If anything, the fact that Chrono Trigger is uplifting and fun, without the endless exposition and "imcomprehensibility disguised as depth," points to how important a creative team is. Kato is capable of some very creative scenarios, but his basic inclination (Xeno, Cross, Kirite, etc.) is towards the verbose and the depressing. He was a thoroughly bizarre pairing with the Dream Team on Chrono Trigger, whose very identity is defined not by Kato's writing but by the cheerful (but not shallow), Dragon Quest-flavored worldview. Yes and no. Certainly, production time limits can lead to sloppy editing or incomplete arcs, but they do not cause the fundamental lack of writing discipline that leads to walls of endless text. Any good writer knows to show and not tell. And surely one of the most baffling and damning aspects of Chrono Cross is that he couldn't even manage to get the one character who matters to the Sara/Schala story into the game as planned.
With all this said, I adore the end credits of Chrono Cross, if nothing else, and find Kato more tolerable when he's either on a leash like in Chrono Trigger, or not wrecking the mood of a very different team's work via a poorly planned and jarring sequel. Xenogears sure needed an editor (not Takahashi's skillset), but it is indeed a flawed masterpiece.