Chained Echoes - Nintendo Switch review
Chained Echoes is a throwback JRPG in the style of the old SNES titles. It hits a home run on so many fronts and comes tantalizingly close to an absolutely perfect game, but some small issues and a major one (to me at least) near the final arc knocks it down just a bit for me.
Presentation
The colorful, pixelated art style and charm of Chained Echoes is what the Switch was made for. The game looks just as beautiful and clear on my 55" TV as it does on handheld mode.
The beauty of this game shines in the villages and small towns. They are vibrant and brimming with life. There's chatter from the townsfolk all around, and they all have their unique charm. I was less impressed with the other locations like Shambala, Fiorwoods, Grotto etc. The atmosphere just felt lacking. The music is the classic jrpg chill soundtrack and they did well with it. It really feels nice to just bundle up with this game on your bed and play for a while.
The character designs are good, and all feel unique. There's not any visual customization to them though. Sky armors look gorgeous and feels truly like mechs. You can customize their looks and flying with them is incredibly satisfying.
Game Design
The quest/journal in this game was one of my biggest gripe with this game. It seemed purposedly opaque. That can work in some game but the world needs to be open and full of interesting things to find, and the map needs to be detailed. In Chained Echoes all the areas feel disconnected, and it makes the world feel small. The map is bare-bones and isn't much help for quests that don't give much details to go on.
There isn't variety in equipment, you just upgrade to the next level of gear for each character. Where you can do some customization is through the crystal system, which is sadly tedioius and a grind, and not the fun kind. The game gives you crystals at random locations in the map where you can choose what to get, then you need too combine them and add to your gear. The system is far too complex and wasteful. To the developer's credit they scrapped this system in the expansion Ashes of Elrand.
To be clear these are still small gripes in the overall scope of the game. The game more than makes up for it in the gameplay and especially the story
Gameplay
Combat was the surprise of Chained Echoes for me. It's ingenious in how easy it is to pick up but the depth makes it enjoyable well into the late game. The controls are perfectly designed and it makes the battles fast, intuitive and rhythmic. The combat animations are fun, and buffing up a character massively to hit for a one shot worthy crit is incredibly satisfying.
Unfortunately the enemies aren't as interesting as the battle system. Most enemies you encounter aren't imaginative, as to be expected, but I was hoping the boss battles or enemies would be cooler. They all pretty much are beaten by the same formula. There isn't much strategy going on.
Navigating the areas in sky armor and getting in/out of them is incredibly satisfying, as I mentioned before. That mechanic is an amazing addition to the game. Unfortunately in combat the sky armors don't really shine. This would lead to my chief complaint with the game.
Combat with sky armor feels like an add-on system compared to combat on foot. Most of the party are not in the sky armors and they don't have any personality while in the armor. There are a lot less abilities and variety in sky armor skills. Considering how much more fun combat on foot was it was extremely annoying how many late game boss battles were with the sky armor instead of the characters I spent all game developing.
Story and World-building
The narrative in Chained Echoes is easily the highlight of the game. Every character gets their due with a nuanced, adult backstory, with the main characters getting some incredible lore.
The world begins small, but it's history is revealed at just the perfect pace until it encapsulates in a hauntingly beautiful place that's vivid with sadness and optimism. To tell a story this layered with this kind of patience, and tie all the different threads at the end is a marvel.
I want to go much more in depth about the story, but to do so would be to spoil some of it and this game deserves to be experienced in full. All I will say is this game in all other aspects could be half as good and I would've loved this experience.
Final verdict
Chained Echoes is an easy 90 for me. All the small issues I mentioned drops it a few points and the decision to go with sky armor for the final arc takes out a bunch, but the story deserves makes up for all of it and then some. The scope of it is ridiculous, and the game manages to connect all the dots and tell it to a satisfying completion. All the while dropping insane amounts of lore about the world to build on in the future. I think any game with a narrative this ambitious and well told has a floor of 80/100 and Chained Echoes does a lot more right than wrong outside of it's main story.