I'm a great fan of Chrono Trigger, by far my favourite Japanese RPG, so after I purchased a second hand PlayStation to play Final Fantasy: Tactics and found a used copy of Chrono Cross was for sale, I figured it couldn't hurt to buy it. This was a good while back, but after I reached the Water Dragon Island I put it aside and haven't played it since. Anyway, I was wondering what players who'd gone through the whole thing thought about it, if it picks up later on, if I should play it again and so forth. For informational purposes, here's why I'm a bit wary of the game:

Graphics: This game falls in one of the very few categories of graphics that piss me off - gratuitous early 3D. It's blocky and rough, but that doesn't inherently bother me if it's relevant to the gameplay, games such as Mario 64 had those early graphics, but it was necessary because the game was actually in 3D. But Chrono Cross, like Final Fantasy VII, doesn't actually need 3D. The character can really only move left and right, back and forward, or variations along that plane. No third dimension. In fact, the maps themselves aren't 3D, I imagine they're just some pathing overlaid on the flat image. I know that objectively, the models look better than the Chrono Trigger sprites, but they still feel like they look worse, presumeably because the disconnect between the blocky models and that painted scenery is very jarring, whereas in Chron Trigger everything used the same style. And I'm certain that they could have used the available technology to make far more fluid sprites for the game.

Scale: I don't know exactly how far I am into the game. Not far, I should expect, but still. Things seem so tiny. Talking about the Porre continental army leaves me puzzled, isn't Porre that village where the mayor will pay you five gil to dance like a chicken? I kinda always assumed it was part of Guardia Kingdom. Anyway, the point is it feels strange to go from travelling the entire planet across five distinct epochs to being restricted to a handful of islands that probably didn't even appear on the world map. That's not the real complaint though. When I first got sucked into the other world, I was certainly very interested in what was happening (special props to the music which really gave you the 'where am I' feeling. But somewhere after that I felt like I wasn't really going anywhere significant. The Hydra Marshes, the Pirate Ship... they felt like dungeons because dungeons were needed. This, especially, is something that might get better as the story picks up, so if it does so do tell.

Number of characters: Like I said, I don't think I'm very far into the game, but I already have a lot of characters available. Seriously, this is verging on Final Fantasy VI territory. But most of the characters from Final Fantasy VI actually had an occasion to be the focus of attention, to display their uniqueness, to draw attention. And since that game didn't have an explicitly main character (I mean, it's got to be Terra, but Locke and Celes both take the focus at various parts) they were free to split the group frequently, forcing me to play with more characters. But thus far, there's really so little to say about these characters. Some of them look like they might amount to something given the chance, but I have some dog just because, a scarecrow or giant voodoo doll or whatnot, and so forth, and I'm pretty sure they're bonus characters or something. Even the characters encountered in the regular game don't have much opportunity to make an impression, because you've got a three person party, Serge is fixed, and Kid is by far the one who has demonstrated the most significance to the story. Which leaves one spot open at a time, to be distributed among around a dozen characters. Will any of these people actually become interesting or significant?

Also, the bloody accents.

EDIT: As an aside, I haven't seen a Nu yet, and this saddens me.