Thinking about how this was used in-game. It's the "game over" music when your party dies. At least, it's used as that... until you hit 2300AD.
And the damn theme plays shortly after you find footage of what destroyed the planet in 1999AD. After Chrono, Marle and Lucca decide to go back in time and stop Lavos from destroying the planet and the main theme blaring, you get back to the people of the dome. The native people of 2300AD. Where all they care about, is whether you found food on your adventure into the bowels of the dome.
And it starts playing.
"Hope? That's a word I haven't heard in a long time"
There's soooo many subtleties about this theme playing at that exact moment in these sequence of events that always makes me tear up when I hear this theme. In some ways, it's "game over". In another, it's this feeling of hopelessness. (Especially after this point in the game, where if memory serves me right, after you die in-game you get a sequence from 1999AD of the Day of Lavos attack with the most ominous "And the future remained Unchanged™" text.)
I remembered it wrong. But the feeling is the same.
But yeah, I have a Lot Of Feelings about Chrono Trigger and the OST (all of the music for Zeal. SO MUCH of the Zeal music is just beautiful and bittersweet and I'm still so mad about what went down in Zeal aaaarghhh)
