Chained Echoes

I really enjoyed this game, despite its flaws. It's one of the better indie rpgs that I've played, even though it could use a little more polish. This is a reto-style RPG that draws a lot from games like Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. It takes inspiration from those games and adds many quality of life features, like no random battles, auto-saves, instant retry on game over, fast travel, up to triple the movement speed, full heal after every fight, and many others. Considering how small the team was, this is an impressive game! The music is great! It's emotional, catchy, and fitting where it's placed. I will say that because of the length of the game and how often you will return to areas and hear the same songs over again, we could have used a few more tracks, especially during the story sequences. That being said, I will be listening to the OST on its own. The art looks great. Its a definite step above your typical SNES graphics, but its not so different that it doesn't still show that aesthetic. The locations vary a lot from one to another and exploration of these worlds are addicting. I would often get to a new area and spend far too long just exploring and finding treasures. The story is interesting, but overly complicated at times and it does jump the shark a couple of times as well. It doesn't feel like a first draft, but it does need some polish. The characters are mostly interesting enough and get introduced well. However, there are a lot of them and so outside of the important characters, a few do get lost in the shuffle a bit. The only way to correct this would be to make the game longer and I think its a little long as is. This game is loaded with side content! The most interesting aspect of the game is the combat and the character building systems. They are very interesting, yet end up a little over complicated. The crystals that gain stats and effects for socketing into your gear are obtained through RNG. These crystals do allow for a lot of build diversity, but if you focus on building dps at all times, you are going to win relatively easy. If you try to learn everything naturally and don't farm crystals; just focus on the best build at all times, the difficulty curve is very satisfying. I also enjoyed the overdrive gauge. You have a few different types of skills and one type will randomly lower the overdrive gauge that you are trying to keep safely balanced in the middle while all over skill will increase it. This makes combat interesting even at the end of the game. The DLC fixes the issue with crystals and lets you obtain them from stealing and monster drops. The DLC is a separate story, though it is related to the main quest. Therefore, it doesn't apply to the main game progression. So you do have to get through the main story finding the crystals randomly. The DLC also has some impressive super bosses and found a way to make the overpowered characters I brought from the main game feel like they weren't too overpowered. I enjoyed this game enough to find everything and put over 100 hours into it. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys retro JRPGs and get hooked by interesting combat systems.

Chaines Echoes just kept impressing me with unexpected twists and turns as well as features and game systems opening up. The most magical thing to me is: How the game has a very typical JRPG story on the surface but adds such great twists and turns to it, making it uniqely intriguing. I should have recommended the game already way sooner! Truly one of the best newer JRPGs and the DLC so far also delivers from the get go: Intriguing story, great humor and fun gameplay. The only nitpick for me is that the skill management in combination with the class emblems could use some ui quality of life. It can become quite tedious going through the skills and having to also go back and forth between equipment and skill pages. Fantastic game!

I kinda hate this game's story, but the gameplay is polished and well-put together throughout, almost to the point that it feels like it has AAA rather than indie sensibilities. It's satisfying to explore its gameplay systems and strategize in battles, even if the writing is kind of atrocious.

otimo

Very much loved the game's world and the story. I was a bit unsure first but it really grew on me. Definitely worth playing if you like old school FF type games.

Um dos melhores RPGs que joguei na minha vida! Personagens fantasticos, historia incrivel com reviravoltas que te pegam de surpresa. O sistema de combate é diferente e inovador. Se você gosta de RPG de turno, pode comprar, não vai se arrepender nenhum pouco!

Fantastically well done RPG that harkens back to the classic sprite-based JRPGs of the SNES era. Developers knocked it out of the park on this one and I can't wait to see what they do next. Edit - Just want to add one thing to my review because my real one gripe with the game's systems got solved in the DLC - the crystal mechanic in the base game is tedious, grindy, and really messes with the flow of the rest of the game. This is mostly solved in the DLC but this is really the only real mechanical problem I have with the game. It still probably is one of the best JRPGs I've ever played even with that system flaw.