Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals

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So roughly a week ago I picked up Chrono Trigger DS. I had avoided getting the game for a long while for the simple reason that I had played and beaten it so many freaking times that it seemed silly to re-purchase it. But buyer's impulse + I'm-never-going-to-hook-up-my-SNES-again combined (insert Dual Tech joke here) to get me to pick it up.

It's amusing and yet also disappointing to play this game again. And ironically, it's both for the same reason: I have played and beaten this game so many times I know it near exactly by heart. So on one hand it's funny that even after all these years I still recall every strategy, every chest location, every puzzle solution. However, on the other it does take some of the enjoyment out of it. Hell, I can recall where every enemy encounter occurs.

The game does have some new content, though it does fall short a little. Easily the best part of the new content is the final boss fight that is unlocked after completing the second optional set of dungeons. It is a) surprisingly difficult compared to the rest of the new content, as even with characters in the late 60s the boss was doing significant damage (and he's fast too), and b) makes a very clear connection to Chrono Cross. Hell, Square-Enix even created some new sprites for the final boss and the scenes before and after, which is nice considering all the other "new" enemies are simply re-colors.

Overall? Well it's still Chrono Trigger. Nothing's going to cause it to be bad, that's for damn sure. The new content is mostly a "do once, never do again" type of thing, but since the replay value of CT is mostly the extra endings, that's not a big deal. Ultimately I can always have the unrealistic yet somewhat pleasant hope that this is just one more sale that might convince Square-Enix to give another thought to Chrono Break (or whatever it would be called).