Struggling to uncover his past and find the mysterious Frozen Flame, Serge is chiefly challenged by Lynx, a shadowy antagonist working to apprehend him.

[7] A remaster of the game, titled Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition[c] was released on April 7, 2022, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.

Locations such as cities and forests are represented by more realistically scaled field maps, in which players can converse with locals to procure items and services, solve puzzles and challenges, or encounter enemies.

Like Chrono Trigger, the game features no random encounters; enemies are openly visible on field maps or lie in wait to ambush the party.

For both the playable characters and the computer-controlled enemies, each attack reduces their number of hit points (a numerically based life bar), which can be restored through some Elements.

Portrayed as willful and tomboyish due to her rough, thieving past, she helps Serge sneak into Viper Manor in order to obtain the Frozen Flame.

Harle was sent by the Dragon God to shadow Lynx and one day steal the Frozen Flame from Chronopolis, a task she painfully fulfills despite being smitten with Serge.

Though tussling with Serge initially, the Acacia Dragoons—whose ranks include the fierce warriors Karsh, Zoah, Marcy, and Glenn—later assist him when the militaristic nation of Porre invades the archipelago.

The invasion brings Norris and Grobyc to the islands, a heartful commander of an elite force and a prototype cyborg soldier, respectively, as they too seek the Frozen Flame.

The game begins with Serge located in El Nido, a tropical archipelago inhabited by ancient natives, mainland colonists, and beings called Demi-humans.

While assisting Kid in a heist at Viper Manor to steal the Frozen Flame, he learns that ten years before the present, the universe split into two dimensions—one in which Serge lived, and one in which he perished.

Charged with guarding the Dead Sea by an entity named FATE, Miguel and three visions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca from Chrono Trigger explain that Serge's existence dooms Home world's future to destruction at the hands of Lavos.

Serge learns that the time research facility Chronopolis created El Nido thousands of years ago after a catastrophic experimental failure drew it to the past.

Schala, the princess of the Kingdom of Zeal, had long ago accidentally fallen to a place known as the Darkness Beyond Time and began merging with Lavos, the chief antagonist of Chrono Trigger.

They reveal that Belthasar's plan was to empower Serge to free Schala from melding with Lavos, lest they evolve into the "Time Devourer", a creature capable of destroying spacetime.

[25] Kato specifically felt that the game's large number of characters, as well as the difficult production schedule, did not allow him to develop the relationship between Magus and Kid.

[30] Square's managers selected a team, appointed Hiromichi Tanaka producer, and asked Kato to direct and develop a new Chrono game in the spirit of Radical Dreamers.

[31] Masato Kato planned for the game's setting to feature a small archipelago, for fear that players would become confused traveling in large areas with respect to parallel worlds.

[9] He hoped El Nido would still impart a sense of grand scale, and the development team pushed hardware limitations in creating the game's world.

[34] Other innovations included variable-frame rate code for fast-forward and slow-motion gameplay (awarded as a bonus for completing the game) and a "CD-read swap" system to allow quick data retrieval.

[31] Masato Kato confirmed that Cross featured a central theme of parallel worlds, as well as the fate of Schala, which he was previously unable to expound upon in Chrono Trigger.

Concerning the ending sequences showing Kid searching for someone in a modern city, he hoped to make players realize that alternate futures and possibilities may exist in their own lives, and that this realization would "not ... stop with the game".

[39] To streamline translation for all 45 playable characters, Honeywood created his own version of the accent generator which needed to be more robust than the simple verbal tics of the Japanese cast.

[30][31] Kato envisioned a "Southeast Asian feel, mixed with the foreign tastes and the tones of countries such as Greece"; Mitsuda centered his work around old world cultural influences, including Mediterranean, Fado, Celtic, and percussive African music.

[46][47] Mitsuda posted a streaming sample of a finished track on his personal website in January 2009, and has stated the album will be released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Japanese debut of Cross.

[7] Critics praised the game's complex plot, innovative battle system, varied characters, moving score, vibrant graphics, and success in breaking convention with its predecessor.

[4][30] Producer Hiromichi Tanaka and director Masato Kato were aware of the changes in development, specifically intending to provide an experience different from Chrono Trigger.

[75] Masato Kato, Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuteru Yuuki, and Hiromichi Tanaka were brought in to lightly polish the game's dialogue, music, character art, and mechanics, respectively.

[76] Tanaka revealed that the game's assets, stored on magnetic tape after development ceased in 1999, were lost in the intervening years, causing him to rely on a personal backup he had maintained for certain aspects of his polishing work.

[76] Producer Koichiro Sakamoto further explained that creating the remaster required teams to painstakingly upscale the game's original location art and remap each 3D field map, sometimes relying on AI to improve the resolution.