YMMV / Chrono Trigger

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • This remark from the original SNES translation, made by a blue imp when the party first arrives in Medina Village:
    "Did you just come out of the closet?!"
  • In the DS translation, the Nu that appears randomly in the Cursed Woods says, "Oh, stop that, you bad boy!" when spoken to.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Frog's outdated Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe in the original SNES translation supposed to be an attempt to make him sound like he’s from the Middle Ages? Or is it a lonely, scared man trying to put on a brave face by imitating the way he thinks a hero should sound?
  • Did Magus' origins shape his villainous character in the middle ages? Or was he deliberately using a Machiavellian method to obtain power and defeat Lavos? Either way, it was rather selfish.
  • Lavos' true nature lends itself to a lot of interpretation and discussion. Is it merely an animal acting out of survival instinct? Is it a cold alien intelligence with sinister plans for Earth? Is it an automated world-killing bio-machine fulfilling some ancient programming? Is it simply a being with thoughts so alien, humans can't comprehend them?
  • Is Tata faking his hero status because he's come to find he likes the fame and attention? Or because, perhaps, for the first time in a decade, he's seeing hope in people's eyes? Bear in mind, he already comes from a rather poor town, and has likely spent his whole life around lonely, broken men and women who are fully convinced the world is going to end soon. He could be hoping that he has bought time for the real one, or perhaps in time he could become the hero himself—he did venture solo to Mt. Denadoro, after all. Worth noting is a popular headcanon of Glenn later taking him on as a squire.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Ozzie barely qualifies as a boss, but in your first battle against him, he hides behind an impenetrable barrier until you hit a switch to drop him in a pit. In the rematch, while the first round ends with you dumped through the floor before you can do anything, a cat wanders in during the second attempt at the battle and hits the switch to dump him for good.
  • The Golem Overlord is fought on the wing of a giant airship. Being afraid of heights, it doesn't attack you and runs away after a couple of turns. Killing it gives some nice tech points and experience points though, if you're fast enough.
  • Lavos' forms past the first one in the Ocean Palace. His outer shell is far more powerful than any of the forms fought at the end of the game, but if the player can get past it turns out that Lavos' later forms have the same stats as they did at the end of the game. This ironically means that the shell, which is normally the weakest of Lavos' forms, is actually the hardest one to defeat.
• Badass Decay: Ozzie isn't especially intimidating even when you first meet him, but late in the game he's downright pathetic. In fact, the one time you actually fight Ozzie, he's accompanied by Slash and Flea, each of whom you've fought twice before, both times three-on-one.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Fiendlord's Keep. There's a Background Music Override so that battles are fought under a low, droning melody that underscores just how creepy the place is. It's also a dungeon that requires you to really think about party setups, has fun enemies, and the boss fight against Magus is a highlight of the story.
  • The Ocean Palace. There's also a Background Music Override, but it's with a tension-filled piece as you descend further and further towards the boss fight. The enemy types are also quite varied, requiring a good mix of physical and magical skill to defeat. There's also a decent number of Save Points to make sure the area isn't too frustrating.
• Breather Boss: Krawlie, the end-boss of the sewers. If you're following the story, he'll be much easier than Golem or Giga Gaia, and the only indication that he's supposed to be a boss is his death animation.
• Breather Level:
  • The Prehistoric Era in general can be considered this, at least until you enter Azala's Lair. Both times you visit, it specifically comes after the Wham Episodes like the visit to the desolate far future, or the confrontation with Magus in the middle ages.
  • The Blackbird, full stop. This happens nearly immediately after the long and heavy atmosphere of the Ocean Palace, as well as falling for a trap by Dalton to get captured. At this point, you are unable to backtrack until this dungeon is completed. This dungeon is far easier than the previous dungeons via Developer's Foresight, avoiding an Unwinnable by Design situation.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The modern-day Chancellor being Yakra XIII in disguise isn't too difficult to predict, given his severe Disproportionate Retribution policies towards Crono at the beginning of the game, as well as his unpleasant and manipulative behavior towards Marle and her father later on. Not that it makes finally defeating him any less satisfying.
• Catharsis Factor: Given how he had attempted to put Crono to death at the beginning of the game, and later destroyed Marle's relationship with her father out of spite for the death of his ancestor, many players salivated at finally being able to put down Yakra XIII for good at the end of Marle's sidequest.
• Character Perception Evolution: During the second half of the 1990s and the majority of the 2000s, Dalton had a cult following in the playerbase who appreciated him for being a Laughably Evil ham who upgrades the Epoch with the ability to fly after stealing it from the party. However, after the 2009 DS re-release added additional content that aimed to bridge Trigger with its divisive 1999 sequel—which canonized Dalton being responsible for militarising Porre, the Fall of Guardia and the deaths of Crono, Lucca and Marle between the events of Trigger and Cross—general fan opinion of Dalton started to significantly sour. Even when ignoring the DS additional content, Dalton has been criticized for being an incompetent nuisance who gets away with far more than he should among a cast of more interesting, entertaining, and/or challenging antagonists, and for being the catalyst for one of the game's worst dungeons in the form of the Blackbird (which follows the widely-acclaimed Ocean Palace). While Trigger is still generally agreed to be a masterpiece, Dalton is now seen as one of its worst elements.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Most peoples' endgame party will consist of Crono, Ayla, and Frog, sometimes swapping Crono for Magus. Because Ayla and Frog are forced into the party at points near the mid-game, they'll often end up at higher level than the reserves, even with Leaked Experience. While nobody is really bad per se (especially since the DS port adds things to make Marle and Robo more feasible late-game in terms of attack power), they often require the least amount of effort to get ready for the endgame. Plus, the three are a relatively balanced team. Most importantly, Ayla can give you megalixirs near the end of the game.
  • If you want to defeat the Dream Devourer, you'll pretty much always use Marle specifically to keep Haste up on everyone.
  • The first few chapters of a New Game Plus will likely see all party members equipped with Berserker Rings to get through battles simply because all enemies (including bosses) die in a single hit.
• Complete Monster: Lavos is the abominable progenitor of mankind, whose schemes serve as the catalyst for millions of years of suffering. Lavos has controlled the evolution of the planet since it arrived on Earth in 65 million B.C., rearing up humanity to become more intelligent and advanced so that Lavos may feast on their collective intelligence to advance itself. In 1999 A.D., Lavos awakens and slaughters all but small pockets of mankind, then creates spawn to send out and repeat this cycle of forced evolution and destruction on other worlds. Lavos drives Queen Zeal into becoming its fanatical worshipper before wiping out her entire kingdom in an early showing of its power, and when a variety of heroes try to stand up to it, Lavos banishes Magus to the past and murders Crono to secure its plans for humanity. Though beaten through use of Time Travel before it wiped out all life, Lavos returns, having forcefully merged with the despairing Schala and used her as a conduit to become the Time Devourer and begin its new plan: to annihilate all of space-time out of a twisted belief in "survival of the fittest", Lavos proclaiming all existence besides itself to be weak and undeserving of life.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Magus gets this a lot, due to a combination of Evil Is Cool and having a sympathetic backstory, with fans often whitewashing (or straight up ignoring) how he was the leader of the fiends who terrorized the humans in 600 A.D. Him joining the good guys is often portrayed as a Heel–Face Turn as well, when in reality he was mostly just trying to save his own hide (though his joining the team does come with, if perhaps not a full level in kindness, at least a noticeable downgrade in jerkass).
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Schala may be an NPC, but she's nonetheless one of the most beloved characters in the game. Tellingly, in the following games, her aftermath is a crucial plot point.
  • They call him Gato, he has metal joints. Beat him up, and earn 15 Silver Points.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Crono/Marle being the Official Couple and the most popular, a considerable portion of the fandom has held torches for Crono/Lucca. It's rare to find a piece of fanwork that takes Lucca's claim that she and Crono are Like Brother and Sister at face value, whether it's shipping Crono/Lucca or not. Then again, considering that there's some Ship Tease between the two in certain canon scenes, those fans aren't coming up with this out of nowhere.
• Fan Wank: The Chrono Compendium is a fan-site that takes all the many Headscratchers and Epileptic Trees and tries to make some sense out of them.
• Fanon:
  • The Zeal royal family dyeing their hair blue is very well ingrained into the fanbase, despite a total lack of canon support. The theory mainly exists to explain why Schala has blonde hair in Chrono Cross, as the game never explains why Kid, who is explicitly Schala's clone, is blonde, as well as Schala herself in the closing scenes of the game.
  • Lucca is the unlucky childhood friend of Crono's who was just unable to admit her feelings, then stood aside for Marle once Lucca realized that she blew her chance. This is such a common fan assumption that it's rare to find portrayals of Lucca that take her at her word that they're Like Brother and Sister. Granted, the Canon itself doesn't totally rule out the possibility.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A considerable number of fans refuses to acknowledge the events of Chrono Cross and the Updated Rereleases of this game, in particular the infamous Happy Ending Override.
• Faux Symbolism: There was a lengthy essay out there that argues that Chrono Trigger is a retelling of The Bible. Masato Kato has denied this, especially when you take into account the Woolseyisms.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Crono:
    • Give Crono the Rainbow (70% critical hit rate) and Wrath Band (80% counter rate). Factor in that he can counter things like barrier changes and enemy revives and he becomes a killing machine.
    • For spamming the screen with death, Luminaire is not too shabby. Combined with the Golden Studs, which reduces it to a paltry 5 MP, or swap the studs for Prism Spectacles to trade efficiency for power. It is one of the go-to spells for clearing the room and even dealing damage to many bosses. If the enemies are immune, then your Rainbow will usually handle that.
    • Prioritizing Crono for Magic Capsules will make him a one-man wrecking machine. Not only will Raise act like Marle's Arise due to the 999 HP MAX CAP, but Luminaire will also dish out the most single-spell damage in the game, with a 20.5x multiplier compared to Flare's 17.25x multiplier.
  • Ayla:
    • She's got the highest Strength and Speed in the game (making her the party's best tank). Even better, she is automatically equipped with her own fists, making equipping her very cheap.
    • She can Charm enemy-exclusive equipment, early-to-obtain gear, or rare-to-obtain items such as capsules. If you face an enemy that appears only once or a boss, she is always on the front lines if possible. One reason she's a common choice for the Black Dream is how many enemies carry megalixirs.
    • Dino Tail/Frog Squash. Non-elemental damage that increases the lower Ayla's/Frog’s HP is. Keep them on the brink of death and they'll do 3000+ damage to everything on the screen every time they use it. And since they got very high speed, they'll probably destroy all enemies onscreen before they even get a chance to attack.
  • Robo should not be overlooked. Though the story may say that he doesn't learn magic, he nevertheless quite possibly makes even better use of Magic Capsules than Crono, with the ability to hit three elements, heal the whole party at once, hit every enemy on the screen with Laser Spin, and still hit hard physically even before his game-breaking weapons come into play. His biggest flaw is that he's slow, but that can be remedied too.
  • Some of the tech combinations are this:
    • Frog and Marle's dual tech Ice Water is a full screen nuke at the cost of 2 TP each, which makes it cheaper than Crono and Robo's Supersonic Spin (Crono pays 2 TP while Robo pays 3). When you first get it, it's a complete game breaker that lets you waltz through all the trash mobs in Fiendlord's Keep without breaking a sweat.
    • Falcon Strike (Ayla+Crono dual tech). Low cost, learned relatively early, and insanely powerful. The only drawback is that it only hits on a horizontal line, but it is amazing how many enemy groups considerately line themselves up (including Lavos' final form).
    • The special triple tech Omega Flare, which requires Lucca, Robo, and Magus. The only steep requirement is Lucca needing Flare (which she should have if you've used her regularly), otherwise it requires Robo having Laser Spin and Magus having Dark Bomb, both relatively cheap and easily-obtained techs. The tech easily hits for over 3000+ on all enemies and in a pinch isn't so bad on single enemies. Its only drawbacks are if the enemies are immune/absorb shadow type attacks and if a mechanic requires single targeting enemies (such as in the Lavos Spawn fights)
    • Even though Frog has a few healing spells, his Jack of All Trades build makes them okay to use by themselves. But his healing combos with three other characters makes him an invaluable asset. The first one is Slurp Kiss with Ayla, which heals everyone for a decent amount and it heals any status effects. The second one is Cure Wave with Robo, which if you buffed Robo's magic stat, basically is a near full-cure for everyone. The last one is Double Cure with Marle, which heals all HP and cures status. It doesn't hurt that having Crono along also grants hard hitting triple techs.
  • Speed increasing items in general. Normally, you cannot increase the speed of your characters by default, but increasing this stat makes you commit actions much faster. See below:
    • Haste Status, used by either Marle's Haste spell or auto-haste equipment like the Haste Helm. This makes the characters buffed with it twice as fast as normal. It's effectively an extra turn.
    • Speed Capsules, bar none, which permanently increases the stat up to a maximum of 16. Combine that with the Haste status and a lot of fights are winnable without worrying about the enemies attacking you outside of possible counter-attacks.
  • The Berserker Ring that you get early on in the game. Equip it to your highest attacker like Crono. While you cannot control the character and not recommended in a few cases, delivering 1.5x damage and reducing 1/3 of all damage will slice you through most of battles in the earlier game with ease.
  • Silver Studs, and later, Golden Studs. Knowing that your max MP is 99 and some spells use up to 20, these cut your MP usage by 1/2 (20 = 10) or 3/4 (20 = 5). Get three Golden Studs, and you can spam your most powerful techs without a care. You find one over the course of normal gameplay, and can steal more from a specific enemy (Flyclops) using Charm. Combine this with Marle's Haste above, and you'll have a team that can spam Triple Techs like there's no tomorrow. Most bosses go down like chumps.
  • The Prism Spectacles increase the damage a character does by fifty percent. Put them on your best physical hitters, like Crono with his 70% critical hit rate sword or his shiny new 90% critical hit sword, or just on Ayla, and their attack commands start hitting as hard as other characters' spells. Then, if you start casting with them...
  • Pretty much the final weapons from the port:
    • Magus' Dreamreaper will do 4x damage for critical hits. With an already high critical hit rate, combine this with the Dragon's Tear and he'll be dishing out a lot of damage per turn.
    • Lucca's Spellslinger can do more damage with a regular hit than Crono's critical hit if her current MP ends in 9 because it is not dependent on her attack.
    • Marle's Venus Bow does 777 damage on everything, which is decent damage to most enemies, but it even does that much to enemies with special defense. This includes bosses like Nizbel, the Black Tyranno, and Lavos, and the Metal Slime Wonder Rock (of course, you need to actually run into the Wonder Rock).
    • Robo's Apocalypse Arm with a base power of zero, but a critical hit deals 9999 damage. Then equip him with the Dragon's Tear, which greatly boosts the wearer's critical rate, and even the Optional Boss becomes a pushover. Similar to Ayla's Bronze Fist, but Level 99 is not required.
    • Crono's Dreamseeker. 240 ATK and 90% critical rate. Self-explanatory, but you probably fully completed the game by then.
    • Lucca's armor in the port, the Elemental Aegis. Give her that and a ton of Ethers and she can solo Nu Spekkio. The downside is that to get it, you need to find and kill a Wonder Rock.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • In general, there are a few encounters that you simply cannot avoid. This makes backtracking in the early part of the game somewhat tedious, since you'll be fighting mobs that can barely scratch you while a stiff breeze could kill them. And you'll have to do this several times just to reach a Gate and continue the story. This gets a lot better once you're able to travel through time in the Epoch, but those first few times are just plain annoying.
  • Those rats and frogs from the Lost Sanctum bonus dungeon. Considering that the whole dungeon is one giant Fetch Quest, you will fight them well over thirty times just traveling back and forth. It's not that they're hard, but the tedium sets in quickly. At least the frogs at some point can be one-shot by normal attacks. But the rats, mainly the Dire Rats, are so fast that they always get the first move, which will somehow screw you over with some HP or MP lost.
  • The shield enemies that appear in the Prison Tower and Black Omen. You can't attack them until they tilt their shields to the side, but they'll go down in one hit against an adequately-leveled group, making them more annoying than dangerous.
• Goddamned Boss: The Dream Devourer is the hardest boss in the DS and future remakes, but also one of the most annoying, simply because at any moment it can just decide to KO you unless your party's maxed out. It also has two stances—one where it resists most physical attacks but counters with MP-stealing attack... or it counters every physical attack with Chaos Zone. Even if you're immune to Confuse (which is mandatory), you still have to sit through shrill noises and an abrupt action pause. All while it can still throw out powerful attacks, requiring you to constantly use Lapises, Megalixirs, or waste your valuable turns casting party-wide heals. Frog Drop and Dino Tail will not work here.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • It's possible, through glitches, to remove armor from your party and counterintuitively shoot their defenses through the roof.
  • The save dialogue has the highest priority when triggered; cue clever routing to use them to skip otherwise unskippable cutscenes.
  • The Dream Devourer has the highest HP of any encounter in the game - so high, in fact that it actually approaches the max. This would be intimidating, except that monster HP wraps back around if it exceeds this value. By "accidentally" healing it with the wrong attacks, one can render this boss pathetically easy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The often-repeated joke about gear from as far back as prehistoric times being better/stronger than items made in the future takes on a new level when you think of planned obsolescence. It's entirely possible that civilization up to Lavos' attack subscribed to this theory.
  • Algetty, the village of non-magical humans in 12,000 B.C. is referred to as "the village of the Earthbound ones" in the English translation. Even though it was a coincidence, another RPG under this title was released at the same time.
  • Akira Toriyama's Only Six Faces art style means that Crono looks like Son Goku with red hair. Cue Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and the introduction of the Super Saiyan God form, wherein Goku's hair turns red.
    • This game also wouldn't be the last time Akira Toriyama would be involved which features time traveling as a major plot element.
  • A headgear item that protects the user from the Stop and Slow statuses is called the Time Hat. In 2017, A Hat in Time was released.
• Ho Yay:
  • Glenn and Cyrus. Especially in the port.
  • Frog and Crono, to a lesser extent. The character that plays the Crono resurrection scene is determined by a priority list, presumably with the characters that are closer to Crono having a higher priority. Marle's first, Lucca's second. Guess who's third?
• Hype Backlash: Given the tremendous amount of praise the game has received for many years, this was inevitable. Almost no one is going to say this is a bad game, but since most fans gloss over Chrono Trigger's notable flaws and the fact it is remarkably short for a JRPG has resulted in a lot of gamers disappointed with the game and confused as to why it is so beloved. Most notably, former Senior Vice President Shinji Hashimoto disagreed at E3 2009:
  Hashimoto: Why does everyone ask about Chrono Trigger?
  ???: (paraphrased) The game was adored by fans.
  Hashimoto: That's not what the sales tell me! If people want a sequel, they should buy more!^note There are mitigating circumstances to the original 1995 release such as the lack of the RPG genre's popularity in the West pre-Final Fantasy VII, the game being released late into the SNES's life cycle, and its unusually high price tag, all of which were factors that played into the failure of another critically-lauded JRPG released in America at that time. However, his statement could very well be including the re-releases on the original PlayStation and DS in 2000 and 2008/09, respectively.
• I Knew It!: Even before the remake, there was the occasional theory that Dalton was responsible for Guardia's destruction between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The facts that Crono outright dies against Lavos and does not need to be revived and Magus can be recruited instead of killed, not to mention the fact that he isn't the Big Bad at all, are an old hat for anyone who's even remotely familiar with the game, not to mention the former is one of the most remembered and discussed surprises of its era.
  • The fact that this game had multiple endings depending on when you kill Lavos. When this game was released, multiple endings were a new concept and few other games had them at the time, and those that did generally only had one or two alternate endings. The fact that this game had 12 different endings was a surprise to many. Similarly, one of the biggest sleds is the fact that Lavos can be defeated at Ocean Palace if you can avert the Hopeless Boss Fight aspect.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The most common criticism brought against the game, especially in the new millennium, when JRPGs and video games as a whole are expected to last for much longer than they did in 1995. However, even some of those critics admit that the tightly plotted story might make up for its shortness, and with multiple endings and a New Game Plus feature, the game is meant to be played multiple times and it being short helps picking it up for future playthroughs.
• Jerkass Woobie: Magus, thanks to a mixture of being incredibly badass but having one of the more tragic backstories in the game.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Most of the game's villains are beloved amongst the fanbase in some way, shape, or form. Lavos, Magus, and Azala are strong examples of Evil Is Cool, Ozzie, Flea, and Slash are enjoyed for being Laughably Evil, and Queen Zeal and Mother Brain are considered really scary villains. However, the two most disliked characters amongst fans are Yakra XIII and Dalton, who, while still villains, are less proactive villains and have more upfront Jerkass moments. Yakra XIII is disliked both for getting Crono sentenced to death via a really flimsy court case and making Marle's family life actively worse while disguised as the Chancellor, while Dalton is disliked for his Gasshole tendencies, being a generally egotistical nuisance who puts the party through one of the game's worst dungeons, and for being implied to be the one responsible for the game's Happy Ending Override.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Lucca is popularly shipped with most of the other playable characters, and even with some NPCs. Crono is the most popular, but she also gets shipped with Robo, Marle, and just about everyone else.
• Low-Level Run: One of the games this is practiced with; it's possible to finish with a Level 1 Crono.
• Magnificent Bastard: Magus was once Janus, prince of the Kingdom of Zeal in Antiquity, until Lavos destroyed the kingdom and sent Janus forward in time to the Middle Ages. There, choosing the name Magus, he became the leader of the non-humans, deceiving them and declaring war on the Kingdom of Guardia. By doing so, he sought to gain enough power to summon and kill Lavos. When Crono and the party disrupt this plan, Magus is sent back in time to the Kingdom of Zeal before Lavos destroyed it. Disguising himself as a Prophet, Magus used his knowledge of history to gain the favor of Queen Zeal, positioning himself to kill Lavos when it surfaces. When this fails, Magus can be recruited as a party member, recognizing he cannot kill Lavos himself. If recruited, he leaves the party to try to find his missing sister. Selfish and never truly turning good, Magus is nevertheless a brilliant, powerful and determined sorcerer that defied the Evil Overlord archetype with Hidden Depths.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Thanks to YTMND, the tune "Burn! Bobonga!" from the game has forever become associated with Brian Peppers, a sex offender from Ohio whose odd-looking physical deformities granted him memetic status.
  • Fans of Sonic Oddball Crackups are also familiar with "Burn! Bobonga!" as the theme song accompanying Michael Jackson's appearances in the animations, who's known himself for sexual assault allegations.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "But you're still hungry."^ExplanationIf you use the Enertron in the Future, you'll get a good night's sleep in a few seconds, but the characters' excited victory animations will give way to disappointed looks and a stomach rumbling sound, followed by the message
  • The similarities between Robo's theme and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up".
  • From Awesome Games Done Quick: WONDERSHOT!^note Named after Lucca's ultimate weapon that uses the Random Number Generator that deals either the tiniest of attacks to three times the damage.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Queen Zeal crosses the MEH when she forces her own daughter Schala to help her activate the Mammon Machine to gain immense power from Lavos, which disturbs the creature's slumber and results in it killing Crono. Schala is a kind and gentle young woman who is internally conflicted by her love for her mother and the knowledge that her mother has fallen into insanity to the point that power is all she cares about, not even her own children.
  • The Chancellor to King Guardia XXXIII almost crosses the MEH when he accuses Crono of kidnapping Marle/Princess Nadia, puts him on trial, tricks the prison warden into believing Crono was found guilty even if he is found innocent, and sentences him to death by execution; but you could make the argument that the Chancellor is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who is taking his duty to protect Marle way too seriously. That is, until he later takes advantage of the strained relationship between Marle and her father by lying to her about how her mother died, telling her that her father refused to see her in her final moments and that "one could say he killed her". At this moment, it is clear that the Chancellor has no good intentions. Subverted; he's actually Yakra XIII, who has been plotting against Crono and Marle's family ever since they defeated his distant ancestor in 600 A.D.. Yakra XIII captured the real Chancellor and has been impersonating him all along, and the real Chancellor is an honest legal judge.
• Narm:
  • While the subplot of Marle and her father falling out with each other has its emotional ups and downs, there's one moment that doesn't really work: if Marle presents King Guardia with beef jerky, because it's his favorite, he'll scold Marle for giving him food high in cholesterol and accuse her of trying to kill him, worsening their already strained relationship. Compared to everything else in the subplot, making a relationship worse by trying to give someone beef jerky is pushing it.
  • The SNES translation turned Slash's kiai when he bum-rushes you into an actual sentence—"Yes, indeed!" Try saying that to someone the next time you smack them around.
  • One change in the newer translation that nobody minded was altering the exchange between Marle and Doan so that he comments on how "hope" is a word he hasn't heard in a long time, but he nevertheless likes the sound of it. This worked far better than it did the SNES translation, which ran with the implausible idea that the word "healthy" literally did not exist in his vocabulary.
  • In the original translation, returning to the End of Time after resurrecting Crono and speaking to Magus causes him to bluntly tell you, "You got whacked, 'cuz you're weak." An incredibly ridiculous slang-filled statement coming out of Magus' mouth.
• One True Threesome: With both Marle and Lucca being popular ship partners for Crono, it should come as no surprise that Crono/Marle/Lucca is seen as an outcome where everyone is happy. It helps that Crono/Marle and Crono/Lucca fans are usually very civil towards each other.
• Player Punch:
  • Failing to save Lucca's mother from her accident. But if at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.
  • Failing to defeat Lavos. If the party gets knocked out, you’re treated to a cutscene where the entire world is destroyed by Lavos. Making things worse is that after the player sees Earth's surface ravaged from space, they hear Lavos' scream accompanied by the words "But... The future refused to change..." almost as though Lavos is taunting the player for failing to stop him.
  • The Ocean Palace Disaster is five player punches in a row. Magus tries to stop Lavos and fails, Crono dies, Schala disappears, Lavos awakens 14,000 years early and destroys Zeal, and then the Choose Your Party screen comes up without Crono in it, proving that he was indeed Killed Off for Real. Being a game about time travel, it is possible to bring Crono back, but it's still one heck of a punch to the gut.
• Polished Port:
  • The Nintendo DS version added new weapons, extra New Game Plus sidequests, and a new Superboss to help tie this game into Chrono Cross. It also features the anime FMV sequences from the PlayStation version and polishes some the gameplay mechanics. The two scrapped materials in the game, the Singing Mountain tune and a volcano dungeon, finally make it in the game in separate occasions. The localization also has been revised from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System version and correcting the inaccuracies it had (though a subsection of fans argue that the SNES localization had more nuance to it). The only major catch is that the game's audio takes a noticeable downgrade, due to the limitations of the DS's sound chip compared to the Sony-owned SNES one; thankfully, it's not as bad as with Game Boy Advance ports of SNES games.
  • After post-launch efforts, the 2018 PC version addresses many of the problems it had from its initial release. It features a UI and HUD that is much more controller and keyboard friendly by default, fixes the game's text font to be closer to the DS version, added an option to disable the smoothing filter, high quality FMVs, features widescreen support, remastered audio, and the extra content from the DS port.
• Porting Disaster:
  • The game received a PlayStation port which featured some extras the Super Nintendo version didn't have, new anime FMV sequences and a bonus mode, but the anime sequences are infrequent and novelty of the bonus mode wears off quickly, as this version is marred with Loads and Loads of Loading, with the game having to stop to load between in-game menus and battles.
  • The initial Steam release in February 2018 was a bad port of the mobile version. At launch, reviews were "Mostly Negative", with issues including horribly blurred and distorted graphics, the mobile touchscreen interface constantly being visible even when using a controller or keyboard, said interface being counter-intuitive, and lower quality FMVs, among other glaring problems. Due to the backlash, Square Enix quickly worked on a series of patches in an attempt to rectify many of these issues and include features based on the criticism and feedback it received, including adding an original graphics option based on the original version's graphics and font, high quality FMVs, and widescreen support. The final patch seemed to do the trick, as the reviews of the game slowly worked their way back to a "Mostly Positive" rating.
• Retroactive Recognition: In the Developer's Room ending, one of the field graphics artists will troll you by pretending to reset your system, only to reveal it's just a joke. Said person? Tetsuya Nomura.
• Robo Ship: Robo/Lucca. Especially if you interpret the strong resemblance of the lyrics of "Never Gonna Give You Up" to Robo's theme as intentional, even though it wasn't, and then take the lyrics of that song to represent how Robo feels about Lucca.
• Sacred Cow: Chrono Trigger is near-universally regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made, with nary an unkind word being said about it. That said, some believe that it doesn't live up to its reputation.
• The Scrappy: In a game with many great and memorable villains ranging from diabolical, to tragic, to comedic, Dalton sticks out for being a joke at best, and a nuisance who overstays his welcome and gets away with more than he should at worst. But the sorest point is, according to Chrono Cross and Updated Re-releases of Trigger, his hand in somehow militarizing Porre and destroying the Kingdom of Guardia, effectively making it so everyone dies in 5 years instead of 999.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Athenian Water/Revive is an item that revives a KO'd ally with 50 HP, an amount that quickly becomes utterly pitiful. By mid-game, regular Mooks can easily reduce a revived ally's HP to single digits or KO them with one attack. This can be circumvented by having a second ally ready with a Mid-Potion to immediately restore 200 more HP (which doesn't really work if two playable characters are KO'd, as there can only be three active playable characters at any one time), but you'd be better off using Crono's Raise or Marle's Arise Techs for revival (although those don't work if they're KO'd).
  • The race against Johnny in 2,300 A.D. It's optional and you only have to do it once, but the "race" leaves a lot to be desired. It's just Johnny repeatedly trying to bump into you or block your path for thirty seconds or so before the finish line, and it all comes down to boosting at the right moment to win the race. It's not hard to do, but getting the timing down may take a few tries before you're allowed to move on.
  • Unavoidable encounters. This isn't a big deal in dungeons that you're only going to visit once, since you expect to be attacked. But when you're just trying to get to a Gate to progress the story or get where you need to go, dealing with trash mobs quickly gets annoying, especially in the early part of the game before you're allowed to travel through time at will. The Lost Sanctum in the DS and PC ports is especially bad at this; you'll be going up and down the mountain about thirty times to do everything, and you'll have to deal with some of the aforesaid trash mobs every time you do.
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Magus is drawn in Fan Art as a typical White Hair, Black Heart type (that is, in addition to his long white hair, he is also drawn very pretty). Toriyama's original character design for him is anything but, better resembling a mix of Kibito Kai and Piccolo Jr. Later games in the series imply that, despite Toriyama's design, he really is quite attractive.
  • To a lesser extent, some female characters like Lucca and Ayla, who tend to be depicted as much more attractive than their somewhat cutesy official art.
  • In-game, Frog is only half of Crono's height and artwork of him is almost always Ugly Cute. Not in fan art.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Millennial Fair is here! Let's race again, or do another strength test, or win another cat! Or beat up Gato and his metal joins for 15 Silver Points! Huh? Lucca's testing a machine? Who cares about THAT?! This is way too much fun!
• Signature Song: "Corridors of Time", the 12,000 B.C. overworld theme, tends to get referenced the most often of all pieces of music in this game, thanks to perfectly capturing the visual beauty of the land of Zeal in audio form.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Robo's theme sounds quite similar to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." It's an odd feeling being Rickrolled in the middle of a video game, especially when Robo's introduction misleads you into thinking it's a boss fight. It's especially funny because when Yasunori Mitsuda was asked about it, he said he honestly hadn't heard of Astley when he was composing the music for this game. This eventually came full circle with the "RoboRoll" mashup.
  • "Singing Mountain", an unused theme in the game's code (originally intended for a dungeon in 65,000,000 B.C. that was never completed and ultimately scrapped) later repurposed for a bonus dungeon in the DS port, sounds like a dead ringer for the Castle in the Sky theme, to the point where many have speculated that the song was cut because of the resemblance.
  • "Corridors of Time" is nicked straight from "Ohmu" from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. It also resembles "Sirius" by the Alan Parsons Project — best known in the '90s as the walk-on music for the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls.
  • "Frog's Theme" is a soundalike of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home".
  • The Guardia Castle theme sounds a whole lot like Percy Faith's "Theme from 'A Summer Place'".
  • "The Trial" sounds like the Pink Floyd song called, wait for it, "The Trial".
• That One Attack: Despite being one of the easiest of Square's RPGs on the whole, there's still a few devastating attacks:
  • Enemies and bosses that have HP to One. Life Shaver (one character) and Halation (all characters). There is a small window where another enemy could follow up with another attack, so be sure to heal immediately.
  • MP Buster, which reduces a characters MP to zero. Some enemies cast it as a final "screw you" when their HP hits zero, just to be jerks.
  • Various HP draining moves from enemies. The way some of those moves work is that it is dependent in your maximum HP, so even weaker enemies who have this move can still do a chunk of damage to your characters. This is why it is always a good idea to keep your character's health to near maximum at all times.
  • Son of the Sun's purple energy ray. Unlike Flare and Flame Counter, it is not a fire attack, and the Ruby Vest and Armor will not reduce its damage. It can hit for over 400 damage, easily killing characters that aren't topped off.
  • Enemies carrying Instant-Death attacks. Yes, enemies. Example 1: Ghaj will counter-attack with such move, so if you do not have a move that can do more than 1350 damage, Ghaj can kill one of your characters. Example 2: Hydraconda's instant-KO bite, which will KO each other first while draining the remaining HP, but once it is alone, you better kill it or else it will continuously instant-kill your characters while draining the remaining HP the KO'd character had.
  • Final Form Spekkio's Luminaire, which will deal extremely high magical damage, capable of doing 800/900+ damage even at Max level.
  • Lavos has two. Grandstone or just a physical attack is enough to do over 1,000 damage to low-defense characters. Dreamweaver is the same thing, but to those who have low magic defense.
  • Dream Devourer's Phantasm. This move is powerful enough to do over 1,000 damage to unprepared characters.
• That One Boss:
  • Masa & Mune, due to being an unexpected Wake-Up Call Boss. A random snippet of information in the town earlier can tell you that using Crono's Wind Slash will stop them from charging their tornado attack, but it's from a random NPC that you're not required to talk to. You might think you're home free after the first round, and then the two become one. The fact you don't get a chance to heal between rounds just makes this more of a headache.
  • Magus, due to the constantly changing barriers. He stops doing this midway throughout the battle, but it's to charge up an extremely powerful Shadow spell that can easily put you in danger from full health. Depending on your party selection, he can be immune to your attacks up to half the time, and will always be immune at least one out of the four.
  • Giga Gaia. There are three targets to hit, with the two hands dual-casting powerful Fire and Shadow spells to mess up your entire team. The hands come back with less health after regeneration, but the hands deal so much damage that it's tough to find a balance between dealing damage and recovering it.
  • The final part of Queen Zeal forces players to only hit her head, as touching the hands kill your MP or leave your HP to 1. If you get her health to half, she will do Halation (all 3 characters get HP to 1) and MP Buster (all MP gone for 1 character); not preparing to heal immediately afterwards and Zeal could use a hit-all spell, killing your entire team.
  • From the DS and PC ports, Once-King Dalton, found in the Dimensional Vortex from 1,000 A.D. At least the clone of Crono found at the end of the dungeon is somewhat manageable, since a White Plate will render its light-based spells worthless. Dalton has no such trick; he uses all four elements, and hits like a truck. After he Turns Red, he'll use MP Buster as a counterattack, and use spells which can one-shot characters without enough Magic Defense at full health, forcing you to waste turns keeping your HP and MP high. Dalton's also surprisingly quick, meaning he'll be spamming these spells over and over, making it very hard to build up any kind of offensive momentum.
• That One Sidequest: The Lost Sanctum in the DS and PC ports. A series of blatant Fetch Quests involving inescapable, scripted battles that reset; going up and down the same mountain at least seven times; obtuse methods of progression, exacerbated by event flags only triggering after talking to NPCs despite having all the items necessary. Even if you complete it, many of the rewards are quickly outclassed by those found in the Dimensional Vortexes. As the icing on the cake, the best reward is an armor that makes Lucca immune to all four elements, and it's obtained by fighting randomly-appearing Metal Slime enemies instead of obtained from a quest.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Nintendo DS version's updated translation is disliked by some fans. Some of the changes were Frog's Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, some item/monster/tech names, and a bit of dialogue cleanup here and there. Locations were also renamed, and a good number of iconic lines such as "but you're still hungry" and "did you just come out of the closet?" were replaced with much wordier and flowery variations. This guide tells everything that was changed from the SNES/PS1 to the DS versions. Not all of it is bad though, and the DS script is in fact significantly closer to the original Japanese script, although not completely, and still takes various creative liberties including preserving various terms from the original translation. The translation also changed beloved names such as "Mystics" to "Fiends" and similarly frequently referred to Magus as the "Fiendlord", which actually is not particularly closer to the original Japanese script, where they are know as "Demons" and "Demon King" respectively.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Frog King seen in Frog's flashback might have made an interesting boss, but he never shows up outside said flashback. Interestingly, unused battle data for the Frog King does exist in the game, implying that he may have been intended to be fought as a proper boss at one point, but for whatever reason (presumably time constraints), it was cut.
  • Given that Yakra's background plotting is second only to his shape-shifting abilities, one could be forgiven for assuming that Janus's comments about the Queen were actually right, and that truly wasn't their mother. Exacerbated later on with Mount Woe, where the ancestors of the fiends are clearly seen to reside.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: With how abnormally difficult the battle against Lavos in the Ocean Palace is —being the hardest version—, you'd think being able to defeat him would result in an ending where Zeal was never destroyed and magic was still common, possibly existing all the way to the present. Instead, the ending is the same "The Dream Project" ending you get for beating Lavos at the earliest possible point in a New Game Plus.
• Values Dissonance: A number of developers in the "The Dream Project" ending comment on the amount of crunch work they put into the game, joking about the amount of weight they lost and how much faster they've aged. In today's era of increasing awareness towards the serious harm to physical and mental health caused by crunch culture, such an environment would not be addressed so lightly, and would be seen in general as a bad thing.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Azala is apparently female, because she and Nizbel II are the only prehistoric characters who know what pronouns are. Reptites don't have Non-Mammal Mammaries, apparently. This isn't helped by Azala's gender not being referenced ever in the SNES version. Thankfully, Nizbel II settled the matter in the DS version.
  • Flea, who looks like a woman but still takes great offense when the party assumes he's a woman. According to Flea, since power is beautiful and he's powerful, looking like a woman is appropriate.
• Wangst: Frog bears regret over watching Cyrus die, and feels as though he's failed even after he helps Crono and Lucca rescue Queen Leene. He spends some time brooding in his hideout until the others give Frog the Hero's Badge and reforged Masamune, at which point he decides to see what would happen if he made a go of it. About five hours of the game is dedicated to snapping Frog out of his funk, and it's one where he paints himself as a failure for failing to save one person when he was hopelessly outmatched.
• The Woobie: Frog, Robo, and Schala. In-game, Ayla woobie-fies Azala right before the latter dies, saying she won't forget her.
• Woolseyism: Done by Ted Woolsey himself, no less:
  • Likely the source of Ozzie/Slash/Flea being named as such rather than their original condiment-themed names. Also, Schala was originally named "Sara" in the Japanese version; Janus was named "Jakki." Similar to Tina/Terra, this is a case where the names that would've sounded "exotic" to Japanese speakers, but commonplace to English speakers, were changed to preserve the exoticism. Same goes for the Gurus' names, Gaspar, Melchior and Belthasar, which were "Gash", "Hash", and "Bash" in the Japanese version, but make a lot more sense in the English translation.
  • In a subversion of using an "exotic" name, Woolsey changed Marle's real name, Princess Marledia, to Princess Nadia. Also, Janus' Japanese name is Jakki, not Jackie, though it's likely Woolsey didn't know that, as both names are written the same in Japanese.

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