Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition – How to Get the True Ending

Chrono Cross is back on the market with the recent release of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. Whether you’re looking to dive into the Chrono Trigger sequel fresh or you’re an old hand, we’ve got you covered on how to find the tricky, true ending in this classic JRPG.

To get the real ending for Chrono Cross, you have to forgo the classic battle style completely and learn to find a peaceful solution. If you go into the final battle against The Time Devourer and just kill it, you won’t get an ending at all, only credits with some cryptic images and a recap of the main story. Instead, you’ll want to use the element titled CHRONO CROSS to get the job done.

How To Encounter & Beat The Time Devourer

You’ll earn this element by fusing the Tear of Love and Tear of Hate together in the Divine Dragon Falls in Another World. Simply place one on each pedestal, and, provided you’ve already been through the requisite story beats, you will receive the element. Once you get it, you can either equip it to Serge manually or select Auto Allocate in the Elements menu to have it applied automatically.

Next, use the Time Egg, which is automatically given during the final dungeon, Terra Tower. Press the item button to bring up your item list and use it where the purple glow has gathered at Opassa Beach in either world. This will activate the game’s final battle, and here’s where things get tricky. Every elemental attack will create a chime with the CHRONO CROSS element equipped. You’ll need to play the correct sequence of chimes to free Schala from The Time Devourer.

This sequence is as follows: Yellow, Red, Green, Blue, Black, White, CHRONO CROSS. There are several ways to get this sequence. You can turn on the boosters included in The Radical Dreamers Edition to help you out, but you can also achieve this by simply observing The Time Devourer’s attacks. It will mostly attack in an established pattern of elements but occasionally changes these based on your elemental attacks.

Regardless, you need to either cast all seven elements yourself between The Time Devourer’s attacks or get it to fill in one of the elements in the sequence itself. The former is much easier, but the latter is also an option and is what some deem the proper way to do it. Either way, you paid the dough so how you decide to beat this final boss is up to you.

Once you use the CHRONO CROSS as the final attack, Schala will be freed from the void at last, and you’ll unlock the proper ending to the game. After that, just enjoy the cut scenes and make sure that you watch through the end credits to see the last bit of the story as it unfolds between recaps of the main game.