven’t by the way, and you like RPGs at all, pick this up if you have a Nintendo DS. Any gamer who hasn’t witnessed this RPG in all it’s glory needs to.

Differences Between Earlier Versions:

If you note the difference between the two pictures shown, you’ll see that the DS version attemps to make a decent use out of the touch screen. For the most part, it succeeds. First of all, battles feel a lot less cramped than they would if only one screen was in use. This could have potentially been a huge problem on the DS due to the fact that a DS is smaller than a television. Alas, there is no need to worry. Even if you prefer the “classic” view, it is an option that you can change. Really the options accomodate everybody.

The touch screen use can get kind of annoying if you’re in active battle mode, however. Scrolling through your techs with the stylus gets to be a little tedious, and most will probably just resort to using the d-pad. This is a reasonable choice and in the end the fact that you get another screen to scroll through techs and items mid-battle turns out to have plenty more pros than cons. It does it’s job in the fact that it improves the port from its predecessor. In terms of the battles though, there is one major, major advantage if you have any experience with the PSX version of this game, and that’s load time. This game is best not played on a CD. The battles become really painful when your characters freeze for five seconds before the battle screen is loaded. Thankfully the DS version corrects that horrid problem, and keeps the cutscenes from the PSX version as well.

Extras in the newer version of Chrono Trigger involve a battle arena where you can compete against other players via wireless, and there are a couple new features as well. The interdimensional vortex offers a series of extra challenges, including a new superboss which is exclusively part of the Nintendo DS version of this game. I haven’t personally been through the entire series of challenges myself, but I can’t complain about having an extra challenge around. If you’re wondering about the rest of the game, however, it’s just as challenging as its previous versions. It’s hard. Very hard.

Conclusions:

This relatively brief review lacks any sort of depth in terms of getting into the games mechanics, but to be perfectly honest I don’t see any reason to go into them. If you like RPGs, there’s no reason you wouldn’t like this game, that is, unless you can’t stand linear “story-based” RPGs and prefer games like Oblivion. It’s worth pointing out though that 13 different endings shows that there are many choices you can make along the way, and each one will have an effect on the past, present and future.

This game deserves none other than an

A - Legendary