Chained Echoes Review (Dar)
Although I've recommended this game, this is not an unmitigated endorsement. I'd like you to imagine going out to a fine dining establishment specialising in "fusion cuisine". When the food arrives, it consists of a smorgasbord of salmon, caviar, iberico ham, expensive cheese, artichokes, lobster, wild duck and Japanese musk melons.
This is more or less what playing Chained Echoes is like. If you're going to steal gratuitously from EVERY single great JRPG ever made and run them through a G.R.R. Martin and anime plot simulator (particularly Code Geass), you're still going to end up with a quality experience. The problem is that it is simultaneously also an incoherent unfocused mess, a Frankenstein's monster of a game awkwardly cobbled together from the choicest cadaver parts - and the stitches are very much visible. The game tries to do too many different things and as a result, many individual parts are underwhelming.
Most of my fun in this game came from trying to reference every single JRPG which particular content was themed upon - I think possibly the only Final Fantasy not referenced in the entire game was Mystic Quest. Otherwise, it lifts gratuitously from other JRPG greats such as Suikoden, the Chrono series, Xenoblade Chronicles, Seiken Densetsu, Xenogears et al.
Sifting through it to find the one original idea the game had was a bit of a chore because some of the systems are very poorly implemented (especially the equipment system which throws upgrades at you which supersede previous gear that you invested into barely five minutes later into the story).
Otherwise, the battle system is decent, the music is excellent, the sprite art is lush, but the portraits could use work because they are quite bland. I wish I could endorse the writing, but I personally don't particularly like any of the cast since the character development kept choking to death on the plot. A truly remarkable experience, but probably not in the way the developer hoped.
===Post-Completion thoughts===
I'd like to update this with a comment about the battle system - Although it is indeed a somewhat interesting battle system, I don't think the game developer realised that you can quickly break the game by stacking 3 different Agility buffs along with Agility passives and gear enhancements and ending up getting 30 turns for every one enemy turn.
The "secret last boss" barely got 2 turns before I got all my buffs up and it died like an overambitious Kickstarter project; and the final boss was equally underwhelming, although I suppose on reflection, that was entirely my own fault.
Additionally, the game falls to the sin of "different flavours of sugar" in terms of elements and enemy types - although there's race-specific passives and different elements, I don't think there's ever an instance in the game I can justify using one instead of a more generic attack or magic up buff, since they generally outperform the specific bonuses and are far less annoying to switch around.
There's also a few strange balance bugs such as the TP restoration song not actually having 8 potency at rank 3 and the Earth AoE magic spell on the bard being exactly as strong as the Wind one except it costs 1/3 the amount at all ranks. Oh, and the cigarette spell being weaker than other elements for no good reason other than maybe "smoking is bad".
Bonus points to having the most underwhelming and plot-irrelevant Blue Mage I've ever played in a JRPG. Also, in case the developer reads this - could we have fewer angsty bipolar main characters and philosophical lectures in the sequel, please? Drama at its best is a slow burn, not a mood whiplash.