Chrono Odyssey’s energetic opening sequence throws my dual-wielding Berserker right in the thick of battle. With a full set of gear and skills, I fight against invading Void forces while attempting to retrieve a strange device known as a Chronotector.
It’s a bit overwhelming, but tutorial messages help me hit the ground running, explaining the basics of attacking, healing, and riding my mount as I push on. Upon reaching my objective, a ruthless Void champion makes short work of my allies before a mysterious stranger saves me from inevitable death, sending me back to the past.
Waking up in rags with no abilities and a pair of rusty chain blades means that my Berserker is not quite as capable a slayer as she was a few minutes ago. I quickly learn this after defeating two lone monsters and exiting the nearby beach camp.
Outside the walls, friendly soldiers battle numerous Void opponents and, struggling to ignore their animations running at a visibly lower frame rate, I let my instincts get the best of me, charging in to help. But fighting multiple foes is, it turns out, much more challenging. My allies’ contribution proves questionable at best, so I spend the next 10-15 minutes repeatedly dying to what are likely lower-rank creatures in the invading army.
Chrono Odyssey’s combat lands in soulslike territory, letting even its basic enemies get the best of you if you’re not careful. The lack of a level number obscures how powerful they are, so it’s only when I start employing patience and dodging attacks that I begin to see moderate success in battles that other MMORPGs would have made trivial.
Swapping to my battle axe gives me a fighting chance, as it allows me to block incoming attacks, minimizing the amount of damage I take. Yet reading the enemy’s animations continues to prove tricky even as my character levels up and my kill count grows.
That’s partly due to the media beta test’s choppy performance, but individual attacks could be better telegraphed. Getting hit even once feels punishing, especially when considering the long cooldown of healing items early on.
When not frequently visiting the respawn screen, Chrono Odyssey’s punchy, stylish combat makes landing attacks and using abilities feel impactful and satisfying. Some of the latter benefit from visual flourishes that bring you closer to feeling like a badass hero, at least before a mob kicks some sense back into you.
After exploring a small chunk of the first region and completing a couple of fairly standard MMO-style quests (talk to this person, collect those items, kill that one monster), I encounter my first hurdle. The main quest leads me to a Chrono Gate, which is essentially a dungeon containing a single boss encounter.
There, I meet another Void champion, the Thousandfold Piercer. Out of my 10-or-so attempts, I almost managed to kill him a single time before deciding that taking the game’s advice and finding ways to get stronger was a wiser approach.
Thus, I set off to explore the surrounding areas, with very little to hold my hand or point me in a direction. Since fast travel requires interacting with Bound Stones found in the environment, unless you’ve reached an inn and asked for a room, I ran back to the nearby town and picked up as many quests as I could.
One takes me to the general goods trader, who sells a variety of gathering tools required to begin leveling up professions. Another, labeled as a bounty, has me tracking down a specific foe in a part of the map I just uncovered.
To push back the fog of war, you need to interact with one of the many Eyes of Insight strewn across the map. These are large structures that are functionally Assassin’s Creed towers minus the climbing.
The locations of most objectives conveniently appear on the map when tracking their associated quests, although there are exceptions, like one particular instance in which a quest giver’s directions were my only guide to finding a missing cat.
Chrono Odyssey’s character models and combat animations make good use of Unreal Engine 5 – especially in cutscenes, where its alien Void architecture infuses a serious dose of threat into the primary antagonists. Its character creator is equally impressive, offering a bevy of options when customizing your avatar while not shying away from letting you create eerily attractive abominations.
Unfortunately, the media beta test build struggled from a technical perspective. As I explored, I often encountered blurry textures that had seemingly forgotten to load in alongside checkered shadows, even when playing on Epic settings. Lighting transitions often felt too sudden, so it was hard to stay immersed as I traversed forests, crossed lakes, and battled at the edge of steep hills.
Hitting a steady 60 FPS proved too much for my PC (Intel i7-13700K, 32 GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080@1440p) even when playing on low settings. Any other combination saw the frame rate hovering between 25 and 55, mostly staying within the 40-50 FPS ballpark, which in a game that prioritizes quick reactions and reading the enemy’s intentions isn’t ideal.
Its world also felt strangely empty, with packs of enemies sometimes too easy to avoid and very few elements organically calling out to my inner explorer. One highlight of my short time with Chrono Odyssey came in the shape of a dynamic quest, which randomly triggered as I was looking to gather ore and wood to raise my weapon and armor crafting skills.
I heard a man shouting from the very edge of a waterfall and, after effortlessly swimming to his rock, which was conveniently sticking out of the waterfall’s very edge, I offered to help. I swiftly swam back, found a piece of rope at his nearby camp, and interacted with a pole to provide him a means of crossing to safety. That measly waterfall proved no match for a confused time traveler who had yet to secure proper pants
One equally jarring black screen later, the man revealed his name, Giotto, before asking me to retrieve his clothes. Since I set up a campfire for him, I took a detour, completing a few other quests and gathering additional crafting materials.
The latter process takes a bit too long with the starter gear, but the presence of multiple tiers of sickles does suggest that it could get better further down the line. Nonetheless, where gathering in other MMORPGs can have a very therapeutic effect, that wasn’t quite the case here.
Chrono Odyssey’s characters keep conversations short, even as the main narrative throws high-level concepts at you in hopes that words like “Chronotector” and “Void” draw you into its worldbuilding. I admittedly saw very little of its story, but the initial segment fell almost completely flat for me. I also can’t say I felt any connection to the soldiers asking me to kill fiends who’d murdered their comrades, the girl whose cat went missing, or the other NPCs who needed help.
The crafting systems certainly contribute to improving your character’s combat abilities and chances of survival, but the workmanlike menus could use a bit of a touch-up that makes them more exciting to look at.
Returning several levels later to the Thousandfold Piercer, equipped with better armor and weapons as well as consumables that regenerated more health, the fight remained challenging. Thankfully, I had also picked up a passive ability from one of my weapon mastery trees that triggered a shield when my health dropped to a low-enough percentage, giving me just enough time to best this enemy.
A big part of combat is swapping between your two equipped weapons – each with its own passive and active skills unlocked by using weapons and gaining mastery points. You can equip four active abilities per weapon, keeping combat dynamic.
The Berserker’s chain blades could strike enemies within a short range, while the battle axe required me to get up close, lest I risk wasting my charged slams. Constantly shifting position and using different skills keeps combat engaging, but coupled with dodging, blocking, and trying to read my enemies’ intentions, it also felt overwhelming, especially when the unstable framerate added another challenge to the mix.
As a reward for overcoming the first big hurdle, I gained he ability to use the Chornotector as not just a means of finding my way during one specific main story quest, but also summon the fallen foe to aid me (?). The short window for the media beta test ended before I could put this ability to use, but it is one thing that makes me somewhat curious about how Chrono Odyssey’s progression evolves later on.
What I played was a small chunk of an in-development build, so performance issues and bugs were to be expected, but my time with Chrono Odyssey leaves me conflicted. Its quest structure and crafting are the only things that feel like they belong in an MMO, while everything else feels at home in a single-player, soulslike action-RPG. Although the two sides could harmonize later on, I didn’t get to experience anything of the sort.
I’m also not entirely convinced this style of combat truly works that well in an MMORPG, but I also didn’t get to play with a party and gear up enough or get a sense of when I was properly equipped for the area I was exploring. Better equipment did make certain encounters easier, but I always had to stay on my toes – at least while playing solo – regardless if I was fighting the big bad in the dungeon or a random wolf out in the woods. This constant friction could prove exhausting in the long run.
Improved performance and better telegraphed attacks could turn Chrono Odyssey into a game that’s worth checking out if you’re a soulslike enthusiast looking for a more multiplayer-leaning experience. Each of its six planned classes can equip two of three distinct weapon types, which all have their own skills to unlock and use, boding well for replayability.
At the same time, everything else outside of combat and character creation, from the story’s cosmic ambitions to its characters and their dedication to quickly ending conversations, failed to get me invested.
Exploring a new zone in Azeroth or Tyria for the first time always comes with a degree of curiosity and whimsy thanks to a convergence of factors – visuals, quests, music, and general atmosphere – that was thoroughly missing from Chrono Odyssey’s first areas.
Its preoccupation with punishing me for pushing on rather than giving me reasons to see more of its world was disappointing, even after I adjusted my approach to exploration, employing more care and focusing on gearing up.
Some additional guidance during its opening hours could prove beneficial, but if you’re eager to weather the storm and see how Chrono Odyssey plays for yourself, you can sign up on Steam for its upcoming closed beta test, which features the Berserker, Ranger, and Swordsman classes and is scheduled to begin on June 20, 2025.
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