[Don't blame me for this post. I was at a conference all week and am all out of whack. It probably doesn't make sense, but who cares?]

Chrono Trigger holds a very deep and special place in my heart. It sparked something within me, changing my life. I can still remember the first time I played it, all those years ago. Seeing all those scenes, playing this legendary game, I felt something new, something deep. And it can pretty much be summed up as...

What the bleep do people see in this stupid game?!?

OK, so before I get lynched, I just want to say that I'm not here to mindlessly bash it. I tried to enjoy the game. It's not like I had any prejudice going into it; if anything I was too excited for it (it's the game that rivals the great FF6, after all!) Nothing ever clicked. What lord-of-shadow called beautiful in simplicity, I only saw boring and cliche. What people see as depth of character, I see as cookie cutter and ham-handed. What people call a refreshing use of time travel, I see as simplistic and wasted potential. What people call great gameplay, I see as a few simple gimmicks that can't hide the sheer boredom that it's based on. That first paragraph I wrote is true, more or less. This was the game that first led me to realize what a waste of time RPGs were (although it wasn't until playing FF9 a couple years later that this belief was confirmed). After all, the game felt no different than any of the average RPGs I've played, and I still firmly believe that.

And with that out of the way, let me say that I enjoy reading why people love the game. It's interesting to see what people say, what really managed to connect. Of course, it's usually the music, which always makes me wonder. After all, there's a great deal of subjectivity in music, especially for those of us with little to no talent in it. But we all know how powerful music is, and how it attaches to us emotionally. So is it the music that makes us enjoy the game, or is it the game that we enjoy, and we like the music mostly because it reminds us of said game? For my part, when it comes to listing games that had a large, positive effect on me, Mario 3 is the only one that isn't also associated with awesome music in my mind (and that's also the only one on the list for purely gameplay reasons). Zelda, Metroid, FF6, Castlevania SotN, all are as impressive musically as they are to play. Why is that?

Part of the reason, of course, is that games with bigger budgets tend to be better games, and those games are the ones that get the most emphasis on their music. But it seems as if there's more to it. Music can be the glue that holds a game together. Listening to a theme could bring back memories of a character's personality traits. But does it really? I think back to my own incredibly fond memories of FF6, a game where at least some of the characters are as laughably pathetic as the Chrono Crew. But listening to Relm's theme changes everything. Yes, she's a 2D character with nothing actually special about her. But the music seems to capture her childhood, her innocence, her offbeat, artistic way. It makes her seem more alive than in any moment in the actual game or plot. It enriches her character, not through any inherent quality of her own, but in my connection with her. Could the same thing be happening here?

It makes you wonder what really makes these games great. People vaguely allude to it all coming together in some magical way, but without being able to explain precisely how. It seems clear to me that in most of these situations (including me with FF6), it is not necessarily what is in the game itself that makes people fall so deeply in love with it, but how the person responds to the game. Why is it I can see characters like Marle and Lucca being the most pathetically cardboard cutouts Square created since FF7's Cid (well, ok, so they came first, but whatever) while others seem to think they're brilliantly designed? Because people are inferring what is not there, emphasizing their own imaginations and thoughts above what the developers created. The 3rd or 4th time I played through FF6, I suddenly realized how little was actually there; how so many major plot events were much shorter than I remembered them. I had been so enraptured by, well, something my first time playing that I didn't quite catch how much was my own interpretation and how much was Square's. And of course, now when I play it doesn't matter, as I've built the game up so much in my mind that each of these simplistic plot points are so enriched, so full of meaning that their true simplicity doesn't actually matter anymore.

Or take Zelda as another example. The plot is childish, the various attempts to create a unified mythology are haphazardly put together. Quite frankly, any underlying themes and connections besides the obvious ones are more likely to be coincidence than any genius on Nintendo's part. Yet look how many people are enraptured in the overarching storyline and the Hylian mythos. I could talk for hours about Hylian religion, mythology, and legends, despite there really not being much there to the average observer.

So bringing this back to Chrono Trigger, it always makes me wonder what the bare minimum is to make these types of games connect. After all, when it comes to people becoming emotionally involved in a game, it's always these same few where it happens. So there's obviously something there. Is it just the aesthetics then? People have already testified how important they are to them with this game. Is something else needed? Do the characters need to at least be interesting stereotypes to make people ignore how poorly designed they are? Or do they just need one semi interesting character like Magus to hide the rest of them? Just how banal can the plot be before it becomes too banal? Or do you even need much of a plot at all? After all, FF6 doesn't have one for the entire second half of the game! Of course, I see it as a plus, but there are plenty of RPG afficianados out there who still enjoy that game while clinging to the pathetic belief that these videogames are actually telling good stories. Can people accurately define just what it is that Chrono Trigger ACTUALLY has that makes it so well loved?

For my part, the bare minimum includes at least semi-interesting gameplay, which completely rules CT out. Maybe if they had something even half as deep as FF6, I could have looked past all of its many faults and just enjoyed the music. As it stands though, I can get a better effect from popping in a Beatles CD and playing Solitaire.