just words

I've been playing Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamer Edition recently, and I'm convinced Square-Enix hates this game, and I'm prepared to prove it.

Yes, I know that Square-Enix isn't a singular person, it's a collective of individuals structured into a corporate hierarchy, but if we look at that collective’s aggregate decisions regarding not only Chrono Cross but all of its classic JRPGs, a trend emerges, and that trend points to only one thing, that they hate all their classic games, especially the ones they've remastered or rereleased in the past ten years, including Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, SaGa Frontier 1 and 2, Chrono Cross, and many others. And if Square-Enix doesn’t hate these games, then, at the very least, they think these games are ugly, mechanically bad, and that they’re only good for quick cash-grab nostalgia baiting.

For the purposes of proving my point, I’ll be focusing mostly on Chrono Cross here, specifically the Radical Dreamers Edition, which they should have called The Radical Garbage Edition, because it's a dumpster fire full of all the trends that lead me to believe that Square-Enix does indeed hate their classic games.

Let's start with the graphics, and before you get all “butttt graphics don't matter,” let me just start by saying that, yes, I agree, graphics don't matter, but aesthetics matter a whole helluva lot, and the remastered aesthetics of Chrono Cross are an affront to the original game, bordering on total abomination. The only thing quote-unquote “wrong” with Chrono Cross’ original graphics is that they’re presented in 240p and the pre-rendered hand-drawn backgrounds were created with CRT televisions in mind, so they don’t translate well to modern monitors, but the seaside town of Arni Village, with its raised platforms, reed-woven huts, thatch roofs, racks of fish, flapping burgundy fabrics, and that endless blue just off in the distance with those big pillowy clouds just above it, is just as beautiful now as it was in 1999, yet, for some ungodly reason, Square-Enix decided to run it, and every other pre-rendered background, through an AI model, to “upscale” the visuals, which resulted in some seriously uncanny eldritch version of Arni Village wherein if you focus on anything for more than a few seconds, you start to notice how everything seems to meld together in this weird squirrely way, as if the painter never lifted his brush from the canvas, and then you start to notice how the designs on those flapping fabrics seem less like designs and more like strange squiggly lines that twist and turn in these nonsensical patterns that give you a headache if you stare at them too long, as if a robot on LSD were handed a paintbrush and told to just go fucking wild, in fact that's exactly what happened, some low-paid intern at Square-Enix was tasked to just drag-drop .pngs into ChatGPT or whatever using a really basic prompt like, “please upscale this image and make sure it looks as if it were hand-painted to fit with the original aesthetic of Chrono Cross, also make it seem as not-AI-generated as possible,” and they didn’t even bother to touch up any of the obvious jank after the fact, which is especially apparent in the city of Termina, where gigantic posters of pop stars with mangled AI faces are all over the place. It’s a fucking mess. It’s also lazy and greedy and obvious as hell, to the point that I’m convinced that only a company that hates beauty itself would do this to Chrono Cross. It’s just flat-out disrespectful.

Thankfully, Square-Enix didn’t fuck with the music though, which is not only some of the most beautiful video game music ever written, it’s quite possibly up there as some of the most beautiful music ever written period, just listen to "Guldove (Another World)" if you don’t believe me, it somehow captures wistful nostalgia even hearing it for the first time. Yasunori Mitsuda was really on a whole ‘nother level when he composed the soundtrack for Chrono Cross, as if there were a muse held prisoner in his basement circa 1998. The music is also part of the reason I love the game so much, and why I'm so offended that Square-Enix basically butchered my boy.

Now I want to tell you about the "enhanced combat features that make battles easier,” as is how it’s described on the back of the Radical Dreamers Edition case, which comes with nothing but the game cartridge, no manual or insert of any kind, and these “enhancements” are really nothing more than glorified emulator features, like four-times speed, and cheat codes, like auto-battle and making your characters invincible and turning off the battles entirely, which are less "enhanced combat features” and more tacit admittances on Square-Enix’s part that they think the original game’s combat is so shit that, instead of improving it in any way, they just opted to remove it entirely. It’s also telling of what Square-Enix executives must think of the modern gamer. I can only imagine the words uttered in that boardroom meeting or Zoom call, “Today’s gamer demographic exhibits significantly reduced tolerance for the traditional pacing of turn-based combat as presented in Chrono Cross, and the element-grid system presents a level of cognitive load that may be perceived as overly complex for broad-market audiences to fully engage with. Flagship franchises such as God of War and Call of Duty have fundamentally reshaped user expectations, cultivating a preference for high-intensity, immediate-feedback gameplay loops, and in alignment with these evolving market trends, I propose we implement a four-times speed toggle to accommodate those seeking accelerated excitement levels, and considering the element system requires a degree of critical thinking and tactical planning, behaviors that data suggest contemporary players are less inclined to engage with, we should also introduce an invincibility mode, as this will mitigate frustration and reduce the likelihood of negative emotional outbursts, including, for example, hardware damage incidents stemming from thrown controllers, because of course we don’t want any lawsuits on our hands, and I also propose that we offer the option to bypass encounters entirely, supplemented by an automated battle feature, which aligns with the up-to-date consumer behavioral data we have collected, which tells us that modern gamers overwhelmingly prioritize streamlined experiences and instant gratification, and in short, today’s gamers don’t want to work for the win, they simply want the win, so we will give them the win, and they will like it, and Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition will make us millions.” And there was probably one old-guard guy in that meeting that was like, “But isn’t the unique combat part of what makes Chrono Cross so special? And if we removed the combat, or trivialized it, wouldn’t the game end up just being walking from screen to screen talking to people? Wouldn’t that be a little boring?” And that person was probably fired.

Granted, all these “enhanced combat features that make battles easier” are optional, which is good, but the fact they exist at all just goes to show that the modern corporate entity known as Square-Enix hates the original game’s design philosophy. And they didn’t just do this to Chrono Cross, they did this to every single remastered classic game released thus far. Take the latest rerelease of Final Fantasy VII, for example, which includes a button that simply makes all your characters max level. At that point, what’s the point of combat to begin with? Isn’t leveling up and that progressively-becoming-stronger feeling part of the draw of these classic JRPGs to begin with? And Final Fantasy VII now includes a four-times speed option as well, so you can just zip right through every screen, without ever stopping to smell the roses, or whatever it is they say. At that point, what’s the point of the whole adventure to begin with? Aren’t the beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds meant to be experienced, absorbed, and appreciated? And does not trudging these beautiful pre-rendered depths assist in this whole experienced-absorbed-appreciated process? And does not allowing the player to zoom through every screen disrespect both the effort and artistic merit of the game?

What really annoys me is that, when you talk about all this stuff online, on forums or whatever, people defend it, and sometimes they get pretty heated. They say stuff like, quote, “As an adult with a job and responsibilities I appreciate the inclusion of these features. Anyone who thinks it's cheating has too much time on their hands,” and “Personally speaking 3x speed made playing the game way less tedious than it would have been otherwise. Just cause random encounters are soooooo slow,” and “I'm out here to have fun playing games. If it feels like a chore, I'm not going to bother. I don't have time for it anymore. If other people prefer to play it that way, all the power to them. I'm just glad there's options.” But all of these people are missing the point, too focused on speeding through life. It’s a video game, for god’s sake, it’s not a race to the finish, part of the whole experience is sitting there taking it all in, and if they’re focused on just completing the game for the sake of being able to say they completed it or whatever, I truly wonder how much they appreciate anything in their lives, since it seems like they just want to get stuff done as quickly as possible. And if the game is “tedious,” as one of these users claims, maybe they just don’t like JRPGs to begin with, and if so, why not just go do something they actually enjoy? Does speeding up the tediousness really make the game less tedious, or does it just make the tedium faster? Are we tricking ourselves here? And if they have very little time because of adult responsibilities and kids and whatnot, then perhaps their priorities are fucked up to begin with? Perhaps they should consider a different hobby? Because, once they complete Final Fantasy or Chrono Cross or whatever, at four-times speed with max level and the battles turned off, they’re just going to start playing another game that takes up their time, so the whole thing seems less about appreciating the individual game for what it is and more so about getting as many completed games under their belt as possible, which really just highlights how sick and twisted our modern sensibilities are, how everything is egotistical, feel-good bullshit, like, “yeah, I’ve beaten that game, and that game, and that game,” just to say they did it, in their insular little online bubbles, like this is some sort of grand accomplishment or something, when really it’s just fucking video games. The whole thing highlights the “gotta go fast” ethos of our modern society, as if we have this serious cosmic FOMO that, if we don’t complete every game ever in the shortest amount of time possible, then we’re not keeping up with the Joneses and somehow we’re less cultured, worse people because of it, and it makes me sad, it really does, because, when we’re moving so fast, we never stop to appreciate the beauty of things, thus we end up trivializing the world around us, turning it into some sick speedrun where glitching through life’s walls is not only encouraged but celebrated with upvotes and vacuous pats on the back.

Anyway. That’s my rant. That’s why Square-Enix hates their classic games, because their classic games, like Chrono Cross, demand to be taken seriously as an art form, they demand the player’s time and attention, they force the player to appreciate their beauty, and that’s why Square-Enix hates them, because, to them, time is money, and if you’re spending time on Chrono Cross, that’s money you’re not spending on their other stuff, and that makes line go down, which demands serious questions from their executive board, and they can’t have that, they can’t have that at all.

And frankly, we’re enabling it.