Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition review – an RPG that haunts itself

Chrono Cross is a time travel tale but it often feels more like a ghost story, albeit one rendered in dazzling, oceanic colours that give every pre-rendered backdrop the ambience of a tropical reef. Teenage protagonist Serge is gathering shells on the beach one day when he tumbles through a portal to a parallel world. This world has a different history: its version of Serge died as a child, his epitaph written in coral high above the waves. Seeking answers, Serge meets a boisterous, Australian-accented girl called Kid, and joins the hunt for a sinister, cat-headed man who is himself searching for something called the Frozen Flame.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition reviewPublisher: Square EnixDeveloper: D4Enterprise, Square EnixPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out 7th April on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch

This journey sees you warping back and forth between worlds, the basis for a narrative in which every character, place or thing is haunted by its alternative. In one reality, a vast technological complex exists far across the sea; in another, it is a ruin. In one reality, a local man has become an accomplished fisherman; in the other, he is a feverish recluse who worships a straw idol (which you can eventually recruit as a party member). In one reality, the lagoons surrounding a fairy village have been drained, thwarting access to a dragon; in the other, they have been overrun by goblins ousted from their homelands.

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Where its acclaimed SNES predecessor Chrono Trigger operates period by period, Chrono Cross offers a universe without a past: everything that might have been exists simultaneously, giving rise to a pervasive anxiety as possibilities clash and threaten to cancel each other, a predicament emblematised by the game’s omnipresent, beautiful but horrifying ocean. This applies especially to Serge, walking the boundary between life and death, existence and anachronism – an irresolution that feeds into one of the greatest plot twists of the PS1 era. But Serge is also a kind of cosmic janitor, switching dimensions in order both to bypass obstacles and reconcile the tensions between parallel selves, each the ghost in the other’s mirror.

Lest all of this sound offputtingly conceptual or just plain old depressing, know that Cross is at heart a jolly save-the-world adventure that alternates poignancy with absurdity. Just look at its 45 playable characters, some of whom can only be recruited during your second playthrough: strutting J-pop idols and hags who mimic previously defeated monsters; moody boy painters and jesters who speak Monty Python French; a skeletal clown you’ll slowly assemble bone by bone. Switched into your three-strong party at savepoints or on the overworld map, these unlikely allies are distinguished both by their stats, and by configurable grids into which you’ll slot spells – “Elements”, as they’re known here – and unique Tech abilities. All have personal dramas to uncover that stretch between realities, though the size of the cast means that only a handful receive the depth of attention you’d associate with party members in the PS1 Final Fantasies.

The main story is thrilling, striking a balance between the conciseness of SNES-era text boxes and the lavish monologues of later 3D RPGs. It takes you to some eldritch places. There are tower dungeons with puzzles that involve changing the party order, shimmering flooded forests and chaos dimensions in which paths weave together Escher-style. As in Trigger, enemies are visible on area maps and can be avoided, which makes those pre-boss dungeon runs a little less arduous than in Final Fantasy. Cross is also relatively light on grinding. Rather than gaining XP and levels from regular battles, you earn useful, but not essential boosts. Major story battles earn you something like a traditional level-up, with stat increases picked for you according to background variables; these are applied to every recruitable character in the game, rather than just the active party, so feel free to favour or neglect companions as you please.