While Square's booth strongly featured Final Fantasy X, one segment of it was devoted to the recently announced Final Fantasy Chronicles. To write an impression of Chronicles, of course, one has to take into account each of the two seperate titles included in the compilation.

The first half of the collection, Final Fantasy IV, played wonderfully. All the graphics and sound of the original have been kept intact and seamlessly ported to the PlayStation. While there was an indication from Square that an updated script would be implicated in the new port, the first segment of the game seemed quite familiar; however, there are likely alterations later in the game. The text speed seemed a little snappier, but other than that the experience was identical to the original Super Nintendo title.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for Chrono Trigger. While the game plays almost identically to the original, it is not without some major flaws. The newly added anime cutscenes played rather choppy, and took far too long to load. And even worse, the in-game load time are atrocious. When switching to either the menu or character swap screens, players can expect at least a five to ten second load time delay. This can become extremely frustrating, as these screens can need to be accessed frequently during the course of the game.

Final Fantasy Chronicles will likely appeal to fans who missed the Super Nintendo versions of the games. However, those who still own their original copies may decide to pass these new ones over.