There’s even a baffling cameo from British mathcore outfit ZILF, and it lasts about 10 seconds in one of the most obtuse cutscenes I’ve seen in years. The game is genuinely funny, and ribs the conventions of the genre in the same way Garth Marenghi's Darkplace ribs horror, or JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure ribs… anything.
Instead, Linda tried to build what he remembers and that might be why Chained Echoes feels so much like one of the golden era RPGs, spiritually.īetter yet, for me, Chained Echoes demonstrates one thing a lot of the 90s RPGs sorely lacked: a sense of humour. Per an interview with Linda from our colleagues at RPS, it was games like Xenogears that Linda has tried to copy – but not copy in terms of code, pilfering encounter ideas and mechanics. You know that when a fight looks like this, it'll be good.Ĭhrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 are the most obvious comparisons you can draw to Chained Echoes, but if you want a slightly deeper cut, you’ll probably see more of Xenogears in there. Already, it sits alongside the Press Turn system from MegaTen and Persona as my favourite way of doing JRPG combat – high praise, indeed. You can’t go too slow otherwise you’ll debuff, you can’t go too fast otherwise you’ll leave yourself wide open. It’s a formula that comes tantalizingly close to fulfilling the promises of the active-time battle mechanic from Final Fantasy 7 and 8 a union of turn-based tactical forward-planning and the thrill of real-time action, realised with aplomb.
Over-reach and over-perform, and your party will leave itself vulnerable to crits from whatever oversized enemy you’re facing. Once you get into a torrent of attacks, you’ll be able to achieve Overdrive, where you’ll start dishing out more damage and attacking with more zhuzh.
You’ll need to scroll through your commands and pop-out menus as you usually would, attacking with weapons and magic and selecting items as is likely second nature to you at this point, but you’ll also need to be aware of your flow and rhythm. When you’re not ogling the gorgeous 16-bit inspired pixel art, you’ll be beavering away in a battle that’s all about flow. No, it’s better than that Chained Echoes observes the tropes and tricks that make the genre great and tinkers with the formula – much in the same way the first 10 or so Final Fantasy games did. It’s not an Octopath Traveler-like checklist of nostalgia, assembled cynically and clinically. Perhaps you can play this game on your Series S – one of the best consoles of all time! I dare you to look at this and not be charmed.īut this isn’t a simple retread.
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