Square Enix finally announce Chrono Cross remaster
Coming to Steam in April
As Square Enix continue to mine middled-aged people's nostalgic memories of long free days sat in front of a PlayStation, they've announced another much-anticipated remaster: Chrono Cross. Originally released in 1999, the JRPG is coming to PC (and some consoles) as Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition with new updated 3D character models, some new 2D art, a "refined" soundtrack, and other tweaky bits. It looks better than many of the garbage PC ports they were releasing a few years ago. Check out the trailer yourself below.
Set in the same world as 1995's Chrono Trigger, the JRPG not-a-sequel is about a fella named Serge who falls into an alternate dimension where he had died as a child then gets caught up in all manner of body-switching, world-saving shenanigans with turn-based battles. I hear it's good? I hear middled-aged people pine for it, anyway.
If you want, you can turn off the Radical Dreamer Edition's new 3D models, illustrations, font, and background filter to see it the old way—though they can only be turned off all together, not individually. You can seperately switch between the original and "refined" soundtrack too.
They've also thrown in some quality-of-life doodads too. These include auto-battle, the option to turn off enemy encounters, game speed options, and boosters to make battles easier for story-focused players.
This also includes Radical Dreamers - Le Trésor Interdit, a text-based adventure originally released in 1996 for a SNES satellite modem peripheral thing.
When Squeenix started bringing their old Final Fantasies and such to PC en masse in the late tensies, we got buggy versions which looked worse than the original games. 1995's Chrono Trigger was one of them, hitting PC in a bad state in 2018. Squeenix patched some problems but it's still not great. They've had a change of heart since then, thankfully. The Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series (wrapping up with FF6 on the 23rd) has been a lot more respectful, and this looks to continue that. Though Squeenix are still gumming up other genres, like the uglier Life Is Strange remasters.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is due to launch on Steam on the 7th of April. It'll also be on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Switch.