A great follow up to the greatest game ever made.
Gameplay/Story: The story begins with a boy named Serge who is suddenly thrown into another dimension in which, he isn't supposed to exist! He is teamed up with a young girl named Kid who is arch-enemies with a cat-person named Lynx. The story, instead of going back and forth through time, has you going all across both dimensions in order to restore order to the time-stream. The characters from Chrono Trigger do make brief appearances but for those of you expecting a continuation of their story, you will be dissapointed. There are, I believe, 12 different endings you can achieve throughout the game and a New Game + mode that lets you replay the game with all your characters, stats, and bonus items.
In order to top the untoppable Chrono Trigger, Squaresoft decided to make the two uncomparable by completely altering the fighting system. It is still turn-based but in a completely new way. Before battle, you must set attacks which act kind of like your magic. This acts kind of like a card battle system but I promise it is a lot more interesting. Each character and attack has an innate color element. If your character uses magic with the same innate color as the character, the attack will be more powerful. Also, you can use the opposite color attack as the enemy to double the damage as well. When you set magic, there are different tiers of magic. The higher the tier, the stronger the magic is. Each magic has a level range so if Fireball says 3+/-2. Then the range is tiers 1-5. Make sense? Now to throw another element into the mix. With fireball, 3 is the neutral level where it will do standard damage. If you put fireball below 3, it will do less damage but also if you put fireball above 3 then it will do more damage. This adds a lot of strategy to the game. You have to consider element, damage, level, tiers, and amount of slots open when you create your characters magic. In battle, you will have 4 attack options: Attack, Magic, Defend, and Run. If you select magic, you go into the magic screen that i explained earlier. However to use this magic, you must attack. You see, in Chrono Cross, there is no MP. When you click on attack, there will be 3 options, 1, 2, and 3. Each attack will increase your magic power by the number given but the higher the number, the lower the hit percentage will be. Also, you will have a certain amount of attack points much like in Xenosaga that you can spend to do whatever you want. So you can attack about 6 times if you really want to using the 1 attack. So, in a mock battle, you can use a 1 attack, then a 2 attack. If both hit then you will be able to use magic up to tier 3 that you have set. Finally, once you use an attack in battle, you won't be able to use that magic again until the battle ends. Items are also set into magic but these are 1 time use spells. They won't recharge after the battle is over. This whole system may sound horrendously confusing, but you get used to it after a short time and it is simply fun to play.
Graphics: The graphics are spectacular for a Playstation game. The walking around character models aren't great but that is expected of Playstation. The CG's are amazing and rival some games on PS2 and Xbox.
Sound: There are no voice overs in Chrono Cross which is mostly a good thing. They can't be bad if they aren't there right? The story ingulfs you so much that they seem to speak to you anyway so it's probably better that they left them out. The music is freaking amazing. I literally reset the playstation 3 times so that I could listen to the opening music. Also, the in-game music always fits the mood perfectly. This music is what every game wishes it could have.
Value: If you like video games in general, you need to buy this game. It got a 10 from gamespot for a reason. It's games like this that got me into RPG's in the first place. Also, if your worried about length, the games main ending takes about 40 hours and then there are 11 other endings to get too. You will always have something to do in this game for as long as you still want to play it. If you are looking for more adventures with chrono and friends, you will be dissapointed. But if you are looking for an incredible RPG, this is the game to buy.