LONG POST!

I see a lot of folks (particularly in this sub) claim that Chrono Trigger invented no random encounters, positional attacks, multiple endings, time travel stories in games etc. None of that is true, those mechanics have existed in JRPG's before Chrono Trigger.

**1. No Random Encounters** \- Earthbound came out 7 months before CT and had no random encounters. Making contact with an enemy model on the field triggers a turn based battle, contacting an enemy from the back gives your party first strike and vice-versa if an enemy contacts the party with their backs turned. If your party is significantly higher leveled than the enemy, the game instantly defeats the enemies without forcing you into the battle screen. Romancing Saga came out 3 yrs before CT and had enemy sprites on the field and dungeons. The first RPG to not utilize random encounters is probably Ultima 3: Exodus.

**2. Positional attacks** \- Live a Live came out around 6 months before CT and had attacks with specific range + area-of-effect shapes on a grid, like straight-line attacks, cross shaped attacks, circular AOE attacks, cone attacks etc. Battles take place in a 7x7 grid, and the player characters can be moved freely around the battlefield. Enemies however remain static. In CT, enemies move around the battlefield in real-time (party member positions are fixed), encouraging you to time your positioning-based attacks, however this feature encourages timing your attacks more than adding any strategic depth to the combat.

**3. Multiple endings** \- Shin Megami Tensei 1 came out 3 yrs before CT and had multiple endings based on Law/Chaos/Neutral alignments. Romancing Saga has 8 main protagonists, with multiple story paths and non-linear progression. The game has a very open-ended design, after the opening scenario, you are largely free to travel the world, recruit party members, tackle quests in different orders, or ignore many objectives entirely, instead of following a strict sequence of story. Each protagonist has their own ending scene/epilogue.

**4. Time Travel Plot** \- Final Fantasy Legend 3 came out 4 yrs before CT and had a plot that revolved around Time Travel. There are 4 main time periods - Future (Doomed), Present and Past (15 yrs before the Present) and Pureland/Floatland (sealed dimension outside normal history). Travelling to these eras depends on acquiring specific parts/upgrades for your airship, Talon and you jump among these timelines depending on the next story objective. Ultima 2 allows you to freely time travel among it's 4 main eras: 1423 BC, 1990 AD (present), 2112 AD, Space era and came out more than a decade before Chrono Trigger, lol.

**5. Side Quests** \- Some ardent fans even claim that Chrono Trigger invented side quests and it was the first to have character-specific, narrative-focused side quests, which is hilariously untrue. Side Quests in JRPG's can be dated back to Dragon Quest 3, but the example I want to use here is Final Fantasy 6, which came out 1 yr before CT. You could recruit optional party members - Gogo and Umaro, there were multiple optional dungeons - Phoenix Cave, Ancient Castle, Cultists' Tower etc, multiple narrative focused side quests - Cyan's dream sequence, Shadow's dreams, Locke and Rachel's backstory resolution, Terra's Mobliz Orphan quest etc. The World of Ruin's design structure is very open-ended.

The only mechanics that **Chrono Trigger can claim to have invented** are double/triple techs (combination attacks between party members) and New Game+. Phantasy Star 4 allowed you to setup macros, FF4 had twincast but there was nothing quite like how CT allowed many double/triple techs across all party members. This would go on to inspire mechanics like Unite attacks in Suikoden and Showtime attacks in Persona etc.  

**Story Pacing:** You will often see the claim that Chrono Trigger's story has excellent pacing with no bloat/filler content. This is true, the story is very well-paced and has a great balance of comedy and drama, both of these disparate elements complementing each other to elevate the story. However, this praise doesn't stop there. The fans will claim that CT was the ONLY game from that era to have excellent pacing, and most other RPG's are filled with filler/bloat of some kind, which is again a ridiculously incorrect claim. A full playthrough of Chrono Trigger, doing everything in-game takes 18.5 hrs, as seen in this vid here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=649Nf8mWUHY. A 100% run of Final Fantasy 4 on the PSP takes 19 hrs, just 30 mins more than CT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiklfRLTtKw. A 100% playthrough of FF5 Pixel Remaster takes 13.5 hrs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMyX7mBKkSM. A full playthrough of Romancing Saga, collecting all destiny stones, takes 5 hrs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvPjyY4\_-aE&t=497s. You get the point. Because of the limitations of the SNES, around 75% of FF4's script had to be cut. Devs didn't have the resources to fit their main game on the SNES, why would they waste time and resources creating filler content, lol? You would be hard pressed to find any SNES RPG that wastes your time with bloated, filler content.

**So, why was CT so highly praised in the West?** Mainly because many of the RPG's I have mentioned here like Romancing Saga 1, SMT 1, Live a Live were never released outside of Japan, so western critics and gamers were unaware of how innovative those games were. Even in the year that CT came out (1995), you will find quite a few other RPG's that were more ambitious and innovative: Front Mission, Romancing Saga 3, Tactics Ogre etc. but were unfortunately never released outside of Japan. Tactics Ogre would only receive a western release in 1998 via the PS1 version, for example. And, if you've played TO, I do not need to state that the depth of it's writing, characters, map design and combat is leagues beyond CT.

This post will most likely get heavily downvoted (despite being factual) as CT fans are quite...uniquely sensitive towards any criticism of the game, but I've seen some posts and comments questioning why CT is so widely praised in this sub and thought to answer them.

A lot of RPG mechanics are falsely attributed to Chrono Trigger, when it neither invented nor pioneered those mechanics, and many aspects of CT that earn widespread praise can also be found in other RPG's of the SNES era, just as well-executed, if not better.