Game Review: Chained Echoes

Game Title: Chained Echoes
Released: December 8, 2022
Game Length: 44 hours
Grade: C+

Prelude

Introduction: A German developer by the name of Matthias Linda started out small with a few personal fan games using RPG Maker. Then one day he started some story development for a game as early as 2016. In around 2018, he started getting serious by creating a website and social media accounts. He went on Kickstarter and was asking for 60,000 euro (about $66,000). Although some of his stretch goals weren't met, he ended up including additional ships, mechs, playable characters, dungeons, mini-games, New Game+, and localization support for Japanese in Patch 1.1 and Chinese in Patch 1.3. This probably explains some of the more abrupt dialogue endings to some of the side quests and some missing character animations. If you are a little curious, there is quite a bit available through the demo on Steam.

Options: When it comes to game mechanics, there is very little to speak of. There are a couple of difficulty options like one that increases enemy aggression. Though, the difficulty wasn't too overwhelming through the main campaign. The white flashes of light, like the one that shines when using a blind ability, can be dimmed to a steady grey color. There is an option to turn off the "new skills" notification which comes in handy when you unlock a special character that learns skills from enemies. The game introduces a few choices and quizzes that properly rewards you depending on the outcome. At one point, an item was given to me by avoiding all the enemies within an encampment before saving a hostage. There is no way to fall off the side and there are a few curious encounters like invisible bridges or hidden passageways in the landscape.

Battle System

On Foot: What ultimately surprised me was how many little quality of life improvements were made into the battle system. For starters, your status resets after every battle. This means that no matter what happens during a match, you will be revived with maximum health and tech points. If you encounter a harder fight, your ultra move meter will immediately be set to full. Any character can contribute and use the bar. A prompt will display with the character's ability as a quick reminder before you use it. You can see and avoid enemies sleeping on the path. If you do accidentally encounter them or find them too difficult, you have the option to escape by pressing the left bumper for nearly any random encounter. Enemies with elemental weaknesses can be exploited. The transition is very smooth as there is no fade away when setting up an encounter or fanfare when completing one. The overdrive system has you watching what sort of skills you perform during the course of battle as the gauge creates bonuses or penalties the higher it goes. If you lose a fight, you have the option to replay the battle (with a prompt to change your party's settings beforehand), your last auto-save, or load a saved file.

Characters: While the option to switch out characters isn't available from the beginning, the ability to have 2 teams of 4 from the 12 maximum playable characters near the end of the game makes for some wide-ranged tactics. The limited number of skills you can equip and the added bonuses of the dozen class emblems makes choosing your progression path more interesting. While you do gain skill points naturally for the ones currently slotted and additional points that can be appropriated towards any skill you want, you do not gain levels through traditional means. Instead, you gain grimoire shards from defeating bosses and completing a set number of activities on the Reward Board. This provides you with a star for all characters (even the ones you haven't discovered yet) that can be used to obtain a new active skill, passive skill, or stat boost. There is much loot to be obtained from enemies when pilfering, defeating, earns from the Reward Board, or rewards from defeating unique monsters from the Adventurer's Guild. They can be used to upgrade your equipment's power and offer additional slots for crystals (this process does require an anvil and a small fee).

Sky Armor: Things become a bit more streamlined after you obtain four hulking battle armors. For starters, the overdrive system becomes a balance meter that interacts with the new gear system. You begin in Gear 1 (normal) that moves it to the right, Gear 2 (berserk) that moves it to the left with boosted skills, and then cycles back to Gear 0 (reset) where the meter doesn't change but you can't use any skills. Everything dedicated to your characters does not contribute to this battle mode (including crystals) and there is always a maximum of four characters. There are armor variants and upgrades, the option to equip a melee weapon and a ranged, an accessory RAM to improve stats, and a custom color scheme. For most of the latter half of the game, you will be using these machines to fight giant monsters and enemy mechanoids.

The Story

Setting: I'm going to thread the needle now and set the stage the best I can without diving into any spoilers. Personally, knowing these things ahead of time might have helped clear some confusion about how this world functions. The main aspect of the game is how energy, or ether as it is called, flows between living things. Some beings have so much energy that they are essentially seen as gods that overlook mankind. This causes several factions that interpret their existence and actions to splinter between the people. A few individuals discover their true intentions as hostile and seek out some form of retaliation. They discover a unique device left behind that reconstructs itself by absorbing everything around after being broken. One faction wants to use the device to defeat their foes, both human and supreme beings alike. Another one wants to establish a sort of farm to fuel its power. In any case, your adventure slowly explores various concepts based upon how individuals manipulate or force the energy to flow from one source to another. You'll hear cases of people who are able to continue living thousands of years by pushing their essence into another structure, ones who can force others to do their bidding by corrupting their energy source, and a number of scientists who experiment on transmogrification.

Plot Twists: Unfortunately, the game drowns out its narrative when the number of surprise twists and shocking events can be more daunting than watching an episode of your favorite soap opera. Every character must have a depressing backstory. Someone will betray you at the end of every chapter. There must always be some sort of conflict or battle that leads to the needless deaths of thousands. I lost count of the number of people that kill themselves. You sort of grow numb to everything after a certain point. There are segments of exploration, puzzles, and finding recruits to keep you entertained for awhile. However, there are bits where your party will be broken apart with a few that never return. Thankfully, most of your party will eventually reunite after waddling through a few linear sections that can last a couple hours without a way to return back to the main world. These transitions made me constantly worry about not being able to finish tasks in the world. In fact, I accidentally completed the game before realizing what was unlocked right before the final boss. Although there might be some global catastrophes and the occasional time jump, you'll always be able to complete any objectives listed on the Reward Board.

Inappropriate Content: If you haven't figured it out by now, there doesn't seem to be a limit on the number of things that can be quite distressing. Horrors, torture, and death are all quite common occurrences. There also appears to be an abundance of swearing during certain events, even from characters you wouldn't expect to have a sailor's mouth. As humorous as some of the descriptive subtext can be on the items you collect off the ground, there are a few with some rather disgusting innuendos. Although the artwork doesn't seem to ever cross the line of displaying any explicit images or mutilation, there was at least one odd case where a man is always urinating off the side of a balcony.

Crystal Dilemma

Slot System: When the game first released, there was quite a commotion about how to enhance your equipment. Even after making it possible to read the tutorials again in Patch 1.1, there was still quite a bit that wasn't well explained. The crystals have a rank but the amount they give only increases at Rank III, V, and X. They only work if they are Rank III or above and the amount isn't necessarily consistent. Attack value may double or triple at 10%, 20%, or 30% while Resistance is set at 15%, 20%, or 25%. The "Not Enough" crystal doesn't upgrade at all even though it still has ranks and it is possible to go beyond Rank X with no added benefits. The size of the crystal determines how many slots it fills. Equipment come with two slots and can be upgraded twice for a total of four slots. However, there are limiters that even the tutorial may not expand upon. Although there is nothing preventing you from equipping the same gem in both your weapon and your armor, you cannot equip a gem with the same name in any given item. You cannot equip more than three crystals even if there are four slots. You are permitted to equip any number of different elements and resistances.

Crafting: Crystals are easily obtained by finding a red shard in various parts of the world. However, they can only be fused or equipped using an anvil at any of the intermittent locations throughout your adventure. This is when the purity of the crystal comes into play. You cannot simply combine two crystals together. You are only able to fuse a "natural" crystal that has not yet gone through the process. It takes the average slot size of the two - combining a 1 with a 2 or 3 ultimately becomes 2 - and subtracts one purity from the initial crystal (ignoring the value of the second one). You are able to add or remove crystals freely without charge. The process must be done for each item and there isn't a way to remove one specific crystal at a time. If there is a crystal that you do not wish to keep, you must throw away that crystal from the sub-menu.

Changes: About five months after the game's release, Patch 1.2 brought about some requested changes to help improve the crystal system. Instead of providing players random boosts to their characters, there was a desire to fully customize them with the most desirable outcome. So, you can now choose which of three crystals (originally a perk offered near the end of the game) to obtain or receive a small sum of currency instead if none are appealing. Also, the next time a crystal appears with the same name will now have a boosted amount. Crystals will now automatically be removed when you sell equipment to the vendor and can fuse again. Crystals without purity (as in they cannot fuse at all) no longer drop and there is less of a chance to obtain large crystals that fit three slots.

Gameplay

Environmental Changes: There are what you might call four major segments of the game. (1) The prologue lasts for about an hour and shows off every aspect from individual choices, battle armor, overdrive mechanics to the key figures of the game. (2) The next dozen hours breaks down the peace talks and has your party converge together in a vast number of ways as you walk from the main city on the most southern point of the map to the rival city in the north and the monastery to the east. You will be able to explore most of the regions with plains, forests, mountains, caverns, and other unnatural vegetation. (3) Something then happens that causes your party to split for three months. Other than a couple of towns now sporting new depressing features, there really isn't much difference to the world. In fact, you'll learn that you now have a private island that gradually changes as you recruit more people. You'll finally obtain a set of battle armor that streamlines the battle system by cutting out the ability to swap members or use crystals. (4) You'll eventually do something that will make the gods angry and cause some major events to occur. However, nothing really responds to the changes and only a few new locations appear on the map.

Unlocks: Because of how the game breaks into different areas, there are what you might call inconsistencies on the map. Each section purposely has parts that are unavailable until you complete an objective. These "blocks" become very annoying as you'll be constantly bombarded with guards that block your way, characters that reject your advancement, and a "you are going the wrong way" warning that makes you turn around. A couple of times I went all the way around, traveled through one of these gates, and couldn't return the same way. Most of the side quests do not become available until the very last section of the game. Four of these will unlock new optional party members with two of them only available after Act IV. Isolated areas will be unavailable until you are able to fly around with the sky armor. Entire sections are locked until you discover a new region, sometimes with the appropriate tool, after a story segment. You might be able to find recruits early, but you can only invite about three of them at a time after completing a new location. To find out when and where they become available will require a payment of 1,000 coins to your fortune teller. The location of the Flying Smithy doesn't appear until you find a scroll in the library right before the final boss encounter. While it is possible to retrieve most of the supplies for the ultimate weapons beforehand, you won't be able to forge them until this character and location is unlocked. However, I wouldn't worry about them too much since I accidentally completed the game without them.

The Map System: Perhaps the most excruciating problem of the game is trying to work with the menu interface. For example, there comes a time they send you on a mission to Phyon Oasis but never tell you that you can finally call an airship by pressing the back button on your controller. When using the airship, only major locations display a title while flying overhead or using the map. Since you cannot enter an airship while in a building or underground, you must first teleport to an open location and then use it. Pressing the back button again allows you to wander around your ship (and there are ways to buy other airships later on) but exiting will reset the ship to the middle of the map. Sky Armors cannot fly or land in high grass areas. This also applies if you "hovering" over water. If you fly into a town area, they will automatically be removed. Opening your map will allow you to (1) physically move the immediate vicinity around, (2) display the names of caverns or where the map transitions to, (3) display main or side quest markers, or (4) open teleportation. When you enter teleportation mode, it will always open up the full list of every "map" location and default to the top location. You cannot move the map around or display information. You must press up or down (not left or right) to cycle through each of the points. This is the only way to view a map outside your current region. While you can find individual towns and cities on the map in an airship, they will not appear in the list of teleportation points. Instead, you must find the towns labeled inside their designated regional map.

Reward Board: Using the left trigger button on the gamepad or accessing the journal sub-menu will bring up a giant board filled with all sorts of fun activities. All you need to do is complete an objective - visit every square on the map, defeat a decent number of enemies, take care of the unique monsters, find buried treasure or hidden caves, complete side quests or collect all the chests (most can't be completed until way later), complete challenges like not entering overdrive during a fight, find class emblems, and collect items. Not only can you collect rewards for each task but you receive items when you "chain" enough across the board. Sacred water will allow you to initiate challenges for class emblems and grimoire shards will level up all your characters.

Adventurer's Guild: The game has this weird way of tucking away information. For example, the Adventurer's Guild barely tells you what any of your abilities do. If you aren't careful, you'll miss out on their valuable information when they disappear from the first site after the time jump. Only the second location becomes available and the only useful information they have is how fire works better with oil. There isn't much advise on what toxic does to the enemy or what agility provides for your characters. I had to visit a website to find out for sure. Somewhere around the region is a Adventurer's Guild scout with information on the two unique monsters within the region. Though, sometimes you just need to run back and forth to make them spawn. Once you defeat one, grab both the rewards from the board and the guild.

Information Control: There are other areas that are a little more obscure. It took way too long for me to figure out that you can travel through the landscape underwater by clicking on air bubbles. There is a notice within the sub-menu that mentions how all items collected on the ground are meant to be sold. Using the select all and sell option makes this process quick and allows you to buy deals that unlock from the merchant. Finding out when to recruit was pretty tough and something as simple as where to get a golden voucher or more incocybin berries (that is what they are called) took a chain of running around without any objective markers to guide you. I don't want to think about the number of things you have to do to summon the secret bosses. Let's just say that my encounter with Little Red Riding Hood turned out to be a disaster when I realized you are limited to about a dozen turns, she has both an ability to take everyone down to 1 health and immediately take down two characters in your party, and more enemies spawn the longer it takes. None of my characters, equipment, or abilities were designed to counter such a fight. Apparently, things aren't so easy nowadays after the developer made it less likely to exploit agility for more turns.

Summary

Review: As a homage to old JRPGs, Chained Echoes takes your typical turn-based combat and mixes up the formula in a big way. Each battle is self-contained with various quality-of-life features that makes each encounter less burdensome. You can improve your equipment with the loot earned from battle, slot crystals to enhance their quality, use elements to exploit enemy weaknesses, and switch characters during a match for better strategies. You can escape most encounters, fly around in battle armor, and use teleportation or an airship to get around. You even gain levels through defeating bosses and completing objectives. Unfortunately, the story's narrative can either be fascinating or deplorable depending on the type of person you are. While the setting is unique, the constant bombardment of the world's depressing nature can take its toll. The game's interface also doesn't do you any favors when navigating messy menus and working with your equipment can become exhausting when repeating the process for each and every one of the ten tiers. Half of the content isn't explained and there is quite a bit of backtracking through frustrating terrain. If you aren't squeamish seeing people die in horrible ways, able to adapt to a fantasy setting, and deal with a lack of information, then there might be a hidden gem here that's right up your alley.