

Even without playing, you can see from the visual theme, design, and overall aesthetic that the game includes the famous formula that jetted the genre to prosperity in the early 90s. The sky armor combat extends the idea of the regular combat system, but plays with the way the overdrive gauge works in a way that is really interesting and fun.It's evident from the outlook of Chained Echoes that the developer is an old-school JRPG enthusiast. The addition of the overdrive gauge brings everything together: each attack raises the overdrive gauge, while swapping characters, defending, and using highlighted abilities lowers it, with your goal being to keep your position in the sweet spot to keep incoming damage minimized and your TP costs lowered. Being able to exercise my full knowledge of my characters’ abilities often rather than having my time wasted by hundreds of weak enemies feels excellent. In exchange, you are fully healed after each battle. I love the way that each area has a relatively small number of encounters, and each one (on the default difficulty settings) balanced to make you make heavy use of your toolkit. The result is something that could only come from examining hundreds of other games, seeing what didn’t work, or almost worked, and tweaking until the final product shines. The result is something that is rock solid – damn near bulletproof, and every little thing that I’ve ever thought was an annoyance in the countless other RPGs I’ve played has been avoided. He demonstrates intricate genre literacy, and has clearly thought very hard about the pros and cons of various systems in RPGs over the years. What Matthias Linda has accomplished here is nothing short of incredible. I was just hoping for something interesting and fun. I’m sure they meant well, but I’ve seen a lot of developers try to pull off a full scale RPG and miss the mark in a variety of ways. I backed it thinking that it looked pretty cool, but it was going to be developed by a single person and they weren’t even asking for that much. Can you bring peace to a continent where war has been waged for generations and betrayal lurks around every corner?Ĭhained Echoes is a game I feel very protective about. Follow a group of heroes as they explore a land filled to the brim with charming characters, fantastic landscapes and vicious foes.

Chained Echoes is a 16-bit SNES style RPG set in a fantasy world where dragons are as common as piloted mechanical suits.

Take up your sword, channel your magic or board your Mech. In the course of their journey, they will travel through a wide array of diverse landscapes spanning from wind-tanned plateaus and exotic archipelagos to sunken cities and forgotten dungeons. Chained Echoes is a story-driven JRPG where a group of heroes travel around the vast continent of Valandis to bring an end to the war between its three kingdoms.
