The Outer Worlds 2 game director Brandon Adler has said Chrono Trigger is the best JRPG ever made, and JRPG fans everywhere just kind of sat there and nodded their heads in general agreement.
For the youngins who might be missing out on the SNES classic, Chrono Trigger commonly beats out strong competitors like Final Fantasy 7 and Earthbound in lists of the best JRPGs of all time, including GamesRadar’s. To be fair, it is a little more bold for Adler to go as far as to say “it’s not even close,” which he did on a new episode of Simon Parkin’s My Perfect Console podcast, but still, saying anything positive about Chrono Trigger is like aura farming on r/JRPG.
“Let’s just take the actual visuals and the music on that thing,” Adler said. “Just aesthetically, the game is gorgeous on so many different fronts. I can still hear the music. The characters, they made such an impact, and they did such interesting things, even in terms of the actual systems behind them, like the texts that were being used.
“I remember at the time when you could combo your text together. This just felt like such a new thing I’d never seen before. And I was like, ‘How did nobody ever do this?'” added Adler. “It felt like I was experiencing this brand new level of game design and immersion into all these characters working together and being part of this team.”
One underappreciated aspect of Chrono Trigger, according to Adler, is its “amazing” pacing. And indeed, it remains one of the most approachable JRPGs despite its age because you can play through the main quest without having to grind much, if at all, even if you don’t do many side quests.
“It doesn’t get enough credit for – although I think the real RPG heads will know this – is the pacing on it is just amazing,” said Adler. “It’s one of the only JRPGs I can think of where you don’t actually have to grind. You can just play through the entire experience and you don’t have to worry about that aspect of JRPGs. Which, some people like that, but also it’s a grind.”
As a pretty big fan of JRPGs, if I never had to load up an old save to grind my way up to the critical path, it would be too soon. It’s one of the reasons I have such a strong love/hate relationship with Dragon Quest, although for me there’s no debate that Dragon Quest 11 is, in fact, the best JRPG ever made. (I kid… maybe?)
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