Even after peeling away the shell of nostalgia, Chrono Trigger is a very basic JRPG, so it’s comprehensible that folks had been a bit miffed when the current PC launch of the sport was a messy port of the Android version of the sport with no scarcity of technical points. Today, it acquired its first main patch, which fits a protracted method to getting the sport again on monitor.
The enhancements start proper on the title display on this new replace, with the basic Chrono Trigger emblem and ticking pendulum on the title display restored to one thing approaching the SNES unique. Previously, that they had in some way managed to knock the pendulum’s audio out of sync with the animation, not precisely the best of omens for a recreation about controlling time itself. They’ve additionally restored the Playstation model’s anime intro to its right place, which is sweet.
Starting the sport, gamers will probably be introduced with a alternative – filtered ‘HD’ sprites (which look smudged and create rather more seen seams between background tiles) and the brand new ‘Original’ type (as seen within the screenshots above and under), which retains the good chunky pixel-art of the unique recreation. It’s nonetheless not precisely as you bear in mind on the SNES – there are some new transparency results, and the sport renders in native widescreen – however they appear to be preserving the enhancements whereas shedding the poor selections.
Another enchancment is the fonts used. They’re nearer to the unique, though nonetheless not fairly there but and nonetheless a bit exhausting to parse in some menus. They’ve tried to listened to criticism and add some refined drop-shadowing to the extra pixelly textual content, but it surely doesn’t fully match the originals at current. They’ve additionally considerably improved the look of textual content entry packing containers, which appeared impressively dangerous within the preliminary launch model. You can see the full patch notes here, together with some earlier than/after photographs evaluating the 2 visible kinds.
The essential difficulty remaining is the interface, which nonetheless seems to be and feels so much prefer it belongs on a touchscreen machine. Fortunately, Square promise that their second replace for the sport will probably be centered on bettering the UI, with modes particular for keyboard and controller play, with the present mouse/tablet-centric UI being relegated to a secondary (and presumably seldom-chosen) possibility.
Chrono Trigger is out on Steam now for £11/$15. If they maintain these updates coming, it’d simply be price taking part in on PC over the alternate options as an alternative of simply monitoring down the SNES or DS model.
