The thing I like most about the PS1 era of JRPGs is that a lot of them were highly experimental. Trigger is sort of the most-polished culmination of a style developed across 8-bit and 16-bit jrpgs. Games like Cross, FF8, the SaGa Frontier games, even Legend of Mana are where Square really started to experiment, and I'm glad they did.

Cross is mechanically a mess. My least favorite part is how you must equip eleventy billion elements, it's tedious as heck, and it sort of discourages you from trying other characters because even bulk-switching elements doesn't work well due to slot and native element differences.

It was also very slow by contemporary standards. That 10 second camera wag before every fight gave them time to load assets etc., but it is very frustrating to watch every time.

I still think the atmosphere shines brightly enough to surmount these issues. It's not just that the game is beautiful, it's that the vibe is completely unique to this day, imo. FF7 also had that undertone of menace and "something's not quite right here", but there was always at least one obvious threat. In Cross, it's hard to ever put your finger on what has really gone wrong for most of the game, but you can feel in your bones that something creepy is going on. The juxtaposition between that and some of the most beautifully poignant art and music on the PS1 just hit the spot for me.