So, I played all the Chrono series games… oh, there’s another one? Sort of?

It’s unfortunate that Square has let the series languish. Masato Kato, a key dev in the first two games, has continued the series recently in Another Eden, but after Cross there were plans for a third instalment, Chrono Break, which fell through. Takashi Tokita, one of the co-directors of Trigger, led this game, repurposing some elements of the Break premise for the opening. Otherwise the game takes a lot of cues from Trigger with its time travel to different eras to avert a disaster. Also Magus is pretty much just here in this game, under a different name! So that’s fun.

Dimensions II was launched as a free-to-play game full of timed events, premium currencies, and gacha mechanics. Luckily for everyone it was soon completely reworked, relaunched, and localised as a standalone experience that you can just buy and play through. Narratively and mechanically it has nothing to do with Dimensions 1 by the way, that seems to just be a way of branding certain mobile spinoff games. While 1 had direct control and seemed fiddly to navigate (having been originally designed for feature phones), 2 is more tuned for a touchscreen, like Brave Exvius or Record Keeper were: very menu-driven, fast-paced, and accessible with bite-sized content chunks. Yummy.

My first impressions were that I’d seen it all before. The story retreads Trigger, the characters were all tired tropes. But as I kept playing it sucked me in, the characters got a chance to become deeper as the game gave them time and interactions, especially with the optional light-hearted side events. There were twists and revelations. The plot did start to drag towards the end of the main campaign, and the epilogue arc was stacked with hours of talky cutscenes and very few fights (apparently nothing having been learned from the ponderous backloaded plot dumps of Chrono Cross and Xenogears). By the end I had a positive feeling about the whole thing, it’s just paced inconsistently.

Much like Another Eden, it helps that the main character Morrow is not silent but gets to have a personality. And that you can freely swap your battle party out at any time, and cutscenes just have everyone (or the relevant members) present. This time around the game revolves around the main mechanic of signets, which work a bit like magicite in FF6. They’re character-specific and teach new spells when equipped to one of their four slots, as well as potentially granting passive bonuses and governing which summons you have access to. The baby dragon character Mootie is also a fun addition, a bonus semi-party member like the capsule monsters in Lufia 2, who can be equipped with any signet.

Since I came in expecting a Chrono game, I found the heavy use of Final Fantasy elements, themes, and references distracting. You’ve got crystals, Chaos, all the enemies come from FF, spell names, Moogles, elves and dwarfs, etc. But that’s just the identity of the game. Now I consider it a mashup and came to appreciate all the callbacks to the first four FFs, including lots of name reuse. The idea of Mysidia as a Zeal-type kingdom but actually utopic, yet doomed, was pretty cool.

And speaking of that, it works well as a Chrono Tigger-esque time travel story, but with all the FF trappings and cosmology. The consequences of time travel are dealt with, attention given to how each era is changed geographically and politically by actions in the previous ones, as well as some characters’ personal reactions to the changing world. Magus—uh, that is, Sorgue—is a particular highlight: he’s immortal and pops up in each era, and you see him mellowing through his interactions with the party and the world’s situation, going through an outright villain redemption arc. It’s nice stuff!

So Dimensions II could use some tightening up around the gills, but I liked a lot of stuff they were doing here. Building up your characters is satisfying and straightforward. The game’s well suited to mobile play in its controls and structure. I’m glad it’s a complete game without the pressure to constantly spend more. I do keep wondering what it would have been like if they’d gone through with making it a full Chrono game… oh well. As a crossover, it’s a fun novelty.