If you wouldn't have said Chrono Cross, I'd have never guessed it, but now it's totally clear. That game really irritated me in that I just couldnt get into it like Chrono Trigger. I played them within a year or so of each other, but maybe playing the CT DS remake spoiled me as playing CC on the PSP (PS1 Classic) just felt bad. Doesnt help that I lost the story thread just about when the whole world(s) opened up.
Chrono Cross and Trigger are very endearing games where whichever you play first will stick harder than whichever you play second. I played Cross first when it first came out and it quickly became and always will be my favorite game. The story is extremely convoluted and every time I go back to it I wind up pulling new things out of the story line. Stories like that are neat, but admittedly the writers bit off way more than they could chew and created something of a mess. It DOES make sense, but it's very difficult and isn't the kind of story you'll ever fully understand without reading write-ups and wikis online about it all. All that said, Trigger's story isn't without its oddities and issues as well, though it's a hell of a lot simpler.
Trigger really is an amazing game as well, though. I've played it through a handful of times; I think I was 14 or so when I beat it the first time. It'll always be close to my heart as well, it's just different.
Cross received so much flak because people wanted Chrono Trigger 2, though, and that's definitely not what Cross is. It's just another game in the same universe with the same vibe and quality as Trigger. I greatly prefer Cross when it comes to gameplay with its unique brand of turn based combat. I've never been a huge fan of Square's dated ATB. It was revolutionary for its time for sure, but going back to it is just not as accessible as I'd like. Turn based RPGs just aged a hell of a lot better, in my opinion.
I will say that Cross is a bit of a joke when it comes to difficulty, though. If you know what you're doing, you'll rarely if ever have any real difficulties. There's a ROM hack called Time's Anguish that ups the difficulty though and makes the game into something really special. It's worth a try if the easiness of the game is a turn off.
EDIT: I've gotta add that coming at Chrono Cross looking at it as a work of art is definitely a good way to go about it. It's a gorgeous game, from the hand drawn environments, to the best score I've ever come across in a game, to some really inventive character and enemy design. It's experimental in a lot of ways as well when it comes to the story, the non MP magic system, and 40+ playable characters that I don't believe has every been rivaled in another game. A lot of people said it was quantity over quantity when it came to characters, but I will say that a lot of them do have decent parts in the story, have their own side quests, etc. Of course there is a pretty big handful of characters who the game could entirely do without.
EDIT 2: Oh, and definitely play the game on an emulator with filters and whatnot to clean it up. The FF7-FF9 era of Square RPGs didn't age very well graphically, and I don't think the version on the PS Store is all that pretty.
