That’s awesome! I can only imagine how much better this game isn’t with that sort of context.

Thank you! Much appreciated

I’ll be the first to tell you there’s no shame in not finishing a game. There are several games I really loved playing, but never finished for one reason or another. Both Red Dead Redemption games and Horizon Forbidden West come to mind.

I totally agree on all accounts, especially the crystal fusions. Thanks for watching!

That’s awesome, and thank you! Yeah I’m worried this game will spoil me for some of the older jrpgs 😬

​@gamersthumb Yo, your reviews are clean and straight to the point. You've got a new subscriber. Keep on with this review format, and you'll be big on KZfaq. Go and play Cassette Beast, Signalis, Thronefall and Baldur's Gate 3 next so you can make a review of them.

@@aviatedviewssound4798 thank you! Yeah I’m dying to play BG3 but it’s so huge I knew I’d have to pretty much out my channel on hold for a month or two 😂. I have a few games lined up for October and November, and then it opens up a lot after that. Thanks for the recommendations (and the follow)!

@@gamersthumb You are welcome; you deserve it. In terms of new platformers, I would recommend you play Dave the Diver, Dome Keeper, Pizza Tower, and Gravity Circuit. Another low-poly cozy gem I enjoy is Dredge.

@@aviatedviewssound4798 Dave the Diver is definitely on my list and Dredge is on the backlog after I, um, missed the boat the first time around…

I do that a lot: drop a game for months and then come back. Sometimes I can pick up where I left off, and other times it feels like I need to start over because I’ve forgotten all the mechanics

I’ve seen those, but have never really checked them out. I will definitely look them up. Thanks!

It definitely has a timeless quality to it

Oh man, I’m excited for you but 12 days is gonna be tight!

I was so blown away even before I knew it was a one-man team. It’s just mind-boggling.

Awesome! It just blows my mind this thing was created by a dude *by himself* 🤯

What? I played a little over 40h, even if you do everything you will be around 50h. I think completing the game from some meta data normally is around 35h.

Yep, 110 hours here. So epic, insane story beats, great writing nuance, music was 12/10 and graphics were *chefs kiss*

Thanks! That’s a great point about the older ones feeling more dense. I have a ton of classics I missed out on back in the day, and as I go back I can definitely feel the pacing. It’s as though they knew you were gonna be playing this thing for months, even years, and there was no rush to move you along. Honestly, I have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy those now, because I feel like I have limited time to play and I want to play everything

@@gamersthumb I'm confused, wasn't keen kind of saying the opposite? "Play 5 hours of Xenoblade 3 and it feels you haven't even started, play 5 hours of FF9 and you've already been to 6 different locales and fought 4 bosses" sounds like they think older rpgs move you along quicker and have faster pacing, while modern games take a lot longer to get going. But as a result they feel like older games are more tiring to play?

@@Alic4444 re-reading I think you’re right. But I think it might be one of those “you had to be there” things where the older ones felt like they were moving you through at a faster pace because it was so different from anything people had played before. For me playing some of the 90s JRPGs for the first time in 2023, it doesn’t feel fast paced. But I also don’t have a lot experience with these games yet. I will say ff7 is a really unique experience so far because every time I think I know what the game is like or what it’s about, another layer of the onion peels back and there’s so much more going on. That might be what he’s referring to as denser.

I liked the story and characters better in chained echoes, but I liked the combat in sea of stars better. That’s not to say I didn’t like those aspects of the other games, that’s just how I would compare them. I would give sea of stars a slight edge just because it wasn’t so long

I switched over to Super Mario RPG, but honestly I like this better

@@gamersthumb nust complete it, it gets really dark and mature later on. There are some story twists that shocked me

@@ioannisdenton I also just restarted Gamepass after a bit, so I’ll be able to get back on it

@@gamersthumb it leaves gamepass this month.

@@ioannisdenton oh crap! Good to know

Truth!

It really deserves more recognition. Thanks for watching!

I completely agree with every word you said!

@@gamersthumb 😁

I agree 100%. That would be perfect for me.

You want your money’s worth, that’s totally fair. I typically play multiple games at a time, so longer games take me even longer to beat. For example, right now I’m splitting my time between Super Mario RPG, Call of Duty, and a handful of other backlog games.

I will say I was feeling that way the first several hours of Sea of Stars but once you meet the pirates the game starts to really catch momentum

same, Sea of stars kinda a let down for me, the more I think about it. It is a good game though, but doesnt impact me surprise as much as Chained Echoes

I support every word of this!

Fair enough, I was a bit more invested in the characters and story in Chained Echoes, as well. I will say I enjoyed Sea of Stars more and more the deeper I got

@@gamersthumb yes I think Chained Echoes has better story and characters development. Siena and Amelia also funny. Anyway CE reminds me of Xenogears instead of Chrono Trigger despite the intro looks like Chrono Trigger. I am hoping that Xenogears available on PC

@@ekowahyudi1642 ohhhh I have Xenogears on my backlog. They seem really long, though, and my backlog is intimidating

I really think the success of BG3 is going to make some publishers think twice, but let’s face it: the success of FF7 Remake and Rebirth is what Square Enix will pay more attention to.

I believe those are kickstarter supporters. He talks about the development process here: www.gamedeveloper.com/production/matthias-linda-s-seven-year-quest-to-make-retro-jrpg-chained-echoes#close-modal

@@gamersthumb The kickstarter supporters have separate credits from the game credits where a lot of people are credited. This is not Undertale. He had help from devs of deck 13. Look I'm not saying Linda is not a genius, without him the game wouldn't exist. And the script... wow what a story he created. BUT the game being so big, it shows this was not a solo dev project + 4 years. It would've taken him 8+ years if he was solo.

I take it you weren’t impressed?

That’s interesting, how do you define a jrpg?

@@gamersthumb First of all, the "J" in "jrpg" is from Japanese, the "jrpg" has been used until a year ago to classify Japanese role-playing games, which are usually more fantastic compared to Western ones, for example you could know that skyrim is a western rpg and that tales of arise is a jrpg just by looking at them. Western rpgs tend to be more explicit in their content, and jrpgs tend to be soft on that. If I see an rpg like fallout, the witcher, dragon age, diablo, and I compare it to shin megami tensei for example, if you have knowledge you will know how to differentiate which is a jrpg and which is not, not even by the name. in Japanese because we could use xenoblade and with a little comparison you would notice the difference. It is a problem that they start making rpgs in Canada and then they catalog that rpg as "jrpg" in the future we will see games like mass effect next to jrpg like suikoden, and then the term "jrpg" will lose all its meaning, I don't know where from This trend comes from now cataloging rpgs not from Japan as jrpg, the jrpg genre was made only for Japanese role-playing games, but current indie rpg creators want to hang themselves on that genre by force and if you say something they censor you, you can look for the latest best selling ps4 jrpgs, below persona 4 is sea of ​​stars which is not a jrpg. (Sorry for some obvious mistakes but my English is not very good.) (I also couldn't clarify my point well because I am more able to express it by speaking than by writing, I always fall short of words writing.)

@@bonedboss no need to apologize, I think you make your point very well. I guess in my mind the J in jrpg was more like “Japanese style” vs literally from Japan. Another descriptor I see used instead of jrpg is TBRPG for turn-based RPG. That gets rid of the geographical confusion.

@@gamersthumb I understand your point of view

@@bonedboss thanks for the discussion, I’m always learning! Either way, Chained Echoes is a great game whatever we call it 😂

That’s interesting, I liked the running speed because it felt less tedious to me, but I can see how it might be off-putting. Are you a fan of other JRPGs in general?