Recently replayed it as a full-grown adult after repeatedly playing and beating it as a kid; its whimsical but barely coherent story is definitely more enjoyable as a persistent childhood memory. But the music and gameplay hold up very well even 20-30+ years later.
We have to remember this was a time where text was still kind of expensive, so making the story more than barely coherent required losing enemy variety and such. The advantages of the switch to CD-ROM wasn't really the pre-rendered cutscenes, but the fact that there were no practical limitations to how much text you want to use. Every bit of text also lead to harder localization, which was still a part of the industry in its infancy.
So from where I stand, the coherence of Chrono Trigger is already kind of a miracle, given cart sizes
I dunno; I haven't played a JRPG in years that has the same sense of immediacy and emotional connection. I feel like there is a lot invested into overbearing systems of inventory management and skill progression that doesn't, for me at least, have the same draw.
CT is basically just pressing A for 5-10 hours though. The characters are pretty well done (albeit pretty hardcore 90s archetypes) and the artwork is gorgeous, but, given the shallowness of the dialogue and the gameplay, it doesn’t hit me like it used to.
I dunno that the dialogue is any more shallow than what's present in the vast majority of JRPGs today, quite frankly, but it's quite likely that this is because it isn't voice (over)acted.
