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As a fan of Chrono Trigger I was excited to see a full sequel with the original cast-not Chrono Cross. This hack does a lot and has some good ideas, but also has a lot of problems.

Good:

New story, new locations, and the same cast of characters. Some techs have been replaced and they are good for the most part. Magus has a useless new ability called Double Tap which is only good if you exploit a glitch that makes it cause 14,000 damage. Ayla has a bunch of new techs and I liked the changes.

There are some interesting story moments with altering the timeline. Some new locations are interesting but poorly implemented. The Coliseum was interesting, but tried to include a FF7 handicap system that gave you bad armor/helmet/weapon/accessory which replaced your current equipment with bottom-tier stuff. The problem is that it doesn't go back to normal after you finish. Each time you get a handicap, you have to re-equip your party after combat. There's a shopping mall in 1999 AD that has absolutely nothing in it aside from a few NPCs and Johnny (who sends you on an annoying trading quest). There is only one actual shop there and it only opens when the final dungeon become available.

Bad:

A lot. First and foremost, the balance is horrendous. Regular enemies are damage sponges and essentially require the use of techs to beat in a timely manner. This become painfully obvious in a few spots of the game where you are required to fight enemies with a single character. 1v1 battles are a huge pain and single character versus groups of enemies in damn near impossible without intense grinding (especially when that character is Marle). You'll be using a lot of items just to survive because you will need to heal after almost every battle. Until the end of the game, you will have

Shops don't update very often and when they do, the difference in power/defense was huge. Toward the end of the game, all of the equipment if overpowered and reverses the difficulty curve for the most part. Late-game enemies still pack a punch and have way too much HP, but Magus has a weapon that makes his critical hit a 9999 damage attack which makes quick work of enemies and bosses.

The dialogue and character changes range from odd to awful. Chrono talking is the biggest offender here, mostly because he comes off as an edgy, emotional loser. There are also a lot of NPCs that will have the exact same dialogue throughout the game when it would make sense for them to react differently. For example, Kino only talks about Ayla taking snoo-snoo from him the entire game. Before you meet Ayla, after Ayla is hurt and bedridden, and when she recovers he still says the same thing.

The main villains are also poorly written. The big bad has a master plan that could have been accomplished right at the start but spends the entire game randomly going around the timeline doing nonsensical things. When you reach the "climax" of the story, he just gives up and says, "Yeah, you guys are right. I'll just go die alone in the darkness now." and for some reason, the party feels the need to go hunt him down and kill him. He gave up. Why are we still chasing him?

The other villains all decide to become good guys for no apparent reason after they alter the timeline and you correct it. Lots of illogical choices from everybody. The only villain that felt reasonable was Dalton, but by the end he just faded into poor writing as well.

Overall, this game was a rough slog. I'd only recommend this to hardcore fans that want to grind levels and techs for a few hours before actually tackling the main story. There are a lot of interesting ideas, but the execution was flawed and underwhelming. Spotty writing paired with an irritating difficulty curve makes this a game I will never be replaying.

If you haven't played this, drop whatever it is you are doing and get patching! Really, for a lifelong fan of SNES RPGs, Chrono Trigger, and, to a lesser extent, CT's successors, this hack is a dream project come true. When Chrono Cross came out, which is objectively speaking a great game, CT fans were dejected at the absence of the characters and world they fell in love with. This hack bridges the gap with a great and appropriate story featuring the original cast that explores the consequences of time-traveling to save the world in a more deep way. There are philosophically meaningful quotes from this game that have actually stuck with me years after playing it. Gameplay is balanced and very similar to the original.

It's everything everyone wanted from a CT sequel but didn't get back in the day. I loved the hell out of it!

I mean, they're essentially just THERE. One of the new areas is a shopping mall in the future, but it, and a lot of the other buildings, are mostly just empty rooms. These new areas need to be populated. A shopping mall should have stores, even if you can't necessarily buy anything.