In 2022, I had a delightful time with the indie-developed JRPG-inspired game Chained Echoes. A massive DLC is on its way called Ashes of Elrant. I had the chance to play the DLC before it launched.
Game Name: Chained Echoes: Ashes of Elrant
Platform(s): Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PC (Reviewed)
Developer(s): Umami Tiger
Publisher(s): Deck13 Spotlight
Release Date: August 7th, 2025
Price: €9.99
Before the final battle in Chained Echoes, a researcher comes to Glenn and his party members asking for help. They were researching rocks in a town when a general from one of the enemy kingdoms starts to terrorize the town. As the main party helps clear the town of enemies, the researcher starts up a ritual that moves all the residual ether into a portal that takes them to an unknown location. It turns out from what Lenne can see that it is the town she grew up in, Elrant.
The Good
I love how much focus Ashes of Elrant gives to only a few of the characters. I forgot just how large the cast was, but because it was mainly focused on the White Wolf, Lenne, Raphael, and Magolia, the story gives a lot more time for their characters to shine. I mean, I did wish maybe other characters got to shine, but I am glad it wasn’t trying to give everyone a purpose, making everyone have very thin arcs.
The combat gets to shine in the DLC, as there are a lot of tough encounters. Some have fun gimmicks like chess characters progressing on a chess board to become stronger, which makes it more enticing to finish off pawns before the heavier-hitting enemies, since if pawns get to the end of the board, they become extremely powerful chess queens, and then they heal back up. Others will have you exploring the map to solve puzzles or get yourself to a point where you can get your sky armor before heading back.
The White Wolf can be powerful once you understand the best way to use him. It requires your enemies to have a lot of health, though, before you can get him sufficiently built. You will need like three buffs, and then you can go to town biting enemies to build up their bite marks. Once you amass a lot of bite marks on an enemy, you can use the White Wolf’s weakness bite to deliver an ungodly amount of damage.
The Bad
Chained Echoes: Ashes of Elrant starts jarringly. It is the day before the final battle, and yet Glenn is fine taking the front-line generals with him to a random town to help researchers study rocks? With how skeptical they should be of sabotage, Glenn and his team should at the very least send scouts to verify the information these researchers are saying.
Some characters have fun moments, but don’t contribute to the DLC’s story or area. To help rectify the first issue I had of the beginning it might have been a good idea to let some of the party members stay back, so you only have a full team of eight characters and have the rest help prepare for the final battle. Since the story heavily focuses on only a partial amount of your playable party just have certain characters that have to be with you and swap out the others as you want for the characters you want in your party.
The base game of Chained Echoes is about a 35-40 hour experience. Ashes of Elrant is quoted as being a “massive DLC” but my completion time of 7 hours and 45 minutes isn’t exactly what I would consider massive. Granted, that’s without guides and redoing a lot of fights, especially in the beginning when I was getting my rust off, since I haven’t played the game since I beat it over two years ago.
The original Chained Echoes played on Steam Deck perfectly before launch for me without any hiccups or configuration changes that I needed to do. Ashes of Elrant, however, was a different story. In order to unlock the DLC, I had to switch the proton configuration to the experimental branch. Otherwise, it starts up the game with the DLC, but never shows that you have the DLC in-game. Once I put Proton Experimental on, I was able to get started much more easily. Also, one thing I would add for this DLC is a button on the menu that lets you go back to the main menu after saving. You have to go to a separate menu to access the DLC, but if you want to go back to the main game, you have to exit the game, then restart the game and choose your save from the main menu.
The Verdict
The base game of Chained Echoes still shines in the DLC of Ashes of Elrant, but I do think, for a premium DLC price, it doesn’t shine through itself. There are mini games like fishing, but they aren’t worth the addition in my opinion. If you want to see the battle system shine, then it could be worth it for you.
Chained Echoes is available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The Ashes of Elrant DLC should be available to buy now on all the available platforms.
Review Disclosure Statement: Chained Echoes: Ashes of Elrant was provided to us by Deck13 Spotlight for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.
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Summary
Chained Echoes: Ashes of Elrant may have its flaws with its execution, but if you liked the combat and the characters, then it is worth a look.
Pros
- Combat has good difficulty
- The Elrant region is varied and has nice art
- Lenne gets to be explored quite a bit in this DLC
Cons
- Story writing is out of place and probably should have been a post-game story rather than a pre-end-game story.
- Some puzzles are not as intuitive as they should be
- For a huge cast, the DLC only focuses on some of them, making the rest of them just exist.
