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So if you're a fan of JRPGs from the good ol' days, the era of Golden Sun, Pokemon Emerald, Final Fantasy X, and the like, this will probably be your messiah for the next 30-40 hours. I've completed the Main Story in about 35 hours, had to lose 2 hours because I erased a very important item by accident (lol). I did every side-quest, but notably did not 100% the game yet. As this game has only just released with no EA, there are no resources out there to help you 100% the game at this time of writing (maybe the first like 2 areas lol). Felt like I was back in the 2000's playing RPGs without knowing about GameFAQs. Nostalgia to the max.
Chained Echoes does exactly what JRPGs should do, that is, deliver a solid story taking place in a lore-packed world, with a wide range of characters (not one but TWO princesses included), and a modest attempt at twisting a few tropes. The battle system also fixes a number of issues (IMO) that makes you wonder "why hasn't anyone else done this yet?".
Some spoilers ahead.
Good/neutral points:
The Battle System
- Battles are great, and with a huge cast of playable characters that can build in a variety of ways, it feels good to make that combo that wipes enemies in two turns.
- Healing items are in-battle only, and your entire party is revived & healed to full after every battle. This is ridiculously convenient, because it also means you can freely spam skills in regular enemy fights, making them feel much less grindy. No idea why this is the first time I'm seeing this.
- Fights are also not random, you can see enemies before you start a fight, and the fighting environments are wherever the enemies happen to be napping.
- The way weaknesses & resistances, as well as element-specific debuffs work makes battles a satisfying puzzle to figure out the best way to use these to do massive damage. It's lots of planning and execution making it very satisfying to pull off.
- Mana, or TP, is manipulable, with a significant lack of TP-restoring items (Sweets are the only one apart from Nectar/Elixers).
- However... most fights aren't particularly challenging. There were a few fights that were straight up unfair (ie, see point 2 in "Bad points" below), but apart from those, the rest were more or less just slightly beefier mobs. If you're looking for a challenge, this isn't it. It was rare for me to even run out of TP once I got a certain character because I'd set her up with my 3 other units and she'd 2-shot bosses. lol.
- Gundam fights are also pretty crazy as they mix up the battle system quite a bit. But realistically you'll just sit in Gear 2 and blast enemies into oblivion as much as you can, except maybe in 1-2 boss fights that require you to actually switch Gears to dodge/block nukes.
Other Systems
- The Reward Board is actually kinda engaging and an interesting take on achievements.
- Side questing is mostly not there. Side quests are story-related (optional, but still), so they feel much more important than merely "get me 10 carrots".
- Exploration is satisfyingly JRPG. There's a corner, there's a chest. Dopamine.
- Flying around in Gundams helps tremendously when you're trying to 100% the game (if that's your thing).
- Level-ups are tied to bosses and the Reward Board, which might feel a little slow in the early game. There's also a lesser sense of progression because your character isn't "level X", but rather progression is tied to your Star level (Grimmoire level) and item tiers. (Max rank is 10 stars)
Lore/Story
- There are some pretty nice surprises in the story, it's not ENTIRELY predictable like your average JRPG. But... yeah, it's a JRPG. Yes. Tropes.
- The lore is pretty deep. The author thought back to the conception of the universe, so it's pretty intense. However... this too, unfortunately suffers from JRPG Trope Syndrome, so YMMV with how much you enjoy it.
- The character back stories are also mostly hidden from you until the second half of the game, which makes it a little intriguing. But not really... most of it is spoiled via flashbacks or other similar scenes.

Bad stuff:
- No character skill resets as far as I can tell. Better plan your character skills in advance...
- Some of the characters are just annoying, ngl.
- There's a few straight up unfair/RNGfest fights. One fight the boss has a skill that instantly kills two of your party members (doesn't deal damage, isn't a status effect, it just kills your party members) that can be used multiple times in a row, a skill that takes your entire party to 1 HP, a summon that hits your entire party for moderate damage, and a timer on the fight. Basically felt like superficial difficulty, rendering your tanks completely useless, and you have to spend a fair chunk of time reviving the shit out of your party. So you end up just re-running the fight over and over until you get favourable RNG. Not a good fight.
- Subclassing feels pretty half-baked. Actually, the entire skill system feels off. You can unlock like 50 passives for each character, but they can only use up to 5 at a time. And this includes 2 from your subclass. Maximum active skills are 8. I think the passives should also have been 8 to promote further synergies with each character.
- In some areas the map is disabled. This kinda sucks because it means you might go the right way, trigger a cutscene, then get kicked out of that map permanently, for the rest of the game. You will need to save at the start of each of these maps and frequently during them if you want to fully explore them (doesn't help they also often contain chests with good gear that won't be available to you in the shop until much later).
Overall, this is the EXACT game I was looking for recently. I tried booting up Golden Sun a few days prior to this release and it scratched that itch slightly, but I've played GS and TLA so many times it's basically just a speedrun now and not really any sense of exploration. CE does exploration excellently, to the point where I was asking "how many damn hidden areas does this game have?"
10/10 game for me. Some weak points, but they don't detract from the overall game. If you're really struggling with some of the cheat-y bosses, there might be an engine out there that could help you out ;)