Chrono Cross Soundtrack

Chrono Cross Soundtrack, Yasunori Mitsuda, 1999

Of the many experiments Square undertook during the second half of the 1990s, Chrono Cross may have been the most controversial. After all, this was not merely another new IP for the company to test and tinker with, but the sequel to Chrono Trigger, one of the most beloved JRPGs ever made. Or rather, it was and it was not. Producer Hiromichi Tanaka stated that his goal had been to “create a completely new and different world from the ground up”, rather than leaning too heavily on Chrono Trigger’s universe, characters or mechanics. Fans, however, were not entirely prepared for that approach, even if it resembled the anthology-like logic of the mainline Final Fantasy series. While Chrono Cross was initially met with near-ecstatic praise from both critics and players, that enthusiasm cooled once it became clear just how little it had to do with its predecessor on the surface.

One aspect of the game, however, drew virtually unanimous praise: its stellar presentation, and with it, of course, Yasunori Mitsuda’s soundtrack. Although Mitsuda had left Square in 1998 and gone freelance, his involvement with Chrono Cross was never really in doubt. His Chrono Trigger score had become hugely popular, and Chrono Cross also reunited him with director and scriptwriter Masato Kato, following their collaborations on Chrono Trigger, Radical Dreamers and Xenogears. Kato specifically commissioned Mitsuda to write the soundtrack, and the composer used the project to deepen the world-music interests that had already shaped much of Xenogears. That direction was reinforced by Kato’s request for music with a “South-East Asian feel, mixed with the foreign tastes and the tones of countries such as Greece”, a brief reflecting the game’s tropical, sun-drenched archipelago setting and its luminous visuals.

Mitsuda expanded that foundation further by drawing on other sources as well. “I tried to apply a Mediterranean sound to all of this music, experimenting with Fado guitar type sounds”, he explained in an interview. Other influences included music from Ireland, Finland, Mongolia and China, as well as African percussion. In the Chrono Cross liner notes, Mitsuda goes out of his way to stress sound programmer Ryo Yamazaki’s contribution and the crucial importance of the right timbre in allowing a piece to make its full impact. He completed the score within six months, this time apparently without the crises that surrounded the making of Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. While Chrono Cross has never quite matched Chrono Trigger’s cultural reach among game-music fans, it remains one of Mitsuda’s most admired works, and arguably one of the defining scores of the PS1 era.

Indeed, the Chrono Cross soundtrack is Mitsuda’s first consistently excellent work. For all the acclaim showered on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, both were hampered by recurring weaknesses, above all an excess of insubstantial material. Chrono Cross not only avoids those problems, but builds decisively on Mitsuda’s earlier strengths, resulting in a genuine all-round masterpiece.

First, there is Mitsuda’s subtle thematic work, one of Chrono Trigger’s most under-discussed achievements. Chrono Cross’s already complicated narrative relationship to Chrono Trigger becomes still more tangled because it also expands on characters and ideas introduced in the Japan-only Satellaview title Radical Dreamers, which itself tied up some of Chrono Trigger’s loose ends. Mitsuda’s fairly frequent use of the main themes from both Chrono Trigger and Radical Dreamers does not necessarily make those relationships any easier to parse, but it does help bind this long soundtrack together. More importantly, Mitsuda has lost none of his flair for reshaping thematic material, whether by adapting it to new emotional contexts, quoting only fragments, or substantially altering its melodic contour. Nor is that all: the score is threaded through with subtler internal connections as well, such as the shared material linking the ‘Home World’ and ‘Another World’ versions of several town themes, elegantly mirroring the game’s parallel-dimension premise.

Yet it is above all Mitsuda’s melodic gift and his ability to conjure vivid, sometimes elusive fantasy worlds that impress most on the Chrono Cross soundtrack. The result is a score that carries the listener through an immense emotional and sonic journey. Its opening stretches could hardly be further removed from the metaphysical intensity of Chrono Trigger, and especially Xenogears. Much of the first third consists of sparsely orchestrated cues built mainly around acoustic guitar, piano and woodwind solos, especially clarinet, and of course Mitsuda’s consistently beautiful, serene melodies. The prevailing mood is low-key, but moving from the outset, as these compositions quietly reinforce the game’s mournful narrative. After all, this is a story in which the protagonist soon finds himself trapped in a parallel world where his counterpart drowned as a child, and where his inexplicable presence causes pain and bewilderment in those around him.

As a result, the Chrono Cross soundtrack perfectly mirrors the pervasive melancholy, nostalgia and longing woven into the game’s storyline, creating an intriguing counterpoint to the colourful setting and the translucent beauty of its world. Mitsuda’s ambition to write something like Fado in a major key perhaps captures that paradox best. For these compositions to make their full effect while relying on only a handful of key instruments, outstanding sound synthesis was essential, and Yamazaki delivers magnificently. Indeed, this may well be the finest music ever coaxed from the PS1 sound chip, excluding pre-recorded Red Book audio for obvious reasons, surpassing even such formidable competition as Legend of Mana. Just listen to the almost lifelike distortion-guitar lead in “Voyage – Home World”, or compare the clarinet solo in “Ephemeral Memories” with the same instrument in Xenogears’ “The Treasure Which Cannot Be Stolen”.

As grounded and earthy as the soundtrack’s opening may be, it gradually begins moving into stranger territory. Before the game’s philosophical complexities fully assert themselves, it is the location themes, playful at first, then increasingly enigmatic, that prepare the listener for this shift. After a joyfully mischievous piece like “Lizard Dance”, which somehow makes a hammered dulcimer feel perfectly at home inside a shuffle rhythm, “Forest of Illusion” opens the door to more elusive emotional and geographical spaces through its entrancing minimalism. “Death Volcano” combines fretless bass, Udu percussion and uilleann pipes into a fascinatingly coherent whole, while “Fortress of Ancient Dragon” almost edges towards progressive rock through its jumpy, disparate components. Its organ solo and faintly ecclesiastical undercurrent already hint at where the score is headed. By this stage, the emotional stakes are clearly rising, and mid-album highlight “Prisoners of Fate” delivers a string melody as devastating as anything Mitsuda has written.

So when “Garden of God” arrives borne on the ethereal sound of an a cappella boys’ choir, the soundtrack’s focus has unmistakably shifted towards more universal concerns. After all, this is a game willing to contemplate questions as large as whether humanity is fated to destroy itself and the world it inhabits. Yet the music never loses sight of the human scale even now. A spellbinding, drifting, otherworldly cue like “Jellyfish Sea” is followed immediately by “The Girl Who Stole the Stars”, in which shimmering strings and flute support Noriko Mitose’s touchingly simple “la la” vocalise.

The score’s epic conclusion therefore lands with all the more force. After the frantic, ceaselessly throbbing final battle cue “Dragon God”, complete with its virtuoso solo-violin line, “Life – A Distant Promise” hits with something approaching biblical power. Built on a gargantuan, slowed-down version of the C section from the Chrono Trigger main theme, the piece’s almost overwhelming emotional release is uplifting in its sense of fulfilment, yet it still preserves the score’s constant undertow of yearning.

That point is driven home with full force by closing song “Radical Dreamers – Unstolen Jewel”. In a sense, its shape is the inverse of “Life – A Distant Promise”. Instead of orchestral mass and grandeur, it offers only Mitose’s voice and acoustic guitar, performing the melody that “Life – A Distant Promise” had previously spun out of the Chrono Trigger theme. Yet Mitsuda’s tune remains utterly heartbreaking, perfectly matched to Mitose’s lyrics about the desperate hope of reunion in a cold universe. Her performance ends with what may be the most haunting vocalise ever heard in a video game, crystallising the score’s emotional and narrative tensions in a few simple sounds that then vanish into the ether. It is a masterstroke of poignant simplicity, and the ideal conclusion to one of game music’s supreme achievements.