Chrono Trigger arrives on Steam, and the PC version gets fixes after criticism

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Check it out: one of the most beloved RPGs of all time arrived on PC with a bang. On February 27, 2018, Square Enix put Chrono Trigger on sale on Steam, without much fanfare, for those who never played it or wanted to revisit the classic.

For those who don’t know it, the résumé is heavy. Chrono Trigger came out in 1995 on the Super Nintendo and brought together what Square itself called the “Dream Team”: Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy, Yuji Horii, creator of Dragon Quest, and Akira Toriyama, of Dragon Ball, on the character designs. The soundtrack, one of the most remembered of the 16-bit era, is by Yasunori Mitsuda, with participation from Nobuo Uematsu.

In the story, Crono and the gang travel through several eras, from prehistory to a destroyed future, to stop the arrival of Lavos, a creature that destroys the planet. Battles happen on the map itself, with no separate screen, and the characters combine moves into double and triple attacks. And there are the multiple endings, which change depending on when you face the final boss, one of the reasons folks beat it more than once.

The Steam version brought the extra content from the 2008 Nintendo DS edition, like the Lost Sanctum and Dimensional Vortex dungeons, and one more ending, which hints at Chrono Cross.

What came next

The party was short-lived. People quickly noticed the PC port was based on the mobile version: smoothed graphics that clashed with the original, menus designed for touchscreens, and poorly adapted keyboard and gamepad controls. Reception turned ugly. Square Enix answered with updates: the first patch came out in April 2018 and brought an option with the original graphics, which can be toggled with the high-resolution look. There were five major updates between April and August 2018, and a sixth, in March 2022, added 21:9 ultrawide support.

We promised a review of this version at the time, and it never came out; here is the record for anyone who landed here looking for it.