BundlePlayStation 4PC (Microsoft Windows)Xbox OneNintendo Switch2022

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition

The Radical Dreamers Edition of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition is a remaster of Chrono Cross bundled with Radical Dreamers, which was previously only released for the Satellaview in Japan.

Community

Critics

Trailers

Screenshots

Mixed

15 Steam reviews

Review History

Reviews

15 total

≥h

Steam User 4339STEAMNot recommended

Game crashes/freezes regularly on Steam Deck. Doesn't seem tied to any specific thing either. I will try to keep playing it, but it is an absolute pain to do so. Regularly it will freeze while trying to load up a save. Froze on me 4 separate times before I was even able to get to a save spot in the early moments of the game.

Mar 17, 2026·4h·Verified

Steam User 5577STEAMNot recommended

Uno de los mejores JRPGs de la historia, pero es casi que injugable debido a la calidad del port.
No solo son los crasheos y freezes aleatorios, si no que tampoco se nota optimizado para nada el juego, las transiciones se quedaron lentas, la imagen a veces no escala como debería hacerlo en monitores actuales y si bien los artworks están en mejor definición, es solo eso, una lavadita de cara y nada más
Una lástima porque los añadidos si son buenos (de entrada el juego está bastante bien traducido y localizado, y debe ser la única forma de conseguir Radical Dreamers legalmente hoy en día)
Chrono Cross es de las mejores cosas que ha dado Square, no se merece tan poco cariño y tirarlo así al público. No soy desarrollador y no sé cómo van estas cosas, pero lanzar un juego con esta historia así de roto…

Mar 15, 2026·6h·Verified

Steam User 5565STEAMNot recommended

A poorly done port with frequent crashes. Look for other options if you want to play this game

Mar 12, 2026·1h·14·Verified

Steam User 6261STEAMRecommended

Chrono Cross is better than Chrono Trigger
Yeah I said it, whatCHA gonna do about it

Mar 9, 2026·33h·14·Verified

Steam User 7646STEAMRecommended

Many reviews are upvoting the core game but downvoting the port, but [b]if I [i]had[/i] downvoted it, I would have downvoted the core game.[/b] I'm upvoting it because we asked SE for this and they succeeded in giving it to us. I can't attest to the technical problems other players have experienced; the framerates are fine and in 50 hours of playtime I experienced no crashes and only 2 or 3 minor graphical glitches. A small handful of upscales could have used some further tuning but it's definitely nothing deserving of a downvote.

However, after replaying Cross with fresh eyes, the core game itself is a [i]mess.[/i] I have extremely fond, even [i]grounding[/i] memories of playing Cross as a teen, but as an adult, the mystique has evaporated and I've realized it's pretty undeserving of the pedestal it's been placed on. I've been on a pilgrimage to 100% all my favorites from that era on Steam...Chrono Trigger, FF7, FF9, FF Tactics, etc., and they've all held up decades later. I'd happily play them again even after mastering them. Revisiting Chrono Cross, however, was just excruciating.

I don't normally write such extensive, itemized reviews, but upon replaying this title I've developed extremely complicated feelings about it. It's clear from some of the other longform reviews that Cross evokes something powerful in people. If you were similarly enamored with this game as a youth, please hear me out before you start white-knighting. This is easily the longest review I've ever written, and I spent several months debating if I should even post it or not...but I've decided I need to just get this off my chest and move on with my life.

[hr][/hr]
[h3]The Good[/h3]
First, to acknowledge what made so many of us love this game...

[b]The music is beautiful, stirring, and timeless.[/b] Yasunori Mitsuda's soundtracks remain my absolute favorite to this day. They evoke [i]spiritual[/i] feelings in me. They fill me with wonder and a sense of beauty and hope. While one or two of his original pieces for Cross feel phoned-in, the soundtrack on the whole is a phenomenal progression of Trigger's melodies. I still get goosebumps listening to the OST decades later.

[b]The aesthetic is truly inspired.[/b] The beautiful locations, creative enemy designs, and broad and eclectic roster of characters weaves a world with a unique and fantastical atmosphere. [spoiler]The Dead Sea and the Tower of Geddon in particular are eerie and awesome things to behold and to this day I can't think of a location in [i]any[/i] video game with a more ominous mood than that frozen futuristic ruin.[/spoiler]

[h3]The Bad[/h3]
Cross also has a few odd, but forgivable quirks; the battle menus and element menus are surprisingly crude (which is baffling because the rest of the interface and menus are so thoughtfully designed). Like literally a full third of all the localized names of techs or enemies are corny puns, and moving around in the field can feel imprecise and "slippery".

But more crucially, some of its aspects can only be described as...

[h3]The Ugly[/h3]
[b]The story is convoluted, and more to the point, it's very poorly told,[/b] even though it does contain some interesting concepts. It [i]shamelessly[/i] relies on a slew of macguffins and plot devices to drive things forward. It also goes off on several distracting tangents that further muddy an already complicated story. [spoiler]Chiefmost amongst these is the Marbule subplot and the events on the S.S. Zelbess, which would have been boring even as a sidequest, let alone as a central requirement.[/spoiler] And seemingly as a reaction to the dense and inaccessible story, the dialogue becomes increasingly expository, culminating in characters explaining the entire plot outright in gigantic, meaty blocks of text near the end.

[b]The battle system is flat and one-dimensional.[/b] Status effects seem to exist solely to impede your movement on the world map. There is no real elemental hierarchy, opposite elements just cancel each other out. Basically every element or tech in the entire game either does single/aoe damage or single/aoe heal (Except for a very tiny handful of techs like "pilfer"), and every character operates nearly identically to each other since casting magic is dependent on landing physical hits, the only variation being whether the bulk of their damage is done [i]while[/i] hitting enemies or [i]after[/i] hitting enemies.

[b]The bestiary is grotesquely underdeveloped.[/b] Even when fighting bosses, even on the first playthrough, there is rarely any real reason to strategize. A handful of creatures absorb their innate element [spoiler](and, totally bizarrely, that one singular jellyfish in the El Nido Triangle is immune to all non-red damage)[/spoiler], but nearly all creatures are functionally identical. [spoiler]Even Lavos and the Dragon God are just basically regular monsters with a lot of HP; it's just sad watching these beautifully designed bosses spam generic, middling aoe spells for a few minutes before they uneventfully keel over and die like an old, obese dog.[/spoiler]

[b]The game is inherently meant to be played multiple times but there is no endgame content.[/b] The sole point of replaying the game the obligatory 3 or 4 times over is to obtain new characters that you [i]can't even do anything with.[/i] Characters from previous playthroughs can only be reacquired at a junction when the game is practically over, half of them can't reacquire their final techs, and there's no challenging endgame bosses or dungeons to use them on anyways.

[b]AND SINCE WE'VE COME THIS FAR, let's address the downright goofy, repetitive nature of hopping between two nearly identical worlds connected at a single point.[/b] Even after you've become numbly familiar with the progression of the game, it's pretty easy to arrive somewhere only to realize you're in the wrong "version" of it. So rather than just opening a menu and warping where you stand, what do you have to do?

Zone out > board your boat > sail to Opassa beach > dock > zone in > warp > zone out > board your other boat > sail back to the location > zone in

Wait, this NPC isn't working either...did I just need to talk to the first one twice in a row? Let me go check...

zoneOut> boardBoat> sailToBeach> dock> zoneIn> warp> zoneOut> boardBoat> sailBack> zoneIn

OH WAIT I DID HAVE THE RIGHT NPC THE LAST TIME BUT I ONLY TALKED TO HER, I NEEDED TO MANUALLY HAND HER MACGUFFIN#7 FROM MY INVENTORY.

ZONE>BOARD>SAIL>DOCK>ZONE>WARP>ZONE>BOARD>SAIL>ZONE.

WHAT'S THAT? WHY, NO, I WOULDN'T LIKE TO WATCH THE FMV OF SERGE DEMATERIALIZING FOR THE 740th TIME, THANK YOU FOR AUTOPLAYING IT THOUGH.

[spoiler]I MEAN, THERE'S [u]THREE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DIMENSIONAL RIFTS[/u] ON THE WORLD MAP IN THE SEA OF EDEN AT THE END OF THE GAME, WHY COULDN'T JUST [u]ONE[/u] OF THEM BE OUT IN THE OCEAN OFF THE COAST OF OPASSA?!?

FOR THAT MATTER, WHY CAN'T I JUST WARP ANYWHERE ON THE WORLD MAP? THEY ALREADY FIGURED THAT OUT IN TRIGGER AND THEN DECIDED TO USE A SYSTEM THAT'S OBJECTIVELY WORSE IN CROSS.[/spoiler]

[hr][/hr]
[h3]In Conclusion...[/h3]
[b]So, what happened?[/b] I think upon its initial release, we were incapable of even seeing Cross's flaws since we were in a collective "milk coma" from the onslaught of amazing titles SE was dumping on us in the late 90's. Aesthetically, Cross was undeniably beautiful, so we never even questioned if all of its parts actually added up to anything meaningful. We conflated convoluted plot devices with nuanced storytelling and mere mechanics with satisfying gameplay.

If you're feeling nostalgic for this title, I can recommend this port, but be forewarned that you may not find the core game to be the timeless classic you remember it as. I am glad I bought it and mastered it, and its music and my memories of it will forever live in my soul. But nothing about the game itself would warrant me to ever return to it again.

Mar 9, 2026·50h·6·Verified

Steam User 8788STEAMRecommended

Amo este juego <3
Es uno de los juegos de mi niñes, play 1.
Tiene todo mi cariño y la bandasonora, que suelen ocuparlo tanto en redes sociales como en la televisiones nacionales, 1000/10. La banda sonora siempre la escucho, me relaja harto.
:3

Mar 7, 2026·80h·Verified

Steam User 8875STEAMNot recommended

Great game, but this version of it keeps freezing up, no matter what I try. Save your money and play via emulator or something.

Mar 6, 2026·9h·13·Verified

Steam User 9475STEAMNot recommended

un poco quise jugarlo, solo un poco, y ese poco que jugué me creasheo la pc.

Mar 6, 2026·1h·Verified

Steam User 8143STEAMRecommended

very nostalgic

Feb 28, 2026·139h·1·Verified

Steam User 4703STEAMRecommended

This is a good update of the classic RPG Chrono Cross. It's rather resource-intensive, but has fixed some of the bugs in the original, and the translation has also been improved in many places. Whether you're an old-time fan, or discovering this gem for the first time, I highly recommend it.

Feb 27, 2026·6h·1·Verified

Steam User 8047STEAMRecommended

Been playing since it first released in 1999. While not as good as it's predecessor I feel it gets far to much hate. This is a great JRPG and fully deserving of it's Chrono title in my opinion! My only real complaint is some of the narrative choices surrounding the potential fates of Trigger's cast, but I think I understand why Masato Kato did it. Doesn't ruin the experience for me, but I still feel a third game is needed to truly tie it all together, and Chrono as a series deserves to be a trilogy, but I won't get my hopes up. Overall I'd give it 8/10 only due to me being a die hard Trigger fan and some narrative choices. Otherwise, the OST is beautiful, graphics were stunning for their time, and switching from time travel in Trigger to alternate realities in Cross just makes sense.

Feb 25, 2026·79h·4·Verified

Steam User 5888STEAMRecommended

Chrono Cross isn't just a sequel to one of the best video games ever made, Chrono Trigger, but it also takes a different approach within the same world. Instead of going back and forth between time, you play as our silent protagonist Serge who has the ability to jump between two timelines. Along the journey of Serge trying to figure out why he has this ability, his meets a colorful cast of party members that either range from irrelevancy to meaningful to the plot. Seriously, there are way too many party members in this game.

Combat also takes a different approach from the ATB to turn-based with, in my opinion, a weird DnD-style magic system where abilities can only be used once per battle. There are also three levels of attacks that consume stamina which builds up a character's ability gauge to use their abilities at certain levels. However, that makes the fights more challenging and having to plan out when to use certain abilities.

Once again, the music is fantastic and elevates the world building as you explore different areas.

I feel like I should point out that most of my playtime for Chrono Cross was spent on the Ps1 version on my Ps2 during one summer vacation back when I was a wee lad in high school. I spent playing Chrono Cross on steam with a guide because back then, I could not figure out how to recruit everyone nor how to get all the endings.

Feb 22, 2026·24h·2·Verified

Steam User 8293STEAMNot recommended

Still don't recommend this. Tons of crashes and they will vary from freezing touching an enemy on the field maps to the game just straight up crashing to desktop after touching enemies in the Viper Manor. Viper Manor is one of the most unstable regions in the game and you return to it multiple times as well.

My playtime reflects the one time the game worked for whatever reason, and I suffered through this. Many attempts including only a week ago still yield the same crashes as before. Do not buy, do not support this version.

Feb 21, 2026·26h·23·Verified

Steam User 7525STEAMRecommended

Um dos melhores jogos da Square pra época do Ps1, e agora com essa versão, a nostalgia bate forte e ficar horas jogando é inevitável!!!

Feb 15, 2026·25h·1·Verified

Steam User 3210STEAMNot recommended

This game is unplayable. Its the only game currently on my list of games that I cannot complete reasonably due to constant freezing and crashing. I've done all the patches and tweaks I know to do other than modding the game but when you pay money for a game you don't want to have to mod a game to make your money worth it. I will be glad to change my review if this mess gets sorted but I doubt it ever will. If I can emulate this game on my cell phone this PC port should of been a walk in the park for Square Enix.

Feb 15, 2026·15h·36·Verified