You're generalizing unfairly and did not argue a single point about the game.
CT, like FF7 and a plethora of other jrpgs suffers from an amazing amount of flaws. It astounds me how blidned by nostalgia everyone is in regards to these "classic" games when so, so much better is out.
I'm 18 and my older brother aws a huge jrpg fanatic, so i've played msot if not all the "quality" titles out there.
Unfortunately most of them are complete garbage, or at the very least severely flawed, yet lauded as exceptional and sometimes even literary masterpieces (XFD).
Chrono trigger had one-dimensional characters who displayed no growth (minus Frog, my childhood favorite, and Robo, though that was a sidequest and not very good). The main character is a mute with shiny gelled up colorful hair and a big sword and kind of loosk like goku. The only character that comes even close to itneresting is frog, and even then he's limited to maybe 2-3 good moments.
The various settings and how they're explored are graet, time travelling mechanic was innovative, fun and cool. The art is often beautifukl and the music is undoubtedly great, fun and some of the best in gaming (though cross, like in nearly every other category, crushes trigger here too).
The dialogue is atrocious, and not simply because of a bad translation. Looking at fantranslations "correcting" the translation amde by the square guy, they're even worse. One of my 'favorite' lines of dialogue comes from a random npc in the future. It goes something like "If you're looking for food, you lose!" Wow. Truly brilliant stuff here, even for a 90's video game!!!
Gameplay wise, it's a joke. You mash a, you use the strongest attack, you use your strongest heal. rpg gameplay is almost always shallow. jrpgs take this to the extreme. Triple/dual techs were 'borrowed' from phantasy star iv (a much better game and one of the few passable jrpgs), while the magic system is nothing exceptional. The boss fights are nothings special, and are all very easy and posed no challenge to me at 6, let alone 12 or 18 (i played it once again last year, this time as a rom after lpaying it on consoles the other two timse, speed up was a blessing to get through this).
I won't touch the story as that is much mroe subjective than any other criticism i have of the game, though i will say it is nothing special (which as i just said, can be contested much more so than any other thign i've said bad about the game)
Chrono trigger is not the worst game ever by any means. It does some things right, it has a passable story with some decent imagery in there somewhere. Frog is completely likable (though a bit on zany side with some of his stupid one-liners, though the alt translations i've seen of his stuff makes him smug and unlikable).
For great rpgs, you can try Fallout and Planescape: Torment. Might and Magic 7 was also very enjoyable, though i'm not sure how that aged as the last i played it i was 14.
Earthbound (despite non-existent character in the protagonists)
suikoden 2 (despite punctuation and boring characters out of maybe half a dozen of them)
phantasy star iv (despite 90's cheese and way too many random battles)
lufia 2 (despite terrible, terible, terrible dialogue and easy, easy gameplay)
grandia (disc 1) (despite awful loading times after battle, bad camera angles and sometimes atrocious voice acting)
all do the rpg thing much better
