Gaming

You're right and, frustratingly, the game does not clearly signal to you what on earth to do. Even worse, to me, is that the element/color line-up thing leads to a long, long monologue from Schala, who, on the bright side, basically says that you've just undone all the BS that happened to the original Chrono Trigger characters (so that's nice) but, on the bad side, is just so underwhelming-- it's just a monologue and not cinematic in the slightest.

Contrast the (main) ending of the original Chrono Trigger, in which you trod through the Millenium Festival, the very event from the beginning of the game in a sweet "Hero's Return" kind of way. Then you say goodbye to all the characters one by one and this wistful, beautiful theme ("To Far Away Times") plays. It's narratively satisfying and again, it's cinematic.

Chrono Cross feels like it ran out of budget and ended in the Square equivalent of "Palpatine returned." It's just a bewildering end of game information dump. I WANT to like this game, but it's just so, so underwhelming and in spite of some of its undeniable strengths (it's a broody, moody masterpiece in parts) it does not stick the landing.