Here is a game clearly influenced by some of the greatest games ever made, but why didn't it completely land for me?
Chained Echoes is a great idea, and a great attempt at crafting a love letter to the golden age of JRPG's, reserrecting their magic to create a lengthy thirty plus hour journey in the 2020's. It does so many things "right" that a lot of titles that try to repackage that original magic don't; anywhere-saves, refreshed hp/mp out of each encounter, shared exp (kinda,) diverse locations, and most importantly a serious dedication to manifesting an interesting story.
Where it missed for me came in a few avenues, firstly with the difficulty of the game. World enemy and boss fight tuning is some of the most difficult work to do in creating a JRPG, as it's tough to balance the reward of using good mechanics to defeat a boss versus the actual ease of doing so. You want your players to work for it, but you don't want to frustrate them to no end with unfair moves and overwhelming status effects. To bypass hard encounters, many games (especially those in the JRPG golden age) gave players the option to grind their EXP to over/match level the fights. This meant that even players who weren't so gifted with comboing moves and pre-planning their opponent's attacks could get by. Unfortunately this also means that game-time was often inflated, as you'd have to spend countless hours grinding tough battles over and over for that sweet exp at the expense of your real life free time. Chained Echoes takes an interesting spin on boss fights, not allowing the player to grind at all to plan for them, with experience points that level up moves only coming after defeating said bosses... of which there is quite a few. This is good in theory, but when you're gated by a boss fight and have tried time and time again to get by to no avail, you feel helpless as there's no secondary option to level and power through. I played Final Fantasy 3's pixel remaster and was able to run back and forth through some rooms for an hour or so and was set for the whole game, Chained Echoes? Not so much. The nice thing here is that there are some difficulty sliders that change the way that enemies attack you without making the fights too easy.
The biggest issue is, well I don't even know if its fair to say: It's not Chrono Trigger. This is clearly a direct influence of CT (as well as Cross, FFVI, and some others,) and man when you're building off the blueprints of possibly the greatest game of all time, you have a tall task ahead of you. The dev did a phenomenal job in trying to match what made Trigger so good (a grandiose journey through time with the fate of the human timelines on the line,) but I spent the entire playthrough reminiscing on the magic that Square Enix' magnum opus put forth twenty-five plus years ago. I don't like to compare two games that aren't directly related but I kept thinking "This has been done better here" throughout the game's runtime. Level and dungeon design was a major mark I had against Chained Echoes in comparing it between its predecessors and influences, with this game having some remarkably boring and/or drab environments to prase through that dragged the game on in moments where the story urged it to be much faster. Puzzles like the one's involving the door and the seer were needless, same with the ones in the jungle, all they did was tarnish pacing in a place where the narrative begged it not to.
I've dragged on Chained Echoes quite a lot but its a great attempt at reviving the magic of the JRPG's of the 1990's. I enjoyed learning more about the lore of the game and the motives behind the multiple factions within Valandis. Lenne, Frederik, Gwayn, Kylian, Glenn, and Ba'thraz all had captivating motives toward solving the problems of the land and had me generally interested in seeing their plots through. The combat, while sometimes frustrating as mentioned above, was thought provoking enough for me to stay on my toes and make sure I was preparing for moves the right way. Music and art were well done too, albeit not necessarily memorable.
I'd recommend Chained Echoes to anyone who really enjoyed the JRPG's of the golden era and wants something to satiate their interest until Sea of Stars comes out.
Chained Echoes is a great idea, and a great attempt at crafting a love letter to the golden age of JRPG's, reserrecting their magic to create a lengthy thirty plus hour journey in the 2020's. It does so many things "right" that a lot of titles that try to repackage that original magic don't; anywhere-saves, refreshed hp/mp out of each encounter, shared exp (kinda,) diverse locations, and most importantly a serious dedication to manifesting an interesting story.
Where it missed for me came in a few avenues, firstly with the difficulty of the game. World enemy and boss fight tuning is some of the most difficult work to do in creating a JRPG, as it's tough to balance the reward of using good mechanics to defeat a boss versus the actual ease of doing so. You want your players to work for it, but you don't want to frustrate them to no end with unfair moves and overwhelming status effects. To bypass hard encounters, many games (especially those in the JRPG golden age) gave players the option to grind their EXP to over/match level the fights. This meant that even players who weren't so gifted with comboing moves and pre-planning their opponent's attacks could get by. Unfortunately this also means that game-time was often inflated, as you'd have to spend countless hours grinding tough battles over and over for that sweet exp at the expense of your real life free time. Chained Echoes takes an interesting spin on boss fights, not allowing the player to grind at all to plan for them, with experience points that level up moves only coming after defeating said bosses... of which there is quite a few. This is good in theory, but when you're gated by a boss fight and have tried time and time again to get by to no avail, you feel helpless as there's no secondary option to level and power through. I played Final Fantasy 3's pixel remaster and was able to run back and forth through some rooms for an hour or so and was set for the whole game, Chained Echoes? Not so much. The nice thing here is that there are some difficulty sliders that change the way that enemies attack you without making the fights too easy.
The biggest issue is, well I don't even know if its fair to say: It's not Chrono Trigger. This is clearly a direct influence of CT (as well as Cross, FFVI, and some others,) and man when you're building off the blueprints of possibly the greatest game of all time, you have a tall task ahead of you. The dev did a phenomenal job in trying to match what made Trigger so good (a grandiose journey through time with the fate of the human timelines on the line,) but I spent the entire playthrough reminiscing on the magic that Square Enix' magnum opus put forth twenty-five plus years ago. I don't like to compare two games that aren't directly related but I kept thinking "This has been done better here" throughout the game's runtime. Level and dungeon design was a major mark I had against Chained Echoes in comparing it between its predecessors and influences, with this game having some remarkably boring and/or drab environments to prase through that dragged the game on in moments where the story urged it to be much faster. Puzzles like the one's involving the door and the seer were needless, same with the ones in the jungle, all they did was tarnish pacing in a place where the narrative begged it not to.
I've dragged on Chained Echoes quite a lot but its a great attempt at reviving the magic of the JRPG's of the 1990's. I enjoyed learning more about the lore of the game and the motives behind the multiple factions within Valandis. Lenne, Frederik, Gwayn, Kylian, Glenn, and Ba'thraz all had captivating motives toward solving the problems of the land and had me generally interested in seeing their plots through. The combat, while sometimes frustrating as mentioned above, was thought provoking enough for me to stay on my toes and make sure I was preparing for moves the right way. Music and art were well done too, albeit not necessarily memorable.
I'd recommend Chained Echoes to anyone who really enjoyed the JRPG's of the golden era and wants something to satiate their interest until Sea of Stars comes out.