Last week, we started our look at Chained Echoes, an Indie RPG for the current gen consoles. While its story had some ups and downs, the game provided an overall strong experience, with excellent atmosphere, likable characters and fantastic music. But how was the actual gameplay? Well, pretty good. It's not without its flaws, but Chained Echoes does a very good job of blending classic JRPG gameplay notes with more modern amenities in a way that largely works.
Let's start with the combat, which offers a turn-based system that will feel very familiar to most old-school RPG fans. Up to four characters can actively participate in battle with four more backing them up, for a total of eight. You can switch at any time, so basically you have eight characters fighting. Like Final Fantasy X, you can see the order in which characters and enemies will attack. Characters can attack, defend, use items or use skills, which require the use of TP. This leads to one of the biggest gameplay differences between Chained Echoes and most old-school RPGs: your health and TP are restored after every battle. This might seem like it would make the game too easy, and honestly, it kind of does at first. But eventually, you come to realize that monsters are scaled accordingly and you absolutely have to unload during every battle. I have...mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it makes every battle feel important. On the other, it causes a few issues that I will get to later. At the end of the day, the combat doesn't do anything completely out of the ordinary. However, the characters are all well designed and their skills are diverse, unique and fun to use in battle. Overall, I would say the combat is very good, it's actually kind of nice that it doesn't deviate too far from traditional turn based JRPG combat. That style is so rare anymore that I'm always happy to see it.
The one major difference between Chained Echoes and other old-school RPGs is the overdrive gauge. The gauge has three sections, normal, overdrive and overheat, and you can increase said gauge by performing attacks and using skills. The goal is to keep the bar in the overdrive section, where you will get across the board stat boosts for all of your characters. Let the bar go too far though and you will overheat, causing you to take more damage and do less. You can lower your overdrive by defending, but occasionally your skills will be highlighted and using them will temporarily lower the bar. This appears to be random, but there may be some level of method to this madness. I like the overdrive gauge a lot, it's not the best battle mechanic ever but it's a nice addition to the combat and adds an additional layer of strategy.
In addition to battling with your characters, you will also have portions of the game where you fight with sky armors, giant flying mech suits used for more powerful monsters and bosses. These battles differ slightly from the party battles, as you only fight with four at a time and the overdrive gauge is different. In these battles, the gauge starts in the middle. Your sky armors have zero, first and second gear, with actions taken in first gear moving the gauge right and actions taken in second gear move it left. Second gear will make your attacks more powerful, but it will also reduce your defense and eat up your TP quickly. Zero gear will increase your defense and won't move the bar, but your skills are inaccessible and first gear is the baseline. I think it's just different enough from the regular battles to feel like a change of pace without feeling like a completely different game entirely.
The battles are fun, but the exploration is also very well done. You do have a world map, but it's not really accessible until much later in the game. At least it's there though, which is more than you can say for a lot of modern RPGs. Still, most of the travel in the game takes place between the various towns and large, open field areas. I didn't think I would like this format, but it really works here. All of the field areas are fun to explore and have tons of secrets. Many of them need to be revisited if you want to fully explore, which I think is cool. There are teleport points throughout the world, most of which are in pretty convenient locations. This makes it easier to get around, even early in the game, and prevents just about every item in the game from being missable. And if you don't like backtracking, you can wait until you acquire your sky armor. These things aren't just for battle, you can hop in them in most field locations and jet around quickly while flying over smaller obstacles. This might not seem like a big deal in theory, but it was awesome in practice.
Unlike most RPGs, Chained Echoes incentivizes you to explore by rewarding you for completing certain tasks. Things like defeating unique enemies, finding hidden caves and exploring certain amounts of the map will fill out spaces on a grid, which will unlock items. Each task fills in a tile and the more of these tiles that you link together, the better the rewards will be. Some of these tasks are relatively easy to do, others are difficult, but all of them incentivize you to continue exploring. Sometimes when games put this much emphasis on exploring, it starts out fine but becomes tedious as the game goes on. It's especially problematic when you have to go back into early areas to explore, where enemies aren't a threat and you have to wander aimlessly to find the small corners of the area you missed. But here, you can fly around in your sky armor so this isn't a problem. Encounters are touch based, so you don't even have to fight anything if you don't want to.
Between the sky armor, airship and teleport points, it's very easy to get around the world of Chained Echoes. It's really easy to revisit old areas, which is nice. But there are also lots of hidden areas to explore as well. Some of these are essential for sidequests, like building out your headquarters on Hermit's Island. You will find characters throughout the world that you can recruit to join your cause, with each providing your party with some sort of benefit. Overall, the sidequests are pretty strong. Most of them are worth doing and all provide a reasonable benefit. Others offer development for members of the party or explain a little bit more about the world. None of them are tedious and even the ones that force you to run across the world aren't bad because it's so easy to get around.
Chained Echoes isn't without its flaws. The weapon upgrade and crystal system seems tacked on and often felt like a waste of time. All of your weapons can be upgraded with materials and have slots to equip crystals, which provide buffs. Unfortunately, this takes tons of time and needs to be done each time you equip new weapons and armor, which happens relatively often. I get upgrading weapons in a game where you don't switch that often, but I dreaded doing it here and it always killed the flow of the game. I also called out the camera shifting in my preview and I stand by that here. No matter how far I got into the game, It was jarring every time I started running and it felt like the camera struggled to keep up with my characters.
At the end of the day, Chained Echoes was an outstanding game, especially considering it was essentially designed by one person. If I had to compare it to a game I've played so far, it would have to be Cosmic Star Heroine. CSH was also an indie darling and it was a title I liked a lot. Honestly, I kind of found CSH to be a bit more innovative than Chained Echoes. However, Chained Echoes is superior in just about every other way. It's a great game that's just what old school RPG fans have been looking for. It has its flaws, but most of them can be ironed out just by simple iteration. I really, really hope there's a sequel someday, even if it takes another seven years. Not an all-time great, but definitely the building blocks of one.
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