DLCChained Echoes: Ashes of ElrantLoading store offers
Chained Echoes
Chained Echoes combines a continuing story with visible enemies and brisk turn-based battles, making it a fit for players looking for a focused, single-player JRPG. The offer is ≈ $11.98 from 
GOG. Mechs and a customizable airship add variety to the journey, while the solo format lets you play at your own pace. It is a distinctive adventure to consider at the current price, rather than a game that depends on multiplayer plans. At $24.99 from GOG, you can compare the offer directly with Steam's current price.
Loading store offers
Wishlist price
Set a target to receive an email when an eligible offer in your selected region is at or below that amount.
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $9.992025-10Current Low Across Stores~ $24.99Steamvs. Historical Low+150%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
DLC
01About Chained Echoes
Chained Echoes is a story-driven JRPG about a band of heroes crossing the continent of Valandis to bring an end to a war between three kingdoms. The journey ranges across varied landscapes, dungeons, and dangerous foes that can be seen in the world. Battles are fast-paced and turn-based, while swords, magic, and piloted Mechs all fit into its fantasy setting. Steam player rating: 88% positive from 7,826 reviews. Supported interface languages: Simplified Chinese, English, French, German, Korean, and Japanese.
Credits
Developer
Umami Tiger (Matthias Linda)
Publisher
Deck13 · WhisperGames
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$9.992025-10-14 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | — | — |
| English | Yes | — | — |
| French | Yes | — | — |
Show 3 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | — | — |
| Korean | Yes | — | — |
| Japanese | Yes | — | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Play and controls
The Steam PC version supports full controller input and is a single-player RPG.
Languages
Supported interface languages include English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified Chinese.
03Frequently asked questions
What is Chained Echoes about?
A group of heroes travels across Valandis to end a war between its three kingdoms.
What are the battles like?
Combat is fast-paced and turn-based, with enemies visible in the world rather than random encounters.
Can you use Mechs and an airship?
The party can travel and fight on foot or in Mechs, and you can customize your airship.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
Chained Echoes is a game I feel very protective about. I backed it thinking that it looked pretty cool, but it was going to be developed by a single person and they weren't even asking for that much. I'm sure they meant well, but I've seen a lot of developers try to pull off a full scale RPG and miss the mark in a variety of ways. I was just hoping for something interesting and fun. What Matthias Linda has accomplished here is nothing short of incredible. He demonstrates intricate genre literacy, and has clearly thought very hard about the pros and cons of various systems in RPGs over the years. The result is something that is rock solid - damn near bulletproof, and every little thing that I've ever thought was an annoyance in the countless other RPGs I've played has been avoided. The result is something that could only come from examining hundreds of other games, seeing what didn't work, or almost worked, and tweaking until the final product shines. I love the way that each area has a relatively small number of encounters, and each one (on the default difficulty settings) balanced to make you make heavy use of your toolkit. In exchange, you are fully healed after each battle. Being able to exercise my full knowledge of my characters' abilities often rather than having my time wasted by hundreds of weak enemies feels excellent. The addition of the overdrive gauge brings everything together: each attack raises the overdrive gauge, while swapping characters, defending, and using highlighted abilities lowers it, with your goal being to keep your position in the sweet spot to keep incoming damage minimized and your TP costs lowered. It just feels great. The sky armor combat extends the idea of the regular combat system, but plays with the way the overdrive gauge works in a way that is really interesting and fun. Speaking of difficulty settings, the game does have three separate settings in the options menu to tweak. "Enemy stats" low/normal/high, "enemy aggressiveness" low/normal/high, and overdrive gauge sweet spot size. The default is to put everything on normal, and as I mentioned above, it feels absolutely perfect to me. But if you are having trouble, you have the ability to adjust to your needs. The side quests in the game are all meaningful and relate directly to the story. There is not a single fetch quest in the game. I really enjoyed this. They have nice little subplots and satisfying encounters. All completely worth doing, and it ties in well with the in-game reward board which is a checklist of tasks that gives you boosts on money and other resources. I also feel the need to praise the soundtrack. Eddie Marianukroh did a fantastic job here, and the game truly would not be what it is without his work. There's a lot more I would love to talk about here, including entire systems that I really enjoyed, but I strongly feel that at least some of them should not be spoiled for the player. They're just that cool. Ultimately, I think that anyone who is a fan of SNES and PSX era RPGs owes it to themselves to check this out. It really is one of the best RPGs I've played in a very long time.Show moreShow less
56.5 hours at review344 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
My wife got this game as she's an avid rpg fan, and it wound up being one of her all time favorites, but she was unable to finish the final boss due to background being constantly flashy as she is epileptic and could go into a seizure from it Idk if the dev reads these reviews but if possible please patch in a toggle option to disable the flashing background during the final boss, it would genuinely help my wife who otherwise adores this gameShow moreShow less
114 hours at review1,008 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Chained Echoes PROS CONS Innovative turnbased system Equipment Upgrades felt weak Colorful cast of characters Difficulty pacing was a little off Writing was engaging… …until the last bit Incentivized just playing the main story Static expression boxes Bugs and Issues Specs On steam deck there were performance hiccups that caused freezing in certain sections of the game Sound Sync issues PLAYED MAINLY ON STEAM DECK AMD Ryzen 9 3900X ASUS TUF RTX 4070Ti 32 GB 3600MHz RAM 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD 1440p Settings Content and Replay Value The game harkens from old school classic RPGs such as final fantasy and chrono trigger. There is plenty here and took me 68 hours to beat. I find that this game doesn’t have much replay value because there isn’t much to change outside of your cast as most serve a specific role Should you get it? This is a love letter to old school RPGs. From the tropes, the style, a little bit of the combat style. Everything is here if you like turn based RPGs such as classic Final Fantasy and Chrono-Trigger Overall Verdict 8/10. This game was solid with the systems it implies, but the overall difficulty pacing was off. Mostly, it was how the story ended. It wasn’t rushed but felt convoluted and left me saying out loud, “I guess…”. Setting & Writing: Set in a war-torn land, Chained Echoes places you in a nation who hasn’t known peace for many generations’ lives. You start out playing as a mercenary Glen who’s supposed to go on a quick in and out mission. This sets in motion the events of the game which involve a weapon of mass destruction, angry petty gods, and reincarnation. This gives way for many points of intrigue in the story. All of this is engaging until the last bits of the game which seem to throw the player for a loop completely. Sometimes instances like these capture the player, I was not one of those players. The game ends with a cliff hanger considering the main issue doesn’t get solved. When credits rolled, I sat back and just thought to myself that it ended weaker than I expected. Gameplay system & Bosses: What Chained Echoes does to stray away from the classic turn based is introduce an overdrive gauge. This gauge moves with every action taken. Split into orange, green and red, the overdrive gauge brings strategy into how the player chooses their actions. Each special skill is classified and using a skill that matches your overdrive gauge will move the cursor inside. The objective is to stay in the green for added advantages such as extra damage and reduced skill cost. If the overdrive reaches the red, enemies do more damage and skills cost more. Bosses take advantage of this gauge by using moves that mix out the normal order of the overdrive gauge. Later, the game introduces (badass) mechs that players can pilot that add an extra dimension to area traversal and discovery. These mechs do substantial amount of damage and change the overdrive movement by linking it to “gears” of your mech. Having your mech in a certain gear will move the gauge in a given direction. This change alone keeps the game from just mashing the skill that does the most damage. Sometimes you’ll have to sacrifice a few turns to make sure you don’t go in the red and suffer the penalties. Quest, Mini-games & Challenges: Chained echoes side missions are not hard to miss, which I love! At a point in the game, you will be able to go off and adventure in your sky ship straight Cid style. Looking at your map you will be able to discern the side missions that you can do and points where to go next. As a person who doesn’t have as much time as I used to play video games, this streamlines everything for me. The content of each side mission varies, but for the most part they hit. There are some heavy hitting side stories and others are pretty lighthearted. In classic RPG form there are secret boss fights that test the build of your group. There are also special beast hunts that only occur if special conditions to make them appear are met. Both of these task do reward you with special equipment and weapons for your troubles. Miscellaneous (art, music, etc.): The game employs the classic 16-bit sprite art concept along with full bodied adventure JRPG soundtrack. There were some definite bangers in there for me such as Rohlan fields. It does a good job of making a high fantasy sound track that tickles your nostalgia bone.Show moreShow less
68.8 hours at review228 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
HARD DOWN VOTE. This game is locked progression. You can only get stronger by hitting milestones in the story. You get no xp/levels/stat increases from fighting. You literally cannot travel to other zones since you will get one shot and there is no way to level. You cannot earn new classes since the fights are impossible. There is no way to level or progress. You literally are required to run straight to the next story point even though there are large fields/music/scenery to enjoy since the only way to progress is to hit story milestones. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? was the bheta locked into a short area with a small series of battle? did no one say this was a bad idea? This is a giant failure in execution. Honestly i am sad since this is a great game with awefull systems. Story is good. Music is good. I love the old school grahpics and yet i cannot even play the game since the only thing you can do is rush to finish story marks then come back to areas to actually play to game after you have finished 60-70% of the story. This game is a great idea with horrible/terrible execution. I would also argue that the gameplay and locked progression makes this more of a visual novel than an RPG. Update: At 33 hours into the game i can say that the prologue was the highlight of this game. Story goes way down hill after doing a really good start in the prologue. It seems like the writer changes what they wanted the narrative arc to be several times throughout the progress of the game. Betrayal is a cool theme, but after the fourth betrayal it starts to loose its bite and after the 16 betrayal it looses all its gravitas. After 33 hours i don't know who the bad guy is saposed to be. At this point the main problem in this world is apparently over population where there are to many souls being born into the world. I do know the game makes me look at war crimes every time i come into a city with family members looking up at their dead relatives hung from a gate with bags over their heads. You would think with such an evil act there would be a clear villian in this game that your protagonist is fighting against. On that note this is the weakest MC, character wise, that i have ever seen in a video game. He drifts along and has no agency or drive. He is just there as the world moves around him. Beware the folks who are trying to gaslight you into believing this game is "like chrono trigger", that is a lie. The opening of the game is a copy and paste from the opening of chrono trigger, except that evil cannot create it can only destroy, so we deviate with profanity and violence. The gameplay is nothing like chrono trigger. The battles are nothing like chrono trigger. The story is nothing like chrono trigger. The character development is nothing like chrono trigger. The only person who would say "this game is like chrono trigger" would be a person who watched a five minute youtube video that showed still pixal images from chrono trigger and said they were "similar" to the pixal images of this game. I am glad people are enjoying this game but from the reviews here and on xbox it seems that they are all one sentence long with buzz words. The way to prevent the gas lighting is to ask questions. How is this game like chrono trigger in its story, battle mechanics, character progression? In conclusion i want more JRPGs and i would love more pixal art JRPGs. I am left with only sadness that the story ended up being this bad. About half way it stops driving the narrative and nothing makes sense. I don't care about saving this world because there is no good in this world. I didn't go from killing slimes outside a village to defeating a rogue god trying to destroy the world. I went and picked up trash in the world, opening chests, fighting enemies without armor and with only female characters to try and farm enough shards to level up my characters enough to not get one shot by bosses. That is how you grow stronger in this game, picking up pieces of junk in all the zone areas.Show moreShow less
5.3 hours at review281 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I genuinely don't know where to start, this is an absolute masterpiece. This is absolutely, without hyperbole, the indie and RPG GOTY 2022. *Spectacular pixel art, highly detailed for both sprites and backgrounds, yet perfectly nostalgic for the classic 16bit era of jRPGs. This would have been comfortable on the SNES and lauded for its visuals to boot. There was a definite missed opportunity for implementing a lovely scanline or CRT shader, that would have just amped the nostalgia factor \o/ *Orchestral soundtrack that was a genuine delight in every single track, melancholic and happy in equal measure.. fabulously composed. *Probably the best classic-style battle system I've seen in a jRPG in a long, long time. Conditional turn-based like in FFX, and even has the same "swap party members in and out on the fly" mechanics too. Being able to swap your characters at will adds enormous layers of strategy and enjoyment. One of my favourite parts of the combat system was how ailments and buffs work, having a departure from the usual "immune to everything" enemy roster -- you can impart buffs and debuffs on any enemy or boss, adding more strategy. Everything about the game just oozes charm, class, style, and absolute talent from the developers. The story is engrossing, mature yet not bleak or overly gritty for the sake of it, just a joy to get wrapped up in - dealing with weighty subjects with characters whose emotions and motivations feel real. Combat is enjoyable, the game pacing is brisk but not rushed, tons of equipment and items, a fabulous "deals" system that has you selling loot in order to acquire rare gear and materials, and even a thoroughly enjoyable "Grid" that rewards exploration and combat prowess. My singular lament is the Gem System, something that had the potential to be truly powerful and enjoyable, a way of customising your characters statistic, allowing you to create and find gems to slot into your weapons/armour. Gems have "purity" and "size" and "rank" - and you have to combine gems in order to unlock stat changes. In reality it just becomes a chore trying to juggle clunky game mechanics and frustrating "purity" or "fake crystals" which can't be merged. So I largely just ignored it. It's fair to say I loved every moment of this (gems notwithstanding, lol) and had I played this prior The Game Awards, or Valve's own Steam Awards, I'd have *happily* rated this RPG GOTY and my own personal GOTY to boot. Fabulous start to finish, a pure delight, and I urge any and all jRPG fans to NOT SLEEP ON THIS.Show moreShow less
66.4 hours at review208 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Insert obligatory "I wish there was an information review category" remark TL:DR: An impressive game with great soundtracks, artwork and a decent story, sadly weighed down by a combat and progression system that never quite finds its footing properly. Chained Echoes isn't bad , but I can hardly call it good. I only learnt it was made by one dude after finishing it, and on that basis it is most definitely impressive. But that's why I want to point out the flaws all the more, because it really could have been that much better with a little fine tuning. My main gripe with the game over my playthrough was definitely the combat and its progression. It starts out allright, was a mess in the second act, pivoted back to meh in the third and completely fell apart in the endgame. The first reason for this is the overdrive mechanic. Basically, you have a bar that fills up if you attack/use abilities or get hit. If its moderately full, your skill costs get cut in half and you get some small stat boosts. If it's too full, all damage your team takes gets doubled, which is usually a death sentence. The only way to lower this bar is to either skip a turn guarding, or to use a skill of a type that is randomly selected and changes every time you do. Now, I get this is trying to encourage diversity so you don't just spam the same skills. But all it does is add busywork and force you to switch things up, rather than actually encouraging diversity by making your other skills worthwhile. The main problem with it is how it scales into the game. It starts out easy enough to manage initially, when you have few enemies to fight and no bosses with double or even tripple turns. It was a nightmare for me to manage in the second act, where you fight many enemies and don't have terribly many skills or party members yet, so you often only have skills to lower it available that effectively skip a turn. In the endgame, you have so many options available that the system kind of just manages itself and can be ignored. In the end, it didn't really add anything beyond being a chore. You can adjust it slightly in the options menu, but you can't turn it off. Secondly, the crystal system. Simply put, crystals are slottable stat boosters you can put in your gear, that you can combine in certain ways to make them better. I heard many reviewers complain about it, and I can understand why. I don't even think it's a bad system, but it's a bit complicated and not well presented to the player. I hear most people don't really do much with it in their plathroughs, and I ignored it for most of the game until I sat down and actually figured it out, since I felt myself hitting a wall on higher difficulty. It'd be too convoluted to explain here, but there are certain strategies by which you can gain very powerful crystals very early on, and the game falls apart completely if you actually do this. The boosts confered by optimized crystals are immense, and with gearing just one character out with an ideal set, that character managed to kill the secret boss by themselves before said boss even got a turn in. To elaborate on how that happened, there is the third problem with combat: Stats scale in an unbalanced fashion. I still haven't been able to figure out the math, but getting a 20% attack boost can lead to a given character dealing 50% more damage. I don't think it's flat, or if it is, there is some kind of damage floor, but if it is multiplicative, the exact math is beyond me. Point being, if you are ever slightly undergeared, your characters will do next to no damage. There was a time in act 2 where this became apparent when my team was taking upwards of four turns to kill a single overworld enemy. I went back and got a better weapon from a side boss, socketed some basic crystals into it, and found that character to do nearly three times as much damage as they did before, despite their attack stat only improving by about 60% overall. The worst offender to this system is the agility stat, however. This is most notable on Sienna, the strongest character in the game by far, as she is the fastest character you get. A high agility stat will eventually allow you to take multiple turns in between enemy turns. If you mess around with crystals and buffs later, this can lead to you taking 5+ turns for every single enemy turn, completely wrecking the combat system. When I managed to push a character's effective agility above 100, the enemies just... stopped taking turns entirely. I assume the internal math simply fails when values reach that point. All this sadly means that a lot of the cast are not terribly useful in the vast majority situations. All the tanks and healers you get basically remain on the bench forever, because all you really need are buffers/debuffers and fast damage dealers to steamroll any encounter with proper setup. The fact that enemies take so few turns later also means that damage over time effects are basically pointless (poor Rob). The rest of the game didn't have as many issues. There were only a few story moments that made me squint at the screen. The oddest one being a cutscene where a side character gets stabbed and the Healer in your party manages to save them, claiming there is no injury she cannot heal. Literally in the next major cutscene, a main character gets stabbed and said Healer stands there not even trying to do anything or emoting at all, while the death is played as this huge disaster. Many of the conflicts in the story could have been resolved by people just... actually talking to each other for a few minutes. But I suppose an unwillingness to listen isn't an unusual trait for someone to have when being emotional. Beyond that, there were actually a lot of moments I really liked, a lot of good twists that were well set up and executed. The game tries a little too hard to shoehorn one twist after the other in, though, sadly hurting the atually good ones in the process. I had many ui glitches with textboxes overlapping or being off screen in the time I played, but I chalk this up to the developer not properly accounting for unusual screen formats. I don't imagine these things happen when playing on 16:9.Show moreShow less
59.8 hours at review187 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
It's a modernized-retro JRPG styled game. For starters there are no random battles and you're automatically healed after each battle without the need of items. During battle, the overdrive system keeps you on your toes and prevents spamming one move with a bar on the top left that has yellow-green-red colors. Green is where you want to keep it at for extra damage and defense. You have to strategize according icon shown at the top box in order to lower or rise that bar. If you go to overheat [red zone] you'll suffer by taking additional damage. Unlike many RPGs, debuffs actually WORK on all bosses and can be vital to your strategy towards victory. My only minor complaints here is that enemies can move your overdrive forward when they attack you. Which can be problematic in certain situations but it's nothing too complicated. Also, some skills have minor improvements [like 5 less TP use.] The only things you can grind for are SP, crystals, upgrade materials and money. Money is easier since you find item bubbles scattered around the world which can respawn anytime you leave an area and come back. Or farm enemy drops. They also unlock deals at shops. Crystal are used to upgrade and customize your characters however you like My approach was Agility, Attack\Magic and HP drain which was very effective. Crystals also respawn but after a set time. Skyarmor battles function a bit differently. You manage 3 gears which can affect you attack power and defense depending on what gear you are on. Skyarmor levels are gained through a proficiency system [for both ranged and melee weapons] so make sure your characters are proficient at everything since the stats gained are permanent. There is a nice variety of equipment and attachment which you can switch around to your needs. Also you can select from a nice variety of predetermined colors for your mechs. Once you first unlock skyarmors it's like a breath of fresh air! Levels\skillpoints are gained by fighting bosses [to get Grimoire Shards] or filling up the reward board with many challenges to take on. SP is gained in every battle which is used to level up your skills. {you gain SP twice one is automatically applied the other is stored for you to Lv up whatever you like. Grimoire Shards are your level up currency which you can use to unlock new skills or stat buffs. You also get stat bonuses when you unlock these skill [After every certain numbers of unlocks]. Reward board also offers some of these upgrade shards. Class emblems are scattered around Valandis. Once found and equipped they give you bonus stats + two skills and two passives. They can be permenant once you master them] so you can switch them around once mastered. You have to go through a group of enemies as a test in order to get each emblem. There are 12 characters to select from. 8 can be used in battle and switched according to your formation mid battle [without losing a turn] 2 for each of the 4 slot. Each character come with their set of skills that are mostly unique and fun to play with. Some characters involve finishing a side-quest in order to be unlocked. Each character has a unique finisher but they share 1 finisher bar [AKA ultra bar]. Finishers are built up during the battle or by using unique skills. The Soundtracks are fun to listen to and they capture the mood perfectly. Overall It's a solid RPG which has a lot to offer. The weakest link in my opinion was the story. It sets up for a potential sequel, but it's by no means boring. In fact, it can be emotional at times. Fun gameplay and skillsets to play around with. It's one of those games you think about when you go to bed. 9/10Show moreShow less
103 hours at review162 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This is the perfect situation for me to want steam reviews to have a neutral option. The game's aesthetic, music, and combat (on foot) is great. However, there are some glaring issues with the difficulty and story that really make it hard for me to recommend. Broad strokes the story is actually really interesting. However there are some sections of the game that are so poorly written that it just takes you out of the immersion completely. I wish the devs had hired an editor to clean up some of the writing, this game needs it. That by itself is not a big deal. Chances are the devs didn't have the budget for an editor, but now that it's sold a few copies they might be able to fix it. Worst case, a dedicated modder fixes it down the line. However, the ending of the story is really, really bad and frustrating. It doesn't tie up the main threat that the game spends hours alluding to. This really makes the overall interesting story and characters fall completely flat and leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I was hoping that a game like this would have a strong, satisfying ending but instead we are left with a weird half-ending that doesn't answer all the questions we have. Maybe the devs wanted to set up for a DLC or sequel, but it seems like a bad choice for a small indie game like this. Difficulty wise, the beginning is insanely difficult. Act 1 some of the normal enemies felt like straight up bosses. I was retrying many "easy" fights multiple times and had to go find all the equips and play everything perfect. I almost quit playing entirely multiple times, but kept hearing how great the game is so I pushed through. Then after Act 1, the game becomes a complete joke with multiple mechanics allowing you to just straight up steam roll anyone and everyone in your way. I never once felt like the game's difficulty was challenging but fair, instead it was always either completely unfair or a complete joke. Also, the sky armor seems fun and interesting at first, but quickly becomes one of the most tedious and boring parts of the game. There are only 4 pilots and limited variety in how to play, and for some reason it's insanely easy to get a broken combo that lets you literally skip the enemy's turns for 2 turns straight. This makes every sky armor fight play out the exact same and with the limited combat variety to begin with, I ended up hating whenever a sky armor fight started. There are many good things about this game. I loved the art style, music, and the worlds. As a final fantasy fan, this game really feels like a love letter in almost all the right ways - but the glaring pitfalls really stand out. This was a world that was worth exploring and mostly fun to get lost in. However, because of the story and difficulty issues, I can't wholeheartedly recommend someone spend their time getting invested here just to fall short. Overall I would say that this is an okay game, but only play it if you don't have anything else left in the backlog, or are absolutely desperate for a fix of turn based combat gameplay (but be warned because of the balancing issues this game feels okay but never quite as good as legends like Persona 5 or FFX).Show moreShow less
28.3 hours at review144 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Chained Echoes is my GOTY. After finishing the game 100%, it has successfully reignited my passion for turn-based RPGs and all the charm that goes with them. To say that I feel like I got my money's worth from this game is a huge understatement because, throughout 50+ hours sunk into Valandis and this beautiful story, I was in a constant state of wonder that never even bordered the realm of tedium. To start off, the combat is what you make it. There is enough customization in difficulty to tailor the game to how you want your experience to be. The crystals are an interesting mechanic, but it is something that I believe has a lot more potential that can be unlocked. I personally turned my focus toward exploration and the story because I wanted to keep a good pace while writing guides for this game. As a result, I found so many subtle but thoughtful changes that occurred from act to act. Upon noticing how the NPCs evolved as the story progressed, I felt invested in the smaller yet just as meaningful stories they had to tell. I found myself determined to talk to every NPC from Act II onwards because the flavor text definitely turned out to not just be for show. What happens in this world affects all citizens, and it's small details like this that really solidified my interest in the game/story. As far as collectibles go, I really enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of the game. I felt that the developer did a great job of encouraging exploration by inserting just the right amount of feedback to point players in the right direction (a yellow orb here and there to alert you of a hidden path, NPC subtext to teach you about an area's mechanics, etc.). I enjoyed the gradual expansion of most areas due to unlocks tied to story progression. It reminded me of how Darksiders encouraged revisiting areas after you unlocked exploration tools to reveal more of the map. Overall, nabbing as many collectibles as I could (chests/caves/buried treasures) was a truly satisfying experience. It felt just right and was never tedious/frustrating. This review would not be complete without me mentioning the fantastic soundtrack! After visiting a certain village, I had a skip in my step and kept singing Wa Wa, WaWaWA! Unless you are speedrunning this game, I strongly suggest taking your time in each area because there's a lot of fantastic ambiance to take in that's only complemented by such a well-placed sountrack. Huge props to the artist(s)! Thank you Matthias Linda, the rest of the team, and the publisher for making sure I can end this year with a masterpiece of a game! After such a beautiful experience trying to 100% this game, I feel confident supporting any future titles from this brilliant developer.Show moreShow less
56.5 hours at review161 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
tl;dr: I feel really, really bad for not feeling able to recommend this game. It feels like there was a lot of love and care put into making it and the presentation is lovely... But it just kept feeling worst and worst to play. --- I want to start off with the positives. The music was good and enjoyable to listen to, the sound design is great, the spritework was lovely, with the backgrounds being a standout. The atmosphere presented by the many different locales and given to the various cutscenes and other events were fantastic. And I don't think I've encountered a single bug in my 32 hours of playtime. For what I've heard was a solo dev, that's pretty awesome! Also, the game introduces a mechanic I've always had a soft spot for in Act 2--base building! The decision to give a full heal after every battle is a nice little quality of life feature, letting me focus on in-battle tactics and skip fiddling with consumables. (The game *is* balanced around doing so!) And how many games let you both fight with your trusty sword and spells AND a mech? ... But. But... First: The combat system. The Overdrive bar, at first, seemed like a cool mechanic to introduce, but by the time I got to act 2, there had only been one fight that tried to make it any more engaging than the basic "stay in the green zone." On top of that, there's a harsh penalty you get for letting your Overdrive bar get too high, and the mechanics seem determined to try and force you into that state whenever it can. What you need to bring the Overdrive bar down with is correlated to RNG. Enemy actions also raise the Overdrive bar. There are bosses who get to act twice, both actions raising the Overdrive bar. The only saving grace is having items that could be used to fulfill the requirement to bring it down... While you're on foot. In Sky Armors, the mechanic tied to the Overdrive bar makes it even harder to manage, AND you don't even have items to force it anywhere! As a result, many major fights ended up feeling either like easy and unengaging, or annoyingly swingy and overwhelming. Even then, that wouldn't have been insurmountable if not for one thing: The game balance itself feels horrendous, with it being simultaneously easy while also constantly putting you at the precipice of a failure spiral. The enemies you fight are generally tanky as hell, and their damage was rarely balanced to account for AoE abilities and multi-hitting attacks. Since most "at-level" enemies deal roughly around 25%-40% of someone's base HP in damage, some enemy compositions can end up just KOing a party member from full health if you have poor RNG. Generally, an annoyance when you face regular enemies. ... But it's an absolute pain when it comes to boss fights. If you needed that party member for a part of your strategy, the only thing you can do is hope the RNG would be merciful on you as you try to revive them. Then, when their too-high numbers is combined with the penalty for taking more damage if you don't manage your Overdrive bar, it feels like many boss fights constantly put you a string of bad RNG away from a spiraling fail state. The bosses themselves also, at the end of the day, give very little room to strategize with them. Sure, you could apply status effects on them, and sure, you could debuff their own stats, but that was the extent of it. For most bosses, every ability they seem to get access to has an equal chance of being used at all times--with no way to manipulate what they do. This in of itself isn't a problem... If not for the aforementioned problem where enemy stats just seemed too high for their own good. However, all this wouldn't have been a problem if not for the fact that *the majority of characters were plain just uninteresting.* Except Sienna. Sienna is the best of all the characters I've met, 32 hours in. (And I'm especially critical about having seen cuts of wood with more charisma than Glenn, seeing as he's the protagonist and stole a moment so thoroughly from Sienna, I thought her textbox was given to the wrong character. *huff*) Unfortunately, the game often falls into the trap of *telling* us things about the characters, rather than *showing* us those things, which is why I suspect the characters are falling flat for me. I remember one scene where Lenne's brother is wondering why she was so cold with him, vs the party member he saw her talking to... Which isn't something that was shown at all between them. A lot of the dialogue also felt stilted or forced. The plot also... While just enough of the events in it were intriguing enough to keep me going for a while, as a whole I can't say the plot engaged me enough that I want to keep going on top of everything else. Everyone else seemed to have already talked about the crystal system, so I don't think I really need to go into that. Last and honestly the least of the problems, the exploration. While the sights are nice and the varied teleport locations are helpful, the scale of things compared to the camera feel a little too close at times, making it easy to miss some paths and chests. The places that have a map don't have them labeled, even though there are dozens of sites of interest around them. And worst of all are the hidden treasures, where you're supposed to just spam the search button in a radius where two arrows *might* be pointing to--not exactly easy to tell, considering it's all offscreen. All in all, while I'm admittedly being fairly harsh in my review, I also... Just feel like I'm not having fun playing it at this point, and these are my reasons why. For anyone who does pick this game up, I hope you have fun and enjoy yourself.Show moreShow less
32.4 hours at review130 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.