While a lot of people praise Chrono Trigger (and right they are! Play it! It's an often recommended game for a reason), its sequel Chrono Cross doesn't get as much love. There are valid reasons for that in my opinion, but I want to argue that CC is still a strong and good game, but it needs to be looked at separated from its ancestor. They didn't call it Crono Trigger 2, in order to separate it more from the first game, but people still expected a sequel to the characters they loved in the first game. And they didn't get that. Spoiler for CC now:
While the game is obviously set in a different world than CT, there still is a connection to the first game.
spoiler
The 3 main characters from CT Chrono, Marle and Luca only appear in a short sequence in the late mid game of CC where they tell the player characters that the universe of the player characters is fucked and they live in a crapsack world. Nearly everything you did in the first game is wasted because of time shenanigans.
So the players of the original game get a sucker punch to the stomach, while non-CT players are wondering why 3 ghost children are telling you the world is fucked. While the end fight was interesting in that the player finally learned what happened to Schala, it ultimately wasn't a net positive.
That is the biggest problem in my opinion. By including this link to the original game they hindered CC of being its own thing and instead alienated fans of the first game and non players alike.
But Chrono Cross has its own strengths, which still create a good game in my opinion. First and foremost I would praise the world itself, set in a tropical archipelago, which was great to explore in combination with a wonderful soundtrack. The atmosphere is often nicely serene, but there is also humor and drama there during the story. I don't know many other RPG games building a tropical world to explore. The story has some interesting twists in it and the parallel world setup means some interesting interactions between them. And while 42 playable characters is a bit overkill, I was surprised how well their language modification works to give nearly every character a characteristic speech tic.
So it should not be seen as a direct sequel, but rather as a story in an universe adjacent to the original one. To keep those stories separated makes both stronger in my mind.
It helps to understand that Chrono Trigger's story was the result of a bit of a struggle between Yuji Horii (aka the Dragon Quest guy) and Masato Kato, who would later write and direct Chrono Cross. Horii's end was light-hearted, which makes sense given his pedigree, while Kato liked darker stuff. That's why Zeal in particular is a shift in tone from the rest of Trigger.
One of the core themes of Cross is that actions have consequences, and I personally loved how the game pulled no punches on that topic with respect to Trigger's cast. The idea of repercussions is only hinted at in the first game, but it's there, and the revelations on the beach are heavily foreshadowed within Cross's story itself. It's a grown-up narrative from an era when players were starting to demand grown-up narratives. Its reception reflects that, as well; it earned some of the highest review scores among JRPGs of its era, and it sold well enough to require reprints. This was a game that was well-received in 2000, aside from the grumblings of a few upset Trigger fans. Cross hasn't endured simply because it was very much a game of its time, and it hasn't aged as gracefully as Trigger (especially its visuals).
I consider Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross to be an excellent cause-and-effect pairing, and Cross's connections to Trigger serve to enhance both games. I love the way Cross can reframe Trigger; I think it adds weight to the actions of a bunch of kids who stumble upon time portals and start messing with things. Time travel raises questions, and Cross's story is why I mull on those questions in my head whenever I replay Trigger.
Very well written! Your second paragraph describes so well why I like Cross and its s story.
I didn't know that Trigger story was written by two people, but yeah, in hindsight it explains a lot.