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90% of Chrono Trigger fans you'll meet will say Chrono Cross is a despicable scourge to a legendary game, and does not deserve to be mentioned in continuity or substance. Another 9% will like it, but not as much as Trigger. I am the 1%. When taking into account that Cross is not a direct sequel to Trigger, you will find that it is, in fact, an immersive, gorgeous and awe-inspiring conclusion to what is undoubtedly the greatest trilogy of RPGs to ever be constructed. I have 5 main reasons as to why, in my opinion, Cross surpasses Trigger and becomes the most worthwhile RPG I have ever played.
#1- The soundtrack. You may think of this as a given point towards Cross, but it has been proven time and time again that technical prowess does not make for an automatically better soundtrack. For example, many believe that the soundtrack of Mega Man 2 is the best in the entire franchise, despite the fact that Mega Man 2 is the second-oldest game in the franchise as well. That being said, Cross's soundtrack is brilliant. Each and every piece reflect the environments and atmosphere perfectly, be it a blood-pumping introduction or a somber boss theme. Every track culminates into an overall tropical and mystical theme, which I felt Trigger lacked. Trigger didn't really know what direction it wanted to take in terms of its story and presentation, leading to instances or tracks that felt very disjointed from the rest of the game, which Cross has no problems with, and instead delivers a brilliant Yasunori Mitsuda score with amazing effects to boot.
#2- The presentation. Again, this is not entirely a given with the PS1's technical superiority over the SNES. This addresses the same problem with Trigger: It didn't know what to do with its story and a lot of its visual style, which admittedly was difficult to perform in the first place with the crossing of time periods. Cross definitely feels like it adheres to an overall theme, that theme being the ocean. The ocean is the center of all life and as such is the center of your expeditions and your journey. The open sea is open to you to discover secrets and treasure, whereas in Trigger you're restricted until the latter third of the game to freely explore. Cross highly rewards you for your use of the sea, and as such feels like a much more open-ended and friendly game, letting you play it however you want. As such, the visuals also fall in line with this theme, as opposed to the oddities of Trigger, which make the areas that much more fun to travel in and explore.
#3- The battle system. Cross offers the most unique turn-based combat I've found. To me, Trigger's combat was a lot like Final Fantasy VI, with minor tweaks, even though critics and fans lauded its "fresh" combat. Cross is much more fresh to me. The element and attack systems resonated beautifully, and alienated many typical JRPG problems. In Cross, you cannot grind, you cannot easily spam magic and you cannot obtain early nuke spells. You can equip "elements" (magic) to your "grid" and only use them once per battle, which was a problem in Trigger. Towards the end of the game, all you had to do to win many fights was spam techs such as Confuse, Luminaire, Antipode, 3D Attack or Dino Tail along with the many Megalixirs the game gave you and you would generally win. Cross requires you to be more resourceful and clever, and rewards you as such with many gateways to powerful elements and weapons. As stated earlier, the battle system is fresh and much more balanced than that of Trigger.
#4- The story. This is something many Trigger fans bash Cross for, but I feel it's one of the game's strong points. Cross is not a direct sequel, it's more of a theoretical leap: What were the effects of Crono's time travel? Trigger touched on this (in its ending, with Robo's reluctance to return to his now nonexistent world) but never went into much detail. Cross fills that void with an ingenious tie-in to the events of Trigger while at the same time generating new events for Serge and his crew to experience. When dealing with such a subject as time travel, many plot holes will arise unless you cover them with extreme detail. Cross does this, Trigger does not. Cross's story is also open to interpretation without creating said plot holes with subjects such as the Dead Sea, FATE and the Reptites. The story is so curiously open-ended and yet at the same time flowing and cohesive that it creates a truly unforgettable experience.
#5- The overall leitmotif of the game. Many criticize Cross for containing 40+ characters, but when I think of it, I see a masterful tie-in to what Serge really is. Even though you can recruit over 40 characters, none of them show any affection or relation to you, which reminds me that Serge is tragically not supposed to exist. In the accepted timeline, Serge died 10 years ago, and all he is, is a ghost wandering the archipelago of "The Nest". The true ending seals Serge's fate, and everyone he meets proceeds to leave and completely forget about his existence with the collapse of the parallel worlds. Even though you've over 40 characters by your side, you couldn't possibly be more alone... This, in my eyes, is one of the greatest underlying stories I have ever observed in any form of media to date.
Well, that would be all from my side. I apologize for wasting your time, but I felt it needed to be said to justify all the remarks I get for being a horrible Chrono series fan. Nonetheless, thank you very much for reading this rant, and have a nice evening.