Chained Echoes by a mile. Wandering sword is solid but isn't as good.

Thanks for your reply

Originally posted by BluesMan:

I’m struggling on which one to pick up first what is the better experience overall ?

Wandering Sword has better narrative, chained echoes has better battle.
Wandering Sword is a wuxia game though.

Chained Echoes 100%. Combat, exploration, systems and secret bosses make CE a really good game, the only caveat is the early game story which is absolute dog sh!t and of course the ending. Tried Wandering Sword recently and it didn't stick for me, felt messy for me but a lot of people really like it so take my word with a grain of salt, this is just my opinion.

Wandering sword apes octopath too much visually while copying Live a live battle system, and the UI and font is rough (typical chinese game)

I would say it depends a bit on what you like.

Chained Echoes - Is kinda split into two parts.

The first part has a fairly weak story that is in large parts an omage to old RPG games, anime and such. The combat is also overall better for the first part. There are also a fair amount of choices and different outcomes in the first part depending on some choices and how you tackle things, sadly these kind of things mostly dissapear as the game goes into the 2nd part where most things becomes streamlined.

The second part has a much more engaging and deep story but it also has a downside of the dev seemingly going too far and having to leave a lot of stuff unresolved, perhaps aiming for a sequal or maybe just burned out, it does however become more of it's own thing instead of being an omage. The combat is still good but it mostly devolves into buffing agility and debuffing agility to get as many turns as possible while denying your enemies.

Overall it's a great game that has some downsides in that the progression systems are either overly complex like the crystal system or not really a progression system outside of being a stat stick like the class system, pretty much all the active skills are weaker version of skills that characters get so while fairly useful early on around mid game and onwards your just better off with bringing the character who has the active skills you want. The combat also goes from having to use some tactics to just doing the same thing pretty much unless you want to make the game harder or next to impossible. Still these are fairly minor problems.

Wandering Sword is a bit of a hit or miss in that the combat is more like a turn based tactical combat game then a traditional turn based rpg. The game is also fairly unbalanced and pretty much expects you to run around and do side stuff to grow stronger the game also especially early on makes you overly reliant on stronger party members. So if you like that type of gameplay and grinding then it's a positive. The game is very open and fairly free in how you do things and has a lot of endings or different outcomes. The game was fairly janky and buggy on release but has mostly been fixed by now the translation was also kinda whacky with the translator clearly not being an english speaker at times though it did give some chuckles at time.

A lot of the story focuses around you managing characters affection with the MC and the game will differ or well play out fairly differently depending on who's affection you've raised which will decide the games ending. For instance you could end up alone, with a male friend or even develop feelings beyond friendship? You could hook up with one of the three female romance options or even get a harem ending. The overall game and story is linear, but again your choices will to some degree affect the game.

All in all I would recommend Chained Echoes over Wandering Sword.