‘Chrono Trigger’ Is Still the Ultimate RPG and Impossible to Replicate

In today’s remake and nostalgia-driven market, there’s no franchise too big or small to be trotted out in the town to help bolster fiscal earnings. Some, like Capcom’s Resident Evil or Square Enix’s Final Fantasy manage to go the extra mile, churning out high-quality remakes and new sequels in tandem to keep their popularity at an all-time high. Others do less, content merely to reheat leftovers to populate digital eshop storefronts.

One of the key games perpetually brought up in the remake discourse is Chrono Trigger, a truly seminal RPG that’s endured for thirty years as a genre-defining influence on generations of developers — and is widely considered one of the greatest games of all time. But there’s a reason Chrono Trigger hasn’t seen a remake, or even a basic remaster —  the game is nearly perfect. How could anyone ever improve it?

Originally released on the Super Nintendo in 1995, Chrono Trigger arrived at the apex of the Japanese RPG golden age. Two of the industry’s biggest players, Square and Enix, had just released two universally beloved role-playing games with Final Fantasy VI (1994) and Dragon Quest V (1992), respectively. At the same time, Dragon Ball Z was just entering its biggest era — absolutely exploding in Japan, with the show set to come to North America in 1996, bringing anime’s popularity to the West. 

Bringing together the creative minds behind not one, but all three of these mega-franchises would be an Avengers-level team-up that should’ve been impossible. But that’s exactly what happened, and the result is Chrono Trigger.

By today’s standards, the game might seem remarkably simple, but that’s also the beauty of it — it’s a succinct experience that doesn’t waste time — where every system and narrative beat serves a purpose. Chrono Trigger’s plays out like a perfectly crafted puzzle where all aspects coalesce: music, storytelling, combat, and exploration. It might sound hyperbolic, but Chrono Trigger feels like the quintessential idea of what an RPG should be. 

Yet, despite being the ideal role-playing game — one that should (theoretically) be easy enough to replicate — there’s never been a true sequel, spiritual successor, or flat-out copy that can live up to the standard.

Building the “Dream Team”

The main reason why no one has ever been able to recreate the Chrono Trigger experience is because of the very specific conditions of its development. Final Fantasy studio Square was amid a period of innovation, and the budding minds behind those games were reaching toward higher ambitions; they wanted to do something bold. 

To look at the list of developers that worked on Chrono Trigger is to see the past, present, and future of RPGs all laid out together. Uniting creators from multiple franchises, Chrono Trigger was a pivotal game that would inform the trajectory of multiple prominent developers’ careers, ultimately influencing every future project they’d work on. That’s largely because Chrono Trigger was actually conceived as the joining point between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest; it’s a game that directly builds on the foundations to the RPG genre, produced by the people who created the rules in the first place.

Although they’d eventually merge in 2003, Square and Enix were two separate companies at the time, and essentially rivals. In assembling the all-star squad, the creator of the Dragon Quest franchise, Yuji Horii, was lent to Square for Chrono Trigger’s development to work alongside Final Fantasy mastermind, Hironobu Sakaguchi.

Character designs and art were overseen by the late Akira Toriyama, arguably the most impactful manga artist in history — whose illustration work on Dragon Ball Z made his art style instantly recognizable across the globe. 

All-star almost doesn’t begin to describe the team behind Chrono Trigger. This was a game produced by the two biggest RPG factories at the time, with a visual style that everyone was familiar with, and was designed by the people who practically invented the Japanese role-playing game. It’s the Mount Rushmore of gaming, all in one game.

But even outside of that trio, Chrono Trigger had a murderer’s row of talent behind it. Takashi Tokita and Yoshinori Kitase were directors, with the former going on to make cult-classic Parasite Eve (1998), while the latter went from working in small design roles on Final Fantasy games to steering the entire franchise — and still is, producing titles like 2024’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Tetsuya Takahashi assisted Toriyama as graphics director, before making his mark with the creation of the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise, an initially niche series that’s now become a core part of Nintendo’s lineup. The story was co-penned by Masato Kato, the scenario writer behind games like Xenogears (1998), Final Fantasy XI (2002), and Baten Kaitos (2003). 

Musically, Chrono Trigger also introduced players to the work of Yasunori Mitsuda, who’d go on to become one of the industry’s most prolific composers on games like Shadow Hearts (1999), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008), and Xenoblade Chronicles (2010). At the time, Mitsuda was even threatening to quit at Square completely if he wasn’t given the chance to compose a game. His work on Chrono Trigger has been widely praised as having some of the most emotionally affecting melodies of RPGs in the SNES era.

The perfect mixture

At first glance, Chrono Trigger might look like a fairly stereotypical RPG, from the themes about the power of friendship to the quirky non-human party members. Taking on the role of a teenage boy named Chrono, players have to travel through time and assemble a team to stop a horrifying creature named Lavos from destroying the world. While the names might change, the teenage boy saving the world from an evil entity is a plot we’ve seen time and again in the last three decades, especially in RPGs. Chrono Trigger even has all the elements expected from an RPG in the Nineties — turn-based combat, an overworld map, multiple party members — it’s a checklist of tropes that come with the territory. But the brilliance of the game is how effectively it uses these core tenets to create something that feels wholly distinct and irreplicable.

Every piece of Chrono Trigger fits together like a puzzle, with each facet of the game feeding into another. For example, the time travel element doesn’t just work within the story but also allows Toriyama’s art to explore different eras and visual tones, painting a picture of civilizations that change dramatically with the flow of time. Toriyama has always had an unmistakable style, but Chrono Trigger has a wonderfully fantastical and whimsical edge that makes it at once both familiar and distinct, even among his other works. 

The combat system grows more complex as the bonds deepen between the party members, opening up new moves and options as players learn more about the game’s characters. No facet of Chrono Trigger is superfluous; it’s all very deliberate and enhances other aspects of the game. Even in terms of story, Chrono Trigger doesn’t get bogged down with needless exposition, but methodically builds each character’s emotional core through actual gameplay. Whether that’s by way of combat or minigames, the plot is always moving, leading to affecting twists that feel like gut punches delivered with elegant timing. These aren’t just characters to fall in love with, they’re each a lynchpin that’s essential to the gameplay as much as they are to the story.

Although it only takes about 30 or so hours to complete the game’s story, Chrono Trigger constantly feels fresh and exciting, with powerful moments delivered in conversation (which were woven into anime cutscenes in the later PlayStation version), and battles that play out dynamically when players run into enemies instead of cutting to a new screen like in Final Fantasy. 

Optional side quests aren’t just there to fill time, but meaningfully flesh out the narrative arcs for each character. In one, the party is tracking down a valuable rainbow shell, but in the process, Chrono helps his friend Marle repair her broken relationship with her father. In another, Glenn (also known as Frog) finally comes to terms with his friend’s death, and gets the chance to say goodbye. As these side stories play out, the party’s bonds grow more tangible as they unlock new team-up moves and attacks. The deeper their relationships grow with Chrono, the better they are in combat. It’s a brilliant way of tying storytelling and gameplay together. 

In many ways, Chrono Trigger feels like the prelude to what games like The Witcher 3 would achieve decades later, the spark that made RPG developers think far more closely about how side content in a game can still inform the larger whole. 

But the game’s biggest achievement lies in its success as a time travel story, a narrative device that’s — more often than not — hard to do right. The very nature of time travel pots means they can often be filled with plot holes or leaps in logic that can be tough to swallow. More than anything, what makes Chrono Trigger stand out is its earnestness and sense of hope. Time travel stories often feature grim themes of destruction and butterfly effect scenarios where even a single change can lead to disastrous outcomes (like Marty almost erasing himself from existence in Back to the Future). That’s not to mention the sheer psychological toll that slipping through the timestream or reliving events can have on a character’s psyche. 

But in Chrono Trigger, the idea of time travel is inverted into something more positive — a storytelling mechanic that shows the resilience of not just the main party, but humanity itself. Chrono and his compatriots show rock-solid determination to go through the timeline again and again until things are made right. Here, time travel is a force for good, a hope to make the world better rather than the gamble of making it worse. That’s an unconventional approach that’s rarely seen in stories of this ilk, and the game’s optimistic narrative bristles with possibility, even after multiple playthroughs. And in some ways, it actually follows through on that divergent potential, due to the game’s multiple story paths and endings. 

Through the ages

What’s especially striking about Chrono Trigger is how effortlessly any of its actual flaws fade into the background. Its progression system is bare bones and combat starts strong but doesn’t grow as much as it could, expanding in terms of the abilities you have, instead of actually adding new elements later on. But it’s a game that’s more than a sum of its parts, and those blemishes pale in comparison to the ways it succeeds, time and again.

Chrono Trigger is the kind of game wherein, even thirty years later, it’s easy to recall a half-dozen of its best moments: Chrono being framed for a crime and subsequently sentenced to death; Robo begging his friends to not intervene during a brutal beating; Frog finding his inner strength and using it to cut a mountain in half. The entire game is chock-full of these potent scenes that remain memorable, signifying why Chrono Trigger’s world and characters remain so beloved. And the lessons its developers learned while crafting Chrono Trigger would be seen down the line in the many projects made in its wake.

Role-playing games have tried to replicate the Chrono Trigger formula for decades. Square Enix would try to emulate team attacks and similar world-building with games like I Am Setsuna (2016) and Lost Sphear (2017). Indie games like Sea of Stars (2023) deliberately pull from the story structure and combat of Chrono Trigger in an effort to make a spiritual successor, and the developers of Cross Code (2018) even named it, specifically, as an inspiration. But beyond that, it’s clear that elements like the non-linear storytelling of Chrono Trigger set the stage for games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), Kingdom Hearts (2002), and Octopath Traveler (2018). 

But that’s also why Chrono Trigger can never be remade. It’s a game that’s entirely a product of its time, a confluence of ideas and execution from a very particular group of creative minds that captured lightning in a bottle — from the legendary character designs of Toriyama to the innovative combat that riffed on well-worn systems of the era. Chrono Trigger didn’t invent the wheel, but it’s high praise to say that it fused a multitude of tropes, mechanics, and familiar designs into something that’s unconditionally loved.

Chrono Trigger is also a reflection of its creators who, while all very accomplished at the time, have moved on. Toriyama’s art remains unmatched, and his style impossible to replicate following his death — even by the very people tasked with continuing his work in series like Dragon Ball Super. The others all remain active: Sakaguchi now runs his own company, Mistwalker; Horii still makes Dragon Quest at Square Enix; Tetsuya Takahashi runs Monolith Soft under Nintendo. The creators of Chrono Trigger have splintered off to other pieces of the industry, each leaving their mark in some way. 

It’s ultimately futile to try to recreate the context in which Chrono Trigger was made, and without bringing the same people together again, any endeavor to recapture the magic would feel hollow. Even attempts to continue the name “Chrono” have largely failed, with its sequel Chrono Cross (1999) — despite being a great game in its own right — proving that even veering in a wildly different direction can’t reignite the flame.

Instead, the focus should be on preserving the original game in the state its creators intended. Though, bizarrely, that doesn’t appear to be a focus for Square Enix, as Chrono Trigger is currently only available on mobile phones and PC via Steam, with ports that have arrived with font issues and a handful of bugs. It’s baffling that a game like this isn’t immediately playable on practically every modern platform, although it’s a situation that Square Enix might finally rectify, having recently said that they intend to “launch various projects that go beyond the world of games” in celebration of the 30th anniversary. Yet no official announcements have been made.

It’s hard to imagine any way Chrono Trigger could be made better, but truthfully, it doesn’t need to be. It’s a perfect time capsule of the golden age of RPGs — picture-proof of how the right idea, at the right time, can live on forever. Whether it’s the first time or the fifth, playing Chrono Trigger remains an unparalleled gaming experience. It’s indicative of a cliché that holds true: they literally don’t make them like this any more.