Not Really A Review But Just Some Thoughts on Chained Echoes

     I don't really like being someone who writes a full on review for a game that they haven't completed. I think its disingenuous to the games' creators because there will be plenty of things that you haven't experienced but still will give their review as if they've played the entire game. However, I am one for expressing some thoughts while playing or looking back at what you just experienced with a video game. It helps find things that you might not have thought about while you're playing and just increases your appreciation of the game overall. So that's what I'm aiming to do today with an indie JRPG I'm playing through right now named Chained Echoes. After playing the Sea of Stars demo a month or so ago I had an itch for something new to fill the void until August when I remembered a game that was on my radar for the past year named Chained Echoes. Chained Echoes takes a lot of inspiration from the golden age of RPG's in the mid to late 90's in its visuals, but its very much on its own with some great modern touches. Right now I'm about 11 hours in to the experience, but how have those 11 hours been thus far?

    

    Chained Echoes opens up with continent that is constantly fighting and in war. You start off the story following a duo of mercenaries, Glenn and Kylian hunting a treasure known as the Grimoire that is supposed to hold great power. After fighting your way up to the Grimoire you try to destroy it so that the enemy doesn't have that advantage in battle, but it causes a huge explosion that kills pretty much everyone in the surrounding area except for people that were closest to the blast. Then the story fast-forwards a year to a city that had just signed a peace-treaty ending the long war between them and another faction. Here you get to experience multiple characters perspective before they all meet up before the parade where their fates align. Personally, I love when games do this kind of thing. It really gives a good concept of what characters personalities and backgrounds are before the adventure begins. One example of this in the game is Lenne and Robb, Lenne being a princess undercover who's nation just signed the peace treaty and traveled with her servant Robb who's protect at all cost attitude is amicable at first, but is also very quick to judge and has that classic upper-class harshness. Lenne generally is the opposite, strong yet understanding and really only wants what is best for her people. I won't go too much into the story after this point because there have already been some big twists and turns with it and I expect more going forward.

    The main thing that I wanted to talk about today however isn't the story, but rather my love-hate relationship with the combat system and difficulty. The combat system is one of the most unique that I've seen in an RPG and really takes advantage of fans of the genre by pushing it's systems to the limits. In a nutshell, the combat in Chained Echoes is a fine balancing act of attacks, buffs, de-buffs and healing to go along with the main mechanic, the Drive Gauge. Every battle will have your Drive Gauge in the top left hand side showing you your current level. You'll always start at a base level, but almost every action that you take or damage that you take from enemies increases your Drive Gauge until you reach Overdrive. In Overdrive, your special skills do more damage, cost less tech points to do and you'll take less damage meaning you always want to be in Overdrive. However, go past the Overdrive point and you'll enter Overheat where pretty much the opposite of Overdrive happens and de-buffs your entire party. Now lowering this gauge can come in a few ways. The main way is by performing a specific type of skill that you can view in the top left, like elemental magic or a slash attack that will decrease the gauge. Otherwise you'll have to defend, switch out your party members or perform an ultra move to decrease your Drive Gauge. In typical battles, you'll have access to 4 party members at any given turn that you're able to switch out with the press of a button with up to 4 reserve members that are tied to each other. You are also able to view the battle turn order with you and the enemy which is something that I always appreciate. The amount of options that you have on any given turn along with a variety of characters to do so makes for an intuitive system that makes every battle engaging. This does come at a big cost in my mind and why I said I have a love hate relationship in the difficulty. Levels aren't gained through a typical experience system, rather every time you fight a boss, they'll drop a Grimoire Shard that you can then use to level up one aspect of your character whether its a statistic, adding a new special move or a trait that they have in battle. That on paper makes for a cool system that every time you beat a boss it makes you feel accomplished that you can learn a new skill every time. With this freedom comes the difficulty along with it. Normal battles in a new area can be ridiculous sometimes in how tanky the opponents are and how much damage they can deal out. You don't get experience from these difficult battles either, only skill points that you can add on to your traits that you gain from beating bosses, making fighting enemies that aren't bosses feel a little tedious and not rewarding. I've lost more than a dozen times to basic enemies you find on the field in the areas that you're supposed to be going to in order to progress, which I can't say for most RPGs. Normally in that situation, I would sit down and grind an area until I was comfortable with the enemies and continue on, but because grinding doesn't work the same way in terms of raw statistics you gain like in other RPGS, I get stuck dying over and over trying to progress. I don't really consider myself a bad player either, I feel like I'm trying multiple methods of attack battles and ways to get into overdrive, and I still end up losing to basic enemies more than I have any boss. The game is generous in that after every battle your party is fully healed, so at least that's nice. In battles though, even after 10 hours I have no party member that's able to heal the entire party consistently which is difficult because a lot of enemies have attacks that go across the entire party. I have spells that can heal one member or boost defense or shield me for a turn, but nothing to heal me which I think is holding me back from enjoying this game to its fullest. Because of what I've experienced so far, I wouldn't recommend Chained Echoes to the general gamer off of the combat alone, its too difficult for people who don't have experience with the genre. If you are a JRPG fan, this system is breath of fresh air in most areas and brings in a lot of cool ideas for you to play around with if you can deal with the difficulty. 

    Visually and musically, the game looks and sounds great. Important characters have more detailed portraits that give you a little more insight to what characters look like. Sound effects have a good punch to them and are satisfying to slice enemies with your sword or attack with elemental magic. The music I wouldn't say is super memorable to me right now, I think if I were to play more it would stand out a bit more, but it suits the game well and there hasn't been anything that I would say is bad. I might have to listen to the OST outside of the game as well. One of the only other gripes I had when I first started playing was actually the move speed of my character. I thought it felt way too fast for some reason and wished there was like a walking toggle or button I could hold down. The environments and pixel art is all very well crafted and are distinct. Weather effects look especially beautiful as well. Like when it rains and you can see the drops falling into the pixel art puddles. However if you don't stop to appreciate it, you move so fast that you can miss some of the minor details that got put into the environments. 

TL;DR

    Chained Echoes is a game that knew exactly what it wanted to be before it was even created. The battle system and presentation makes you think of JRPGs of old, but it doesn't have those same older tropes that were better left off in the past. However, I can only as of right now recommend the game to fans of the genre who are willing to go through with the difficulty of some of its battles. You have to play older games in order to appreciate some of the QOL changes that are offered here and appreciate the game to its fullest. 

I don't know if I'll finish the game right now, I might look at it again later on down the line because right now I'm a little frustrated with it and I'm playing Zelda BOTW for the first time and that has my full attention. Thanks for reading I appreciate it!

New Game Pickups as of 6/15/23

 New Game Pickups June 2023

Welcome back to another edition of new game pickups where I highlight some games that I've been buying over the past month or so. This month was pretty busy outside of game collecting, my apartment just had some nice renovations done to it with a new kitchen/bathrooms being put in. This meant I had to put away all my games before the contractors came in, and I had to reorganize all my games which was nice change of pace. I did get some time to make some to do some decent game shopping and go to some game stores I don't normally go to, as well as a pretty big purchase that I'll detail a little bit more in another post. With that being said, let's take a look at what I spend my money on.

First off a DS game that I had known about growing up, and decided to check out, Trauma Center: Under the Knife. Developed by Atlus and published by Nintendo here in the states, Trauma Center is a visual novel/surgeon simulator with a fun twist where you find out you have special surgeon powers and you help as many people as you can. I think I originally found out about this believe it or not from Super Smash Bros Brawl, where they had the Chronicle section that showed every Nintendo published game up to that point. I started playing this one and so far it's pretty good. The characters have personality, and definitely takes some darker themes being that you're saving peoples' lives after injury or disease. Some of the surgeries I've done have been pretty stressful too, I don't think I could be a real surgeon lol. A lot of the surgeries that I have done have been pretty down to the wire, but you unlock some tools that make things a bit easier in order to fight off a new disease that pretty much only you can treat. So far so good, I'm interested to see where the story goes with this one.

Here's one that I was looking to get back after having as a kid. Fossil Fighters is a DS RPG where you dig for fossils, resurrect them and fight in battles with other dinosaur owners. Very similar to Pokémon with it's creature collection, pretty simple story and battle system but I remember having a lot of fun with this one. Trying to dig up fossils to the best of your ability trying to make sure that they'll get as strong as possible was pretty cool, and I liked how all battles were 3-on-3. Thankfully I still had the sequel Fossil Fighters Champions, but somewhere along the line I had lost my cartridge for the original game. I still had the case for the game so now it's sitting pretty on my shelf

 This was a mega cheap game that I only really got because the store I bought from I was using store credit, and didn't want to leave 3 bucks just sitting there. That being said, True Swing Golf has a neat little background. The game was developed by T&E Soft (who made every golf game known to man) and actually published by Nintendo and marketed as part of their Touch Generations line of games that were meant to appeal to a wider audience. Nothing could be easier than swinging a golf club with a stylus according to Nintendo until they figured out what a Wii remote could do. I enjoy a few golf games from time to time, so for 3 bucks I figured why not. 

This one I was really happy to find as Metal Slug games are some of my favorite to pick up and play. Metal Slug Anthology is a collection of games from the series 1-6 giving you every major Metal Slug game up to that point. I bought the Wii version of the game but it also came out on PS2 and PSP. I actually was going to buy the PS2 version, but the Wii version was 10 bucks cheaper, and my Wii collection isn't as big so I figured this would be a great addition. One thing I am a little disappointed in is that it doesn't support the Wii classic controller, but after reading the manual it looks like GameCube controller support is available which is enough for me. I really only played the OG Metal Slug and Metal Slug X so I'm excited to check out all the other games in the series, especially with some co-op too.

It's not every day I get to find a new racing game to obsess over but I think Auto Modellista will fill that void for me. Developed by Capcom, this was an era in the early 2000's when everyone was trying their hand at simulation racers after the major success of Gran Turismo. Capcom's attempt has a few things to help it stand out, with the main one being a cel-shaded art style. Most games from this era with similar art like Wind Waker or Jet Set Radio have aged really well, and Auto Modellista is no different as the game looks awesome. Capcom themselves have made a ton of great games in the past, but aren't really known for their racing games so it'll be interesting to see how it plays. I also don't really know why the GameCube version of the game is so expensive, I thought the PS2 version would be as well but the game was like 15 bucks. Look out for a review later down the line once I sink my teeth into it. 

Watching the new PlayStation presentation one of the games that had me most excited was the announcement of the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake. That game along with a few other games they announced might be the reason I finally get a next generation console. Along with actually playing Metal Gear Solid 3 before the game comes out, I wanted to check out some other Kojima games that he had made before the game came out. One of those I actually found while out shopping, Zone of the Enders. Zone of the Enders to my knowledge is a mech hack and slash game with a pretty involved plot. I learned about the game from SomecallmeJohnny on YouTube and his review of Metal Gear Solid 2. Either way, I think it looks interesting enough to check out.

As a Sega Saturn fan this one was probably the pickup I got most excited to find. Nights Journey of Dreams is the direct sequel to the Saturn game Nights into Dreams. The Saturn original is one of my favorite games for the platform with its great visuals for the console as well as gameplay that isn't really matched by any other game because it's so unique.  I remember this game being covered in Nintendo Power as well, so when I saw this on the shelf I had to pick it up. I'm sure the game will use some sort of motion control since it is on the Wii, but most games from the Saturn didn't get follow-ups so I'll take what I can get.

Last but certainly not least we have the only new release out of all of these games is Capcom's newest entry in the Street Fighter franchise, Street Fighter 6. I wasn't really following the prerelease information about this game too much so I didn't have that same hype I would for some other games, but I really enjoy a lot of the older games in the franchise and the game looked beautiful so I wanted to give it a shot. After playing the game for a few hours with friends and in the training room I'm loving it so far. Characters are more expressive and have some great new tools like the Drive Rush or the return of the parry system to all characters which I'm a big fan of. This is also the first fighting game that a lot of my friends are playing simultaneously which I'm excited about, because normally I'll just grind out combos in the training room and play the arcade modes. Right now though the characters I'm enjoying the most are Dee Jay and E. Honda, although Lily and Kimberly are pretty cool to mess around with as well. Capcom is having a hell of a year in 2023 and I can't wait to see what they put out next, including the remake of Ghost Trick to look out for!

Overall a little bit slower this month, I didn't really get a chance to go out and game shop the way I would like but still got some great games added in. There's another surprise coming soon like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, but I'm still working on that before I fully write that post out. In terms of what is on the horizon, my lovely girlfriend is very excited to play the new Bethesda release Starfield and I don't have a good PC to really play on, so a new Xbox will most likely be in my future as well which I'll be excited to sink my teeth into. I've never owned a Microsoft console, and I know it does have some backwards compatibility with the older consoles that I'll be interested along with some newer releases like the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake. Otherwise thanks for taking time to read and I hope you have a great rest of your day!