Patching a Year Later: Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - Nice to hear from you again.

A brief history lesson: CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION got announced at the February 2022 Nintendo Direct. I got excited about it in KoopaTV's live reaction log of that Direct.

Then the game released on modern consoles and PC on April 7, 2022, at MSRP $20. Shortly after its release, this remaster of the classic PlayStation game got a whole bunch of complaints. Some of them technically valid, like there being glitches (the non-fun kind) from the PlayStation version, the graphical update being kinda weird, and very drastic performance and frame rate issues. Other complaints were about “censorship”, and my article focused a lot on my strong disagreement with that line of thought. Thinking back, if I didn't have a passion for trashing BALAN WONDERWORLD and Yuji Naka, this article would've been nominated (but still not win) for the Best Gaming Commentary Article of 2022 award.

But I digress. I said in that article that I'd probably get the CHRONO CROSS remaster if it'd go on sale, and I wrote that such a sale would be likely to happen at least once in 2022. Well... it didn't go on sale at any point. As a result, no one's talked about CHRONO CROSS ever since, and we've moved on to talking about lots of other games, including others from SQUARE ENIX. However... someone at SQUARE ENIX didn't forget about CHRONO CROSS. Or... maybe they did and then suddenly remembered it:

We’re launching an update for Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. pic.twitter.com/pMxwcuoxzN

— Chrono Cross (@chronogame) February 20, 2023

Almost a year after its release, CHRONO CROSS: THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION will be receiving its first ever (I'd say likely its last ever, but who knows with these people?) update within a week of this article being published, featuring a vague “wide range of changes” that specifically will address the frame rate, Pip's growth system, and “fixes for other bugs.”

The frame rate is an appreciated and straight-forward thing to look forward to. Pip, an optional character that is about growth and potential, has been bugged since the PlayStation version in many different ways, including the game forgetting Pip's grid advancements when you turn the game off, Pip not gaining stats so he's at base form skills, not being able to advance his available moveset, and some other bizarre problems that make what should be a versatile and fun character into a garbage and risky mess. Since the note couples Pip with “other bugs”, perhaps they acknowledge what happened with Pip as a bug and not an intentional design choice and fix him.

Pip is launching into a future of existing as intended! ...Right...?

CHRONO CROSS is still on my wishlist, but even with this upcoming update (which I'll keep an eye on!) it still is going to have to wait in line, even likely behind other SQUARE ENIX games. I think it can wait, though.


Ludwig tried to get actual CHRONO CROSS discussion in the comments section of the censorship controversy criticism article, but no one really did. How about now? Hype Ludwig up for some day being a CHRONO CROSS player. (Unless the game actually does suck on its own lack of merits. Then please warn him to continue to stay away.)