The upgrade, gear, and leveling systems are all engaging and filled with compelling decisions. I found the high challenge enjoyable, especially since bad decisions and a game over led to an immediate choice to replay the battle, so the penalty for failure is negligible. Even regular fights sometimes come down to only having one hero standing to strike the final blow. The party fully heals between combat, so it’s always about throwing everything you have at the enemy.

Instead, every fight demands your full attention, leveraging enemy weaknesses, character abilities, on-the-fly party formation changes, and a unique overdrive mechanic to keep your party in the sweet spot of damage dealing. The thoughtfully designed combat system scales back on grindy, repetitive battles. Think you understand the arc of the fated hero storyline? Maybe things are more complicated than you first guessed.Īlong the way, the staples of classic JRPG-style adventuring appear in a balanced and rewarding loop. Ready for a new twist on combat? Here’s a new additional system in which you control mechs in a fascinating alternate combat style, recalling classics like Xenogears. Sometimes, it’s fulfilling those expectations at precisely the pace and moment you are most ready for them, in both story and gameplay, and at other times it’s about subverting them. The developer delights in playing with your preconceived ideas. The resulting adventure may look like something from 30 years ago, but it plays with a sophistication that deserves attention from any genre fan. Of course, the reality is this lavish and imaginative RPG is brand new, crafted mostly by a single developer as both an homage to and celebration of those old games, even while injecting a healthy dose of new concepts. Chained Echoes deceives at first glance, making you question if you missed it back when its seeming contemporaries, like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, were making a big splash.

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