So, thanks to Yinza live-plurking their Chrono Trigger playthrough, and playing the edition with the expanded ending... I'm back to thinking about Chrono Cross.

Everyone who's heard me rant about this should know my opinion on it by now. (The game is bad and should burn in a fire. The music is STRAIGHT fire and didn't deserve to be tied to that shitshow.)

This is all just my opinion. In reality, it's not a terrible game, though much of the community agrees that the game is a terrible SEQUEL to Chrono Trigger.

ALL OF THAT SAID, I found myself ruminating on how there was actually a REALLY GOOD story there... if you just fucking ignored the main character.

If you gave me a story these days, where in one universe, a Pirate had his soul broken and turned his vessel into a wandering pleasure cruise (which he uses to cheat people out of their money)... and had a son with a gorgeous mermaid who passed away because something went wrong, leading to said soul break...

And in ANOTHER universe... Said pirate is a DAMN GOOD PIRATE and a scourge of the seas...

And they MEET... And the damn good pirate KICKS THE ASS of the soul-broken one because he cannot believe he's fallen so far...

Well, that's just amazing storytelling, and I would love to follow that story through to its natural conclusion.

AND... in one universe, there's a military governor who managed to unite a portion of the world and DEFEND IT from the intrusion of a dictatorial outside force... while in another universe, said governor and all his forces are killed, leading to the region being claimed by a shitty fucking dictatorial military...

Well, god damn, I want to see what happens when that guy LIVES and comes over to the other universe!

The Viper Manor storyline is FUCKING INCREDIBLE, and a game based entirely around THAT would knock my fucking socks off, especially if there was a dual-timeline mechanic to play around with!

But no.

Instead, it's a subplot that gets entirely too little time, because it's just a background piece for the plot tumor that is Chrono Cross's main plot.

Basically, Fargo and General Viper should both have been the main characters of a better game than the one they were in.

chrono cross is a series of good moments and an at least INTERESTING, IF NOT ACTUALLY GOOD magic system... and a load of dog shit besides that got haphazardly strapped to chrono cross, which was a HUGE mistake for many reasons, not least of which because chrono trigger did NOT need a sequel and masato kato clearly did not want to write one!

Yesssssssssssssssss...

The El Nido Triangle WITHOUT SERGE would be a fucking incredible setting for a game, and I would love to follow Fargo's adventures with AND against General Viper.

But too many characters really spoiled the soup, on top of everything else that was wrong with it.