22. Chrono Cross (PS1)
Chrono Cross always seems to elicit strong reactions and is one of the best examples of a "love it or hate it" game. For one thing, the storyline about time-bending and parallel worlds is so fucking contrived that it made Hideo Kojima say, "Holy smokes! That's fucking contrived!" For another, many people feel that it blasphemes against, undermines, or otherwise screws around with the canon established by one the most beloved RPGs of all time. That's all fair enough, but I deeply appreciate the immense ambitions of Kato and Tanaka (no, not the early '90s WWF tag team) in creating such an outside-the-box JRPG with its various experiments with traditional gameplay mechanics and its absurd number of recruitable characters - a good 40 or so, ranging from the archetypical to the quite bizarre, each of whom has his or her own story arc. There's an incredible amount to see and do on any given playthrough, and you'd have to play it through multiple times to see it all. The music is some of the most spine-tingling I've ever heard, in a video game or elsewhere. Time's Scar and Star-Stealing Girl are the clear highlights for me; either one would probably give Noel Pointer's corpse goosebumps. Chrono Cross doesn't necessarily pull off everything it attempts, but it's a strangely moving game that's absolutely slathered with the old Squaresoft charm, and I'm firmly in the "love it" crowd.
