Before I started, let me say that the reason I don’t recommend this mod isn’t because of the whole “what if we saved Schala” scenario. That part is actually quite okay. More on that later.

The good. This patch have a lot of good things: Frog and Marle rebalance, ultimate accessories that also unlocks triple techs, “what if” scenario that’s written quite well, Elizabethan English in 600AD, and so on.

Frog especially becomes my MVP comes lategame, and this playthrough I’m using him alongside Robo and Ayla. Their triple techs absolutely wrecks everything post-Ocean Palace. I also feel Robo Tackle especially is buffed a lot to deal 700 damage while the others are barely breaking 300, so Robo is also a big powerhouse here carrying me for the first half of the game. MP changes for techs also help everyone all around. Unfortunately I still don’t use Marle because as a healer she doesn’t even have a heal-all tech, so I skipped her in lieu of Robo. Her final tech does come in handy against Spekkio late game however.

I also particularly like the implementation of rocks being changed into ultimate accessories for everyone except Chrono and Ayla, who to be fair are already powerful enough. When trying Chrono Trigger Plus romhack I loved that that hack made triple techs permanently learnable from sidequests, and ultimate accessories, while not permanent, are basically the same system since they’re so integral in buffing the characters.

The Schala cutscene is okay. It’s not very good but it’s serviceable. You’ll be visiting several small single-screen maps that gives background stories on how future events came to be, and you’ll be doing a few dungeons and bosses. Unfortunately those dungeons are very linear and the bosses are basically rematches from past bosses. These designs drags down the otherwise good writing. The events leading to Magus joining and the search for Schala, and what happens afterwards feel natural enough to be part of the game, but gameplay designs detracts a lot from immersion.

600 AD is rewritten so that people use ye olde English. I personally don’t mind much, I find it charming in its own way, but some lines I feel too modern which also detracts from the immersion. Unfortunately 600AD isn’t the only timeline where this specific problem happens. 65m BC also feels too modern at times. The new NPCs and Ayla’s new dialogues can feel too long-winded and modern at times instead of the caveman talk they had in vanilla.

There’s a small bug regarding inconsistencies in MP used for double and triple techs. Some of the listed MP requirement are inaccurate. I’d trust in-battle menu instead of main menu. Also, because I still remember the MP requirements for a lot of those techs, I could use my memory for reference. Not a game-breaking bug, but it’s there.

Now for the biggest flaw, and the reason I can’t recommend this hack. In spite of some of these dialogue changes, some parts most problematic parts are not touched at all, while changing a lot of dialogues that are already good. The earliest sign would be the removal of Crono’s mom’s “I want you to behave yourself today” line, which serves as the setup for the trial. Why is it removed? Isn’t it already what moms would typically say to their son? Meanwhile almost every minor NPCs in 1000AD are now given names in their dialogue. These writings feel very inconsistent and they are the biggest problem.

In 600AD, when you’re about to return to 1000AD, you can bring Lucca to meet her ancestors. In the original it’s a subtle nod that not everyone will notice the first time around. Now you have Lucca outright say that these are her ancestors, removing all subtleties. The same thing also happens multiple times throughout the game. After Fiona’s forest quest, Lucca is teleported back to the past to see her mom’s accident. There are multiple notes now, outright saying that the password is Lara, again removing subtleties. This part is already made repeatable if you fail the first time, why would you even need to rewrite these lines? Not to mention Lucca’s mom’s dialogue when you first see her in the beginning of the game, heavily hinting that she had an accident, wink wink, nod nod. That feels too on-the-nose, and I doubt someone playing Chrono Trigger the first time would install this hack anyway that you need to put a heavy hint.

Some of the more noticeable changes including Belthasar saying he missed home instead of Schala (this line is iconic, and changing it just to be technically more correct isn’t good enough reason), Spekkio saying magic got too bad that everyone else but Mystics are forbidden from using it (it was translation error, it’s supposed to be everyone else destroyed themselves with magic and only Mystic survives), 65m AD when Ayla challenged Crono to drink pork soup (censored line from liquor that this hack amplifies), 65m BC when Ayla addressed Lavos with a different name, and so on. A lot of the rewrites feels like change for change’s sake, just so the maker could put their fingerprints on the hack, but ended up just inconsequential as a whole.

(also, fun fact, a new NPC gives Ayla an item after some dialogue. The dialogue and the item given is very inappropriate by today’s standard, but it’s a good joke, even if unintended)

Meanwhile, the parts that needs to be changed but aren’t, involves 2300AD in Trann Dome where someone said “if you’re looking for food, you lose” (should be “you won’t find any”), Spekkio again during the whole introduction (it’s not that humans are forbidden from using magic, but magic-using humans died out), Ayla again (just uncensor it instead of rewriting the censored version), Magus before the fight against him (same issue, rewritten censor instead of being uncensored), Gaspar at the end of time with the whole “someone close to you is in trouble” mistranslation. There are tons of dialogue that could be improved and yet aren’t, while the creator rewrites tons of dialogues that are already perfectly fine just because.

These writings break immersion the most. Not the Schala part, that part is fine. But the “everything else” part. And this is the biggest reason I can’t in good faith recommend this mod. It fixes what’s not broken while it also doesn’t fix what is broken. The result is a rewrite that ranges from “meh, it’s fine” to “why would you even change that” while some parts are firmly “why would you NOT change that”. These rewrites, in turn, makes it feel like you’re reading a rough draft of a book with the editor’s notes all over the place. It’s jarring. None of the other reviews even mention this even though it’s something very noticeable. They all mention how this is the best improvement patch ever and it’s perfect. It’s not. It’s average. To be honest, I’ll take just the gameplay and map changes without any of the script changes. If I were to see mistranslations anyway, better that I see the original script instead of this one.

The creator, Fauntleroy, writes in the readme that he doesn’t want the writings to feel like weird fanfiction. To that I say he doesn’t succeed. Not yet. And ironically, not in the parts where he’s most concerned about. My biggest advice for the creator would be to stop fixing what’s not broken and focus on the mistranslations from the original script. Don’t rewrite a perfectly good script but then gloss over the errors. It’s sad because there are lots of good gameplay changes here but the script heavily weighs it down. If you absolutely must replay Chrono Trigger but want some twists, then go ahead and give it a try. For a more passing interest however, I’ll say skip this one.