Chained Echoes REVIEW

I'm not sure why but the main menu screen and music for Chained Echoes instantly brought me back to a time when things were simpler. Come home from school, grab a hot pocket and play my favorite RPGs for HOURS. 

I miss these days and after watching information on Chained Echoes for some time, I'm hoping it can bring me back.

The story starts with Glenn, a young "sky pilot" tagging along with a rag-tag group of mercs named Iron Bull. They are tasked with destroying a stone said to fuel cannons of the enemy. Turns out, that stone does much more. We learn about the war that has been plaguing the continent for years and years. Bad things happen that lead to a peace treaty. We get to meet some more of our main characters and then, all hell breaks loose. Pretty standard stuff here but these tales are always exciting!

I really find myself engaged with the stories more of RPGs lately and having played through Tales of Arise and Scarlet Nexus recently, I'm so ready for more character development and lore!

Chained Echoes has quite a bit of humans and creatures alike for you to love, hate, and feel pretty confused about. This is a good thing. There are nice scenes of bonding with your friends and emotional, motivational excitement. The story is written to get you the details and not barrage you with excess dialogue. The old graphics/sprite style of the game adds its own unique charm to the characters which I will forever relish. Colors pop, character models look amazing and the world feels like Stardew Valley mixed with Chrono Trigger.

As you get introduced to these characters, you also get to play with their fighting styles. Your party fights in a traditional turn-based combat. Healers, tanks, warriors, the types are here and it is fun (especially having way more years of experience than I did as a kid) leveling up and making your group more powerful and synergetic. 

Speaking of synergy. Chained Echoes has a combat system that is reliant on something called the Overdrive system. This changes the strategy throughout many fights as you must pick your attacks, skills and defenses according to a meter to keep your team running well. Keep the meter in yellow and you have yourself a normal battle. Keep it in green and you can take more damage as well as have a reduction in skill cost. Boost that puppy too hard to red and you're going to get whacked with more damage dealt to your members. It is a pretty fun system to prevent combat from getting stale. Some RPGs fall victim to skill mashing. Luckily, there is a switch-up here.

You do get a limit-break style move as well. Dish out enough damage and you can choose a party member to unleash a powerful attack to your foes (or buff to your allies). 

One great thing I love is that your health and TP (technique points) refill after each battle so you're not spending time blasting your team with items after a fight.

We even get to pilot Sky Armor. A flying suit of armor that has its own set of skills and attacks. These beefy suits look awesome and add more diversity to the gameplay as well. Who wouldn't want to pilot one of these things?!

There are plenty of dungeons to explore with branching pathways leading to treasure. Luckily, there isn't TOO much grinding to do. The majority of the enemies you'll find scattered throughout will do the trick and you can put your points into passive, active, or TP skills to take down the big baddies. There are some instances where the bad guys will absolutely demolish you, but all it generally takes is a little switch here and there (you can swap out members of the party eventually) or a quick peek at the enemy buffs to take them out. 

Going through these, I haven't found that I was missing out on any items or extra-level gains as it was scaled relatively well. Normally in an RPG, a lot of dungeons can be overwhelming or exhausting. Here they feel like a part needed to advance. It fits rather nicely. Plus, the soundtracks are a joy to listen to.

The music is REALLY good and there were times I would stop to listen for fear of triggering another song. It's definitely a soundtrack I would put on my playlist to write up a review or read a book to. 

If I am being honest, there wasn't much through Chained Echoes that really bothered me. I was pleasantly happy to playthrough 99% of the time. My frustration would only come from my own negligence of a boss fight. Sometimes I would not pay attention to my Overcharge meter or I would forget to remember that a creature had HP Regeneration buffed. Playing through and learning each of the character's strengths is a blast and I would honestly recommend this through to completion.

For about $25 (I got a copy sent to me but was not paid for any opinions), you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't scoop this up.

As far as a rating scale, I give Chained Echoes a 9.5/10.