Spoiler Alert: This review will have spoilers so beware
Growing up, I didn't have an SNES. I had a Genesis (It did what Nintendon't). I loved my Genesis, but because of that, I was deprived of several great games that were out at the same time for the SNES. One of those games was Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger came out for the DS a few weeks ago, and so I went and picked it up. I had heard a lot about this game, but nearly nothing about it at the same time.

Going into the the game, all I really knew about the game was that:

A) It was supposed to be zomg amazing
B) The guy that did Dragonball Z designed the characters
C) The main character's name is Chrono

I didn't even know that there was a time travel mechanic involved, which looking back should have been
obvious given the title of the game.

I was surprised at how well the game had aged, considering most of the time I can't make it through retro
games that I hadn't actually played growing up. I was pleasantly surprised with the battle system, since
random battles can get annoying.



There were several moments in the game that really blew me away, and seemed so incredible considering the time period the game actually came out. The first of these was the trail scene. When the things I had done at the fair came back to haunt me (trying to sell Marle's pendant, eating the old man's food, rushing off while
Marle buys candy) really caught me off guard as these seemingly insignificant events came back to bite me in the ass. These little details was not something I expected from a game from this era (hell, I'd be as surprised if a game now could pull it off as well as it did here).

Another moment was when Chrono freaking died. When this happened, I couldn't believe that the developers had the balls to actually kill off the main character, the guy who's name is in the title of the game. Watching Chrono die, and no longer having him in my party left me feeling empty and depressed, and I kept thinking over and over "They did not actually do that."

The final moment that really blew my mind was when Lucca goes back in time and has the opportunity to save her mom. Me, not really knowing what I was doing, missed the password and didn't manage to actually save her. And I legitimately felt awful. A video game hasn't elicited emotions in me like that since Bioshock. The gut wrenching "Shit, what did I just do?" feeling stuck with me for the rest of the game.

I need to commend the game, because the leveling curve was absolutely perfect. It's all too common these days for RPGs to force you to grind levels, but not once throughout the 25ish hours I put into the game did I feel like I was too underpowered to beat a boss.

All in all, Chrono Trigger is a fantastic game that I must recommend to anyone who enjoys RPGs. Somebody could definitely pick this up without knowing it is originally an SNES game and play the hell out of it. In my mind, Chrono Trigger is up there as one of the greatest achievements in Video Game history.