Chained Echoes Reviews
I couldn’t have been happier with my time with Matthias Linda and Deck13’s Chained Echos. It does everything right. Taking retro inspired designs and making it an RPG worthy of today’s standards, the characters, the environments, the music, the gameplay, essentially the works, you have it here. Thank you for this early holiday present!
The one person passion project from German developer Matthias Linda re-works and banishes some of the genre's more frustrating staples and presents an exciting, fleshed out fantasy world meshed with some of the best strategic turn-based combat the genre has seen in years.
Chained Echoes is a must-play both for fans of old school JRPGs as well as story-centric role-playing games.
Chained Echoes is a fantastic game that hearkens back to the good old days of the 16-bit RPGs and adds its own flair to make it stand out from the bunch. The turn-based combat system is very involved thanks to the Overdrive mechanic, and the art style is simply eye candy, which is music to the ears of all old-school RPG lovers out there. The first few hours of the game can get a bit messy and confusing, events-wise, but really gathers itself and goes on to tell a solid and heartfelt story across multiple characters that is punctuated by stellar gameplay. The experience has been mostly bug-free and the game has simply been a surprise, as I’m sure many didn’t expect such a gem amidst all of the big triple A titles this month.
Chained Echoes is an incredibly passionate love letter to 16-32 bit era JRPGs, but it also knows when to try new things and add modern conveniences. Its battle system is one of the best in the genre, and feels genuinely revolutionary. I was slightly underwhelmed by the game’s rushed final act and a couple of party members but Chained Echoes is a great game and is absolutely worth your time if you’re a fan of the genre.