JRPGs and Emotional Immersion: Why Final Fantasy 6 Beats Chrono Trigger

 

I’ve recently completed two certified SNES classics, Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger, and I have opinions. Rather controversial opinions. I’ve seen the many praises and complaints, on one side - lack thereof, for both of these JRPG behemoths and many debates by passionate fans on which game was better. Of course, my unpopular opinion is that Final Fantasy 6 was the better game, primarily for a major point that many people praise Chrono Trigger but criticized FF6 for: the pacing - and as a result, the emotional immersion. Let’s get right into things… and yes, this blog will be chock full of spoilers for these nearly 30 year-old games, so beware.

Vastly Different Tones, Similar Broader Narrative Structure

Chrono Trigger is usually remembered as a more positive and upbeat adventure to save the world, with some darker moments sparsely sprinkled throughout the journey. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 6 is often described as a more mature and depressing journey to pick back up the pieces of a destroyed world, with some humorous moments sprinkled in between every now and then. Final Fantasy 6’s Esper system and Relics allow for more free-form character customization while avoiding the trap of homogenizing every combat unit unless you grind Espers obviously. Chrono Trigger practically has zero character customization, as there is… one accessory (the Rage Band) that lets you perform a specific role in combat compared to other party members, and even that is barely any different, frankly.

In many ways, these two games feel almost like opposites design-wise. However, if you look at them from a broader scope, they’re actually very similar in terms of progression. Both games take and return party members away from you throughout the story, the villain achieved a huge “victory” 2/3rd into the game, and the sidequests to develop or give more background to the party members are available after this huge story event and can be done in a non-linear fashion. They both start out quite linearly and gradually open up a lot by the end, and you have the choice to “re-recruit” party member(s) before taking on the final dungeon, which you can do basically at any time you want after going through a very brief mandatory story section to set up the circumstances needed to access said dungeon. Let’s look at some detailed examples.

Outside of two deliberately designed key sections in the game, namely the fair at the start and the Egg of Time portion after Crono sacrificed himself to save the party from Lavos. Though both of these sections are technically still entirely optional. You can waltz straight to Lucca’s teleporter showcase without engaging in any of the minigames at the carnival, and the game never forces you to revive Crono or complete any of the sidequests before tackling the final dungeon. The trial is a cool part of the game that rewards or punishes you based on your own optional engagement with the game’s NPC in a previous section of the game, and you can recruit the optional party member, Magus, based on your decision to kill or spare him at an important part of the story.

This is basically the same design philosophy as Final Fantasy 6. Re-recruiting the missing “protagonist” aka Terra, or any of your party members really, isn’t mandatory and you can simply fly to Kefka’s Tower with just the mandatory characters - Celes, Edgar, and Setzer - after regaining your means of traversal, just like Chrono Trigger. The banquet is also a neat section of the game where you basically undergo a mini “trial” of questions after engaging with the many Imperial Soldiers, and better performance will earn you some rewards. At the end of the Floating Continent, the climatic “finale” of the World of Balance, you can “recruit” Shadow, an optional party member, based on your decision to either wait for him or escape immediately.

When you boil it down this way, they don’t seem all that different, do they? There are even more similarities in their development. These two games were released only 1 year apart, with FF6 in 1994 and Chrono Trigger in 1995, and both games have a more “collaborative” work environment when it came to writing their stories. In this way, it feels like Chrono Trigger took some inspiration from FF6’s structure, as they were games made by the same company albeit different teams. Final Fantasy 6 took only 1 year to make, while Chrono Trigger took 2, and both games involved the legendary Hironobu Sakaguchi. Despite the similar “outline”, when it came to the final execution, these two games took rather drastically different approaches, and in my opinion, Final Fantasy 6 chose the right way unlike Chrono Trigger.

Chrono Trigger “Trims the Fat”, and This Is A Double-Edged Sword

 One of the most universally praised thing about Chrono Trigger is its brisk pacing, even after the “apocalyptic” event that transitioned the game into the non-linear second half. The plot is constantly moving forward and story beats, as well as new characters, are introduced in a concise manner. The story, as many fans lauded, “trims all the fat” and is very easy to follow. Combined with the much more streamlined progression, lack of deep customization or strictly random encounters, and pseudo real-time combat system that vaguely incorporates elements of positioning and timing instead of strictly turn-based, it’s no wonder Chrono Trigger is often recommended as “the best first JRPG for a newbie”, especially for people who tend to not enjoy the many quirks and general play style of the genre. And with its time jumping mechanics, there is still something more mechanically engaging for JRPG veterans to enjoy.

However, I’d argue that this “trimming the fat” approach doesn’t always work in Chrono Trigger’s favour and the game does seem pretty content to “waste your time” with certain design choices that clash with its fast-paced storytelling, like the “joke bosses” and “recycling the previous 9 boss fights” in the already multi-phase final boss confrontation. And this is not even mentioning the mind-numbingly back and forth timeline hopping in Frog and Lucca’s sidequests. You know what I’m talking about…

So let’s touch on why “trimming the fat” can be a detriment. After Crono dies, you can go on a story branch where you revive him, or just jump straight to the final dungeon. The devs cleverly designed 3 separate versions of the final dungeon, with only 1 version being the real final final dungeon, so that you won’t be underlevelled if you decide to ignore all the character sidequests. Even though you reclaimed Epoch in 12,000 BC, the Guru of Time will refuse to give you any hints about the character sidequests until you revive Crono. Until then, he’ll only ever give a hint to complete the “Revive Crono” sidequest whenever you speak to him. And you need to go to 1,000 AD to start doing this, away from 12,000 BC which is the location of the real final version of the last dungeon, into one of the timelines with a version of the final dungeon. Pretty brilliant stuff. And of course, he is the OP main character that trivializes an already easy game, so you’re also incentivized, from a gameplay perspective, to get him back.

Here lies the first and most obvious problem that even the most die-hard Chrono Trigger fans could agree with to some extent: Crono. Simply put: He’s a stale cardboard cut-out with no personality and no real contribution to the story, from a storytelling perspective - not a gameplay perspective. There is zero emotional attachment players would ever have with this character beyond the obvious “he’s the silent protagonist that is meant to represent me”. This creates a huge disconnect between your immersion as a person experiencing the story and as a player playing the game. All these colourful “side characters” characters cry about how important Crono is to them and that we must get him back…. is a disconnect to how you actually feel about this story beat with this character. I couldn’t even understand why these characters are so sad in the first place. And speaking of these side characters, it leads to my next point…

… The side characters too are mostly uninteresting, outside of Frog and Magus, and I’m not even complaining about the lack of interactions between party members like most modern gamers seem to do with this game. You’re introduced to these characters in a very… unengaging manner, and they stay unengaging until the very end unless you do their sidequests. Most of them are basically just dropped into the story with no real background or goals to engage with. Without doing their character sidequests, all you know is that: Marle is a rebellious princess who might have a rocky relationship with her father (and the Chancellor is extremely shady), Lucca is the “miracle worker” scientist that enabled all these time travelling shenanigans for the party to be possible at all, Robo is a broken down robot from the future who’s different from his other man-made, specifically programmed mechanical siblings, and Ayla is a hot-tempered and determined cavewoman who’s next in line for the role of the tribe’s Chief. By the time the party without Crono hopped on Epoch, the only feeling I have at this point of the story, at a major climax moment… is emptiness. I was simply, unengaged by everything that has and is happening, and that is a serious problem.

Sidenote: this might be a weird stance but Ayla, despite being the character that’s most lamented for having no role in the story/the most generic personality, is actually my favourite amongst these party members. I personally enjoyed her hidden, more mature and responsible side, and her little subplot with Kino is actually one of the little moments I enjoy in the game. I think people exaggerate her “dumbness” and frankly, she never struck me as being dumb? She’s literally from an ancient civilization, and a lot of her “ignorance” comes from interacting with party members who are… from the future. How exactly does this make her “dumb”...?

I’d argue that she feels more nuanced than Lucca, who just seems to be a “miracle worker” that makes seemingly impossible science stuff happens. You’re TOLD by NPCs that all of Lucca’s inventions fail, but you literally NEVER see this happen at any point in the story. The teleporter worked perfectly until Marle’s pendant turned it into a time travelling machine. She, someone from 600 AD, somehow knew how to fix the broken-down Robo upon first meeting him in 2,300 AD. And even in her backstory, the machine that turned her mother into a cripple wasn’t even her invention - it was her dad’s - and this incident was what motivated her to become an inventor in the first place. So how exactly has she ever “failed” as a scientist again? Her story was fine and did make her more relatable, but this is basically one of the biggest crimes in storytelling, telling instead of showing. Anyways…

I mentioned that Frog and Magus are the outliers, so why exactly are they different? Well, for starters, they’re introduced with some hints of their background, and you learn more about their backstories BEFORE even doing any of their endgame sidequests. In fact, you learn about most of Frog’s backstory and motivation before even formally recruiting him to your party, and the same goes for Magus. This helps build an emotional attachment to these characters that give them a purpose in the overall story rather than the “tag-alongs” like the rest of your party members. In fact, if you really strip it down, it feels like Marle is only there because of her special pendant, Lucca because she handles all the technical aspects of hopping to a new timeline prior to obtaining the Epoch, Robo to see the end of the world and learn about the history of Lavos’ arrival, and Ayla because… worldbuilding and physically witnessing the arrival of Lavos… These are all plot/story vehicles, not personal emotional connection and attachment like Frog and Magus, at least not until you can finally access the character sidequests.

Chrono Trigger is a pretty short game, but it can really feel like forever until you can FINALLY get to know most of your party members beyond some one-sentence description. And the worst part is, I feel like I HAVE to do these sidequests to get any enjoyment out of the characters - and by extension, the game - beyond the presentation. The game did punish me for finishing my playthrough with a 3-girls party and leaving Crono to die, but not once did I ever feel emotionally punished. (It was all because the 3-girls party simply suck in combat since Marle and Lucca are much weaker units than the others, and their Triple Tech, for how far into the game until you can get it, is completely terrible).  

I do want to clarify that I don’t hate these characters and I do conclude that most of them are fairly decent characters in their own right after completing their sidequests. My problem lies in the way they are introduced and when the game finally decides to give us any other bit of extra detail about them, a character writing pacing issue, if you will. It’s only until I sat down and took a breather from the rapidly-moving plot after Crono dies that I realize something about Frog and Magus that explained why I cared more for them than the other party members: their character portrayal/story progression… is structured like a Final Fantasy 6 character.

Final Fantasy 6 and The Art of Building Player Attachment

All I knew about Chrono Trigger’s story before playing was that Magus was going to be an important character that you can recruit later on, and that there was a clever “trial” that judges your character based on what you did in the start of the game at the fair. Meanwhile, I was already rather heavily spoiled about Final Fantasy 6 before I even ,start playing it. I knew about Kefka destroying the world halfway through the game and forcing you to re-recruit your party members, I knew about Celes’ potential suicide scenario if you fail to save Cid, I knew about Terra not being a mandatory character in the second half and many smaller details. After all, it’s basically impossible to look Final Fantasy 6 up online without seeing people praise its major villain, story, and characters.

However, the most common criticism levied at Final Fantasy 6 is that “the pacing falls apart” in the World of Ruin because “it becomes a meandering game of sidequests to regroup your party”. This is, honestly, one of the most confusing criticisms I’ve seen, and it’s rather shocking to me that it’s so common. Especially when the game itself, in my opinion, has one of the most natural and engaging stories and exploration progression for a JRPG, only beat out by SMT: Strange Journey for the latter aspect. Like Strange Journey, FF6 starts very structured and slowly introduces more open-ness into its gameplay so that by the time the game took off the “training wheels” midgame, you should be pretty well-equipped to take on the rest of its more “advanced” content.

 Final Fantasy 6, like Chrono Trigger, starts out relatively linear and plot-driven, though with a healthy and necessary mix of character introduction, and even early development, from the get-go. Most of the characters have a character-defining moment that reflects who they are the moment they’re introduced, even “simpler” characters like Gau and Relm. Aside from the bonus characters Umaro and Gogo, who basically serve as the last “animal” friend for Mog and a Final Fantasy 5 cameo respectively instead of being important to the story, the cast of Final Fantasy 6 is well introduced, well realized, and well developed, even those who aren’t as “deep”.

One of my favourite characters in the game is Strago, a Blue Mage old of age but young of heart who loves his precocious granddaughter. He’s often accused to be “underdeveloped” or “too thin of a character”, especially next to characters with dramatic stories and lots of focus like Terra, Celes, Locke, etc., and since he’s introduced more than halfway into the story. However, you still get a sense of who he is as a person and even saw some “development” immediately when you meet him. He started out very reserved and overly protective of his granddaughter, Relm, desperate to hide the fact that his village Thamasa is home to the last of the Magi. However, an unexpected fire that trapped Relm and her friend forced Strago to reveal his identity by casting magic to extinguish the flames. When Strago joined the party to uncover the history of the Warring Triad, he forbade Relm to go with him but was later “saved” by her when the party fought “Uncle Ulty” again in the Magi cave, and this event led to him allowing her to travel with the Returners to save the world as the last Magi.

All of this is nothing special for a character, but what’s important is the “pacing” of his character portrayal. The game at least shows you what kind of a person Strago is beyond a trope-y personality trait and his basic background in the setting. Since he’s always so positive and energetic, you can’t help but want to find Strago and see how he’s fairing in after the end of the world. In the World of Ruin aka when you learn even more about him via sidequests, Strago also has brief but noticeable character moments, especially when contrasted with other characters affiliated with him like Relm and Shadow. He followed the Cult of Kefka after the world ended and he thought he had lost the 1 family member he had left, and it was only thanks to her that he immediately snapped out of his broken mindset. It was a very quick moment but the simplicity still manages to convey universal truths about humans.

In his sidequest, you get to help him take on a mythical beast, Hidon, that he spent most of his life chasing after, presumably until Shadow decided to dump the responsibility of raising Relm on him. And in the end, you find out that Relm orchestrated the whole thing to let her grandfather finally accomplishes his life’s dream. In the epilogue, you see Relm helping out her senile grandfather escape the crumbling final dungeon, and Strago executing an impressive leap into the air to escape onto the airship despite his old age. Again, none of this is revolutionary or unique for a character, but they are all things that speak to our nature as humans and teach simple yet fundamentally true values in life. When contrasting Strago and Relm’s characters with Shadow, their characterization is further enhanced, making you appreciate the enjoyable and resonating character writing of Final Fantasy 6 even more.

 

All this probably unwanted Strago appreciation aside, I do hope I got my point across here. When I compare the characters of Chrono Trigger to Final Fantasy 6, it’s not about which characters are more mature, deeper, or suffer through more crap. It’s about how they’re introduced as people instead of plot devices and the pace at which you learn about who they are, which are key factors beyond character design and combat performance that organically gives you the motivation to spend more time with them and thus, complete their sidequests to learn even more about them and give them a satisfactory character arc conclusion. Instead of feeling like you have to do sidequests to learn more about a character beyond their extremely basic traits.

An Honourable Mention to Grandia 1

Before anyone says that Chrono Trigger is about the adventure and journey instead of the characters unlike Final Fantasy 6, and that my point doesn’t really apply to this kind of story, let me bring up another game with simpler characters that focus more on the adventure: Grandia 1. In fact, it’s an interesting comparison since the beginning of Grandia 1 especially is usually panned for being “too slow”. This is exactly what I mean when I said that “trimming the fat” isn’t always for the better. Chrono Trigger might have a more focused and fast-paced plot than Grandia 1, but this can be a detriment to your attachment to its characters. None of the characters in Grandia 1 are really super complex or thought-provoking like Final Fantasy 6 either, but the way they’re introduced, the defining character moments they get throughout the game, and the fact that you can really feel their bond with the main character Justin and how he affected their lives, made the characters and their bonds much more believable and engaging. 

 

 

Also, this might be another unpopular opinion but I also like that in Grandia 1, party members come and go depending on their circumstances and motivation. It makes for some truly memorable and touching character moments, like Sue’s inevitable departure, that I rarely see in games at all. Grandia didn’t feature any “shocking” and subversive character death, but moments like Justin reading his mom’s letter, Sue going back to Parm, Feena protecting Justin from the fall and sprouting her Icarian wings for the first time, Justin meeting up with all the departed party members one last time that gave him the strength to continue, etc. truly touched my heart and will always stay much more memorable in my mind. And none of this could’ve been possible without the “painfully meandering” opening of the game that made me fall in love with its world and characters.

At the end of the day, neither Chrono Trigger nor Final Fantasy 6 were very mechanically stimulating games, but I would still put FF6 in my list of favourite JRPGs because of the characters, cohesion in story-gameplay integration, and rather underrated narrative-gameplay structure progression that tends to get overlooked or flat out misunderstood. And as I continue to play JRPGs with colourful and memorable characters that capture the essence of adventure like Breath of Fire (who, along with Shin Megami Tensei, had multiple endings before Chrono Trigger made it cool, game journalists and fanboys), I can only see my stance on Chrono Trigger’s lacking qualities strengthening. Maybe it’s just me and my own preference and expectations when it comes to playing JRPGs, but Chrono Trigger just wasn’t the game for me, and that’s totally fine too. It’s certainly not a bad game and definitely has its own charms, but to me it feels more hollow and other old school RPGs deserve more love and recognition.