Okay. I'll admit it. Chrono Cross was a great game. At the time, I enjoyed it more than Final Fantasy IX. It had some of the best PS1 graphics available at the time and the music was top notch. The story was confusing as hell, though. My big gripe was how they tried to take Chrono Trigger and turn it into Final Fantasy. The story was so far out there that it had almost nothing to do with the game that came before. They tied it together somehow (going off of memory, here. Forgive me if I get something wrong.) with a fire, Schala, and some shitty 8-bit sprites hanging out with PS1's best polygon models. That's what rubbed me the wrong way.
On its own, it's a great RPG. As a fan of Chrono Trigger, it was a kick in the balls. It was like making Uncharted 4 take place in a space ship and getting rid of all of the familiar characters. Technically, it could still be an action adventure but it would be nothing like the game that you loved (aka the game that most of us bought the sequel for).
I still own the OPM demo disc that featured the intro to Chrono Cross. I watched that intro a billion times trying to analyze it. I was so excited, only to find out that none of the stuff I expected was in the final game. That's where my bitterness comes from.
