Great game, as long as you aren't hoping for a Trigger sequel.
Let me start by saying that I loved Chrono Trigger. It was a fun and engaging game with a variety of playable characters each with their own quirks that made using each a fun experience, and each had memorable personalities set in a surprisingly complex and interesting world. Needless to say, when Chrono Cross was announced, I was thrilled, and the title being on the Playstation, while not unexpected given Square's move to Sony, was a bit crushing to me until I finally managed to acquire one. Unfortunately, the real crushing blow was yet to come. As I played Cross, I felt my excitement slowly giving way to confusion. Who was Serge? What's up with these Elements? Why aren't there any cool team-up attacks? Most importantly, where are Chrono and friends, and where - and when - is this place? Certainly doesn't look like anywhere even geologically similar to the world in Chrono Trigger, and I scoured that map relatively thoroughly in all the eras. My hopes got kindled on the small clues here and there, like Belthasar showing up in Viper Manor, Kid's references to Lucca, Lynx referring to Serge as the Chrono Trigger, etc., only to be extinguished as the game went on with seemingly no connection beyond these few fleeting mentions to the game I so adored. Before even getting halfway through the first disc, I'd given up the game and moved on to something else.

Fast forward several years - at no particular time I'd become a little more knowledgable, mostly due to reading through Wikipedia articles and the Chrono Compendium's materials, and so while I hadn't really been tempted to go back and replay it, I'd since read up on the connecting points and seen how Cross merited being called the sequel to Trigger, at least in terms of the plot. It was only with the release of the DS port of Chrono Trigger, however, that I really felt tempted to try Cross again. Two major factors came into play here - one, the new ending added into the DS port that serves as more or less of a connecting point to Cross, probably the biggest one concerning why Cross happened to begin with, and which made me feel somewhat obligated to see Cross's ending for myself to give a sense of closure. Second... in the intervening years, the once-challenging Trigger had become surprisingly easy. Perhaps it was the result of feeling more experimental with a game I'd cleared multiple times over, or perhaps I've just become smarter about how to allocate resources and to use what when (to say nothing of having memorized most of the game,) but I breezed through the remake, with the bonus areas only providing a very slight challenge in the form of the final bonus boss. It's still a solid game, especially given when it came from, but it left me hungry for something a little more complicated. On this notion, I decided to go ahead and order up the Japanese Chrono Cross here, and have been surprised to find I'm enjoying it significantly more than I did before. The once-hated Element system intrigues me, although it is disappointingly simpler than I remember, and the rhythm of battle induced by the Stamina system is rather nice after countless turn-based RPGs of just holding down the Attack button (which even Trigger was guilty of from time to time.) It still has it's flaws, of course, and it's far from perfect - looking at it now, it feels like they had to rush the game out the door half-finished to try and recoup some of the money thrown into it... but I digress.

In short, Chrono Cross is a great game when taken on it's own merits and not looked at as a sequel to Trigger - it has a few rough points here and there, and could've used a bit more editing and cleaning up in a few places, but the battle system is fun and the plot's captivating enough. Solid title, and definitely worth a purchase.

be careful not to be amazed so that u stun..
greatest graphic in ps1.
time adventure is not over yet.
i want this game to be remaked.
hola holalalalalalala