Exact Answer: 45 hours
Widely viewed as one of the greatest games of all time, Chrono Trigger was first released by Square in March of 1995. Known widely for its revolutionary active battle system, lack of random encounters, and multiple endings; Chrono Trigger is one of the most popular RPGs of all time.
It tells the story of young Chrono as he travels across time to save the world. After an accident at the local fair, Chrono and his friends are sucked through a time vortex and find themselves on an adventure to save the world from the evil Lavos. Like most RPGs, Chrono Trigger has an expansive story over many hours of gameplay and a cast of eight characters. It is a masterful example of the time travel genre and one of the greatest role-playings ever created. Today let’s look at exactly how long it will take you to complete the story of Chrono.
How Long does it take to beat Chrono Trigger?
Depending on your gameplay style, Chrono Trigger’s length can vary considerably. If you are the mind of person who likes the main story with very little exploration, then you can expect this classic SNES game to take you around twenty three hours to finish.
For the rest of us, Square included hours of extra side quests and multiple endings. If you enjoy side quests you can expect to spend nearly thirty hours from beginning to end.
Also, there are over ten endings to Chrono Trigger, depending on how and when you defeat Lagos, the main villain of the story. To finish the game with a 100% completion rate, you will sink nearly 45 hours into this glorious game.
Chrono Triggers gives us the new game plus feature which allows you to replay the game without losing any of your previous progress. You can breeze through the storywhile trying to unlock each of the ten unique endings to the game.
I won’t give any spoilers to what those endings are though. I hope you discover them for yourself!
| Main Story | Plus sidequests | 100% |
| 23 Hours | 27 hours | 45 hours |
Why does it take so long to beat Chrono Trigger?
Much of the time sunk into this game will be grinding in between boss fights. In most RPG’s this can be hinder the experience, but with Chrono Trigger’s active battle system and lack of random encounter, you will enjoy each and every encounter.
The 32-bit characters and the various skills make each battle unique and exhilarating. While there are hours of content, the story for Chrono Trigger never seems to slow down.
You will be sucked in by the well-written characters and the exhilarating story as you travel throughout time to defeat Lavos. The art of Akira Toriyama gives us some of the beautiful and interesting character models from this console.
You will never forget your journey with these characters.
References
https://web.stanford.edu/group/htgg/cgi-bin/drupal/sites/default/files2/wshen_2001_1.pdf