Performance guide 2025 - No crashes

This guide aims to help optimize Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition on PC by improving performance, preventing crashes (like the Viper Manor issue), and ensuring smoother gameplay. It covers GPU settings, DirectX tweaks, FPS adjustments, and essential patches. Follow these steps to enjoy the game without technical issues.

Start

I’ve checked several reviews after the Square Enix’s updates and I thought that the game was running smoothly and decided to buy. I’ve played Radical Dreamers first and had no issues. But when I started CC (Chrono Cross), that’s where the problems began.

I could not even start the first scenario of the game, but fear not, I’ve read a lot of posts, and I tried EVERYTHING, until I was able to play the game properly, passed the Viper Manor super common crash and finished the game with no issues.

These are my pc specs
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700
RAM: 32 GB DDR5
RTX 3060 TI 8GB
SSD Samsung pro

So, if you love this game as I do, and want to play it smoothly with no issues and even some mods, LETS GOOOO!! I’m going to show all the ropes, specially after Square Enix’s updates that helped, but did not resolve everything.

Main guide

1 - Activate high performance mode for GPU
Click on the Windows icon at the bottom left of the screen to open the Start Menu, and click the cogwheel icon to access your Settings.
In the Settings window, select System > Display, and scroll down to the bottom of the page and select “Graphics settings”.
In “Graphics performance preference”, find and add “CHRONOCROSS.exe”. Once added, click “Options” and select “High performance”, then click “Save”.
Link: https://support.na.square-enix.com/faqarticle.php?id=19055&la=1&kid=81108&ret=faqtop&c=5&sc=0

2 - Deactivate Direct X11 on steam launch options
For that you need to launch the game with -dx11
Go to library on steam-> click on the game -> right click and select properties.
Under launch options there is a box to type -> type in -dx11
This will help with some crashes.

3 – Apply the patch Ntcore (4GB) - https://ntcore.com/4gb-patch/
Trust me, I saw a huge improvement after installing this patch, here is the link, and inside the link there is an explanation about the purpose of the patch. Basically, it will allow the app to use more RAM, and since the game is poorly optimized, this helps A LOT!

4 - Disable Antialising and Antialising (Post-Filter) ingame.
When CC starts, you can hit ESC on the keyboard and disable Antialising/Antialising (Post-Filter) ingame. I’ve done this, and the game looked really nice and worked properly. I’m not sure if this a big deal, so if you wish to reactivate it later, you can give it a try.

5 – Disable everything from the GPU.
In my case, my GPU is from NVIDIA, so I created a profile, and disabled everything possible from it.
Open NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D settings -Click on the tab Program Settings -> Select a program to customize -> Select CC -> Specify everything as below:
Feature Setting
Image Scaling Off
Ambient Occlusion Not supported for this application
Anisotropic filtering Off
Antialiasing - FXAA Use global setting (Off)
Antialiasing - Gamma correction Off
Antialiasing - Mode Off
Antialiasing - Setting None
Antialiasing - Transparency Use global setting (Off)
Background Application Max Frame Rate Use global setting (Off)
CUDA - GPUs Use global setting (All)
CUDA - Sysmem Fallback Policy Use global setting (Driver Default)
Low Latency Mode Use global setting (Off)
Max Frame Rate Use global setting (Off)
Monitor Technology Fixed Refresh
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) Use global setting (Off)
OpenGL GDI compatibility Use global setting (Auto)
OpenGL rendering GPU NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
Power management mode Prefer maximum performance
Preferred refresh rate (2460G4) Application-controlled
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample opti... Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias Allow
Texture filtering - Quality Performance
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization Off
Threaded optimization 1 Off
Triple buffering Off
Vertical sync Off
Virtual Reality pre-rendered 2 frames Use global setting (1)
Virtual Reality - Variable Rate Super Sampling Not supported for this application 3
Vulkan/OpenGL present method Use global setting (Auto)

6 – Disable G-sync
I had G-sync available, and I turned it off for CC, as I saw that some people were commenting about it.

7 – Set FPS to 59
Lastly, the same people that were talking about G-sync also said that when the FPS was lowered to 59-60 the game did not crash anymore, so if you have a fancy monitor that has lots of Hz, lowering to 59-60 might help.

Extra

8 – Windowed mode (Optional)
Try this mode, I’ve tried for some hours, and it worked really well on Steam Link, as appeared full screen, try windowed mode first then change to Fullscreen.

9 - Viper Manor (crash) – MINOR SPOILERS
So, at some point, I would say 3 to 5 hours of gameplay, there will be a quest in Viper Manor, in which there is a boss battle, after you win the battle, there is a cutscene, in which there is a blank screen, and then the game crashes. This is super common, and I was able to pass this part several times with those configs, since I have a specific save there, for testing purposes.
The game crashed 4 times for me, after the tweaks, never crashed again.

10 – Screen tearing (Issue)
If you perform all of those modifications, you will notice that there is a screen tearing issue, this was not an issue to me, as I was playing using Steam Link in a tv, and there were no issues with the V-sync. My suggestion is first, to make sure that the game is running well, perform some tweaks to try to make the V-sync work and the test if the game is crashing.

End of guide

Thats it folks, I hope the game work properly for you, and cheers for this amazing franchise.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.