Chained Echoes is a story-driven JRPG where a group of heroes travel around the vast continent of Valandis to bring an end to the war between its three kingdoms.
In the course of their journey, they will travel through a wide array of diverse landscapes spanning from wind-tanned plateaus and...
Chained Echoes is a story-driven JRPG where a group of heroes travel around the vast continent of Valandis to bring an end to the war between its three kingdoms.
In the course of their journey, they will travel through a wide array of diverse landscapes spanning from wind-tanned plateaus and exotic archipelagos to sunken cities and forgotten dungeons.
Take up your sword, channel your magic or board your Mech. Chained Echoes is a 16-bit SNES style RPG set in a fantasy world where dragons are as common as piloted mechanical suits.
Follow a group of heroes as they explore a land filled to the brim with charming characters, fantastic landscapes and vicious foes.
Can you bring peace to a continent where war has been waged for generations and betrayal lurks around every corner?
Key Features:
30 - 40 hours of play time
Fast paced turn-based battles
No random encounters; enemies can be seen running around
It would be a great game if sometimes you wouldn't get trapped in situations with fights you just can't win without making the game easier through the options menu. When that happens you usually can't even go back and grind or get better equipment, like for example when the party was split in chapter 1 - Victor, Kylian and Rob get out of the caves with the lorry ride and the Mountain Bibis were just unbeatable. And you can't go anywhere else from that point on, you just have to play on easy mode for a while. Exacerbated by the fact like in that instance you are forced to use characters you don't like for a while and haven't paid as much attention to as to your "mains".
If you like JRPGs, you're going to like this game. The influence and nods to past greats is clear, and the level of polish is quite high.
I have only two gripes with the game, one of which involves the crystal system. It has so much potential to be cool, but is brought down by papercuts when you actually want to use them. Combining crystals is a bit of a chore, although the smallest of problems. The biggest problem is crystals get slotted into gear, and you regularly get new gear, but it is a many step process to move your crystals to your new gear and also, can only be done once it's fully upgraded (and can only be done at a forge - which are quite common, but not everywhere). I don't understand the decision to not just allow a single click "equip better weapon/armour and move crystals with it", this would have solved about 95% of the problems with crystals.
The other gripe involves the way you learn new skills (active, passive and stats). It is cool until you run out of slots for new skills (which happens relatively early on). Later skills aren't really better than older ones for the most part, so you're left trying to figure out if you actually want them or not. Especially towards the end of the game finding a new GS (which grants a new skill for everybody) is just a chore.
Despite those gripes, there are many upsides. The story is engaging. There are tons of sidequests and optional content to find. The pivot point mid game where you get a "base" is very cool. The QoL features are great.
The battle system feels like it avoids a lot of the repetition present in other games where you're given full HP/TP for every battle. I could have done without an additional battle system for Sky Armours, as it didn't really feel like it added to the game. Difficulty (at "Hard") felt about right until roughly mid game where it became quite easy, which is pretty standard fare for any game with this amount of sidequests.
The pros easily outweigh the cons. Well worth playing.
I Thought overheat bar was suppose to encourage players to keep a balance between offensive and defensive actions. But it only breaks the combat flows by forcing player to choose pointless actions.
I grew up on classic 16-bit JRPGs but have almost entirely lost my taste for the genre. I still get the desire to play them, but I inevitably put a few hours in and drop out hard.
For whatever reason, I gave this one a try and it really stuck for me. Feels like playing an old classic with modern QOL. Great battle systems that keep combat and character building interesting, fun exploration, and a nicely balanced progression that makes everything work together. Engaging and often surprising story and characters as well. It's not perfect, but for a one-man show it has no right to be as good as it is. I'll be 100%-ing this one.
I am quite a few hours in to this game and i don't feel in control of anything.
The game trudges on without you participating much, you have no choice of where to
go and how to do things. I would say that 70% of the game so far has been reading a lot of
different dialogues. I've come to a point to skipping them and hoping that I am still in some early aspect
of the game before it hand over control to me about how to play the game but so far I am not having the best of times with this title.
