Chained Echoes, developed by Matthias Linda and published by Deck13 across all platforms in 2022, is a loving homage to J-RPGs of the past, such as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, and Xenogears, but with it's own spin.
The story takes place on a fictional continent named Valandis, which is enjoying a tenuous peace for the first time in years after enduring brutal intercontinental wars between rival kingdoms. However, when a powerful weapon capable of leveling whole cities is discovered by the powerful kingdom of Tormund, tensions rise with a new war for dominance on the horizon. Of course, not everything as it seems, and as the story progresses, you find out that a more existential and ancient threat is pulling the strings.
When I started Chained Echoes, at first I was worried it would pay homage to the abovementioned RPGs to the point of being derivative. However, it doesn't take long before it paves its own way, with a dense, but not overly complex, story of political intrigue, forging one's own fate, and redemption. The characters are well realized, even if I thought the main character, Glenn, was a bit of an insufferable wiener.
The combat system is interesting, utilizing what's called an "Overdrive", which is set up as a meter that steadily increases with each action that is taken by both your party and the enemy. The ideal strategy is to keep it in the green, the benefits of which being that you save TP, or "Tech Points", whenever you use skills. If the meter goes into the red, though, it can be a disaster as enemy damage then doubles. I've had many a battle go south because I wasn't paying attention to the Overdrive meter, it went red, and I got wiped out by an area attack. It can be easy to get swept up by the fight and let the overdrive go out of control, which brings an interesting dynamic to the battle. Sometimes you'll need to heal your party, but if you do, it'll put you in the red! It definitely forces you to make interesting choices.
That being said, my only critique is how the game highly encourages you to use skills, rather than normal attacks, which make normal attacks kind of... pointless. Maybe it throws me off because I'm so used to primarily using normal attacks and reserving my magic or skills for tougher fights so that I don't deplete my tech points. In Chained Echoes, though, your HP and TP Is refilled after every battle, whether you win or run away, so there's no reason to conserve energy. It took some getting used to, but I eventually got the hang of it.
I do really like the level up system, which amounts to getting something called "Grimoire Shards" after every boss fight which unlock either new skills or stronger stats. You also get points after every fight that you can use to upgrade your skills, but the benefit of this system is it gets rid of the need to level grind!
The graphics of the game are a throwback to 16-bit RPGs of yore, which is nice, but it often felt like I was playing a mod of Stardew Valley, which was a little distracting. Also, the movement of my characters felt so floaty and the environments lacked texture. It's hard to explain, but something about the graphics just wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as I usually find pixel art graphics to be.
There's also a point in the game where you start your own clan and have to build up membership by recruiting new members. I hope a sequel will build on this concept and give you more clan management options, as that would be a fun diversion from the normal gameplay.
Overall, Chained Echoes is an impressive indie RPG that serves to set the stage for what I hope will be an even more impressive sequel!