Time Break Chronicles

This game is much more than I expected it to be. There's 100 characters and that's kind of the hook right?
There's all kinds of fantasy tropes and things you've never even thought about as it pertains to a traditional JRPG kind of experience. It goes much deeper though than mere novelty as you realize each of these characters are unique in their own way. They offer different wrinkles to gameplay based upon who they're teamed with and what kind of relics you equip them with.
Relics are a system which augments aspects of your character's abilities and act as an equipment system of sorts. Two such items can be equipped freely upon any character once you have unlocked them. They do things as banal as flat stat increases, to adding new moves that other characters may have, to entire shifts in the way certain damage, healing, or buffs interact with said character. The system is so deep there is no way to find the bottom here.
The actual meat of the game works like so. You enter into a grid style layout similar to slay the spire. You select a node and it usually enters into a combat. This combat is done in a traditional final fantasy style pretty much. During these expeditions there are nodes to unlock more characters during your "run". Guys gain xp, they complete individual quests (each character has quests to help him upgrade his skills), and you unlock new relics and characters as you go. The gameplay loop keeps that juicy drip of content coming your way making you feel good and rewarded for your time in one form or another.
I just can't say enough about how surprised I am at the depth and nuance on display here. I expected a bunch of bland characters that were only neat in terms of "i get to play as a clown! cool!". I didn't expect said clown to have an interesting and deep thematically appropriate mechanical role! That's wild. All the characters are like that too. If you find a character you think is just so cool, they absolutely CAN be used and they will be unique and there's a way to leverage them. The fun is in finding out how guys work and what kinds of ways they interact with each other. It's a really rewarding time.
PS: As an aside I suppose I should note that just because you find a winning team, that doesn't mean you should just trot out your favorites every time. Keep trying new things. That's where the juice is. Your next favorite character is just waiting for you to notice him.

Time Break Chronicles is really good.
Here is what you need to know:
1. This game is exactly for the guy who loves old RPG combat systems and creating/flexing characters. You know that person who spends like 12 hours making a DND character? This game is for you.
2. Do not expect a story in this game. It's basically, "Bad guys are bad, so you kill them". This isn't an RPG story. This is a rogue-lite at heart.
3. First half of the game so far? Too easy. Second half? Too hard.
It's worth picking up for the price and I can't recommend it enough if it sounds appealing to you.

Time Break Chronicles is, as far as I know, one of the only rogueli(k/t)es out there that uses Final Fantasy-style turn-based JRPG combat. I enjoy it quite a lot. I have my quibbles here and there with the gameplay design, but there's just nothing else quite like it on the market right now. If you're a fan of Final Fantasies 1-6 and rogueli(k/t)es, give it a try.

Got this in 2025.
About 20 hours in at this message, and I'm having an incredible time with this game! Learning how different characters work might take a few battles to fully grasp them, but once you do you carry that knowledge on to other characters you unlock. Coming up with different combos and synergies with different characters is great too!
The video isn't lying about deep customization either. Almost every ability on every character can level up twice (starts at bronze star, then goes to silver and then gold). Each character comes with two relics (equipment) that can be unlocked to be copied after completing their various quests (three quests per character). Those relics can also sometimes come with active or passive abilities from that character, allowing you to spread the joy with other teammates. Each character gets four relic slots.
All of this, and I haven't even started Act 2 yet! I will once I get the last three characters from Act 1 :D.

This game is actually crazy good. It puts the combat front and center and outside of that there's not a ton to do, but the game doesn't need it. A TON of characters that all play very differently, combined with team synergy among those characters plus relics that you can equip to them, and you've got a game that's a tactical feast.

If you're into combat focused games with deep strategy/mechanics then this game will scratch that itch.

Love the concept and love the gameplay when my team is set up well. Find myself swamped and frustrated when trying to build team comps and when equipping heroes with relics.
The UI for building and setting up your team is a little bad and it gets worse the more stuff you have unlocked. There are also different UI screens for looking at your heroes. I love the screen that categorizes heroes by act, but I cant use that screen when adding heroes to my team.
Filtering through relics is haphazard. sorting my discipline wont show you every item that interacts with discipline. relics also say "increase" but sometimes not by how much they increase.

Really good tactical roguelike game. There isn't much besides the combat and unlocks, but there doesn't need to be. Enough variety of classes and relics here to add a lot of replay value