Game 4 of 2023: Chained Echoes

 Chained Echoes - A Substantial Slice of JRPG Sentimentality

Developer: Matthias Linda
Publisher: Deck13
Platform: PC
Genre: JRPG

Difficulty: Difficult
Date Started: Feb 2nd 2023
Date Ended: Mar 4th 2023
Hours: 37

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 8/10

Chained Echoes looks a lot like something I would have played in middle school. Made by mostly one person, Chained Echoes is a love letter to the classic JRPGs of yesteryear that proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. Allusions to those classic RPGs abound, some subtle, some not. The game's incredibly well-done, charming pixel art graphics belie a fairly mature story and rather sophisticated combat.

The broad strokes of the story are pretty standard JRPG fare (motley group of friends must band together and defeat world-ending superbeings), but the best parts are the details, the little moments between characters that kept me mostly interested in seeing it through to the end. There are 12 characters you can get in total but some you can miss if you don't do all the side quests. Most of the important characters get pretty satisfactory arcs, particularly Robb, who begins as a callous asshole whose only redeeming quality is that he can poison enemies. There's definitely some cringe dialog, though.

The fantasy world we're given to explore is pretty interesting, filled with colorful and visually striking locations. You'll visit breathtaking mountaintops, sewers (there must be a law requiring games of this type to have a sewer level), island resorts and floating castles. The setting is a neat mix of the sort of generic RPG fantasy world many of these games have in common, with some science fiction elements (flying mechs and airships). Despite the cliches, the world feels well done because special attention has been given to the details, and the details are what make the world interesting and engaging.

The combat, while engaging, kind of dragged for me sometimes. The game does away with random encounters, but the encounters you face on the map are more challenging; if you just spam your standard attack, you'll quickly fail. Your party completely heals between each encounter, so Chained Echoes expects you to be at your best during each fight, taking advantage of enemy weakness and swapping out characters on the fly(which is a pretty cool feature) in order to win. I found enemies in the first area that were capable of completely wiping out my party. Despite the difficulty of some combats, the game is quite forgiving, allowing you to just replay the battle upon defeat if you so wish. I liked the idea of fewer but more rewarding encounters, but I felt that the enemies were often just damage sponges which made battles take some time. But hey, I'm old with precious little free time so to each their own.

There's a satisfying equipment upgrade system that often has you making a tough decision about equipping the cool new sword you just got in the dungeon, or upgrading the current one that already has some useful power ups. Rather than getting money after battles, you get items and 'loot.' A lot of the items you get after fights can be used to upgrade your equipment, while the loot is vendor trash. I certainly appreciate the efficiency of just getting money after a fight, but why the heck would a crab carry around a bunch of gold?

Exactly, it wouldn't. That crab would not carry gold around.

Anyway, this took me a little shy of 40 hours to beat. I got all the characters and did all the side quests and learned tons of skills for each character. 40 hours is a little bit longer than I would normally spend on a game like this (again, old, little free time, etc) but it was worth it in this case. This is getting a recommendation out of me.