What can I say? It's a great game.
Our story takes place in 1000 A.D in a place known as Guardia. There's a celebration going on and young Crono heads out to see what's up. He bumps into one Marle, who is really the Princess. After this chance meeting, Chrono and Marle are thrown into a series of events that will cause them, and others that they meet along the way, into trying to save the world from an event that takes place in 1999 A.D. To help them out, he meet up with Lucca, Crono's good friend, a robot from the far future, a "knight" from 600 A.D who takes the form of a frog, and more. I find that as you play more and the story unfolds, you get sucked in and you want to see what happens next. A nice addition is all of the back story on everyone that you have to keep track of. It made it more enjoyable for me to learn why Frog is a frog (the knight from 600 A.D). In fact, I think, character wise, Frog just might be my favorite character out of all of the cast in Chrono Trigger.
The hub world is a place you're going to find yourself most of the time. During the beginning of the game, you'll find yourself walking everywhere, whether it be a Gate, the way you travel from one time zone to another, one of the few side quest the game offers, or to the next point in the story. There's little to do here sine it is the hub world. Lucky there's no fighting while you're here, there's enough of that while you're in the different places. Now, all of the hub worlds look somewhat the same, but there are some differences between them. They are from different time periods, even if they are of the same land masses.
The first time you hit actually fighting in the game, you might find yourself saying something like "whoa." I know I did because it's something different then a number of RPGs out there. It's a mix between turn-base and real time where you wait a few seconds for a bar to fill up, then you can select either to do a normal attack, use a "tech", use an item, or flee. How often/how fast you get to attack is based on the character's speed. The really fast characters can get a few hits in before the enemy attacks you, while the slow ones get to sit there and wait before they can do anything. It's something different and it was pulled off very well. Now, if you're wondering what a tech is, it's a special move or a spell that is learned after you get a number of Tech Points (TPs). You not only get experience each fight, but you also get these TPs. Only the characters that are in your party can earn TPs while characters that are not in your party can still level up over time. You can also combine different techs so you can perform far more powerful moves, but it takes two or all three of your party members to perform these attacks. For me, boss fights really made this game fun. Most of them were challenging, while a fun were more of something to laugh at. Once you figured out their weakness though, they became easier to beat.
Something I noticed that the game lacked in was side-quests. There are some, but they are at the very end of the game. I'm not counting the new features that were added to the DS version just yet, just so you know. I can understand why, but I would of liked to do something else then the monster battle arena. Here you train a monster to fight other monsters. It's not that bad, but it could have been executed better. In a way, it's like a failed version of Pokemon mixed with Chrono Trigger's fighting style, but with only one monster. Sure, you might find yourself messing around with it, but it's nothing major, even with the fact you can fight over Wi-Fi. There's also a number of mini-games, most of them being in Leene Square in 1000 A.D and the only point to these is to get Silver Points which you can spend them on cats or something. The other one is a racing mini-game where you can a trycical. No added bonus for getting a high number of points other then you can say that you got so many points for it.
Like I said before, there where some extra features added to the DS version of the game. One was filled with fetch quests, while the other lead to a new "super" boss and a new ending that ties this game and it's squeal, Chrono Cross, together, Lost Sanctum and the Dimensional Vortex respectively. Both add a bit more time to the game and give you a number of insanely strong weapons. Now, I myself enjoyed both of these add-ons because I was using them to get all of the techs, but Lost Sanctum does get repetitive since you have to run up and down the same mountain a plethora of times while you're doing all the quests and the new "super" boss is retardedly easy at the point that you fight it at because it's only slightly stronger then Lavos's first form. Other then that, I welcome them.
The graphics are a nice draw back the the good ol' SNES days. It goes to show that you don't need fancy graphics to make a great looking game at all. Everything is really colorful and there is plenty of nice little touches added to the game here and there. I'm also a fan of the animated cut scenes that pop up every once in a while. The downside is that there are only a few throughout that entire game, but then again it keeps the flow of the game going not having loads of them.
Fantastic is a word that I'd use to describe the musical score for Chrono Trigger. All of it was well done and enjoy able. Animated cut scenes are not voice acted, so nothing to say there, which I actually like about them. There really isn't anything else to say other then the little dittles before some of the characters talk (Frog makes frog sounds and Robo makes some beeps and bops) are nice touches.
Over all, this is a great game that will have you coming back time and time again to get all of the different endings, which is do able thanks to New Game+, though some of them are kind of stupid. Anyone who says they are a RPG fan needs to play this game if they haven't already. It's easily worth your money and is something I've really enjoyed playing.