Recent reviews by Nighty

TL;DR:

Chained Echoes is a great 16-bit style JRPG for the type of player who appreciates some more depth and complexity in their games. The combat mechanics are extensive, with many interlocking parts, but still manageable. Together with the rich lore of the game world, and the complex characters with their own motivations, this makes for an information-dense game that can sometimes feel a bit like an extended info-dump. However, even if you have a hard time keeping track of all the characters and moving pieces, you can still enjoy the game. Add in a well written story, sprinkle with some great graphics and music, and it's easy to see why this game gets so much praise.

The long and rambly:

The opening sets the mood with a nice reference to a beloved classic from the 16-bit era. Since the trailers don't show it, I won't spoil it for anyone either. But if you don't care for spoilers, it's Chrono Trigger,, what else? To the best of my knowledge, this is the only part where this happens though; the rest of the game is very much its own thing.

At the start of the game, we get introduced to the various characters in turn, playing a small part of their lives in the events leading up to the game proper. Eventually their paths will cross, and they will team up, each for their own reasons. At certain predetermined story beats, characters may join or leave the group, or the group may be temporarily split up again, forcing you to adapt your strategies since you can not always count on your favourite abilities or character combos to be at your disposal during combat.

And the combat system is really where the game shines. You have two combat modes: on foot, or using sky armours. The latter being mech suits with powerful attacks, suitable for combat against other sky armours and large beasts of the land. They can also fly, allowing you to access parts of the map you can't reach on foot.

Foot combat allows you to fight with a combat roster of 4 characters picked from your party. But each combatant slot can hold two characters, which you can tag-team whenever it's their turn, provided they're still standing. An extra complexity layer is added in the form of your "overdrive" status that needs to be managed, which determines whether you are unaffected, penalised or rewarded during combat. The combat is often challenging, but most encounters are winnable. And thankfully, you can flee most battles if you chewed off more than you can swallow. New abilities get unlocked as your characters gain experience, and you can choose the order in which you unlock them, allowing you to steer your character's and party's growth. Of course, you have the usual range of buffs, debuffs, physical and elemental attacks, usable items, attacks that target individual enemies or the whole group, and of course every character has a unique "ultimate" move that needs to be charged up during combat.

Sky armour combat is similar, but with enough differences to keep things interesting. You don't have access to your party's abilities during sky armour combat, but instead each mech carries a unique set of weapons that come with their own abilities. Just like with normal combat, new abilities appear as your character progresses. But this time the order is determined by which weapons you use the most, rather than allowing you to pick the next upgrade from a list. The overdrive bar is still there, but with different mechanics. Again, you fight in a group of 4, but this time you can't tag-team with other party members. Instead your mech has 3 gears it operates in, which determine how much damage you deal/receive, the cost and availability of your abilities, their recovery rate, and your traversal through the overdrive bar. Outside of combat, you can also use your sky armour to explore the landscape, switching between hover mode, from where you can initiate combat or disembark from your mech, and fly mode, which allows you to access the entire map. And of course, just to keep things interesting, the game imposes certain restrictions on when it's possible to switch between both modes, adding a puzzle element to map exploration.

The game also has an extensive crafting element through two separate crafting mechanics. You can combine crystals into more powerful versions, which can be set into your weapons and armour for additional benefits during combat, and you can upgrade your weapons for increased stats. Personally, I never liked crafting mechanics in games, because it often devolves into finding the right ingredients and the right recipes to combine into usable items which offer very little gameplay benefit. Most of the time it feels tacked on to tick a box, rather than included as a meaningful aspect of the game, and just amounts to boring busywork. Not so here! The crafting mechanics are rather simple, but not overly so. The simplicity comes from the straightforward way in which you combine items. In the case of crystals, it's super simple: no myriad of combinations, you can only combine "like" crystals for increased strength, although they lose purity each time they're combined, putting a limit on how often you can do so. In the case of weapons, it's also rather simple: the upgrade menu clearly tells you which crafting components you need to collect to perform the upgrade, and you will either find these items during your travels, or you can purchase a limited amount from merchants. That's it. You don't craft potions, you don't craft usable items; the crafting system supports the game's core gameplay mechanics and doesn't overwhelm the player with countless options. I can't stress enough how well the crafting mechanics in this game are implemented: this is the first time I actually enjoy the crafting experience.

As you progress through the game, more gameplay elements get added piecemeal. Skill progression, merchants, fast travel, crafting, sky armour combat, base building, unrestricted map exploration, ... The latter two just got introduced in act 2, and I have no idea if there's more to come. And if so, how much. Speaking of which: the game boasts 30-40h of gameplay. Well, let me tell you, I was already 30+h into the game before reaching act 2. Out of the usual 3. So I guess those 30-40h are for experienced players who already know the game and optimal route. The rest of us mortals will be spending quite a bit more time in this game world. And I for one am not complaining!

All in all, this game is an easy recommend from me. If you have a fondness for 16-bit style JRPGs from the "golden era", or just like interesting turn-based combat mechanics that have you spinning multiple plates at once, you'll feel right at home here. For a game developed by a single person, apart from the music, this game makes one heck of an impression! It's clearly a passion project and a homage to the JRPG classics from times past, and a well executed one at that.

And for those to whom it matters: yes, the game plays great on Linux and on the Steam Deck. It has full controller support, and is perfect for couch play.

Received this game as a gift from a friend, who'd been playing this a lot and thought I might like it too. Played it a few times, but didn't really get the hang of it, and there it languished in my collection.

Fast-forward a couple of months, and me and said friend are visiting a third friend who owns the game on the Switch. Observed his aggressive play style, and upon returning home, tried doing the same, as opposed to my usual cautious approach. And suddenly it dawned on me: this game is meant to be played like a 2D version of Quake. You have to be brutal, fast, merciless and unrelenting!

Once you realise this, the game suddenly becomes a lot more fun. I'm not very far yet, but I'm progressing at a steady clip, and having loads of fun doing it. It took me a while to make the click, but now that I did, I'm glad I got to play this little gem.

I have a bit of an odd relationship with brawler-style beat-em-ups. I love the genre. I really do. The problem is: I'm just terrible at 'em.

This game, however, is just the right balance for me as a casual player of the genre. It offers enough complexity in the form of moves, combos, special attacks, to keep things interesting. But not so many as to overwhelm. The gameplay on the easier difficulty levels is also sufficiently forgiving for a novice like me. It's a nice introduction to the genre, allowing us less experienced players to practice controlling this type of game properly, rather than just reverting to button mashing in a panic and never progressing our skillset.

Gameplay-wise, it's very reminiscent of Turtles in Time on the SNES, but with an overworld map harking back to the very first Turtles side-scrolling platformer on the NES. Except you're "on rails" in the overworld and don't need to fight foes there. The combination works, but as a point of criticism, I would've preferred more freedom in the overworld, more exploration rather than linear progression. And on the subject of criticism: the way the moves are introduced is very inefficient. The turtle simply goes through their list of moves, performing them one after the other while the button presses are displayed underneath. But it's a lot of information to take in, and you don't get to practice your moves like e.g. in Tekken where you can practice against the dummy. It also shows you all the moves at once, even the ones you don't have access to yet. It would have been better to introduce those moves once you acquire them, like most other games do. Because when you start out, it's not immediately clear you can't perform them yet. But these minor blemishes don't detract much from the overwhelmingly positive impression the game made on me.

What makes this game simply great though is the charm it oozes. I was never a huge fan of the Turtles back in the day, although I knew them and watched the show whenever I happened to encounter it while channel surfing. This game made me seek out the rest of the TMNT media, and I'm currently devouring the 2003 series (this game is based on the first one from 1987). And it's the little things that make it stand out in my opinion: the way the Foot Clan members are just goofing off until you walk in to ruin their day, the fun little animations when you get set on fire, or the loose board that flips up into your (or the Foot Clan member's) cherries when stepped on. It all adds to the charm.

The drawing style is updated a bit from the original show, but still recognisable. This game got a similar visual treatment as Streets of Rage 4, and it works wonderfully in both cases.

All in all, I'm pretty happy that I picked this up. Can't wait to have some friends over so we can couch co-op this thing. Hopefully, by then, I'll have upgraded most of my characters and unlocked Casey.

I'm sure there's a beautiful story in here, but unfortunately it's buried under the most tedious and uninspired gameplay ever.

The whole game is just a load of busywork, expressed through boring little minigames you've seen a thousand times before. You can fish. Which boils down to pressing the action key to cast your line, then waiting until something bites, before holding down the action key to reel it in. Once a certain character comes aboard, it gets a little bit more complicated: now you can catch bigger things, which means your line can snap. So now you have to release the action button when your line is about to break, letting it cool down for a brief instant, and hold it again to continue reeling in. Yawn-a-licious! But hey, there's also farming. Which involves standing in front of your plot, and using your action key to plant something (it lets you select what), using the same action key to water it (which must be done daily, for every individual plot), and again to harvest after a couple of days. Don't like that? Well, there's the music minigame. Hit the specified controller keys at the correct moment to play a melody. Cutting down trees: move the stick left and right to move the saw. Cooking: toss something in the oven and wait for the timer to run out, then take it out of the oven. Mining: hold the action key to "charge up" your swing, then let go before you inexplicably drop your pickaxe. And so on, and so forth.

On top of that, you need to keep your passengers happy. Some have certain demands, which you need to fulfill. They also each have their personal preferences regarding food. Satisfying their demands and dietary preferences increases their happiness, which apparently (although I'm probably not at that stage yet) makes them help out on the boat with all the menial tasks. The problem is, in order to see their mood, you need to interact with them and select the "mood" option. They don't have different animations depending on their mental state, nor do they have handy icons floating overhead so you can quickly see which passengers require attention. Unless it's for scripted events. And they don't do anything by themselves; you have to cook for them, you have to provide them with whatever makes them happy, they're just along for the ride but don't expect them to carry their own weight or anything.

All of this results in a load of busywork, and you're frantically running from left to right to react to all the different timers running out or gathering resources. This leaves you very little time to actually interact with your passengers in a meaningful way. Which, to me, seemed the whole point of this game prior to purchase, going by the marketing materials. But then, if you're looking for meaningful interactions, you're not gonna find it in this game anyway, as the characters don't really have much to say. Nor do you, for that matter. There is no dialogue in this game, just monologue where the characters apparently reveal their story. And their preferences, and the "tutorials", and whatever else the game wants you to know about. You can't steer the conversations, you can't react to what they tell you, you're just there to listen.

I truly don't understand all the raving reviews, or the "overwhelmingly positive" rating this game gets. This is Farmville levels of gaming "fun". I can't believe none of the people who gave this a glowing review have ever played an actual game before, so what am I missing?

On the cautiously positive side: the drawing and animation style is beautiful and charming, I'll give them that. Although, like all the rest, it's also very repetitive. I mean, how many times can that deer be genuinely surprised that you hug her before she simply hugs you back without getting startled every... single... time??? Would it have killed them to create, I don't know, *two* hug animations for that character? But still, it's beautifully drawn, and the game oozes visual charm. Too bad it doesn't have the gameplay to back it up.

The short: Aer is a nice little game with lots of charm and a surprisingly enjoyable birdflight mechanic. It has its flaws, but overall it's an easy game to recommend.

You play as Auk, a young woman on a pilgrimage in a gorgeous world. The world is made up of floating islands, but as you explore the game and its lore, you learn that this has not always been so.

The graphics are not spectacular, but they're functional and very fitting to the atmosphere of the game. In this case it's safe to say that more would have been less. Bringing in more detail would have robbed the game of its atmosphere, and the developers made a good choice keeping the graphics clean and simple.

The game does not try to hold your hand too much. There is a map so you can find your way around, and NPCs occasionally drop hints as to what you might want to explore next. But it's still an open world exploration game with some (easy) puzzles thrown in. There is also a storyline involving the history of this world, and the almost forgotten gods of old. To make sense of it, you'll have to piece together seemingly unrelated fragments of information, which you encounter in more or less random order. It almost makes me feel as if I'm playing a game about archaeology. Thankfully, most of the background story can be safely ignored without impeding progress, so everyone will be able to appreciate what this game has to offer.

While this game isn't hard per se, there are some inconsistencies in difficulty. Most parts are pretty unchallenging. There are no complex flight acrobatics and the puzzles aren't particularly hard to figure out. But for some inexplicable reason this relaxed gameplay is juxtaposed against some 3d platformer action inside the caves which raises the difficulty level by a fair amount. Still not particularly hard, but these are the only points at which you can fail after a lengthy sequence, and be forced to start all over again. These sections break the otherwise mellow flow of the game, and feel a bit jarring.

But all in all, it's a really beautiful game that gives you plenty of freedom. There is no rush to finish the game, there is no ticking clock, no constant reminders of what you "need" to do next. So if all you want to do is fly around and take in the scenery, the game will happily let you.

TL;DR: fun game, has a lot of gameplay and UI/UX issues, get it in a sale.


I'm not sure I like the game, but it sure is addictive. It's addictive in the same sense that most unforgiving games with permadeath are: that drive to give it another shot, see if a different approach may yield better results, applying what little we learned in this round to hopefully do better in the next one. In this regard, it reminds me a lot of FTL.

The graphics are adequate and help create a fitting atmosphere. Some elements are just so-so, e.g. the vortices or what I assume represents bad weather, and the ships are merely adequate. But these small blemishes can be easily overlooked. The sound and music are also very fitting, and it appears the music reacts to both your location and present situation. Every port and their surrounding area seems to have its own soundscape. I probably should pay more attention to the sound, but I'm one of those people who automatically blocks out the music on a conscious level, although it still helps set the mood.

But the one thing every reviewer agrees on: this game is merciless, and there's a certain learning curve. While I don't mind permadeath per se, in this game, it clashes with the narrative elements. Every time you die, you start over with a new captain. The legacy mechanic allows you to retain some stats/belongings from the previous captain, but every storyline they participated in is reset. They can receive the same quests, or enlist the same officers, but the stories play out the exact same way, word for word, *from the very beginning*. And this is where the game falls a bit short for me: it wants to be two conflicting things at once. It wants to be a narrative-driven game, but because it also wants to be a merciless permadeath game, it forces you to reread paragraphs and paragraphs of narrative. So after a short while, you develop this habit of just skipping or skimming it, at which point you start to wonder why it's there to begin with since you no longer even bother reading the new text.

On to the UI. Let me start by saying I'm a couch player, so I need to enlargen the UI elements and fonts to make this game playable on the TV from 10ft away. I think it's very commendable that the authors put these options in there, although the lack of controller support is puzzling since the game would lend itself so well to being played with a controller. However, some elements could've been better. The buttons in the main menu offer too little contrast. Especially from a distance, without UI scaling. And the flow through the ingame screens lacks, well, flow... In your Gazetteer (book that serves as the ingame menu), many pages are redundant. There's this button after visiting a place "Back to the city". Clicking it, rather than taking you to the "City" menu, just shows you a page telling you that you can just click "London" at the right edge of the screen. The harbourmaster's summary of your "action items" in the form of a list of messages contains no clickable items and disappears until your next visit when dismissed. After interacting with one of your officers, you're taken back to an unrelated screen devoid of any information or relevance, rather than back to the Officers screen from where you came. All in all, the gazetteer is a jumbled mess. There are even parts of the game where it simply states that to unlock a certain interaction, a certain status "must be !", as if someone forgot to put in the template variable that will be filled in with the actual value. It's little things like this that give the game an unpolished and unfinished look.

And then there's the gameplay. It's easy to get hooked on this game, if you're the kind of person who enjoys starting over and devising ever better strategies. But some things are just boring busywork. You're supposed to report back on ports you visited, but doing so requires you to write these reports in the first place. This requires you to actually click a button when docked, nested in one of the menu items. This is a redundant gameplay element, a piece of senseless busywork. It's not like there's this situation developing at these ports, and every time you visit, the story progresses and you learn new details. The text is more along the lines of "these fishermen play their cards close to their chest and reply mostly with evasive answers, but after a while you manage to piece together enough clues to write your report". Every port has its own variation, but every time you visit the same port it's the exact same text. Filing these reports separately upon returning to London is even more tedious. And it's not the only instance of busywork in this game: the only way to obtain news is to go to your lodging and explicitly click "read the paper". These things should not require user interaction, if they have a place in the game at all.

And then there's the "everything is an item" mechanic. You can collect secrets, but it's abstract. You just receive an item called "Secret". You can have multiple, and they can be used/traded. This leads to ridiculous scenarios such as you learning a secret from an NPC, which becomes a "Secret" inventory item, which you then spend on the Cladery Heir in the form of "revealing something about your past" in order to improve your Hearts stat by 1. And literally everything in this game suffers from this illogical mechanic: read the paper in London, and you have one "News" item which several ports are interested in. But if you use it at one port, it's gone and can no longer be used at another. Secrets, news, ... are not modeled as knowledge, but as consumables which are stored in your inventory.


In summary:

Despite its shortcomings, the game is still quite addictive. Whether I find it enjoyable is something I haven't fully decided yet. Some issues with the game are easy to ignore, e.g. the "everything is an item" mechanic, while weird and illogical, is just something you have to accept and get used to. But the game suffers from a schizofrenic undecisiveness about what it wants to be: some parts (the secrets, the tales of terror, ...) are so abstract and devoid of detail, whereas other parts such as the quests drown in narrative. And this narrative clashes with the "fail often and restart from zero" approach to progression, which leads to repitition, causing the player to ignore or skim the narrative entirely.

Would I recommend it? Sure, it has enough good elements to keep things interesting. But not at full retail. It's simply too unpolished and even unfinished to justify the asking price. Especially compared to other games that cost less (e.g. FTL), and are more polished and more focused in their gameplay elements.

This is an interesting take on the platformer genre. You're quite vulnerable and danger is everywhere, and if that wasn't bad enough, you constantly encounter situations that won't allow you to progress.

However, you have one power that can help you muddle through: you can rotate the world around you at will. The objects present in it (including yourself) will realign with the new direction of gravity, opening up creative ways of advancing through the levels, but also tricky pitfalls such as the fact that that heavy boulder that was behind you is now suddenly right above you, and in free fall.

I wouldn't describe it as the most engaging platformer out there, but that's just one man's opinion. Your mileage may vary.

The game delivers on its promise of being a non-violent horror game, seen through the eyes of a toddler. It doesn't have the greatest graphics in the world, but in this fantasy world that's not really necessary either. The only place where it bothers a bit is when the game tries to render humans,. But luckily there's only one (mommy) and we only see her very briefly.

The formula revolves around navigating levels and collecting items in order to advance, whilst remaining unseen by the scary evil that roams the world. And let me tell you, when it is near, you feel its presence. This is where the game really distinguishes itself in my opinion: the evil presence is quite scary, and it will make you play it cautious so as to not invoke its wrath. Very well executed.

There's little replay value though, and even the extra story in the free DLC was unnecessary in my opinion. It's also a step down from the main storyline if you ask me. It failed to captivate me because of its repetitive formula and unreasonable expectations of wilful suspension of disbelief compared to the main storyline. Then again, nobody forces you to play it, and the main storyline is definitely worth it even if it doesn't have a lot of replay value. For this reason I suggest you may perhaps want to wait for a sale.

The game has a free demo, which is not something you see often. I haven't played it, but if you're curious I'd suggest you take it for a spin.

Disclaimer: I'm reviewing this from the point of view of a Linux user. Not sure if people on Windows are having to jump through similarly ridiculous hoops to get the game running or not, although I stumbled upon some Windows users with controller issues as well during my research.

First of all, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with the game itself. It looks OK, seems to play OK, there's really not much one can say about the game other than it is a platformer and a remake of a classic. Does it live up to the hype? Does it play well? Is it balanced? Are the controls tight and responsive? I wouldn't know; of my 50 ingame minutes, I spent 10 minutes testing, and the other 40 struggling with the controller setup.

And that brings us to the reason I'm giving this a negative review: I don't care how good your game is, a platformer should not expect me to set up two screens worth of action bindings with confusing labels before it allows me to play. Apparently, if you use a supported controller, such as the XBox 360 controller, this problem shouldn't present itself since it gets detected automatically. I say apparently, because I use exactly that, and I can not select the XBox 360 control scheme in the dropdown. Only the generic one with a blank configuration.

The issue has been reported over a year ago, and rather than fixing it, the devs have released incomplete and confusing instructions on how to work around this. Instructions which became obsolete within 6 months of posting, yet the posts are still not updated and they don't even respond when you ask for clarification. See http://gtm.you1.cn/app/314660/discussions/0/594820473983869155/ and its linked forum posts for more info.

In the end, it took a fellow gamer with way more patience than me to set up their controller and post their config before I could actually enjoy the game. For those on Linux who are having trouble with their configs (and for future self), this is the post that helped me set up my controller: https://gtm.you1.cn/app/314660/discussions/2/485623406953212192/

Enjoyable with some frustrating elements.

The game is interesting enough and has plenty of atmosphere. But it's a weird mix between a brutal unforgiving platformer, a story-driven puzzle platformer (think The Swapper) and a keyboard/mouse sidescrolling shooter in the vein of Abuse. All enjoyable in their own right, but the mix doesn't really work for me.

I believe a platformer should be entirely playable with a gamepad. This game doen't support one, but requires a keyboard for movement and a mouse to aim. Not to mention quick reflexes because some of the enemies pop out and are on top of you in no time, giving you precious little time to aim.

It also doesn't help that the mouse aim is not very predictable. In some screens you can traverse the entire screen, and your cursor will remain in exactly the same spot in absolute level-coordinates. Yet, other times you climb a ladder, the entire screen scrolls, and your mouse cursor travels along with you.I'd have preferred a more twin-stick friendly "always relative aim" scheme, allowing for gamepad support in addition to keyboard/mouse. The game in its current form is not very couch friendly. You can make it work with a Steam Controller, but it's not ideal.

Despite the strange mix of genres and the slightly bizarre choice of control scheme, the game remains very enjoyable. Sometimes frustratingly so due to an overreliance on narrow platforms. Unless you're a seasoned platformer, you'll die a lot in this game.

Most people complain about the puzzles being too hard. I can't speak for the puzzles deeper into the game, but so far I found them all very logical, and some felt more like chores than puzzles. For me it's the more hardcore platform and combat elements that give rise to frustration.

The pixel art neither adds nor detracts from the gameplay, so it's unnecessary, merely a design choice by the developers. But it's well executed and gives the game a retro feel. From a gameplay and aesthetic point of view, the comparison to Another World is not undeserved.

Pros:
* Atmosphere
* Well done pixel art
* Semi-challenging platform action
* Homouristic pop culture references (Major Tom, PEANUT civilisation, Red Dwarf, ...)

Cons:
* Requires keyboard/mouse, no couch platformer
* Some parts rely too much on platform-spamming
* Some required objects are easy to miss

Minor nitpicks:
* Use of the cliché "enemy that can be stunned but not killed"
* Enemies that respawn every time you pass their spawn point