Chained Echoes Review

When I was a teenager, most of my gaming was in the form of JRPGs. These 2D turn-based role-playing games had great characters, incredible stories, and memorable soundtracks — that I still listen to today. So when I see a new "retro" style RPG, it's hard to not compare it to my childhood favourites like Final Fantasy IV and VI, Chrono Trigger, or Lufia and The Fortress of Doom. I had high hopes for Chained Echoes after seeing the trailer.

In Chained Echoes, you play as a group of heroes travelling around Valandis. This large continent is home to three kingdoms that have been at war for generations. As soon as you start, you are thrown right into the action with young mercenaries, Glenn, an ace Sky Armor pilot who is part of the Band of the Iron Bull. As you progress through the story, you will meet seven other characters, each with their own goals but who still contribute to the game's main story. I love being able to experience piloting a cool mech this early in the game; it's not that different from the battle system you use without the suit. So all the information you use here will be helpful later on. The game is different from other JRPGs as there are no random battles, so each area you travel through has only a few encounters where you will be battling. It feels like Chained Echoes focused more on the story than making your grind to gain levels which I appreciated.

When you find yourself in battle, Chained Echoes implements a new, unique system that I haven't experienced in an RPG before, The Overdrive System. There is an Overdrive Bar with yellow, green, and red areas representing your party's state. When in perfect synergy, you hit the green Overdrive area. At this point, your team does more damage, takes less damage, and moves use half as much TP. The weakness and strength of each enemy are displayed right under their name, so you won't waste time trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. If you continuously keep spamming the same attack, or if you use attacks they aren't weak to, you run the risk of hitting the red area of the bar. This means your team will become Overheated, and the enemy will deal massive damage to all your characters. If this happens, you will want to get back into the green Overdrive area; fortunately, this is pretty easy to accomplish. The first thing you will want to do is match your skill attack icon — denoting the attack you are using — with the icon displayed beside the Overdrive bar or by switching out your characters. This is the other new addition that Chained Echoes features. Instead of only having a maximum team size of four, each slot can be split between two characters that can share the spot. During a battle, you can quickly switch to the other person without wasting a turn whenever you need. This works excellent for strategising by using special attacks the other person has. After each battle, your HP and TP are completely restored, so there is no wasting all your items between battles trying to replenish everything.  

Chained Echoes is one of the most beautiful-looking, pixel-style games that I have played in a long time. The environments in the game are full of detail and colour, filled with a vast variety of human and animal citizens. I appreciate that there are tons of different enemies to fight against and tons of NPCs to interact with. It was neat to see characters who aren't all part of the human race. A commander who looks like a lion-dolphin-human hybrid was really cool, it didn't feel weird, it was just natural for that world. To accompany the great visuals was a soundtrack full of orchestral music; Eddie Marianukroh did a fantastic job. It reminded me of the tracks you would hear on a game like Chrono Trigger. It's one of those soundtracks that I would love to listen to outside of the game. Between the graphics and music, Chained Echoes feels like it is right at home with all the other wonderful 16-bit JRPGs that came to the SNES. 

I could go on forever about everything that Chained Echoes does right. The other thing that makes Chained Echoes even more impressive is that it was created by one person, Matthias Linda. Obviously, he has played a lot of other JRPGs in the past and has figured out what works well and what needs to be tweaked because all of the issues I have had with other games are gone. I'm not wasting my time grinding or going on fetch quests that don't have anything to do with the story. The story felt like it mattered more than all these random things, making the pacing feel fantastic. I cared about all the characters, but because of the ability to switch between eight members of your team, it didn't feel like anyone was neglected or under utilised. If that character didn't have a spell that worked on the enemy at that point in time, just switch and bring them back in when the type changes.

If you have ever enjoyed playing turn-based RPGs, you absolutely have to play this game. Or, in contrast, even if you have never experienced a game like this, Chained Echoes is a great place to start! This will surely be one of my favourite games of the year and added to my esteemed list of must-play JRPGs. Now I'm hoping there will be a sequel to look forward to coming soon!