Chained Echoes (2022) [PC] review

“I wish somebody would have told me, babe
Some day, these will be the good old days”

-Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Good Old Days

Remember the good ol’ days of the 16-bit era? Games just hit different back then, as the kids say lately. That can be either a good thing or a bad thing, really – sure, it was great to be introduced to some of the mainstays of JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, but spotty localization decisions would often mean we’d miss games or get them in butchered form. It’s fortunate, then, that today most everything is localized and there are indie developers to crank out even more games if you haven’t got enough to play. Chained Echoes is in the latter camp, offering a lengthy JRPG adventure that’s generally pretty solid but has some irritating quirks.

Glenn the mech pilot – well, it’s a Sky Armor, but let’s be real here – finds himself in a bad way after a battle when he accidentally causes a calamitous explosion trying to destroy a mysterious stone called the grand grimoire. Having taken responsibility for the disaster, Glenn and his comrade Kylian go on a search for the grimoire so they can fail a little bit less at destroying it. Along the way, they’ll team up with a wide cast of other characters, from a scarlet-haired thief to a princess to a magical auteur, and discover that there’s a little bit more going on than just the destruction of a dangerous magic stone.

An early version of the game’s map

The plot’s fairly complicated since each party member gets a fair amount of screen time, but don’t worry if you’re feeling a little burned by more meandering games like Kingdom Hearts, as everything comes together in the end. One complaint is that Chained Echoes’ text was clearly originally written in a different language and then translated to English, resulting in some bizarre sentence construction, stilted dialogue, and some typos here and there. An editor would have done a lot to help out here, but well, remember This Game Was Made By One Guy, alright?

Either way, this is a classic JRPG through and through, fitting nicely in the same niche as games like the recent masterpiece Rise of the Third Power. You’ll run around dungeon maps, get into battles that appear onscreen a la Chrono Trigger, customize your characters between battles, and take on powerful bosses. Chrono Trigger, in fact, might be the closest comparison to a true retro game, as the art style feels similar and the gameplay has the same sort of punch. Unlike that classic, though, which is a game that’s clearly meant to be polite to new players, Chained Echoes expects a little bit more. This makes it feel a tad hostile compared to similar titles.

Case in point: combat is more complex than the classic games Chained Echoes is aping. Plot considerations notwithstanding, you’ve got eight party members in the end, paired up to give you four active members at a time that can switch back and forth to suit your needs. Each character is able to equip six different skills from a fairly sizable list per character, and this is how you’ll get most of your work done. Along with consuming resources, skills affect an Overdrive gauge at the top of the screen, either pushing it up or down based on the skill. Keeping this meter in the proper spot around the middle will result in a sizable buff for your party, but pushing it up too far will cause your party to take additional damage. Later, you obtain Sky Armor of your own that spices things up a little more, offering a somewhat simpler combat system, which gives Chained Echoes a Xenogears vibe.

It’s a fairly deep combat system that’s enjoyable to mess with when it opens up. The issue for some might be that it takes a while to do that. Early on, when you’ve only got a few characters and little chunks of the possible mechanics available to you, Chained Echoes struggles a bit. Early combat has a stiff “puzzle battle” feel reminiscent of the Super Famicom anime tie-in games of old. There’s a “right” way to win, typically focusing on a combat mechanic emphasized by a character’s skills and you’re going to do that or pay. Some might be fine with this, but I found it a little stifling and certainly preferred when more options were available.

Likewise, Chained Echoes’ character customization can feel a little restrictive. There’s no leveling in a traditional sense here, replacing grinding with enhancing characters’ abilities using shards obtained via story progression. This means that if you run into a fight that feels a little too mean, well, tough cookies. You’ll get better or you’ll get stuck. Again, later when you have more characters and they all have more shards, this isn’t the burden that it seems at first, but it definitely takes some getting used to. You can tweak things a tiny bit further by upgrading gear and slotting gems, with plenty of each strewn all over the place to find or obtain via sidequests.

Once it gets going you’ll probably find Chained Echoes pretty acceptable. At least you’re going to get to enjoy some eye candy on the way there, as the game’s graphics are lovely. Pixel art’s been done to death, revived, then done to death again by the indie crowd, but Chained Echoes is one of those titles that really does it justice. In particular, the backgrounds are fantastic and do a lot to help the game feel immersive and engaging. Likewise, the sound design here harkens back to the days of yore and does so without too many issues, though you may be irritated at the lack of voice acting for the many, many cutscenes.

Chained Echoes’ text issues and difficulty spikes mean that it’s not quite a perfectly-tuned magnum opus like the aforementioned games. Still, it’s an ambitious title that delivers on a lot of its promises. If you’re able to endure some clunky dialogue and stick with a combat system that really does get better with age, you’re probably going to enjoy Chained Echoes’ 40-hour or so runtime.

We would like to thank Deck13 Spotlight for providing us with a copy of Chained Echoes for this review.

PIXEL PERFECT

Recommended

Cory G. believes the pen is mightier than the sword…well, depending on how sharp the pen and sword are. A child of the ’90s and a prolific writer, he strews his work about like Legos made of words, just waiting for your brain to step on them. He enjoys a devilish challenge, so when it comes to talking about some of the more difficult games out there, you might just run into the Infernal Accountant Mage. Some advice: hold on to your soul around this guy, and don’t sign anything. Read more at popzara.com.