Heard about this years ago and was pleasantly surprised when it actually came out - kudos to a mostly solo dev for putting so much work into what is very clearly a labor of love, but I feel like I’m missing something when I hear people calling it the next great indie RPG - it’s just fine.

A couple of interesting setpieces and bits of mechanical refinement of the JRPGs Chained Echoes is cribbing from don’t really make up for the fact that the rest of the game is pretty boring. Every story decision feels like the least interesting one that could be made in the moment, and every new mechanic introduced feels less refined and integrated into the whole than the last. I put it down not even by choice - I just realised I hadn’t played it in a few days because I didn’t care about what might happen next.

When the game at one point tries to integrate a story featuring graphic sexual assault into a character’s backstory, I found it hard to even be offended at the batshit message it was trying to get across, because like the rest of the game the moment felt unfocused and only put where it was because other stories do that kind of thing. Chained Echoes struggles to find any sense of individuality or identity outside of its reverence to other video games, but instead of feeling like a considered understanding of what made those things great, it just feels like somebody quoting a good movie back at you.