Time Break Chronicles is a gem of a game. When I first saw it on Steam, I had my doubts: The game is marketed as “a fusion of classic JRPGs and modern Roguelites, with a cast of 100 playable classes to find and unlock. Build your team, customize their abilities, and venture into a procedurally generated adventure through space-time and beyond!”
Does it really have 100 playable classes?
Can you really customize their abilities?
Is there adventure to experience, through spacetime and beyond?
The answer to these questions are “yes, sort of.” I will explain:
Each character that you unlock is a “class” in and of itself. You could categorize characters into a macro-class (Damage Dealer, Tank, Support, Healer), then beyond that is their actual class/job (Wrestler, Chef, Clown, so on and so forth). What does their “actual job” mean? Well, each character is thematic on what a person of that profession would do. For example, the Clown has abilities such as throwing pies, giving allies balloons, and healing allies (representative of making them laugh). The Chef has the ability to prepare food on one turn, then serve it to an ally, boosting their maximum HP and MP. While these examples seem brief and simplistic, the game really comes together in complexity when factoring in the Relic system and managing six characters per team; more than the traditional four. Relics are items you give to characters to change their stats, grant them new abilities, and new passives. Each character can hold four Relics, allowing them to specialize further into a niche; or, completely change their gameplay. Each character has two signature relics, and you can use signature relics on other characters besides themselves, creating an initial repertoire of 200 relic options, plus relics associated with bosses and other sources. To summarize, the game has 100 playable classes in the sense that each character is its own class/niche. It’s not the same as Final Fantasy where there’s job advancement, but the character and relic systems feel novel and unique.
In Time Break Chronicles, there are two game modes: Chronicle Mode and Singularity Mode. Chronicle Mode is, unsurprisingly, the main story mode of the game. Singularity Mode is a roguelite mode with minimal metaprogression. Chronicle Mode has a procedurally generated adventure: The story is divided into, at the time of posting, five Acts with their own plot painting a larger story. The main character, Claire, navigates spacetime by warping from node to node. Each node is a battle or encounter, not unlike Slay the Spire’s nodes, battles, and encounters. Combat nodes fully heal your party between fights, where as Encounter nodes have the possibility of combat, adding temporary buffs/debuffs, opening chests, crossing bridges, being ambushed, or buying items from a mysterious trader in a vending machine. Overall, the story okay and makes sense, but it’s nothing award-winning. The encounter nodes are novel at first, but that novelty wears off when you’ve experienced all of them; or, realize you can simply skip/avoid them. Chronicle Mode also has its own metaprogression: Improving town buildings by spending a metacurrency called Particles. This system adds a lot of quality of life to the game to make runs easier and it’s worth investing into. In my opinion, the appeal of Chronicle Mode, and Time Break Chronicles overall, is the endgame combat. The teambuilding with fully leveled skills and Relics unlocked is fantastic. The game is punishing enough that you need to think about the characters you choose wisely. You will not be able to steamroll the entire game in one sitting. It’s challenging, it’s knows what it is, and is not designed to cater to the zeitgeist. It’s intended for a niche audience.
I haven’t played a lot of Singularity Mode, so I don’t feel informed enough to have an opinion on it.
To summarize the pros of this game: Characters feel unique from one another; and, with 100 characters to choose from, you will find characters you enjoy playing over and over. The Relic system allows you to customize those characters further, and you have the option to save up to 4 different Relic loadouts. The game is very cerebral in that your choices matter and wrong decisions are punished. The main character of Chronicle Mode is likable and very powerful; but, if you don’t want to use her, you can remove her from the party altogether. You can spend over hundreds of hours, like I have, and still learn something new about characters you’ve written off (join the Discord!).
For the cons, there are a few, but not bad enough that I wouldn’t recommend this game:
1. The tutorial feels very slow. If you’re already familiar with roguelites and JRPGs, it’s going to feel like a slog.
2. The damage output early game is low. Fights are going to feel like they take forever. In the lategame, combat can take anywhere between 1-4 turns with fully built, optimized teams. You are going to be introduced to a mechanic called Time Break Techs early, and you will need them.
3. Leveling characters’ skills can take a very long time. This is offset by their quests, which award 2 skill points each (and infinite uses of their signature relic), but the grind is still long. It’s a JRPG, so I understand that grind exists, sometimes; however, this has been a recurring turn off for several people in the Discord.
4. Once you level a skill, you can’t take points out. This sounds like common sense, as all skills are supposed to be maxed; however, some characters have strange interactions with Relics that make it “optimal” to leave their skills at level 1 or 2.
5. This isn’t really a con, but it can feel pretty bad leveling a whole new team just to get absolutely stomped anyway. Again, this game is intended to be hard. You might spend a lot of time in trial and error mode just to fail a lot. That’s okay! Some people really can’t stand it though.
Overall, I’d give this game an 8/10. Really cool and a gem for what it is, especially in Early Access. Looking forward to Act 6 and hoping it’s the endgame content Act I’m looking for.
