Chained Echoes
Take up your sword, channel your magic or board your Mech. Chained Echoes is a 16-bit style RPG set in a fantasy world where dragons are as common as piloted mechanical suits.
Chained Echoes is a rpg, pixel graphics and indie game
developed by Umami Tiger (Matthias Linda)
and published by Deck13 and WhisperGames.
Released on December 08th 2022 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 6 languages: English, French, German, Korean, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
It has received 6,392 reviews of which 5,780 were positive and 612 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.8 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 17.49€ on Steam and has a 30% discount.
The Steam community has classified Chained Echoes into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7 or newer
- Processor: Dual Core Processor
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon R9 200 or equal
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 900 MB available space
MacOS
- OS: MacOS 10.15 Catalina
- Processor: Dual Core Processor
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon R9 200 or equal
- Storage: 900 MB available space
Linux
- OS: SteamOS
- Processor: Dual Core Processor
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon R9 200 or equal
- Storage: 900 MB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Good game but not without faults. Chained Echoes shines in its character development, main battle system, music, and world building. Unlike a lot of players, I liked the crystal system and used it to heavily customize my characters. It's also chock full of references to its spiritual predecessors. Its biggest fault, in my opinion, is that the plot and storytelling went in a lot of different directions, and came off as though it was trying to do too much. Its second biggest fault is that the mech battle system lacks the finesse that the main battle system has, which I honestly think is a symptom of the main issue of trying to do everything. That said, if you're looking for a good RPG, give it a try. I think what Matthias was able to accomplish with minimal help is very impressive.
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I'm really excited to see this developer's next game. Playing the first chapter of Chained Echoes gave me a feeling like i was 1997 and the second disc for Final Fantasy Tactics was spinning up. The combat was crisp and challenging. The story was rote but nevertheless compelling. The progression system was unique and fun -- tying together job selection, combat, and exploration in a way that made it so that nothing in the game felt like a grind. That feeling lasted for about the first 20 hours of the game. After that, with each new mechanical and story layer that was added I felt my experience degrade. I recommend, even highly recommend, this game, because those first twenty hours approach perfection. They nail everything that makes old-school JRPGs feel great and use modern game design techniques to make the stuff that felt terrible about them fun. Unfortunately, the game didn't stop there. By the end, the game was mechanically bloated and the narrative felt like it was falling apart at the seams. It feels like the game needed an editor. If it had been half as long and had never added a mechanic after the first chapter or two, then the game would have been much better. The mechs could have been cut and the mechanics and story would both have been better, That's why I say I am really looking forward to this developer's second game. There is so much that is fantastic on display here. A title from this developer that shows some more restraint and can kill some of its darlings could be truly great.
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"Do you believe this? We're on a suicide mission, and he's taking a nap!" Introduction This review is based on playing on the Steam deck. Chained Echoes is a classic era-styled JRPG with a strong focus on story, character and world-building, and with its retro-style aesthetic and beautiful soundtrack, it promises to be an epic journey. But does it soar through the sky as free as a bird, or is trapped in a cage of its own devices? 🟩 Positives 🟥 Negatives 🟩 A well-thought, written and devised storyline that promises to keep you on the edge of your seat with its many plot twists and ability to invest you in the cast exceptionally quickly. 🟩 Unique gameplay elements that set it aside from the rest in terms of how it mechanically plays and reinterprets the levelling system in more than one way. 🟩 A beautiful retro-styled aesthetic that continued to surprise me the entire way through that was perfectly complimented by a stunning soundtrack. 🟩 Engaging in unique enemy and boss encounters will continuously push you to the limit, pushing you to adapt to each situation as they arise. 🟥 RNG seems to play a pretty considerable role in the outcome of some combat scenarios. Skill takes precedence, followed by preparedness, but RNG follows closely and can significantly impact your success. Story The game opens with the hold of a fantastical flying vessel on its way to a battlefield in a distant land. Soldiers and crew wander its hallways, busy with preparations and contemplation for the coming battle that weighs heavily in the crowded halls. It's here, amongst the bustling busyness of the crew, that you meet the main protagonist, Glenn. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3224820055 Glenn, accompanied by his close friend, Kylian, and the rest of the Iron Bull mercenary company, are on their way to a distant city to assist in freeing them from tyranny. But as is always the case, fate has different plans for the heroes, as a grand explosion consumes the city that nobody could have prepared for. Now, with the world feeling the weight of that fateful day, an uncertain peace has fallen across the lands that have faced war for the last several centuries. With the world in such a precarious position, new events begin to unfold that threaten the lives of everyone on Valandis. Do you have what it takes to stand against the tides of chaos? Chained Echoes blew me away with how well-written and paced it was. The story provides a substantial, emotionally fueled experience, filled to the brim with twists and moments of solemn contemplation for the events that transpire. The dialogue enormously assists in the grand scheme, providing much-needed bolstering to the already considerable plot and delivering a great deal of understanding of the main cast and their motivations. Gameplay Analysis Old school, but mechanically rejuvenated. This game isn't your standard, run-of-the-mill RPG. While it aesthetically matches most of the classic SNES era games of its type, it differs greatly in a mechanical sense. Unlike almost every other RPG on the market, there isn't a standard levelling system in place in Chained Echoes. Instead of gaining experience points and using these to level your character progressively across the story, you are awarded skill points for overcoming significant obstacles in your journey, usually in the form of powerful enemies. These skill points can unlock skills in an extensive list of abilities within a tiered list that increase in power the higher the tier. The second significant difference between this game and others is the overdrive system. Overdrive is a bar in the corner of your screen that increases with every skill you use and hit you take and decreases with inaction and defence. Keeping the overdrive in yellow ensures you receive standard damage with no penalty, green lowers your damage taken and increases damage done, and red at the far end of the spectrum increases damage taken and reduces damage done. Improving your prowess through exploration. Weapons and armour in Chained Echoes take a different direction than the usual format. You don't always have to move up to the subsequent variant to see an improvement. You can always opt for upgrading the piece through materials found in the world and then enchanting it with crystals that greatly bolster your attributes. Finding good crystals can be a bit of a grind as you are bound to RNG at this point, and simply finding the crystal you're after might prove difficult until much later in the game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3224820467 But this isn't the only method for improvement, as, at a certain early point in the journey, you will unlock a hideout where you and your crew can begin to set up operations to take the battle to the enemy. By inviting random people you meet to help you, you will unlock passive bonuses that vastly help you in many different ways, such as increased crystal discoveries per node and random items at intervals of game time. And the rest you already know. The rest of the game is relatively standard to the usual RPG foundations and will feel particularly nostalgic to the classic-era RPG fans. Audio and Visual As mentioned above, despite its retro aesthetic, I genuinely believe Chained Echoes is one of the most vibrantly beautiful experiences I've ever had the opportunity to play. The art and atmosphere are captivating aspects of the world and really deliver a true sense of immersion throughout the entire experience. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3224820385 The audio is much the same as the soundtrack and general audio, is an impeccable feat of design, and provides a sensational sense of adaptation and vividness to an already remarkable journey. Deck Performance and Specifications During my rather lengthy experience, I didn't notice any drops in quality at all, and the game feels like it was made all along for the Steam Deck, which ran exceptionally well. A full charge would approximately provide 8-10 hours of gameplay demonstrating the title optimisation. Final Thoughts - Excellent [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2529084785]Review chart here. As I sit here in quiet contemplation over the journey I have just undertaken, I feel resounding pride and sadness over the decisions that were made and the fact that it's almost over now. I wonder if the minor flaws the game holds are enough to lower the score in any dramatic sense, and in the very end I believe they don't do enough harm to warrant that course of action. This is a truly wondrous experience that deserves both distinction and praise for the high-quality content it has provided as well as the experience that continues to resonate with me even now. I would recommend this game without hesitation to anyone who is a true fan of storytelling, world and character design. A journey taken is rarely without purpose, so head on over to [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43064204/] Hell, Purgatory and Paradise to find your next epic tale. A climb to the summit is a sign of strength, so head on over to [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/] Summit Reviews where every review is peak.
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This will ushering the Next Renaissance of Indie JRPG Im gonna keep it short & simple, This game remind me of: [*]The innovation of gameplay system from Chrono Trigger . [*]The story that have great character, heavy lore & mature theme development as Final Fantasy 6 . [*]The sky armor combat that reminiscent mecha combat in Xenogear . No level grinding, Every after battle HP/TP fully recovered, Reward board to give extra benefit for completing specific task, Team swapping system & more. This game totally respect player time for implement such modern feature. Soundtrack score by Eddie Marianukroh is nothing short of beauty & mesmerizing, not to compare to the great Nobuo Uematsu but im believe Eddie's work here will inspire other gaming composer in the future. Cons: - Personally i think the story is a bit convoluted and feel overlong. (im an older man so it kinda stress me out when the game is long, but for those avid JRPG player im sure they will love this) - The crystal crafting system feel undercook. Lastly I gonna give kudos to the masterful solo developer Matthias Linda who code, do all the character & background pixel design, gameplay system and story writing (according to the internet, if im miss out information, My apologies). Its crazy to think one developer can complete such amazing work in 7 years of time. Personal Rant: In this modern age of gaming, Square enix seems changing direction leading FF16 unsatisfied most of their JRPG fans, AAA studios put up lazy work like Starfield, Diablo 4, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 & etc, Gaming trend that priorities monetization than provide good gaming experience to player, This game had put up 100x of effort from a single developer & should be celebrate like this year Larian Studios Baldur's Gate 3! I urge if you are a Turn Based JRPG fans, You owe it to yourself to play this game!
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There are a lot of hyperboles thrown around Chained Echoes. From "greatest game ever developped by a single person" to "absolute worst ending for a video game in all history". I'll try to be a bit more grounded. First off, I'm recommending Chained Echoes because overall, I liked the game. I thought it was good. Simple as that. It's not great, not amazing, not bad, not terrible ; just good. Basically, I liked it as a whole, but there were several things that soured my opinion of it - just not to the point of making my overall experience a negative one. First is the combat system. There's the overdrive bar. Basically, you have a gauge in combat, with three sections - yellow, then green, then red. A cursor starts in the yellow zone, and moves to the right every time you or an enemy act. If the cursor is in the green zone, you get increased stats and reduced skill cost, but in the red zone, damage taken and skill costs are doubled - a death sentence if you don't fix it very fast. For that, the game will select a skill category - if you use a skill from this category, the cursor will move the left instead of the right. The needed category then refreshes ; it also refreshes by itself after a few turn. The idea is to promote using different skills, rather than spamming the same thing. When first playing the game, I thought it was great. But as I kept playing, I started disliking it more and more. There's simply too much RNG involved. Sometimes the game will ask for a skill you were about to use anyway. Other times, it'll make you spam buffs and heals you don't need and stall the fight. The proper way to encourage diverse skill use is to make every skill different and worth using. Not to force you to waste three turns doing nothing or risk being suddenly nuked. Another point of contention is the fact that you heal to full after every fight. This completely removes ressource management and attrition from the game. Again, at first this feels great, you don't need to carry around a hundred potions to heal after a fight and you can use your skills on normal enemies without fearing being low when facing the boss - so much tedium removed! But the thing is, with this system, a fight that doesn't have the potential to inflict a game over is a fight that serves no purpose. Thus, every level appropriate encounter - every single one - is a challenge that requires your full attention (at least until you figure out how to break the game - more on that later). This is EXHAUSTING. You'll be going through an area, then run into the exact same enemies you've already fought five times ; you've seen everything they have to show, but you can't just power through them, because they can still inflict a game over. So you need to take the five minutes to properly defeat them. Then you move half a screen and run into yet another group... Also, the combat has an aggro management system. You learn about it when you get the first character that's geared toward making use of it. You get this character... about 25 hours in. Two third of the way through the game. And it's not like this is a mechanic that only activates from that moment on, no, it's been there from the beginning, the game just didn't feel like telling you about it. And by that point you've been managing just fine without taking it into account, so why would you start now? It's rather baffling. Oh and then there are the mechs (sorry, "sky armors"). They're meant to be a strong selling point judging from the game's description, so it's strange that they end up being so lame. First off, you can use them to fly around, which brings amazing freedom of movement. And therefore every new area you go to after the point you get them will have its own justification as to why you cannot go into free flight there, why you CAN go into free flight but cannot land anywhere except very specific spots, or why you just plain can't use the mechs there. Combat wise, they're lame. It's the exact same thing as regular combat, except with a more annoying overdrive system, less customization (all your mechs are the same, their skills are determined solely by their equipment), and bigger numbers. Those bigger numbers are also a problem, because you can run into mech encounters on foot, or the opposite. A random giant meant to be fought with your mech will pulverize you if you fight it on foot, attacking for hundreds of time more damage than the final boss. And reciprocally, any regular fight you can reach with your mech is an auto win. Towards the end of the game, I was getting rather tired of the overall combat but could still stomach it ; mech combat, though, I was absolutely sick of. There's also the lack of progression. There's no exp in Chained Echoes ; rather, you level up with "grimoire shards", found by beating a boss, with a small amount also available through optional exploration challenges. Thus, any new content you find will always be at your level (with a little wiggle room from the aforementionned exploration challenges). On top of that, Chained Echoes is a small numbers game, with every level up or new equipment giving very small increments of stats. At one point, roughly 15 hours in, I went back to the first area to search for some stuff I had missed. And it still took me several attacks to finish the enemies there. The very first enemies you encounter past the tutorial. This feels bad. The only leeways you have progression wise are the skill point system (you gain a few SP after every fight, which you can use to improve your skills up to twice - here, too, the improvements are small) and the crystal system. Crystals are items you can find at gathering spots, that can be refined and then slotted into a piece equipment to add extra passives to it. The system is a bit annoying and unwieldy to use, and RNG heavy... And if you take the time to invest in it anyway, figure out which types are valuables, and farm a bit, it can break the game balance over its knee, bringing massively more benefits than any level up or better equipment could bring. And finally, there's the writing. It can get pretty juvenile. For example, one of the first enemies you can fight is a big fly with boxing gloves. Just your typical weird funny JRPG monster. If you defeat it, it'll drop boxing gloves. And if you then read the description of those boxing gloves, the game will gleefully inform you that those were in fact NOT boxing gloves - but rather the fly's testicles. Other highlights include ape enemies fighting with feces, walking in on people having sex, being tricked into drinking urine, looting sperm off a whale (ahah, get it, sperm whale? Ugh), looting nipples, characters swearing like a highschooler trying to be cool (using modern swears that clash with the medieval-steampunk setting), etc. There are also a good number of grammatical errors and not-quite-right sentences throughout the game. Now, yes, the developper is not a native English speaker. But neither am I. And yet I still noticed and was bothered by those mistakes. It's not broken English, but it's still a noticeable negative. There were several pretty unlikable characters, too. And a lot of completely forgettable ones. I did not like the ending, but I didn't think it was this abomination of writing some people are making it out to be. I know it sounds like I'm dunking on the game, even though I'm recommending it. What did I like then? Well, everything else! The game is gorgeous, the combat was fun before the overdrive system started to wear out its welcome, the worldbuilding is neat and interesting (though you have to pull through some heavy exposition dumps first), the music is great, the story overall was serviceable. Also, it may sound very minor, but I really, REALLY liked that you have a pretty fast movement speed on the map. Really, Chained Echoes is an alright-to-good game. Don't go in with too high expectations, and you should have a good time with it.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 12 December 2024 00:37 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 17 December 2024 16:38 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:26 |
| Steam reviews | 21 December 2024 21:54 |
Online players
96
Developer
Umami Tiger (Matthias Linda)
Publisher
Deck13,
WhisperGames
Release
08 Dec 2022
Platforms