7/10

Chained Echoes was a really enjoyable riff on the classic JRPG from the early console era, but it could've done with another pass of editing that might've helped boost it up a couple points to be a classic itself. If you enjoyed the classics from that era, you'll have a good time with Chained Echoes as well, but be prepared to get frustrated sometimes with it.

I really enjoyed the game's overworld exploration, including the ability to veer clear of many enemy encounters. Your party's HP/TP is replenished between battles, and the game takes advantage of this to make combat surprisingly challenging throughout the game, especially boss encounters. There are times where this makes the game a little bit of a slog, but for the most part this was pretty enjoyable. On the occasions where it was less enjoyable, an ability to "quit" combat and reload from save would've been useful, as it's not uncommon to see that you've had a streak of bad luck (status effect on the wrong character, enemies all ganged up on your healer, etc.) and recognize that the fight is unsalvageable, but you have to play it out until the enemy wipes out your team so you can reload and try again. Similarly, while the game does a good job of offering tutorials/references to make many of its mechanics clear and transparent to the player, there's a lot of other mechanics that could've used the same treatment. What does a spell "potency of (x)" really mean? What's the difference between your character's Magic (MAG) and Mind (MND) stats? Is there a difference between "Poison" and "Toxic" statuses? These sorts of questions were frustrating when I was trying to optimize to help get through these difficult battles.

The game's world was well-built, but it suffered a good bit from throwing too much at the player at once. The game does a lot of referencing kingdoms/factions/etc. that never end up being relevant, which makes it harder to keep track of what you're actually concerned with, and a little more restraint (or back-loading some of this, rather than front-loading it) could've helped with this. The story was generally quite compelling and sometimes even quite dark, and I found myself really engaged with it as I went along. Where a lot of the classic JRPGs would gloss over some of the grimness of war and human misery, Chained Echoes didn't pull those punches, and it was better for it. There were a few spots where the dialogue felt incongruous for the seriousness of the game's world, but overall, the game did a good job of telling a serious and complex story. Unfortunately, I don't feel like the game entirely paid this off in the final act with unsatisfying resolutions for the game's villains.

All of this sounds like I'm dumping on Chained Echoes, but those are really the kinds of things that hold this game down to "pretty good" instead of being "great". The game is thoroughly enjoyable and it impresses with the number of interesting and unusual/creative mechanics that the game introduces. In that regard, it is probably one of the most "complex" JRPGs that I've played, which dovetailed nicely with the story to create a feel for the game being more of an "adult" or "mature" game. Chained Echoes will almost certainly be an enjoyable experience for anyone who enjoys a classic turn based RPG, even if it's not necessarily as good as it can be, and I'm hopeful that we'll Matthias Linda and company use this experience to make something even better in the future.

Nice game to play with. Nice combat system with overdrive. Upgrading weapon and armor feels frustrating (moving the crystal enhancement every time we change weapon/armor). But overall, the games is fun and relaxing!

It's like they took everything that you ever loved from every JRPG in the 80s and 90s and they distilled it into one game and then sprinkled in a few modern elements to bring it into the current era. It has a turn based combat system that makes every decision have consequence, and I love it. The story is amazing, and the way it handles splitting up the party and adjusting the gameplay based on it is masterful. For example, there are some times when the rogue type character has to do subtle stuff without the rest of the party, and it's a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.