Perhaps the one area that the game lacks is in fact its
plot. It’s a fairly tried and tested formula, and not one a million miles away
from another of the big RPG’s of 2022 in Xenoblade 3. Basically, there are different nations, a big cataclysm type thing happens and then various heroes
from each nation decide they don’t want to fight and band together to save the
world. We’ve seen it a lot in the past but it works as a solid framework for
the story.
Chained Echoes has a retro top down style to it. It looks
somewhere between Chrono Trigger, the early Breath of Fire games and the
recently revived Live A Live. It would certainly fit in with the look of all the
SNES games of the past. It does look lovely as well with pixel art working to
really convince you this is some long lost gem.
What is more unique is that the story does not follow the ‘chosen
one’ or a sole hero. This is very much about the group and seeing the world
through their different eyes. Of course, the characters you have at your
disposal vary widely and range from knights to thieves with you needing to be
pretty sharp at utilising their skill sets in order to proceed.
This isn’t the only break from the norm as Chained Echoes
does a fair few things differently to the standard template. First of all, you
are automatically healed at the end of each encounter. This means skills and
magic are much more in play and using your standard attacks should be left as a last resort. This does mean though that even standard enemies have a hefty
health bar to knock down. This isn’t helped by the colour of it being almost impossible to discern for anyone remotely colourblind.
Another difference is that you only level up at certain
points in the game. After defeating bosses you get points you can use to select
from a pre-existing list of buffs and skills picked for each character. This
means you’ll have to think carefully about the sort of character and team you
are trying to build as you can’t just level yourself out of trouble. This can
be a problem as we found ourselves stuck at various points of the game with no
real way to make our characters stronger in order to progress. You can still
level up individual character skills in the more traditional way but these are
expensive to buff so be prepared for grinding if that’s the route you want to
go.
The real unique selling point though is the attack system. As
you carry out attacks a meter builds which eventually will move you into ‘Overdrive’.
When in this state you get buffs to your attack and defence. Keep going though
and you will move into ‘Overheat’ which then dramatically improves the odds for
your opponents. In order to keep the meter in the sweet spot you need to keep
and eye on which skills move the meter up and down and use the correct ones
accordingly. This can mean swapping characters in and out or having to use a
skill you really don’t want to so you have think ahead. On top of this
characters can also build up a special attack meter to unleash much like Final
Fantasy’s limit breaks.
If this wasn’t enough to get your head around there’s also a
whole host of other stuff going on. You can craft and enhance weapons, join an adventures
guild for side quests or go on Monster Hunts. There’s also a reward grid that
plays out like a sort of board game where as you undertake certain feets you
can claim rewards. There really is a lot to do and see and that’s before you consider
that simply wandering off the beaten path will normally end up with some kind
of hidden boss fight or treasure.
Overall, it is remarkable that a game of this size and
ambition has come from such a small team. It’s in danger of being overlooked
but fans of RPG’s should go out of there way to make sure to check this out. It
holds up against some of the best games in the genre and will give even the
most experienced of players something to get their teeth into.
Overall 8/10
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