Chrono Trigger DS is here!

[MinisterofDOOM]

And it's really really well done. Definitely not just a crude port. Square put a LOT of effort onto the touch-screen support as well as the rest of the translation from SNES to DS.What you get is basically all 3 versions of the game. You can choose to play "classic" mode which does away with touch-screen support and plays EXACTLY the way the SNES and PSX versions played. You can even choose to enable the PSX cutscenes or not.And with touch screen mode, the GUI becomes highly configurable. There are shortcut buttons for common menus and commands (like equipment, armor, gear, party, save, etc.) which can be moved around the edge of the screen in any arrangement you want. It's very cool to be able to put the touch screen buttons where YOU think they're most intuitive.

With the two screens and the TONS of options, the game shows you exactly the info you want, where you want, when you want. And with the combination of both touch screen and buttons (this is one of the first games that doesn't make you pick functionality of one at the expense of the other) there's always a quick and effective way to do what you need to do.

The game also features some new quests and a new ending that ties in with Chrono Cross (I haven't seen it yet). It has the bonus content from the PSX version, and it also has a new multiplayer mode in which you raise monsters for fighting (kind of a strange addition, but it might be fun...haven't tried it yet). It's just too bad we didn't get real coop as the multiplayer addition instead.

Gameplay has been streamlined a bit. There's no longer a long hang at the transition from exploration to combat mode. And especially compared to the PSX version, menus and menu actions are much quicker and smoother. Dialog has been re-translated, too. Some corrections have been made, as with the other recent Square re-releases. It's now more accurate to the original Japanese.