Chained Echoes

[도전과제 100% 달성, DLC 유무는 도과에 영향 X] 체인드에코즈 히든 보스 및 모든 수집품 & 도전 과제 완료했습니다 리뷰 갈게요. 첫인상은 좀 캐쥬얼한 턴제 도트 RPG 느낌이었는데 이거 기본 난이도가 꽤 맵습니다, 따라서 난이도를 낮춰줄 수 있는 각종 장비템에 대한 니즈가 생기는데요. 기본적으로 장비 (무기, 방어구) 강화 두 번에 룬을 인첸트해서 장비에 꽂아줄 수 있는데 룬 종류가 다양해서 여러가지 시도해보는 재미가 쏠쏠했습니다. 또 스킬도 종류가 다양해서 여러가지를 찍을 수 있는데 이 스킬을 장착할 수 있는 슬롯이 한정되어 있습니다 (액티브, 패시브 스킬 둘 다) 따라서 최고의 시너지를 낼 수 있는 조합을 찾아야 하는데 조합 후 필드 전투에서 이런 저런 시도를 해보는 것도 즐거웠습니다. 특이점으로는 한 판 전투가 끝나면 HP와 TP (마나) 그리고 상태이상이 전부 회복됩니다. 말 그대로 이기기만 하면 됩니다. 전반적으로 준수한 도트 그래픽과 파밍 그리고 조합, 전투의 재미라고 할 수 있겠네요. 자 이제 단점. 다만 단점으로는 장비 업그레이드를 해도 다음 장비가 나오면 바로 버려야 합니다, 인첸트가 된 룬은 빼서 새로운 장비에 넣어줄 수는 있는데 문제는 이게 전부 수동이라 뺐다 꼈다 하는데 시간이 많이 소모되고 엄청 귀찮습니다. 이 정도 편의성 업그레이드는 분명히 해줄 수 있을텐데 말이죠.. 맵이 엄청 복잡시럽습니다. 보물 상자가 많고 맵이 굉장히 넓은데다 후반이 되서 기믹이 열려야 갈 수 있는 곳이 많아서 일일이 길 찾는게 스트레스입니다. 수집품 요소가 굉장히 많은데 이게 강요되는 느낌. 히든 보스를 잡으려면 최고 장비로 둘러싸고 있어야 합니다. 최고급 장비를 얻으려면 모든 맵을 돌아다니면서 리워드 보드라는 걸 다 완성해야 전부 얻을 수 있습니다. (도과 때문이 아니라면 주력 캐릭터 장비만 모아도 되지만 문제는 공략을 보지 않으면 찾기 어렵습니다) 도과쟁이인 저도 좀 지쳤을 정도로 해야 할게 많은데 여기서 많은 유저들이 끝까지 콘텐츠를 즐기지 못할 거라는 생각이 들었네요. 마지막 10시간 정도는 그냥 빨리 끝내고 싶은 마음뿐이었습니다 ㅠ 줄이며, 전반적으로 우수한 턴제 알피지 게임인데 몇 가지 불편한 요소들 때문에 재미가 좀 경감되는 느낌이었습니다. 여러 스팀 리뷰들에서도 그게 들어나네요. 그래도 할인 때 즐기시면 후회는 없으리라 봅니다! 본인이 수집 요소에 미친다? 잘 맞을 겁니다.

Not recommending this would be a waste, just know that there are items that fall into both pro and con category. For example: No grinding: You do not need to grind whatsoever in this game. There is no necessecity and no big reward either. While it can be a good thing for some, for my case any turn-based rpg / jrpg needs to have a grind - reward mechanism. Level system: You level up by beating unique story bosses. Same arguments as above. Side quests: There are some, but there should be more. This is definitely consistent with no grinding approach of the game, which is again a pro but also a con. Overdrive system: While you fight, your team "heats up". Game randomly chooses some actions that lets that "heat" dissipate. This occasionally dictates how you should fight. It is a new system which I don't love but definitely an original addition. Sky Armor system: Uses same overdrive system with extra steps. Same arguments as above. Story: A story of different people somewhat coming together and sharing an adventure. While this is not a bad story and does have a lot of "plot twist" moments, it is sooooo complex that it gets tiring. Every bad person either has a sad backstory or good intentions, while every good person has an evil plot. It gets seriously tiring. All this demotes this game from a masterpiece to a good game for me. But maybe it will be a masterpiece for you. Either way, you wont regret buying it.

I enjoyed every second, every moment, every encounter in this game for me, this is the perfect JRPG, a masterpiece 10/10. A Memorable Experience I dropped FFX to play this game and i did not regret it one bit

El juego está bien, de momento, pero no puedo premiarles sabiendo que no se han molestado en traducirlo al español

[i]TL;DR: An outstanding RPG with a lot of interesting mechanics mashed into one, held back by many unfortunate teeny tiny flaws piling up. [/i] First and foremost, I really like the art style of the game. It has many different areas with a lot of love to detail, and the soundtrack is amazing. The game is not very hard, but it can have some unfair fights if you’re unprepared. The story is pretty good, with quite a few twists and unexpected turns. Without spoiling too much, all characters have more or less screen time, featuring the different burdens and backstories each one is carrying with them. Even though the game suffers from the usual “fantasy world with its own rules and lore” which is dumped on you in the beginning. It took me several hours to get accustomed to it and probably forgot half of what was told. When I started this game and played the first few hours, I did not know how to feel going forward. I liked the direction where it was going and wanted to get more, but felt overwhelmed with all the mechanics. This game has a lot, and I mean A LOT of different mechanics. You can see that Matthias Linda is a fan of many different RPGs and games in general, so he is taking a little bit of everything into his game and complement it with unique new ideas. Just to get you an idea of the amount of different stuff, I’ll try to line them up below and will probably forget half of them. Every idea in itself is unique and thought through, but also has a little “but” attached to it. [list] [*] The whole equipment system is pretty standard, and you can upgrade weapons and armor and enhance them freely with abilities. But because a new weapon you find in a dungeon is probably a little weaker that the latest fully upgraded weapon, switching to a new weapon is only done after you finish the current dungeon. [*] The crystals used to upgrade your equipment are an excellent concept, it allows you to create your own unique style of playing. But getting good crystals is difficult and the forging system to upgrade the crystals is very overwhelming, especially in the beginning. Taking the crystals from one weapon to another is also unnecessarily annoying. [*] The talents and “level-up” systems are a nice way to prevent over-leveling. You can instead level-up single abilities by simply equipping them during your adventure. Each character has a unique shtick and multiple active and passive abilities complementing each other. But for me, who likes looting and leveling, I must switch talents to train others, causing me to abandon very good maxed out talents for new ones with a heavy heart. This might be a me-problem though. You also can’t reskill, making your decision on a talent final. You can get all talents in the end though. [*] The talent system is complemented by a class system, allowing to enhance stats and learning unique class talents. Some classes are outright required on specific characters to make them useful. But unfortunately, you only ever have two slots for class talents, even if you maxed them. This limits the options to use many different class skills. [*] The whole sky armor fighting is a thing within itself, and it’s a good one. I like the separate fighting mode, even though it might be a little too overused. But if you encounter an enemy on foot which is designed to be fought with sky armors, you’ll be erased faster than a Bulbasaur by a Fire Storm. [*] The fighting system in itself is really good once you get used to it. The fights have a lot of things themselves: Turn-based battling, stat boosting and lowering, weaknesses, unique status and combo moves and most prominent the overdrive bar. You have a lot of options during battles and finding a combination of characters and talents you personally can work with is part of the fun. But sometimes, overdrive can make a fight unwinnable, like if you just don’t have the right type of attack to lower the gauge or have to make the decision between healing and trying to prevent overheat. As said, the game is not very hard and rearrange yourself and retrying a fight will give you the upper hand in the next try. [*] In the overworld, you have treasures and loot to be found, buried treasures including a tiny puzzle and hidden caves, the reward board, special enemies only showing under certain conditions (like the hunts in Final Fantasy XII), side quests, base building and many more. These are pretty much all great additions, but it might get overwhelming in the beginning. [*] Same with the tutorials, which mostly consists of large chunks of texts, which might overwhelm you. [*] The final nitpick is probably inconsequential for the English reader, but I played the game in German. And this might be a me-problem again, but for a game made by a German, for the love of everything unholy, I can’t understand why the localization has tpyos and missing commas even in major cutscenes. It’s far, far, very far from bad, but like with all the points above it’s a lot of minor typos piling up. A few talent names are too long, breaking their designated position or going out of bounds of the turn log. One typo includes a wrong translation on the reward board (blind instead of paralyze) which was apparently never fixed. [/list] After all this bickering (wow, this got way longer than expected) you might think I don’t like this game. And yet, after the initial wall I had to overcome and getting used to all the mechanics one at a time, I had a whole lot of fun with this game and am thinking of getting the DLC sometime soon. If you like a good RPG made with love and passion and many things that made other big RPGs great, I whole-heartily recommend this to you.

This game seems very overrated. It has one of the worst JRPG battle systems I've ever seen. At first the Overdrive meter system, which is the centerpiece of the combat, seemed like a novel idea, something which would help avoid the trap that JRPGs fall into where you end up with a set sequence of abilities that is always correct and rarely needed to deviate from them. But it just replaced it with basically the turn based version of "simon says" where the state of the overbar makes it so that one choice is almost always obviously correct, and any other action will just put you at a disadvantage. At no point when fighting enemies in this game did I feel like I had to really consider my actions - I just did the thing that the overdrive system demanded that I do. The advantage is that every fight plays out a little differently becuase of the RNG nature of the Overdrive system, but that comes with the heavy disadvantage of removing almost all player agency during the combat. Otherwise the rest seemed very average. The story seems "ok", but I didn't finish it so maybe it gets better (or worse). The art style is basically the same as every other small developer pixel art RPG out there, it looks good but doesn't set itself apart in any meaningful way. Overall, pretty disappointed in this one. I expected more from rave reviews, but it just wasn't there.

É a primeira vez que compro um jogo na Steam, comprei por que vi um amigo jogando e me interessei. Não imaginava que seria tão incrível, uma pena não ter tradução para PT, tive problemas com isso. Mas tive nostalgia a jogar um jogo de RPG clássico todo remodelado e com meu notebook de 2014. Obrigado Matthias você criou algo sensacional.