Top 50 Games - 34. Chrono Trigger

You know how I called The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past timeless? That applies to Chrono Trigger as well, but I'd add another adjective: rare. How the hell did this game ever come to such fruitful fruition? It's the love child of Square and Enix circa the mid-90's, before their merger. It's an Aryan product of only the best RPG genes, like Jesus but with Hironobu Sakaguchi and Akira Toriyama's DNA instead of God's. With an utterly merciful lack of random battles, an epic plot that doesn't succumb to its melodrama, a fast and efficient battle system, sweeping music, and adorable un-emo characters, Chrono Trigger is everything good about JRPGs with almost none of the bad. Somehow, miraculously, the design philosophies of Square and Enix didn't conflict; rather, they balanced each other out and produced one of the leanest, most endearing RPGs ever made. Like I said, I was not of the SNES generation (a truth that has me crying myself to sleep every night), but I did play Trigger on Final Fantasy Chronicles for the Playstation. Thankfully, this lets me taste a bit of that sweet nostalgia which fans return to this time-traveling masterpiece for. And unlike many games of its era, Chrono Trigger doesn't disappoint you when you come back to it. That, my friends, is rare.