I’ll give them props for making it far more visible than it ever was, even at the cost of it looking a bit generic. The new font is adequate, but not special. I like my games to have a nice font, and that's something that can be tricky for remasters of games in this era. This is all massively subjective, obviously, but the updated aesthetic works for me rather well. One of Cross’ biggest selling points has always been its beauty, and this can be appreciated now better than ever before. I don’t know what happened with her original dialogue portrait, but I’m glad they fixed it. Some just look better because of the changes, with Kid’s new portrait being a vast improvement. They’re sharper, more expressive, and offer deeper colors. Of all the new portraits, I think I preferred each one over its original version. ![]() None of the characters were redesigned, just redrawn. One of the most valuable improvements is that the original character designer, Nobuteru Yuki, was brought back to redraw every character portrait in his modern style. It’s perhaps not as nice as SaGa Frontier Remastered or Legend of Mana’s redrawn backgrounds, but Chrono Cross’s look pretty good, and work together well with the new character models and artwork. I’m quite impressed with all of the touched-up pre-rendered backgrounds.I’m not sure how exactly Square Enix is approaching the backgrounds here, whether it’s a simple filter or AI upscale, but it’s been a big improvement over what has been done before with the likes of games like Final Fantasy VIII Remastered. I was hoping that everything was enhanced in similar fashion, but noticed quickly that some of the bosses like Solt and Peppor had their original models. The important things were, like all of the main characters, designed under what I can only assume to be the principle of making them as good as we remember them being. ![]() The new models are faithful, wonderfully so, but it is worth noting that not everything was remade. Each time I return, I find something new to appreciate. It’s a more flawed game than Trigger, but far more interesting to think about. From story to gameplay, it’s rather ahead of its time even if it doesn’t always land. ![]() It’s far more open-ended, covers more mature themes, and in my opinion is a more poignant experience. It fundamentally has less wide-spread appeal, but the eccentricities might just be the reason you could fall in love with it. That’s not meant to brush aside criticism, but you can certainly go in with your expectations out of line and come across hating it. ![]() However, just don’t expect Chrono Trigger 2. I adore Chrono Cross, and no matter how you play it I really recommend it. Proper AI upscaling on backgrounds, new character art, and a full localization of the Radical Dreamers sound novel? I was giddy to jump back in, and I’m thankful that from an artistic perspective, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a home run. I’d go as far to say that now I like Cross a tad bit more than Trigger, so I was primed for this new remaster. What was once one of my most disliked games of all time has become one I hold dear, all thanks to a second playthrough after almost a decade. I’ve come around quite a lot since first playing Chrono Cross.
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