Chrono Trigger - Reception

Reception

The game was a bestseller in Japan. The game's SNES and PS1 iterations have shipped more than 2.36 million copies in Japan and 290,000 abroad. The first two million copies sold in Japan were delivered in only two months. Famicom Tsūshin gave Chrono Trigger first an 8 out of 10 and later a 9 out of 10 in their Reader Cross Review, and the game ended 1995 as the third best-selling game of the year behind Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Reverie and Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. The game was met with substantial success upon release in North America, and its rerelease on the PlayStation as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles package topped the NPD TRSTS PlayStation sales charts for over six weeks. This version was later re-released again in 2003 as part of Sony's Greatest Hits line. Chrono Trigger DS has sold 490,000 copies in Japan, 240,000 in North America and 60,000 in Europe as of March 2009.

Chrono Trigger garnered much critical praise in addition to its brisk sales. Nintendo Power called it Square's "biggest game ever", citing improved graphics, sound, and gameplay over past RPG titles. Chrono Trigger won multiple awards from Electronic Gaming Monthly's 1995 video game awards, including Best Role-Playing Game, Best Music in a Cartridge-Based Game, and Best Super NES Game. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine described Trigger as "original and extremely captivating", singling out its graphics, sound and story as particularly impressive. IGN commented that "it may be filled with every imaginable console RPG cliché, but Chrono Trigger manages to stand out among the pack" with "a story that doesn't take itself too serious " and "one of the best videogame soundtracks ever produced". Other reviewers (such as the staff of RPGFan and RPGamer) have criticized the game's short length and relative ease compared to its peers. Victoria Earl of Gamasutra praised the game design for balancing "developer control with player freedom using carefully-designed mechanics and a modular approach to narrative."

Overall, critics lauded Chrono Trigger for its "fantastic yet not overly complex" story, simple but innovative gameplay, and high replay value afforded by multiple endings. Online score aggregator Game Rankings lists the original Super Nintendo version as the 2nd highest scoring RPG and 25th highest scoring game ever reviewed. In 2009, Guinness World Records listed it as the 32nd most influential video game in history. Nintendo Power listed the ending to Chrono Trigger as one of the greatest endings in Nintendo history, due to over a dozen endings that players can experience. Tom Hall drew inspiration from Chrono Trigger and other console games in creating Anachronox, and used the campfire scene to illustrate the dramatic depth of Japanese RPGs.

Chrono Trigger is frequently listed among the greatest video games of all time. It has placed highly on all six of multimedia website IGN's "top 100 games of all time" lists—4th in 2002, 6th in early 2005, 13th in late 2005, 2nd in 2006, 18th in 2007, and 2nd in 2008. GameSpot included Chrono Trigger in "The Greatest Games of All Time" list released in April 2006, and it also appeared as 28th on an "All Time Top 100" list in a poll conducted by Japanese magazine Famitsu the same year. In 2004, Chrono Trigger finished runner up to Final Fantasy VII in the inaugural GameFAQs video game battle. In 2008, readers of Dengeki Online voted it the eighth best game ever made. Nintendo Power's twentieth anniversary issue named it the fifth best Super Nintendo game. In 2012, it came 3rd place on GamesRadar's "100 best games of all time" list, and 1st place on its "Best JRPGs" list.