Chained Echoes has been out for over two months, and Sea of Stars just got a demo. I now have some time in both titles, so let's discuss Chained Echoes' greatness and Sea of Stars' high potential.
This just became my most viewed video. I never would have expected that. Thanks for all the engagement! For those of you asking why would I compare these two projects, let's make another goofy comparison. The total run time of Game of Thrones is around 70 hours. That's nearly a decade of content premiered across eight seasons. Many JRPGs take about that long to complete. In other words, an eight-year TV series is the same time commitment as a single video game in this genre. JRPGs are HUGE time investments. I'm barely able to play a fraction of the games I'm interested in. Comparing options can be useful because it's a way to carefully consider how to spend our limited time as consumers. Game reviews, impressions, top 10 lists, and comparisons can all seem superficial on the surface, but these tools are sometimes essential for making informed decisions within a very expensive and time-consuming hobby. Unfortunately, we can't choose what to play without also choosing what not to play in that moment. Baring any Sports Story scenarios, I fully intend to play Sea of Stars upon its release, but I know that not everyone will be able to commit to both games. So hopefully this video can offer some guidance for those curious in one or both titles.
First video I've seen if yours... you popped up randomly in my feed. Love the video, thought it was very well put together and it's the first I've seen about sea of stars. Just started playing chain of echos and love it, definetly brings me back to a great Era. I'm too old for the cods and things now so I'm getting back into old school jrpgs. I'm now subbed to your channel and will be going through to see what else you cover. Not sure what you meant by sports stuff, but I'm highly anticipating EA PGA tour. I miss old tiger woods games.
This video was great to listen to & I can tell you are an old soul for the love you have of RPG's. I'm so right there with you "Pestulon" If you keep these coming I would & will be here for your content which is informative, thought provoking & insightful. You have a New Fan as of today!! **Subbed/Liked/Shared**
I am all in (over 50 hours) Chained Echoes and I can't wait for the Sea of Stars to come out. I don't even care what game will be better. I just want more quality games like these.
Oh. And keep in mind that Sea of Stars is apparently a prequel to The Messenger. I find it a bold change how The Messenger starts out as an action-adventure then shifts back to an RPG.
Chained echoes was a vision from 1 person. Which in this case is very beneficial as the creator didn't have to please a board of directors or ask approval from any person but himself. It was created with less fear of failure. That what makes it so great. No grinding. Excellent story that will drive players to finish it to uncover mysteries. Unpredictable twists. Oh its so good
I understand this video is for discussion sake, but I certainly hope people won't actually feel the need to be like "sea of stars vs chained echos, which one is better than the other?" Both are great and we should be extremely grateful for having such fantastic pieces of works to indulge in rather than pit them against them each other
@TheRoleplayer40k i plan to play and enjoy both. Well ive already played one of course... but i dont mind weighing them against one another...later. Doing it pre-release not so much. Too much speculation. But its fun. And it gets people talking about both which is good.
I finished Chained Echoes yesterday (main story) and I think it's the game that I liked the most in the past 2 or 3 years, AAA included. It brought me back 25 years or so and it did it in an almost perfect fashion. I backed it on Kickstarter, as I did for Sea of Stars, so I'm eager to put my hands on it, since finishing Chained Echoes left me with a hole in my heart :D Oh and I backed Eiyuden Chronicles too, I can't explain how much I'm waiting for that game.
I've got my eye on Eiyuden as well. However, I also need to actually play a Suikoden game first, and hopefully I will when the remakes come out. Octopath II is also out there. (I'll never get caught up. 😭)
I’m loving chained echoes a ton right now. Played them demo for sea of stars and I can’t explain how excited i am for that one. Both are 10000% worth the money so I highly recommend buying both!
Finished 100% the other day, and while I do have a couple of issues with the script and felt the crystal fusion mechanic was undercooked, this was a hell of an experience and I loved every minute. The reward board and battle system are ideas that I really hope someone expands on, because I found them to be the real hooks for keeping me in the moment to moment gameplay. The fact that the complex, interesting story was let down by sometime iffy dialogue an an out-of-left-field character beat honestly just gives it a *more* authentic 16/32-bit JRPG vibe.
This is how I feel. Loved the game and combat, characters, world and music but the script and story had its highs and lows. I also wasn’t a fan of how anti Christian it became by making the church an extremely warped version of Christianity led by pedophiles and satan death cults) I’m just glad that raphael actually was a true follower and showed that not all the church were rapist and death cultists.)
Play Xenogears. The creator chained echoes credits that game as the main inspiration, more than any other game. It is also my favorite game of all time. The story will not disappoint
You legit earned my sub. It’s very rare to come across people who are genuinely happy JRPG type games. It’s been my passion since I was 5 years old back on 1993. Absolutely love to see people with the same passion. God bless you dude.
Finished my run of the Sea of Stars demo and really looking forward to playing Chained Echoes!! What's so cool to me about modern 'retro' RPGs is the quasi-3D stuff they can do within the sprite art style that just wasn't possible on the SNES, especially for the bosses and environments
man, between the voice, the style, and the clear understanding and appreciation/enjoyment of the games, you've just become my favorite game discussion guy
Chained Echoes is incredible, I keep trying to share it and tell as many people as possible. I backed it but I still didn't play it until January and I only just completed the main story this week. Like many others I wanted to play other stuff first and I had to go to Crisis Core first!! even thought I finished that game years ago lol but I was waiting so long for this on the big screen! Chained did not help itself releasing when it did but I hope people eventually play more of it. It's such a homage to Xenogears! then other games too. So many similarities to so many of my favourite games. Majorly Xenogears but also FF9, FF12, FF14 etcccc. It pulls from so much and I love it. There were some beautiful backstories to some of the characters too. Felt weird to see my name in the credits too lol
Don't know about sea of stars, but regarding Chained Echoes I would say this: in terms of story and characters, it is there in the league not just of classic games like Final Fantasy 7, or Chronotriger, but of fantasy gray series like Tolkien's Lord of the rings, and A Song of Ice and Fire. The lore is simply mind blowing , not just cause of the various races, factions, divinities, bestiary, and all that which makes a jpeg great, but moreover: it's compelling characters, side arcs, storytelling which puts this game in a league of its own. It is no exaggerating to say that this game resembles a lot ASOIAF, we have betrayal, complex characters, really disturbing moments, that goes way above other games. Unfortunately, this game is created in a time in which online shooters and other crap takes the biggest share on gaming market, while at the same time nostalgia won't let older players to recon that Chained Echoes is perhaps the best JRPG every made
Good video man, love your thought process and it parallels my own for the most part it seems. I expect your channel to get quite a bit of growth in time!
After playing the Trails in the Sky Trilogy, I've been looking into these two games. I realized I need to bounce between action and turn based rpgs to keep things fresh(Currently on Ys 8). thanks for this video! can't wait to play both of these games!
I'm really interested in checking Trails in the Sky, but it's a bit daunting getting into such a long series. Ys VIII is up super high on my backlog (because I'm obsessed with Ys I and Origin).
@Pestulon that's a very fair point. They are long, but the dialogue is so well done that it never felt long. Plus, grinding is almost non-existent. BTW, I'm really enjoying Chained Echoes. It's so much fun. There's all sorts of cool systems from rewards to crafting. And the battle system is great.
I bought it because of the mechas and the intro with the nudge to Chrono trigger just mesmerized, I still have not finished it jet but the combat it's challenging and engaging.
Can you share your story notes for Chained Echos please? I've gotten pretty far in the game then it got really difficult so I took a break for a while after 70 hours (near the end of the game from what I can tell). Would be great to have a story refresher to get back into it!
I'm very interested in Sea of Stars because it's supposed to be set in the same universe of The Messenger, I want to see what they did there. Chained Echoes is on my list. feels weird playing it on game pass so I'll get it on the switch soon
I like the character portraits in Chained Echoes. I like Lenne and Viktor’s especially. My main gripe with Chained Echoes so far is that the menus for upgrades don’t show stats while you’re going through them. For example, character stats while leveling up skills or weapon and armor tiers while using the anvil. It would also be nice to have some indicator of status in the character sprite during battle. I’ve lost too many turns due to the flinch or whatever it was called where you have to swap characters or lose your turn. There was also no tutorial that you can press I (i) to check the status of your party.
I like the character portraits, too. I do think they're less flashy/marketable than portraits in many other games, but I also think they're solid. They also grew on me more and more the deeper I got into the game.
The anvil shows all stats and how they change when you do the upgrade. I agree there is a lack in explaining the skills. If he would have added a part in the log for explaining all skills that you unlock that would have been great.
Wasn’t there a third one in a rotation? There are so many games these days, these two and maybe another one looked really cool. It had a similar art style to these two but can’t remember if it even was a thing. Can’t wait to play these when I get the physicals though!
I don't even want to do a this vs that for these two. I'm just about done with Chained Echoes and its imo a hidden masterpiece not just a hidden gem. I hope the same for Secret of Stars which already just in the demo alone feels like its going to be.
Hey my dude! Just found your channel and wanna say it’s really looking good! I was shocked when I figured you’d already have 120K subs! Anyway keep up the great work!
I just beat Chained Echoes, and I enjoyed it. It's not perfect, but it's a very impressive game for a solo dev. I've been waiting for Sea of Stars since 2020 and I think it has potential to be one of my favorite games of all time. And Sea of Stars has a team of 20-30 people, I think, working on it, and it shows- The details, the art style, the animations, the polish are just something I don't think one person could achieve on his own. Very excited to see the full game. It's one of the most beautiful-looking games I've ever seen. The fact that people are comparing Chained Echoes, a solo dev project, to Sea of Stars, speaks very well of what Matthias Linda was able to achieve in Chained Echoes
Thanks for the thoughts. I agree with most everything you've said here. For me, Chained Echoes is among my favorite RPGs of all time. My other favorites were made by teams of tens or hundreds. So the idea of Chained Echoes being made by only a couple people is almost incomprehensible to me. I love the Sea of Stars demo, and I love the polish you mention. Here's hoping Sea of Stars can match or best the combat, story, and music of Chained Echoes. (But if it falls shorts, at least we've got Chained Echoes.)
It's interesting because I don't have a massive amount of time as I pursue my goals and invest in myself and my relationships. So I found my myself literally wondering to play chained echoes or wait for sea of stars as I dig into some back logged games as well upcoming games like Street Fighter 6 or FF16. I got some confidence in my answer watching this video and listening to the types of games you've played. I really don't like to play anything besides the best as well, so thanks for that
I will absolutely play this game. Finished back to back Chrono Trigger, and Radiant Historia Perfect Chronolgy to essentially just get into the 16 bit mood, and really make an educated opinion on Sea of Stars with all these greats still fresh in my mind. It really has been an amazing year for jrpgs.
just finished chaned echoes recently, and it was amazing. it definitely worth your time. you know as we grow up, the priority to play a game is pushed lower than ever as other things in real life comes above. for most of the time, don't have time to play even when have a break to play, not in the mood to play but chained echoes, is one game i actually find time to finish and almost complete all achievements 35/37 i think I really thank the dev for this amazing game and I hope the profit returns him a good payment so that he could deliver more games like this in future. and hope more people could recognize this game to try it out.
Finding the time and motivation to commit to a long game isn't easy. It's probably my biggest challenge with the hobby. And I agree that-in spite of that-Chained Echoes was very effective in grabbing my attention and holding it. I also hope the game is a success and the dev is motivated to keep going. A sequel would be great, but it would take a LONG time. For the foreseeable future, I'd be perfectly happy with some simple, short DLC packs here and there. A few more dungeons and short story beats would be a perfect excuse to revisit CE.
I have loved many jrpgs in my time, but I haven't really played any turnbased "jrpgs" since octopath(which I loved) first came out. Most just haven't caught my eye. I recently started playing Chained Echoes and then saw Sea of Stars so I played its demo. I love them both so much and I'm so happy to have games in the genre that appeal to me again. with Suikoden remaster coming in October, and Eiyuden Chronicle coming next year it's a great time to be a fan of some old school jrpg goodness. I hope I get through Chained Echoes before Sea of Stars comes out. I love them both so far with what I've seen/played so far. I think Sea of Stars may edge out Chained Echoes in my opinion, but they are both absolutely fantastic and I hope they both get sequels.
I've been waiting ages for Sea of Stars, and didn't know of the existance of Chained Echoes...By the minute 2 of the vid I went to Steam and bought it :D THANKS DUDE
Great video! Subscribed! Btw I'm going to try this based on you're recommendation. I'm a huge fan of Suikoden, Earthbound, Phantasy Star IV, Dragon Quest etc.
I keep hearing about how next-level OT2 is, but I can't quite make time at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to get around to it later in the year. If it tops Chained Echoes, then that'd be a pretty astonishing achievement, especially considering the close release dates.
@@PestulonGaming I just started streaming Chained Echoes yesterday, and while it seems to have a lot going for it, it hasn't given me the same wow factor OT2 did early on. But, to be fair to CE, I'm trying to hold off on more comparisons while I'm playing it until I finish it.
I throughly enjoyed both, but the power progression in Chain Echos is far more satisfying, e.g., Grimoir shards, SP grinding, crystals, item upgrades, class emblems, etc.
Finished Chained Echoes a few months ago, one of the best RPGs of the past years. I'm looking forward to Sea of Stars to get my next JRPG nostalgia trip!
I'm in Chapter 4 of chained echoes right now and it's a GOAT status game. Though I will agree that the in game character portraits should have been swapped for the marketing art. I'm sure that mod will come.
Just found your channel "Sir Pestulon" This was a great share of your opinions and love for JRPG's. I myself love them and also (A-RPG's) have been playing them since I was a youngin I think 9 or 10. Way back on the ATARI 2600 my first ever was (SWORD QUEST) a very bad game compared to the standards of now lol but man i played the sh!t out of it. Anyway I'm a huge J/A-RPG fan and running through "Chained Echoes" right now and you are spot on a bout it! It's a very well made gem of a game and it really does remind me of the best of the best from our blasts from the past such as (Xenogears - Chrono Trigger - Final Fantasy 6 - Lunar - Lufia - Breath of Fire) which are some of my **Top 10** This game has that magical spark and I truly believe that **Matthias Linda** is a remarkable person who loves the true greats of old!. You have my attention and appreciation from today! **Subbed/Liked/Shared**
Sea of Stars gives me huge Breath of Fire 3 vibes. Especially with the fishing. Thats a great thing imo because BoF3 is one of my all time favorite games.
Long, strong, and to the left....... Chained Echoes was sooo good!! It'll be tough for Sea of Stars to live up to that standard....i hope it does.... it already has a little edge in the visual department
Just got 100% on chained echos, looking forward to sea of stars, should be about done with octopath 2 by then, can't game as much as I used to these days.
I'm currently playing through Chained Echoes and I'm loving it so far. I'm only 10 hours in but from what I've seen so far it feels like a 16 bit JRPG.
My top 10 favorite indie RPGs of this generation: 1. Sea of Stars 2. Chained Echoes 3. Cross Code 4. Eastward 5. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling 6. Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition 7. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech 8. Alterium Shift 9. World of Anterra 10. Finding Paradise
Paused my Octopath Traveler playthrough a while back and resumed it recently, I finished the game actually, to prepare for Octopath Traveler 2. In terms of looks I think Octopath Traveler 2 is better than 1 and also better than Chained Echoes. But I was mesmerized by Sea of Stars, ain't gonna lie. Did not play the demo yet but it reminds me of Chrono Trigger and that game is legendary. Chrono Trigger is one of the best things that happened to me and will forever have a special place in my heart.
Octopath II really came out of nowhere, and now I feel tempted to give it priority, even though there are 2022 games that are burning holes in my backlog. Also, yes, Chrono Trigger is just that good. It gets name dropped constantly, and I fully understand why. As a kid, I loved RPGs but never had the patience to finish them. Chrono Trigger was one of only a few I actually played all the way through.
Chained Echoes was damn near immaculate. I have high hopes for Sea of Stars but I have very little faith any JRPG will surpass it in the near future. I sincerely hope it does but Chained Echoes being the best JRPG I've played since PS2 leaves me little hope that any JRPG will be better in the foreseeable future. It might be an unpopular opinion but having just finished Octopath 2 it has no place even being in the same converation as Chained Echoes.
I'm in agreement that CE is simply going to be hard for ANY RPG to beat, Sea of Stars or otherwise. Glad to hear your perspective on Octopath II. I've been very tempted to give it priority, but I just can't with my current backlog.
More than 6 months apart is not around the same time you also got eiyreden chronicls that would be closer to the realease date of sea of stars. I beat the full game of Chained of ecchos and curetnly working onw ildarms 2 and Octopath 2. No competition between them at all as you got more than enopgh timeto complete chained before the release of both the other two and yes it is amazing game. I loved the ending of chained ecchos. Tsuikoden 1 and 2 HD2d coming as well.
When i think of what Sea of Stars and what it needs to live up to its not Chained Echoes i think of. Its The Messenger. The Messenger sits nearly atop the retro indy space alongside titans like Shovel Knight, Celeste, Hollowknight etc as a bastion of supreme quality. When i see Sea of Stars my thoughts are can the team make a game that can rival those charactes. That story. Those jokes. Can it nail the genre its aiming at as well as the previous genre they explored? If they can it wont simply be better than a chained echoes it will be better than the classics that inspired it. Chained Echoes is an outstanding game. I think Sea of Stars could be genre-defining.
Strong words on The Messenger! I've been wanting to check it out for years. I've only dabbled. Ideally, I can make time for it before Sea of Stars. I also hope you're right about Sea of Stars. I wish the demo were a little meatier, especially story-wise.
There's really nothing similar at all except for the world they're in. It's like saying car racing and baking are the same because they're both on Earth
As a big Chrono Trigger fan, although i will never play those two games(being a 40+ old man don't have much time),im happy to see some companys using the same formula to create more great games.
I will most def check out chain echoes, sea of stars is next on my hit list, def my most fav style of games and my variety is vast, I'd love to see a survival horror JRPG type of game, coz the second type of game I enjoy is horror, but there's alot out there I feel i can't really gravitate towards, maybe one day they'll be a hybrid JRPG /Horror that'll be sweet as, The Evil Within 2 i thoroughly enjoyed, and crossing my fingers will get another of the 'of mana' series one day because Secret and Trials of mana are some of my most fav games ever
I own Chained Echoes, and I like it, but had to take a break and getting back into it is.. hard?. Instead I downloaded and tried the Demo for Sea of Stars... and played through it.. TWICE. So IMO Sea of Stars has it out the gate. we will see...
I don't know how long you played CE for initially, but you might consider just starting again from the beginning. I had about six hours of gameplay, then I also had to take a break cos some things came up. When I returned to it, I decided to start over. I was happy to do that because the game is just that good. But if it's just not hitting for you, no shame in moving on.
Chained Echoes was great, and I'm REALLY looking forward to Sea of Stars. When it comes out, and I play it, I'll be happy to weigh in. Although I must note that SoS has a bigger team and experience (unlike Matthias Linda). So even if SoS is better than Echoes, that's worth bearing in mind.
Totally, but CE has managed to be an all-time great in the genre (in my eyes) with such a small dev team. It's gonna be hard for any team to beat CE, but I'm rooting Sea of Stars to be as good as possible.
sea of stars looks better, but maybe its 10 hours long or something, we wont know till august. The mech's are also a great part of chained echoes, which we have to give it credit for.
While both look fantastic. Im going through chained echoes right now and absolutely hate the sp leveling system. Wish it was more traditional. With that said sea of stars was one of my most anticipated games this year. Im still very much interested but word came out that sea of stars will have a level cap of 30. That blows imo. I enjoyed the olden jrpgs and leveling up etc. Then what a developer said about the reason for the cap seemed kinda bs to me. Still looking forward to it but damn missed opportunity imo I also just finished ff6 for the first time finally since the 90s lol. Chained echoes love everything , story, characters, hate the sp system
Octopath traveler 2 is blowing me away right now, though even with all its flaws chained echoes had a little bit better writing or much higher highs and lower lows.
The term jrpg still goes completely over my head ever since it’s been coined by some incognito dude round two decades ago.. Since any rpg from any region could have any style under the sun.. I noticed it’s quite literally the only genre that they try to meticulously separate by putting a J lol.. Yet for example Blazblu is never regarded as JFighter & Mortal Kombat Wfighter when it’s basically the same situation.. I dunno it’s super inconsistent imo Anyways I’m looking forward to Sea of Stars although I really thought it’d be out earlier tbh Not that I’m lacking in backlog or anything as I haven’t even finished The Messenger.. The other I totally forgot about.. Perhaps I’ll pick that one up at some point too
I also find the term "JRPG" confusing and daunting. I guess I've settled on it meaning "RPG in the style of most Japanese RPGs." Of course, that's also imperfect because RPGs from Japan can be all over the place in terms of style. I would compare it to "sushi," which is a Japanese dish, but it doesn't have to be made by a Japanese person to be sushi, and it does not have to be made and served in Japan to be sushi. Similarly, I interpret "JRPG" to be more of a stylistic distinction rather than a regional one. I would consider Chained Echoes to be a JRPG, even though no Japanese developers are credited. I would consider Elden Ring to be an RPG, but not necessarily a JRPG, even though it was developed by a Japanese studio. It's an imperfect term, no doubt, and we probably need a new one. But until we get one, I'm okay with using it as described here.
@@PestulonGaming It’s just something I’ve observed.. I read it’s possibly a conspiracy by western devs to make the ones from Japan appear more niche.. Although there always were RPGs to come from different regions the term is never used in virtually all my classic gaming mags.. I find a simple remedy is calling games like Dragon Quest classical rpg and Skyrim modern rpg which I use.. Another suggestion I read online is to call them al RPGs except the ones more narrative based with the anime aesthetic RPG Adventure(RPGA) I guess maybe I try to avoid terms that allow for oxymorons and are technically incorrect being thats possibly my biggest pet peeve.. Other than that all the other gaming terms are spot on except maybe walking simulator sucks.. A positive word of advice never wait around for changes and not take action yourself if you see something that doesn’t appear right.. If Galileo thought this way we’d still be in the world is flat popular opinion narrative hahaha
Both games are good in their own ways but if I absolutely had to make a choice I'd go for Chained Echoes. If Sea of Stars is a tribute to Chrono Trigger, Chained Echoes is a tribute to Xenogears. The difference in storytelling between both titles is just that big and Chained Echoes combat system is overall deeper. Thankfully their releases were spaced enough that they don't really have to compete against one another.
At this particular moment, I have no clue because I've only barely gotten started with Sea of Stars, but I fully intend to finish it. I can vouch that CE is excellent, and I'd recommend it to any RPG fan. As other commenters have pointed out, this really isn't a competition. Both games deserve to be checked out. But if you're strapped for time and can only commit to one, I would say invest some time into both demos and go from there. Also, Sea of Stars is clearly more polished, but I'd try to look beyond cosmetics when deciding because both games offer a LOT.
Crosscode, lol! Seriously tho, each of these games looks to bring a completely different feel to the table, so I think it may not do the games justice to quantify them so stringently. I agree with the guy who says he's just happy being able to enjoy more quality titles like these. But let's not forget about Undertale either folks! 😜
@@PestulonGaming Play it, you will not regret it. I am at least 30 hours in, I think, and I don’t think I’m even halfway through. It’s a real rollercoaster but they know how to lighten it up with some comedic relief.
To my great shame I never finished Chrono Trigger due to skipping too much of the grinding and got stuck not being able to defeat neither the future nor the past boss
Both are really good, but not the same philosophy design. Chained Echoes is based more on huge lore + evil empire. Sea of Stars is more about adventure/journey. There is no evil empire in this game. Also Sea of Stars exploration level design seems more solid/original. Chained Echoes is still one of my biggest surprise of 2022. 😁
I think it's slightly unfair to compare the two games even through the they are so similar given that CE was developed almost entirely by one person and SoS is being developed by a full team of people. A lot of points about Chained Echoes, like the portraits or graphics being less impressive are justifiable for that reason. Play both. Enjoy both. Love both.
Anyone with enough time for both games who wants to play both should absolutely play both. I'm very much rooting for both games. But I'd argue that Chained Echoes is all the more worthy of comparison because it has such a small team. It can stand next to all-time greats in the genre, and all that greatness comes from one developer and one composer. No small feat.
Played both. In my opinion, Chained Echoes is far superior. Im a huge Chrono Trigger fan. Played Sea of Stars for about 20 or 25 hours. I dropped. I think it is not a fun game. It starts good. But becomes boring and repetitive. Chained Echoes is much better. Better history. Better combat. Better characters. Better soundtrack. It is just not superior when we talk about graphics. But almost everything is far superior.
