I started this game a few years ago but never finished it due to life obligations. Recently, I decided to come back to it and finally see it through. It took me just under 41 hours to 100% the game and earn all achievements.
Before getting into the game itself, I want to mention that the fact this was created by a single developer (with some art assistance from one other person) is an absolutely jaw-dropping accomplishment. As someone who has developed multiple games, I was blown away by what Matthias was able to pull off and genuinely impressed by how intelligently many of the systems were designed from a production standpoint. Bravo.
Character Progression
Chained Echoes features a large cast of characters, though you'll spend most of the game rotating around 6–8 before gaining more in the later acts. Most fit familiar RPG archetypes, but a few stand out and feel genuinely unique.
Each character has a talent tree that grants stat boosts, passives, and abilities. Across the entire roster, there's plenty of room for experimentation, and if you enjoy party-building, you'll have a great time. Combat continues to evolve as you recruit new allies and unlock new branches of the talent tree, so every few hours you're given a reason to rethink your party composition or try new strategies. That said, if you wanted to brute-force one setup through most of the game, you probably could.
There are also multiple tiers of weapons and armor that can be upgraded throughout the game. One of the coolest progression systems is the Class Emblems, which grant characters access to abilities they normally wouldn't have. You can slap a Cleric emblem on an assassin and suddenly have a character capable of both massive damage and party healing. Since abilities scale with a character's stats, you'll usually want to amplify their strengths rather than make them more balanced, but it's still a really cool idea.
Combat
If you're reading this review, you've probably heard people talk about the Overdrive system. It's essentially a heat meter that grants bonus damage, damage resistance, and reduced mana costs when managed properly, while penalizing you if it gets too high.
Heat builds whenever characters use abilities, but the game also displays a random ability type (physical, magical, healing, buff, debuff, or utility) that will significantly reduce it when used. As a result, fights can play out differently depending on how the meter shifts.
I think most complaints about the system are valid in the sense that it can become tedious in some fights. However, if you invest points wisely and maintain a diverse set of abilities across your party, it isn't nearly as restrictive as some make it out to be. For me, it was a fun idea that mostly lost its novelty by the end of the game, but it was never detrimental to the experience.
Sky Armors (The Giant Mechs)
This was the one part of the game that fell a little flat for me.
As a traversal tool, the Sky Armors are fantastic. Swapping between movement modes and transitioning between mech and on-foot gameplay is quick and seamless.
In combat, though, they felt a bit stiff. There's nowhere near the same level of variety or complexity as the standard party combat, so after a few hours it starts to feel repetitive. The Overdrive meter also functions differently during Sky Armor battles and becomes completely predictable. Once you discover a strategy that works, there's very little need to adapt to what enemies are doing.
The last 40% or so of Sky Armor encounters felt nearly identical, and I found myself repeating the same approach over and over.
As a side note, I've seen reviews claim you need to become proficient with multiple weapon types to handle bosses. In my experience, that's not true. I barely swapped weapons on my Sky Armors until near the final fight and had no issues, so make of that what you will.
Story
I enjoyed the story overall. The central plot is interesting, and there are plenty of twists and revelations that make it exciting to follow.
That said, the quality of the writing is inconsistent. Sometimes the dialogue feels natural, while other times it veers into very anime-esque or cheesy territory. It never hurt my enjoyment of the game, but don't come in expecting incredibly compelling writing.
Several characters have tragic backstories, but it often felt like the game didn't explore them much beyond that. I would've loved to see more character arcs develop throughout the adventure, though I understand that's a big ask considering the scope of the project.
To be fair, some of the dialogue is genuinely funny and enjoyable (namely the guards looking for Sienna—iykyk).
Overall, the story itself is engaging, but the dialogue is mostly just passable.
Crystals
This is my one major gripe with the game.
Weapons and armor can be equipped with crystals that provide additional stats and passives. On paper, it's a great system. In practice, it's incredibly tedious, and by the end of the game I largely ignored it for anyone outside my main party.
There are around 30 different crystal types. For this example, let's use an Attack Up crystal. Crystals drop between ranks 1–3 but can be upgraded all the way to rank 10. Combining crystals simply adds their ranks together, and each crystal has a purity value that determines how many times it can be upgraded.
Here's where things start getting annoying. If I combine an Attack Up crystal and its purity hits 0, it can no longer be upgraded. "Just use it to upgrade another crystal," you might say. Nope. Once a crystal has been upgraded, it can't be used as upgrade material. It's just stuck.
Crystals also only combine with the same type of crystal. Remember when I said there were around 30 of them? Yeah... getting enough matching crystals to make high-rank versions can take awhile.
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE.
Crystals have random sizes from 1–3 slots, and equipment starts with only 2 crystal slots until you upgrade it. If you find a better weapon or armor in the field, it's often not worth equipping because you'll lose your crystal bonuses. Even when you get back to an anvil, your best crystal might not fit into your new gear until you've upgraded it.
Then you multiply this process across 6 characters (or 10 in the late game), and it becomes an insanely time-consuming chore. The worst part is that crystal bonuses are actually really good, so you don't want to ignore them. But keeping everyone's gear updated takes forever.
Ultimately, that's why I only bothered maintaining crystals for my main four characters and stopped worrying about everyone else by the end.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Chained Echoes was a great experience, and I'm very glad I gave it another shot. The scale of what was accomplished by such a small team is genuinely impressive, and despite some rough edges, it's easy to see why the game has earned so much praise.
7.5/10
