Welcome back. Remember the SNES Chrono Cross, "Radical Dreamers"? Well, they finally finished translating it, and here it is.

The whole thing takes place from the narration of Serge, so we get to hear him talk. Or rather, the actual viewpoint is from his grandson, reading Serge's old writing about 60 years later, but that's only seen in the beginning. The "book" beginning obviously developed into the "book" beginning in Chrono Cross's opening FMV, but without the grandkid. I guess "you" were supposed to be opening the book...or something.

Yes, it's entirely text. Most people who've played it says this makes it completely boring, but they didn't spend time with Apple II text games, when text games were all RPGs could be. (Well, not when I was playing them, but...)
To play, you make directional choices and "battle" by hitting more choices. The good news is, there are no random encounters. The bad news is, everything else. You can't back out of a fight. You can't know how damaged you are until you flop dead. And you can't save--you gotta play it all in one sitting. No wonder this sattelite stuff didn't catch on.
You spend the entire 3-hour game in Viper Manor, which is a lot more dark, a lot more creepy, and is now full of deadly booby-traps.

Boy, does Serge seem different, and he met Kid a different way as well. He's also super-hot for her, even more so than in the game. My opinion in Chrono Cross was that Serge belonged with Leena, and it's still my opinion now.

The third guy, "Magil", hasn't been seen in either game, but someone told me that's actually Magus. The Frozen Flame has no powers and Lynx is an "aristocrat."

One of the first things you must do is face your first battle. This part is kinda cool since the battle music is exactly the same as in the Playstation version, and we get to find out where Lynx's Feral Cats attack originated from. But you're going to get scratched up a lot, since you have no idea what you're doing.

Serge 'n the gang venture into their first mysterious room. Apparently either Lynx or General Viper(is he even in this?) had a giant clock installed in his mansion. He overpaid--it's broken. Hey, what's that old lady doing? HEEEY, don't heal me now! I've barely even started! This is useless! And sure enough, when I go back into the room, the old lady no longer appears.

There are booby trap rooms, and lots of 'em. After trying to read some dusty wall writing that says something about Acacia Dragoon soldiers getting killed in a torture room, a huge MODE-7 SPIKED CEILING COMES DOWN TOWARD US!!! You may be wondering how you escape if it's all text...well, you have a limited number of times to attempt an escape by selecting something. The longer it takes, in any booby trap, the more damage you get...despite the fact that the spikes seemed to be taking their time, Serge got damaged anyway.

After this I ran into a three-directional choice. What follows is a result of going two of the directions. I first tried going down the path that extends into darkness, because who wouldn't? And I got a pretty computer-rendered gargoyle statue fountain. He's got a jug--he's Appalachian too!

The fountain turns out to be full of piranhas and then the room fills with blood. It's another booby trap, and I'm sure it would have been edited to a room full of Kool-Aid if this had been brought to America. The piranhas will damage you until you escape, and by the way, you might as well choose any option you feel like because it's all based on luck. So are the battles.

If you choose "proceed on ahead" back there, you run into this. The Mouth of Truth, despite looking creepy, is my favorite part of the portion of the game I sat through. If you choose "proceed on ahead" back there, you run into this. They stand there staring at this stone face in the wall, and they reason that it should be able to tell them some amazing truth about Lynx or the mansion or something, if they can just get it to talk. So Kid unloads her backpack and you have to put everything that's in there into the thing's mouth to see if they have any effect.

You can also stick your hand in there, but don't. It'll chomp down on you and give you more damage, and then you have to make more guess choices to get your hand free. Anyway, to make a long story short NONE of these items work, and they all make Kid angry with you when you use them.

And here's another monster. I quit playing shortly after this. But other people didn't, and some actually played the Japanese version. Let's surf around the Web and see what we can find...

From "Magus' Threshold": I have received word (and found out myself) that while playing Chrono Cross, when in Chronopolis, you receive data which is actually a clipping of translated dialogue from the game, Radical Dreamers in which the name Magil pops up. This further confirms the theory because Magil can easily be a meshing of "Magus" and "Gill".  Interesting. Ya gotta help ol' Gil...the wolf's at old Gil's door!

From Chronogamer.net: When rumors began to spread about a Chrono Trigger sequel, people became excited, and found that Radical Dreamers was indeed the true sequel to Chrono Trigger, and Chrono Cross was basically a continuation of both the original Chrono Trigger and Radical Dreamers.
A lot of sites erroneously say this, when the game clearly shows otherwise. Chrono Cross may be based on Radical Dreamers, but too much has been changed to call Cross a SEQUEL, or even a continuation to Dreamers. Ha, now it's proven--Cross isn't a sequel to Trigger!

From "Bobo the Clown" in a GameFAQS review: "What GRAPHICS!? There are none, oh expect the dull backgrounds that appear in the introduction and on some screens, it is TEXT ONLY so I have to give it a 1." Shut up, Bobo.

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