Chained Echoes

This is just a slice of nostalgia. Great story, great team members. It left me wanting more, but also satisfied. quick hit list: Pros: + Great combat. The mechs feel like Xenogears (that's why you looked at it). +Kicking Soundtrack. I put some of the songs on my Spotify rotation. +Diverse party who all have a function. Double ++ for a lizardman berserker caster. Tragic backstory and hella fun to use. +feels like a classic SNES rpg but with modern comforts. By the late game you can get or go anywhere you need/want to. +Kickass boss fights. They'll challenge you just enough. +Lots to do, from sidequests to gear and item farming. +Overall story is great. the writing ranges from great to OK. It keeps you involved. Cons: -The crystal system for weapon and gear upgrades is jank AF. I learned how it should work, but that was far in. You could break the game if you know what you need to do early. It's like FF8 Junction system jank; tricky but easy to break if you know what you're doing. -Great cast of main characters, but some are just better than others in combat. to each their own. -Encounters, even just regular ones, can F you up. It wants you to know the games systems. You …

This is my second time buying this game, because I have it on switch. Battle system is the best version of turn based I've played. Can't spam moves, have to actually think about what attacks to use in both foot battles and in mech, this keeps you engaged and doesn't turn it into an autobattle. Always had fun getting in to a fight. And also, the level up system works in conjunstion with story progress, so you're never over leveled or having to grind because a battle is too hard. I can't say enough of how these two simple choices are enough to keep an oldschool formula refreshing and yet no tedious. Don't listen to people who have said it's a clunky system, It's not. Plus, there's just enough character customization to build each into how you want them to play, allowing some experimentation in multiple playthoughs. The story was also a big pull in for me, not incredibly deep, but fantastical enough for me to continue to want to see what the resolution was, with some twists along the way. Great game, not too long a journey, pretty much one guy project, and it's not expansive. Any hate it gets is exactly that, just haters.

Honestly, I was excited to play this at first. It makes a lot of improvements on the usual JRPG formula, modernizing it by getting rid of grinding and by streamlining the leveling process. The dialogue is competently written, but the story got progressively more and more tedious with no interesting developments jumping out at me. I kinda stopped playing about an hour or so into Act 3 because there's honestly just nothing to motivate me continuing. I played on the the hardest settings, but the Sky Armor sections become stat checks on this setting because you have to explore around for gear upgrades and I really don't want to bother with that. The normal combat is far more compelling and fun and I wish we could have just skipped the Sky Armors altogether. Overall it's a disappointment. Half of the combat system (without the Sky Armors) is decent, while the story is boring. Did not finish.

Very good story, graphics, combat mechanics.

Better than anything Square-Enix has done for the JRPG genre in decades.

Hard yes.