I don't think I've ever cried so hard at a game. I know everyone says that about these games but it was the first time I've cried in the past five months, and I'm not an easy crier! It's a fantastic story that is going to stick with me for a very long while.

I personally recommend playing the routes in the following order: Carl->Leo->Route 65->Jenna->TJ->Flynn. While Jenna's does have a happy ending (and would come up after Flynn's if you're playing in release order, I believe), I think Flynn's route is a much more thematically relevant conclusion to the narrative that Echo presents, and retroactively gives a lot of weight to a lot of stuff discussed in pretty much every previous route, including Jenna's, in a way that would be much less impactful if you were to play his route before any of theirs.

That said: find another adjective/metaphor for the darkness that isn't inky it's noticeable that it's the only word used to describe it lol

it started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this...

its so weird and hard to try and explain whats good about echo because its surface level is equally ridden with humble shortcomings and overwhelming power...the prose is not anything special, the presentation is often in the novice land of weird sprites and endless kevin macleod music (though the cgs tend to be wonderful at least) theres a couple route-specific flaws, and maybe a couple ideas or plot beats have been Done Before if u care about that stuff. but its just so clearly one of the greatest things ive ever experienced in any medium, and could only exist in this specific form as a visibly amateurish gay furry itch.io cult classic...a sprawling, ambitious, colorful, comforting, gutting, endlessly fascinating generator of Thoughts and Feelings stepped in the kind of emotional truth you can only get from a niche product whos very conception will grant it the safety of probably not penetrating beyond its niche. but maybe thats a shame...echo is difficult to recommend, but i Do want more people to know about it, if for no other reason then its going to inspire at least one of them to take its lessons and go back something possibly even better...tho nothing could ever replace this

i am under no illusions that i will write a definitive review of echo, especially in the spoiler-free fashion i keep my stuff in, but after having spent literal years now reading this (i read my first route in late 2021, and took massive gap breaks between all the times i slowly returned to chip away at it), starting in one of the most tumultuous times of my life and ending it what has been one of the most peaceful times of my life, there are some things is especially have to commend...i owe it that much for its companionship

for me, echo's greatest strength, and its greatest thematic idea, is its commitment to the long-term effect...a relative de-emphasis on the individual moment-to-moment reading experience as anything amazing in isolation, and ability to weave these seemingly non-amazing scenes into something unspeakably identifiable and powerful. identity , for the game, for its routes, for its characters, is rich and multifaceted because it exists less in any big gestures and more in an increasingly dense personal history spent interacting with them. part of why the game took so damn long for me to playthru is that it has a kind of naturally rising emotional difficulty...the more routes u do, the more emotional baggage u have with the characters, the more u have to reckon with when they are onscreen , consciously and subconsciously. its not the the innocuous becomes massive in hindsight, it mostly stays innocuous...but it takes on a different color and flavor, becomes more specific and distinct

none of this is unique to echo, hopefully it could be applied to most good longform storytelling. but i do think echo has a uniquely powerful and steady hand in this department that resonates in myriad ways...its characters overwhelmingly traumatized queers with varying backgrounds of abuse, attempting to not be defined by the dry and brittle embrace of the town they spent their whole lives in...a struggle that often fails because the past cannot be truly left behind, and when actively denied manifests in secret subtle horrible ways that are now beyond your understanding because you have refused to reckon with it. the characters are their experiences, every moment of their lives enabled by every previous moment of their lives...there is no way to un-form themselves, who were formed in great pain and a deeply unjust world.

it is in this way that this being not just a gay game but a Gay Furry game is so fucking important. being queer is inherently traumatic in the cishetero patriarchal world, inherently abusive...even if not overtly, then internally, raised in an abnormality in a world that doesnt even teach u to recognize urself as one, leading to potentially years and years of ur identity and attractions being isolated from urself as u subconsciously recognize they are not yours. furries are overwhelmingly queer, and why not? u spend so long separated from urself, that u have to look in unexpected places to find it in a comforting and authentic way...why not cute animal people?

echo's niche is not tangential to its power (tho it is refreshingly un-exhausting about the logistics of its animal people world, leading by almost entirely intuition with a couple moments of playfully leaning on the unmovable concession that is the central aesthetic identity), it is Exactly Why i dont care if another vn ten years ago did similar things with anime girls or whatever. this is a frank and harrowing and emotionally complex discussion of internal and external queer trauma for an audience that will inherently understand it, without having to do any pandering or explanations to those who dont. this is why the game constantly blurs the line between romanticism/eroticism and horror, rather then being a DDLC style bait and switch where one becomes the other. this is why every single one of the deeply lovable incredible main characters could be convincingly argued to be a terrible person, and why theres no contradiction in that when the game asks u to love and accept them anyway. this is why every route has revelations that re-contextualize the entire game, with a full workable picture denied until the very end (and even then, in a world so vast, whos to say what we're still missing?). this is why the shit with sydney's dad is the way it is.

because if queerness is beautiful, yet also inherently traumatic, then that trauma can be, from some specific angle and trick of the light, beautiful as well...or at least, it can still produce a beautiful being, of which i have known countless...we are our experiences, especially our ugliest and most unjust ones. we cannot undo it, and yet we are worth something anyway. this is the revelation, and reorientation of how i see myself, that has allowed me to like myself for the first time in my life

i hadnt had this realization when i started echo, finishing it now id say its been the dominant pattern in my thought for the past year or so. echo is a space where i have returned like an intellectual checkpoint. am i being as kind and understanding to my younger self and their mistakes as i am to sydney? am i keeping a good holistic view of all of this enlightened traumaqueery to make sure im not making any excuses for genuine abuse, from or against or outside myself? has my acceptance turned to passivity? has my fear of passivity overturned my acceptance? have i been remembering that my worth and energy comes not from easily listenable or observable traits but something far more ephemeral built up by individual points of view choosing to spend time with me? echo has been equal parts challenging and comforting, realist and idealist, indulgent and thoughtful, spiraling and perceptive. at least in this stage of my life, its difficult to imagine being "done" with it , or having learned all i can from it. but even if i move on eventually, it, like everything, will remain within me. i could not be happier to have it here

If you like Higurashi/Silent Hill, stories that involve small town horror, and also gay furries (like me) then this is definitely the VN for you. It deals with a lot of heavy topics, though, and there are times I had to stop to take several week long (if not sometimes months) breaks for my own mental health. But that doesn't detract from how much I loved the story and characters.

Also if you hate Jenna and villianize her more than any other character then I simply do not trust you as a person.

Shout out to one of my very close friends for recommending this game to me otherwise I probably never would have checked it out.

As of this review I haven't finished Jenna's route but I've done the rest and... Oh boy.

I went into this expecting horror obviously but I was served way more than just that. I don't even know if I can really explain this game, dude. Doesn't matter if you aren't gay or a furry, I reccomend this in general.

However I can't stress enough that the order of the routes matters so much-
Carl->Leo->TJ->Flynn (Jenna can be anywhere you want but Flynn's route builds off of TJ's)

Update: DO JENNAS ROUTE LAST IT GIVES A SATISFYING ENDING