I never considered Blue Dragon as a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger. Blue Dragon is just a complete different game, with some of the same developers.
It is a great game imo, but it's also insanely long and pretty grind heavy. I made it through two of the three disc before I sadly lost my save file in a break in.
I later tried again but only made it to disc 2 before just not being able to stomach the grind :/