Chained Echoes Revisited
When Cohost was still around there was this super rad account called Indie Games of Cohost run by Kyle Labriola which posted images and descriptions of interesting indie games that had been either announced or released (and also occasionally did interviews with Indie devs about their process). It kinda ruled?? Over my time on the site I picked up a lot of recommendations from it. For example, in December of 2022 it made the following post which hit me on the head like a mech shell in F91.
I'd just come off of playing through 2021's Eastward, a game that felt like it was trying to be counted as a long lost Mother game in terms of visual style (even if the gameplay had more in common with a 2D Zelda title), and I'd been watching the development of Sea of Stars for a while; a game that unapologetically screams 'HEY. HEY. REMEMBER CHRONO TRIGGER? THAT SHIT WAS GOOD, RIGHT? WE GOT THE COMPOSER TO DO SOME TRACKS ON THIS NEW GAME' (much to the detriment of the game's actual composer who I can't name off the top of my head for this very reason).
The era of 'High Profile Indie developed Retro Inspired 'J'RPGs made by non Japanese developers' had kicked off in earnest
Chained Echoes at first glimpse (especially from the four screenshots IGoC used as part of the post that sold me) is not nostalgia-bait exempt; Queen Zeal's palace is clearly referenced, giant demonic-looking boar gods in anime-inspired art are always going to call to mind Princess Mononoke - but the images were enough to get me to check it out.
(Fun sidenote - I felt at the time that the game came out of nowhere but then I remembered later on that I HAD seen some of the game's in-development posts on Twitter before I'd left that platform, but had conflated it with Sea of Stars. FWIW it was the heavy metal snail race video. If you don't know what I'm talking about, play Chained Echoes lmao)
Anyway, on the strength of those screenshots alone I picked it up and gave it a whirl.
My initial thoughts on it were a bit mixed and thanks to the Archive.org team backing up the entire Cohost domain you can read them there so I won't re-tread; I enjoyed the art, the systems and the experience of playing it, but I had some questions about the pacing, the whitness of the cast and most importantly the writing. To this day I still think it's borderline hilarious (and probably NOT in the way the author intended) when moments like the below two screenshots would pop up:
Again, I'm obviously not against the idea that pixel art games can have swear words it's just so fucking jarring the first few times. You get used to it lmao
Despite this, it kept calling me back. It was the winter holidays and I finally had a job where having time off during them was guaranteed so Chained Echoes became my go-to activity when I had time; now I realize I'm furthering the nostalgiabait here but drowning in this game during December of 2022 is the closest I've probably ever felt to my childhood experiences playing through FFVI on SNES for the first time while being home from school with strep throat or 100%-ing Chrono Trigger during a summer vacation. I was intrigued to see what was going to happen next in the story and I thoroughly enjoyed almost all of the time I was spending in the game's world.
Oddly it didn't end up on my 'games of the year' list but that was purely because I already had said list mostly locked in by the time the game was out. I still wonder to this day if it had come out a month or two earlier would have been my undisputed 2022 GotY? Buuuuut at the same time, I can't separate the experience of fully drowning in that game with the vacation window it happened in. An earlier in the year release may not have allowed me the same play environment.
When I finally wrapped on Chained Echoes, Sea of Stars had released. From their first trailer announcements, I'd waited for YEARS for both Eastward and Sea of Stars, the latter of which I was arguably MORE excited about purely because of the aforementioned "Chrono Trigger was a life-changing experience for me as a kid" thing; but this meant I had expectations for both games that I didn't for Chained Echoes because to me, it mostly came out of nowhere.
...and being massively let down by Sea of Stars helped me appreciate Chained Echoes infinitely more.
I know it's kinda bland to write about a game by talking about a different game but listen; yea both games are pixel art 'J'RPGs made by non-Japanese developers, yes both are heavily derivative of the greats, yes both have some things that shine and some things that clearly needed more time to cook - but on the whole, I enjoyed playing Chained Echoes; the moment to moment gameplay aspects, the characters, the music.
With Sea of Stars I was scratching my head at every story beat wondering if I was missing something. The game's a goddamn mess of pacing, the dual protagonists are effectively magic cops with zero personality, the game REALLY tries to get you to care about a third character who isn't worth caring about just so it can pay off an emotional beat later, and the villain is called THE FLESHMANCER so it's really hard to take seriously. Plus the moment to moment was not that enjoyable; combat is a drag with timed presses being a necessity (even the accessibility options that should help here don't make combat go by any faster).
I maintain that the only thing Sea of Stars has going for it is Wheels, the in-game board game you play around the world which actually fucking rules. Give me a standalone Wheels with more pieces please, thanks.
What I appreciated about Chained Echoes was how much it wears its influences on its sleeve but tries to do interesting things with them. You'd expect a pixel art nostalgia drive to reference FFVI, Suikoden, Chrono Trigger, etc; you don't expect it to reference Final Fantasy XII, or Xenogears or even fucking Stardew Valley? Where it explored these things, Sea of Stars stuck with "YEA MAN LOVE CHRONO TRIGGER SO MUCH hey bro pass me that, thanks REMEMBER WHEN YOU WENT TO THE FUTURE? THAT WAS SIIICK"
I'm not a defender of every choice Chained Echoes make but it truly feels like a time displaced mid-90's unreleased JRPG, where Sea of Stars feels more like it was made in a lab out of Chrono Trigger references.
I guess what I'm saying is, if your modern JRPG (Japanese or otherwise) doesn't have disaster lesbians arguing about the futility of reforming the theocratic hegemony from the inside, what are you even doing?
The Ashes of Elrant DLC just launched this week but I've only spent a tiny bit of time with it so I'll have to report back later on if it lives up to my above experiences. Maybe this holiday I can 100% it to keep the vibe going.
Anyway thanks for reading. Here's your end of post cat.
