Looking in the mirror and accepting I ain't finishing this one.

A truly masterful one man effort. Over the course of nearly ten years of development time, Matthias Linda delivered a truly ambitious product. The game is filled with overwhelming levels of content. The first act takes up nearly 20 hours, at least including some sidequest work, with elaborate mechanical systems to dig into. Combat is always a challenging puzzle, understanding enemy weaknesses and how to build a party against the different kind of foes you may acquire. Unique monsters, blue-magic style enemy attack stealing, and elaborate mechanical depths to each character, all provide an incredible run-time of content.

Its just, I kinda think Matt needed another writer on this one. There's so much lore bloat, its kind of hard to keep track of what matters. The political conflict surrounding a magic nuke and how it shapes the world is interesting enough on its own. Once reincarnation, old gods, and immortal plots get involved, the entire story gets so unwieldy and difficult to follow. Its deeply inspired by Chrono Trigger and FF6, but those stories are ultimately straight-forward, with strong character work backing it up. Only a few characters of Chained Echoes rise above "okay" and its hard to push through when the things that made the lead hero interesting are swallowed up by the lore stuff. And once that lore stuff takes center stage, the other party members fade into the background, with little else to engage with. The things that made combat so challenging also becomes frustrating towards the end. The no level-up system certainly helps avoid too much grinding or so on, but it also means there's never a time where I feel powerful. Dying to enemies constantly. Stops being fun.

Its a gorgeous game, it really is, I just wish the final stretch kept up all the things I enjoyed for the previous 60 hours I dropped into it.