CHAINED ECHOES - 5 Things I WISH I Knew Before I Started! Hints and Tips for Beginners! 

This game is probably the biggest surprise hit for me this year. I didn't even hear about it until the day it released and I'm absolutely loving it.

The moment I checked out Sienna's skills I knew she would not be leaving the party. Strong in every situation.

The stat upgrades do not suck. Especially when you can only equip a limited amount of passive and active skills. The stats add up. You even said when talking about upgrading gear.. "this is a game where every little teeny tiny stat counts." Also, on Robb and Sienna. It's a good pair early on when you don't have a full party yet, but Robb falls off later on. His poison/toxin is still nice but Victor can paralyze and do it for more turns. Not to mention, later on there are certain skills on Sienna that you should be using all the time over the one that you use on a paralyzed enemy.

Shame that not enough big channels have spotted this game. Huge salute for the developer of this masterpiece.

Some tips are not the best actually. There's no point rushing for all the active skills first as you can only equip 6 and some of them are pretty useless. It's good to have some variation of skills on every character to keep the Overdrive under control, but you'll mostly be using mostly the same 3 skills from each character more often. Some passives are useful and also the stat boosts, which are much more worth it than more active skills that you don't need. It might not look like much early on but 30%+ ATK by mid game is like +20. That's much higher than upgrading weapons, which is actually not too useful until later in the game. The reason is, you'll spend time and resources upgrading weapons and 10 min later you'll find a new weapon that is as strong as your current upgraded one. Also combining crystals and equipping them early on is almost useless, more of a waste of time. And Robb + Sienna combo is only useful early on. Robb is one of the worst characters by mid game and not worth keeping because of 1 skill. Sienna also has better skills that you'll be using more often, which can activate Petal Strike that deals the same damage as the Robb combo.

Was surprised by the game's overall quality and is prob my fave game of the year. Feels like I'm playing a jrpg in the golden era and it feels nostalgic. The pacing on the game releases it's features makes the game not a single moment boring. Only thing I can nitpick about the game is that weapon upgrading and crystal smithing feels a drag sometimes when the game just decides to give you a better weapon outta nowhere.

This game was so well written and just that already a big plus. Highly recommend if you are a JRPG story geek.

I'm almost done with my playthrough so I'm gonna come back when I'm done to see how my list compares, but I'm absolutely loving this game and really appreciate you making me aware of it.

Great video with some awesome tips, I've really been enjoying this game. One thing I'll suggest using your pool of SP to master the class abilities asap; once they are mastered the skills stay with the character. You can then equip the class item on another character to master giving the entire team access to many useful abilities.

I'm going to start it today and this video is awesome, congrats. Direct to the point and no bs. Thanks!

Coming back to this now that I've beaten the game and I agree with everything on this list. Some additional tips I would give to a new player would be to really take advantage of the elemental debuffs (dry, wet, oil, heavy), because it's an easy way to increase damage against enemies and bosses without elemental weaknesses and absolutely destroy ones who do. Also don't forget about the bestiary, because if you are hunting for specific loot for deals or trying to figure out which enemies can be canned the bestiary will tell you which monsters you need to be looking for.

Just a quick note: the Bonus Board is NOT the only way to get Sacred Water. You find quite a few in chests.

Great vid, thanks for this. Looking forward to playing this one in the near future, looks amazing!

I recently bought this for the Switch but I haven't started it yet, I'm glad to have these tips and tricks for when I do! Thank you David

Great video! Small addition. The bonus board actually isn't the only way to get sacred water. They're in chests too. I know there's one in Tormund for example.

One early game tip i'd throw in is to not buy the latest weapons/armor in the early game, since you usually end up finding them soon enough. I ran into situations where I bought a weapon and then found it in a chest soon after

Lol yuuuup, Rob + Sienna is too good. Paralyze Shot plus Iaijitsu for life. Great list of tips 👍 It was mentioned Sacred Water can only be obtained through the bonus board. While it’s the best way to get them, they are also found throughout the world as well (Chests and rewards).

Good video, as always, but a few things: A) you don't need to get every passive before investing in perm stat increases. It takes a while to get SP in this game and you'll be waiting a while to get those stat boosts if you want to do all passives first, plus some (as you stated) aren't worth it. B) the board isn't *the only* way to get water. There are a few in chests/locations throughout the game. C) Rob _ Sienna is a powerful combo, but Glenn's oil + armor break with Lenne's fire attack does more damage. (in my experience) Again great video and love your content!

Thanks for the tips, David! Very helpful!

I discovered the bonus board when my controller fell on the floor.

This is great info. Thank you, David! 🙂

Thanks @Davidvinc SO MUCH! I really Appreciate the Pointers, just Starting it Now, I screen capped All 5😅But HUGE Thanks, this is MUCH Appreciated Brother

This video is so helpful David thank you, wrote all your points down (and stole some from the comments) and its just me, lots of coffee and this absolute gem festive gaming ! Best rpg of the year for me alongside elden ring, and with sea of stars and the remasters of suikoden and ff1-6 we're eating well as old school rpg gamers. 😎 I already feel this will be a classic.

Such an amazing game! Don't forget, one of the main reasons to unlock more active skills first is to more efficiently manipulate your overcharge bar. Cheers!

This was awesome, TY! One character combo I like is the dude that hits them and places "oil" on them(even ghosts!), And then you use the girls fire spear. Wow that did great damage.

not an early game tip but still, make sure you find as many members for the crimson wing as possible as they offer some great benefits such as getting more from crystals and seeing how many chests are left in an area. Also when you get sky armour, make sure that you swap weapons when you reach level 8 proficiency with a weapon. This is the main way you upgrade the sky armour stats as the stats you get from level into weapon proficiency are permanently added.

This is something you learn really quick......I just finished beating it the story was so epic so many twist and turn to think something and then boom is not what you thou. The ending was so crazy I was shock that after that crazy story they was able to throw a twist again in the end lol

I was looking for a good turn based rpg to play and u definitely sold me on this now I'm looking forward to Christmas

The first 20 minutes of this game along with the music, I was hooked. Been playing it all day instead of editing videos. Definitely a sleeper game 💯🍻

Not all skills are worth it, sometimes it's better to go for core stats instead of skills. You also do not need most passives, so read up on future passives, decide which you want, and ignore the rest. You also definitely want silver lining as an option. There isn't any particular reason not to upgrade and try all your characters. Some late game characters are actually really good. So, some spoilers about characters you can get ahead. Minah is absolutely amazing as a buffer. Her ability to stack three different buffs and extend them with one skill is very useful. Have a Victor in reserve for his late game buff for some potent buffing. Ba Thraz (weapon summoner) is capable of dealing sky armor levels of AOE damage. Stack up his weapons, use heaven or hell, and use a 4-5 stack summoned weapon. Cast revival on him so he doesn't lose any buffs he has. Raphael is actually worth using. He has a drain HP passive, can be quite tanky, and does pretty good damage with his muti-hit skill. He also has an AOE break that isn't tied to a special.

I’ve been leveling up passives and actives from classes. You can keep them permanently if you max them out and only equip them in class slots.

Dunno if people know about this, but the Right stick, lets you pan the camera away from the party. i just figure this out 10 hours into the game!

Earlier on kylian has the best debuffing skill that reduces both defense and mind on all enemies, i put swift boots accessory on him to make sure he goes first. Coupled with victor’s offense boost you will see amazing dmg numbers! Also I suggest you save up SP for skills that you gain from EMBLEMS as maxing these allow you to use those skills even without equiping the emblem so earlier on you should pass those emblems between chars so they all get to learn ESPECIALLY Heal all, which was the first skill i made sure all my party members learned asap.

This game have a lot of optional content (side quest, hidden cave, boss, secret, etc). It's so good. 😁

Thank u man. This helped

Here some tips from my side! 1. Farm crystals!!! If you have good crystals and many for different bosses, bioms of the world your life is much easier! Just don't use the very good ones yet. Save them for late or end game. Have a boss who hits with earth? Earth defense crystals you go into armor! 2. Go back after finishing a biom after you enter the next. Don't oversearch but do some things. Some things will only be able to do later in the game or even after you finsihed it. 3. Think how to fight the enemy before engaging them! Maybe even go into fight and flee to just look at their weakness etc. 4. When you have your sky armor, go farm their levels! It helps insanely with what is coming your way after that!

I just did a 100% completion of the game….and a few tips I would give: focus on crit on your attackers (and agility with sienna, whom is one of the best attackers anyway) Even mages can gain the ability to magic crit with a certain accessory. You can do some very high numbers stacking attack/crit buffs via the crystal system (and skills) …..Lenne’s ability to apply elements to the party can be abused for some very high damage as well. I would also say to be very strategic about how you use ba’thraz. He’s a Jack of all trades, and he’s one of the best TP healers. There were a few times where I could’ve avoided wasting my ultra move with victor, by just using ba’thraz more strategically.

I did 0 grinding on the game and played with heightened enemy stats and tighter overdrive. My recommendation is utilize your supports as effectively as possible. Enemies with how I played will bring you down super fast so getting your healers weapons strong is super important (healing scales off magic damage) also Lenne third eye combining with oil slash from glen to the fire strike will deal upwards of 1500 damage a hit in the early game so if you can survive long enough to pull the combo off do it.

Very helpful hints. I would add: 1. Use Ultra Moves: - boss battles start with gage filled. Use it early so if the battle drags you could use it the second time - The best Ultra to start with is Glenn's - hits all and debuffs all their Atk/Mag/Def/Mnd - if things are going really bad, use items to fill Ultra gage. 2. Exploit elemental weaknesses: - most enemy have weakness to an element. Utilize it. - you can inflict temporary weakness fore few turns by skills and items like Oil, Dry,... - inflict temp weakness even if the enemy has natural one! This will multiply the damage. Example weak to fire, add oil and hit with Fire based skill

I have 2 questions, So I have a good amount of accessories and some of them don’t give me any type of stat boosts. Like the Comfy Scarf for example, so what gives? And when looking at the bottom right of the accessory description and attributes there’s a little purple square, what in the heck does that mean? 🤔

These hint videos are like when you got an issue of Nintendo Power in the mail and it had a section on a new game you've been eyeballing. These are always appreciated!

Tx David this game is absolutely amazing

I am 24 hrs in and enjoying it every minute

So here are my recommendations for the playthru. Learn Debuffs first among skills. Then Buffs. Get the bandit class medal as soon as possible and teach AGI up to your main party. AGI Breaks boss battles!!! Max it. The Monk medals drunken master skill is also a Really good tool as it buffs party agility. I usually teach it to sienna since she acts early in rotations. Use crystals. They aren't needed most of the game but they are really useful for AGI and damage buffs. The Best crystals to take are always stat boosters. Next are the utility stuff like armor buffs or specific weapon damage upers. Then the esoteric stuff like counter attacks. The killers skills and elemental resists are USELESS, Dont waste the sp on them till everything esle is filled and never slot them. Try to grab crystals with 4 or 5 purity over others. Then choose ones with a higher numeral (I II III) finally take ones with lowest slot costs. On average your always going to end up with 2 slots taken per crystal. Viktors buffs are incredible, Lenne's coats are a path to insane damage, Sienna can stack AGI so high she can literally act 3 times per boss action. Glenn's debuffs, R2 ability and Gauge control are SUPER useful. And Mikah Has the BEST agillity boost skill in game. Get it FIRST among her skills, she is also a great damage dealer. You can build a whole party around ANY two of these for absurd damage per turn. I havent really found a use for the tanks yet. Rapheal is a useful fill in agains the Randomage but thats about it...

Just started and loving the game , should i get then for Lenne wind thrust skill first? So she gain sp? Or should I go for a passive one like TP up?

Love the game, thanks for this intro!

the best combo is mikah using double step, and then victor use heroic ode, and then glenn cross slash, and then lenne using heavenly blow. u will move 2 or 3 times on one enemy turn

this is way better than any triple A game I’ve played this year

Awsome game , awsome tips , awsome David 💕

Thanks. What I like about the game is the humor. I grinded out getting 250 'chips' at the fair, thinking I could win all those cool items. Of course, I save-scummed the turtle race to do this. Then the red haired girl stole all my chips. They KNEW the player would be save-scumming, so of course you don't get anything. Very meta prank pulled on the player, and hilarious.

bonus board is the best for SP? wut you can farm pigears near basil and get 5-25 SP per fight (which takes 2 turns), while the board gives you just 5 SP per and takes way more time (also limited, cuz you can only do it once).

Regarding 2: how could you forget the bonus board? It's literally the thing that sold me on this game. It sounded interesting up until that point, but then I heard about the bonus board and went to the steam store immediately and purchased it instantly. Achievements are my thing. Achievements with in game rewards? Best thing ever

I'm definitely getting this

Will have to pick this up at some point

I just bought it yesterday, i can’t way to play it tomorrow

One of the suprised rpg for sure. I finished the playthrough and still thinking about it

David I honestly would have let this pass me by if it wasn't for you. It reminds me of my first playthrough of the greats when I was a kid like Suikoden 1, Xenogears, Lunar SSS, Grandia... nothing like this has released in 20 years imo.

Just picked this up after the hole that crisis core left in my heart

Dude this fucken game is S tier to the max. We need the word to get out on this game. I'm legit blown away by how good this game is.

You talked about Rob and sienna but personally sienna max agility let's you do five dragon fangs which is more damage the only problem is sienna goes so often that it runs your overdrive bar

Some "corrections" and some other tips. great video as always. Sacred Water - The board is not the ONLY way to Sacred Water. It contains a lot of but it does not contain all the sacred water obtainable. It only has 5 of the total 12. Class Medals and skills - If you focus on maxing out the skill/passives accessed from the class medals, that character will ALWAYS have those skills available even when you remove the class medal. So if a class medal has an important skill/passive you want more people to have be sure to max it out and pass on the medal. Such as using the cleric skill "Heal All" and having everyone learn it for emergencies. Crystals and crafting: The Crystals which you gaher through out the game are bar none one of the MOST IMPORTANT aspect to min maxing and build making. Do not take them for granted. Do's and don'ts Do combine every 1 size crystal with other 1 size crystals. As a higher tier 1 size crystal is perfection. As you can slot 4 1 size crystals into a peice of gear where you get really limited with a 3 size Do not use the auto-combine feature before looking at what you have. You may have a something perfect and it can ruin it. (If you are still early game and limited, at least try and aim for 2 size, combinding a 3 size and and a 1 size will produce a 2 size.) Character Builds, stats, weapon crystals (sienna): Every character has their own set of skills and abilities which learn toward that characters play style. Be it a buffer, debuffer, full offense, healer, tank etc. But every character also has many other options which you can focus into and create REALLY interesting builds. Sienna in particular has at least 3 builds i used. 1: Speed-Crits: By focusing her passives, Class medal, and skill crystals in to AGI, Crit, and Crit Damage can do INSANE amounts of damage. AGI which increases the amount of times you get to act, and her ability which increases her own agi by a whopping 75% she could end up moving 2-5 times more than anyone else on the board, including bosses. And because the game is so diverse with what it can do, you can effectively get 100% crit rate, but 85% just fine for me, and crit damage of 100-150%, She is the hardest hitting person in the game. Her Multi hit move is a personal favorite of mine for this build as the amount of hits scales with AGI. sometimes hitting for 10 hits 2: Filthy Touch (named after the RAM): Basically anyone can do this, but I have the best time with Sienna. The core of the this build is again, the multi-strike move of hers and high AGI. Basically give her every passive Debuff, poison, paralyze, silence, toxic whatever you can put on her weapons, passives or armor, and just swing away, the amount of hits she can get just means that she can apply all the debuffs she wants, capable of effective shutting down any enemy. 3: Dodge-Tank: Oh ya. She can tank. Ironically, you'll notice with any other build, she kind of stacks up a LOT of hate. So why not just double down. Again, High AGI and using her selection of skill such as lightning rod, her hate generater and the key to it all, he dodge ability which gives her effective full physical immunity while it lasts. She will have more turns than most, allowing her to set up, attack and even play defensive before the enemies really get a chance to cut her off. I spent so many hours into this game...its just so good

Personally I am at the point where I am debating even having Rob in my active party. Early on poison was super helpful, but now it's not worth it imo. I could never justify the skill slot for ninjitsu either. Just unlocked the tank and I'm not sure they will be in the party. Also, I feel like the only reason overdrive gauge really matters is TP cost. Edit: also some of the active skills are pretty meh imo. So I tended to unlock the useful skills then look for useful passives or the best stat boosts.

Does this game have a high replay value? I'm thinking about buying it and wonder if it's a game that I would like to play more than once.

my best Sienna build is still the Dragonfang + Quickstep + Drunken Master + weap with +atk,+agi,+crit.dmg + Armor with +atk +agi +crit Life Thread +crit and Gambler +crit. with passiv you can either use more dmg or more crit. the result? my Sienna with Victor's Heroic Hym and Glenn Armor Break can get 9-12K per Dragonfang and with 100+Agi she can spam it again for at least 3 to 4 time before her TP depleted and use Glenn's Lend Energy for another round.

Chained echoes is Final Fantasy 12 in pixel mode. Great game, by the way! :)

To sum it up, poetic March + armor break + crit up + paralyze + go all out

When should I actually be spending my SP? Do I wait until a skill is almost full and cheap to level up? Or do I grab important stuff right away? Or only when I plan to swap something out to learn it permanently? I have no idea.

So far, is the best game that i was not expecting in years

Minute 1:30 stat increases suck. Don’t invest. Minute 5:11 the +2 ATK may not see like much but every tiny stat counts. Upgrade your gear as soon as posible. Me: been hit by confussion. Weakness procs.

I found a sacred water in a cabinet and a chest before, I’m not sure why you said it’s the only way to get sacred water

2:49 they’re a good combo but Lenne’s Third Eye then Fire Thrust combined with Glenn’s Oil Slash deals with most bosses and high HP enemies in a few blows. Just make sure Victor or Amalia have good healing boosts

Thank you for showing me this RPG. I'll be sure to put this on my wish list

What are those class badges, such as cleric, used for?

If you want to SP grind to level up your stats quickly fast travel to Fiorwoods bottom left most crystal and fight the 5 pigs just above the crystal and just keep spamming it you because you can earn 5sp and up to 15sp if they are shiny

You don't need Rob and Sienna for synergy - Rob is pretty useless. Slap paralyze on any other party member if you want the 3x damage but its not even needed if you focus on crit buffs for Sienna. The game is half masterpiece half aggravation for me. The crystal system could be dumbed down a bit - it's overtly long just to get the right combination to get crazy +X leveling for them. One way to cut it back would be to just have all crystals same purity, we didn't need impure crystals and the remaining system could stay cutting game time in half. I don't like how they don't show the max crystals you can hold or even when you reach it and I don't like that they force you to grind them because they drop a lot of useless ones you will never use. Furthermore why can't we sell abilities? I find it unbelievable that you can sell everything else in this world but abilities; because knowledge isn't for sale even though it's ice picked on a crystal!? Like how the hell does that work? And we already know that there are villains who use these same abilities so why didn't they let us sell them? It's a needless grind for most of it, and it can be pretty aggravating as a result. That said, manipulate the crystal system in it's full glory you can even reach lvl XX crystals so long as you figured out how to play the system by adding pieces to armor then stripping it right away, combined with another same crystal will get you high powered ones in no time. Just note it can take a long time and a lot of luck to get the right crystal drop with the right amount of refinements to get that high in level. Save back an ability with 1 slot to combine with a high level crystal to turn that X+ beauty into a 2 slot instead of 3; then repeat when you get your next higher end gear.

Heya David! Wow, this looks like a game I would enjoy immensely. Definitely wish-listed this one. Thanks for the tips! (Does anyone know the approximate length of the game?)

“Our little archer with anger management problems” 😂😂

I almost bought Atelier: Sophie for 90 bucks but I wasn't sure I would like it. I saw this for 35 bucks Canadian and I'm glad I did.

Gonna wait for the physical.

5 hours in and i had no idea about the points at the end

the first one is insanity... only a few of the active skills are usefull, even less of the passives are (the best ones being atk up and mag up), I always get the best active ones then the status up, and only then i get some passives that are worth it the bonus board is not the only way of getting sacred water and of course it is not the best way to grind, lol... the 5 pigs next to the warrior statute give 5 to 20 sp each fight... are you shitting us right now?

This game looks fabulous.

bonus board is not the only way to find sacred water

I damn wish i knew about how i level up skills...i can't remember how far i got without doing that, but i think i barely passed Dream Eater with level 1 skills...or even further, don't know 😅 it was a struggle anyway

its weird you say ignore stat bonuses, but then every little stat counts for weapons.

I want this as retail so bad.

The passive skills only work when you have them equipped.

how can you use 4 party members at the same time?

1:30 sorry but I don’t understand the difference between „Character: PASSIVE Skills“ and „Class: PASSIVE Skills“ here…. What do I put where and why? Why do I have to put Skills into the „class“-window?

I found you do not need all skills only the skills that go with how you ae setting that character up as and I leaned more on the stats as you can only have so many skills set for use and I ended up finding and keeping the skills that worked best per charaacter for what I wanted them to do and be glenn has some of the best skills in the game as well as passives but to be honest 90% of the time he was used just to debuff and later he gets a better debuff that debuffs everything for 4 turns att mag def and mind all down and if it is a big group his ult is Amazing as it does that to all and damage he also ends up doing tons of damage like his cross hit 3 hits doing like 700 a hit after you debuff and then buff as well as recovering HP per hit he was recovering 120hp or so a hit so powerful. The rewards board is a good one and yes you get 5 out of the 12 sacred water. I didnt do the combo with Senia and rob I was more commented to setting up vettor and glenns and that made boss fights and any fight so easy.

I really expected this to be another "meh" indie jrpg..but from the start to the end of the first chapter I've just been constantly surprised. So many well thought out details

I'm about 5hrs in and it feels like my characters are so weak. I've upgraded my weapons and used gems. I've also upgrade skills too. It just feels like I need to level grind but the SP that given is always so small.

This came out a day after I finished Astlibra, which was also a game that is notoriously understocked in any kind of guides or help. I'd highly recommend Astlibra if you're looking for sleeper hits.

This game is a masterpiece!

You way undervalue those stat increases lol

The thing I wish I knew was which character not to invest all my time into leveling his gear early on

T-this is the Sienna appreciation board right? Might have gotten turned around somewhere.

this game is delicious, just finished my 50 hours playthrough. The MANY details that make us remember old classics, sort of like a homage, to ff6, chrono trigger and many others made me smile so many times.

Love how the game trolls you with so many 4th walls on other games from the glory days, for instance - the Chrono Trigger opening scene.

I'm playing it in Oct-2023. I dont know if they patched it, but the first advice - about the passive skills and stats - doens not make a lot of sense. Anyways, thank you for the other tips 👍