Vimm's Lair: PS1 Reviews - Final Fantasy Chronicles: Chrono Trigger
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PlayStation
Final Fantasy Chronicles: Chrono Trigger

Graphics:
Sound:
Gameplay:
Overall:
7.71
8.41
8.29
8.06
Votes: 17
Reviews: 1


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Reviewer: Spooniest Date: Jun 26, 2012
This release was half of a fine package. Someone was thinking on their feet, at least for one of the two discs. You'll see what I mean in a moment.

Graphics: 8
...is the score I give for Final Fantasy 4.

Chrono Trigger gets an 8 as well, as these are both visually beautiful games, save for the mode 7 effects that get up to about mode 6.5 and then choke. Not critical.

Sound: 9
...is the score I give for Final Fantasy 4. All the music is rendered beautifully, and the sound effects, while harsher than the SNES cart, still don't disappoint.

Chrono Trigger receives a 6. They didn't quite get it. It sounds like a copy of of a copy, most likely because that's exactly what it is. The SNES cart had some serious horsepower driving the sound design, and the PSX just doesn't speak the custom chips' language.

Gameplay: 10
It's all there. They even threw in some nicely drawn Toriyama (!) cutscenes on the Chrono Trigger disc. The cutscenes for Final Fantasy 4 are good for a laugh and little else, but they aren't shoehorned into the middle of the game, which was a good thing, because they stink.
Overall: 7
Let me make one thing clear, in case you haven't picked up on it yet.

The Final Fantasy 4 disc is superb. The sound effects took a hit in fidelity, but the script was rewritten with a variable width font that looks great. There are words I had to look up, and semicolons. I mean, this is a grand rendering of Final Fantasy 4, make no mistake about it.

But Chrono Trigger's sound is dodgy and the game is broken up by some really unforgivable loading pauses. One of the amazing things about Chrono Trigger in the first place is how much they were able to cram into it, and still keep the engine running lightning fast. That effect is lost in this conversion.

Get this package for Final Fantasy 4, and get the SNES version of Chrono Trigger.
There are extras packed in with this version of Chrono Trigger, but it's nothing super spectacular, other than the aforementioned cutscenes.

This is really the best commercially-released version of the original Final Fantasy 4 you're going to find. The remakes are wonderful to have, but this is Final Fantasy 4 as it is meant to be experienced. The script is superfluous and the music is just perfect. Don't know how they did it.