I forgot I played this so just adding it now.
The story was pretty forgettable but the atmosphere is great and the low poly ps1 graphics are on point. I love when fromsoft did weird, slow paced games.
The real thing this game taught me about fromsoft is that they knew how to make a character move fast in first person. They just chose to make you move that slow in Kings Field on purpose. I love it.
The story was pretty forgettable but the atmosphere is great and the low poly ps1 graphics are on point. I love when fromsoft did weird, slow paced games.
The real thing this game taught me about fromsoft is that they knew how to make a character move fast in first person. They just chose to make you move that slow in Kings Field on purpose. I love it.
p solid, adventure game. i feel like the main reason i loved this franchise is bc it heavily reminds me of horror rpgmaker games lol
me an my friends all cheered at the same time when i found out i could sit on the infinitely rocking, rocking chair
From a high level and modern perspective, Echo Night isn't all that strange. At its core we have a fairly typical adventure game where you slowly work your way around a cruise ship inhabited by ghosts and solve their many problems. Occasionally you may get attacked by a vengeful ghost, but most of the time you can quickly flick the room's light on and the ghost will disappear, allowing you to focus on the puzzles again. There are no RPG elements or combat segments that most would generally associate with Fromsoft (with good reason!) and the actual horror of the game is paper thin so I imagine some might be put off from playing it. Reviews and sales from the time of its release certainly reflect that hypothesis.
This is a pretty unfair assessment of Echo Night however and it deserves your attention for the sheer amount of creativity involved here. I have neglected to mention one of the coolest things about this game - while the main game is set on a cruise liner, you constantly jump back in time and into the memories of the ghosts you're trying to help and explore a huge variety of visually interesting locations. Moving trains, graveyards, old castles, a library... there's lots of places to visit and it's always exciting when a jump happens. With such a short runtime too (~5-6 hours) the mechanic never grows stale.
Not only that, but this game is a visual treat. Sure, it's a PlayStation game so it's heavily limited in its rendering capabilities, but they managed to create a first-person perspective game with fully 3D graphics that doesn't run like arse. Every room is full of detail and visually distinct so navigating the ship as a result was a breeze. The entire reason this game even exists is because Fromsoft wanted to reuse the technology they created for King's Field 3 (King's Field 2 in the west) but push the visual fidelity to its limits.
Not everything is perfect though. The controls for instance are incredibly dated, using shoulders and triggers to control the camera. If you are emulating I highly recommend rebinding things to use the analogue control sticks. Some of the puzzles are a bit obtuse too and I wouldn't blame you for cracking out a walkthrough to get past those sections.
The definite worst offender is the casino. There are 3 ghosts you can optionally save in here but if you want the best ending it's a must. With the fruit machine or roulette table you can quite easily save scum your way to victory. However, this is impossible with the blackjack and good lord does it feel like the odds are stacked against you. Now I'm not too bad at blackjack, but the amount of times I was dealt obviously losing hands was astronomical. Either save up your tokens until the very end and do this or, if you play emulated, use save states and save yourself a headache.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the story. I'm in two minds about this - while I enjoyed solving the individual ghosts' problems and unravelling the mystery of the ghost ship, it was all incredibly predictable. There were also an awful lot of characters presented to you and it was very difficult to follow who's who, so I was constantly referring back to the helpful notes the game provides on each ghost encounter. I came away feeling like I understood the basic main plot but missed a lot of subtext while I was lost in my notes. Others may have a better experience with this!
Saying all that, I came away from Echo Night with a very positive outlook. Maybe it's just because I fell in love with its aesthetics, but I believe Echo Night deserves your time. If you love the PlayStation and the weird experimentation of developers, take a couple of evenings to wind down and explore the world of Echo Night and I don't think you will regret it.
This is a pretty unfair assessment of Echo Night however and it deserves your attention for the sheer amount of creativity involved here. I have neglected to mention one of the coolest things about this game - while the main game is set on a cruise liner, you constantly jump back in time and into the memories of the ghosts you're trying to help and explore a huge variety of visually interesting locations. Moving trains, graveyards, old castles, a library... there's lots of places to visit and it's always exciting when a jump happens. With such a short runtime too (~5-6 hours) the mechanic never grows stale.
Not only that, but this game is a visual treat. Sure, it's a PlayStation game so it's heavily limited in its rendering capabilities, but they managed to create a first-person perspective game with fully 3D graphics that doesn't run like arse. Every room is full of detail and visually distinct so navigating the ship as a result was a breeze. The entire reason this game even exists is because Fromsoft wanted to reuse the technology they created for King's Field 3 (King's Field 2 in the west) but push the visual fidelity to its limits.
Not everything is perfect though. The controls for instance are incredibly dated, using shoulders and triggers to control the camera. If you are emulating I highly recommend rebinding things to use the analogue control sticks. Some of the puzzles are a bit obtuse too and I wouldn't blame you for cracking out a walkthrough to get past those sections.
The definite worst offender is the casino. There are 3 ghosts you can optionally save in here but if you want the best ending it's a must. With the fruit machine or roulette table you can quite easily save scum your way to victory. However, this is impossible with the blackjack and good lord does it feel like the odds are stacked against you. Now I'm not too bad at blackjack, but the amount of times I was dealt obviously losing hands was astronomical. Either save up your tokens until the very end and do this or, if you play emulated, use save states and save yourself a headache.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is the story. I'm in two minds about this - while I enjoyed solving the individual ghosts' problems and unravelling the mystery of the ghost ship, it was all incredibly predictable. There were also an awful lot of characters presented to you and it was very difficult to follow who's who, so I was constantly referring back to the helpful notes the game provides on each ghost encounter. I came away feeling like I understood the basic main plot but missed a lot of subtext while I was lost in my notes. Others may have a better experience with this!
Saying all that, I came away from Echo Night with a very positive outlook. Maybe it's just because I fell in love with its aesthetics, but I believe Echo Night deserves your time. If you love the PlayStation and the weird experimentation of developers, take a couple of evenings to wind down and explore the world of Echo Night and I don't think you will regret it.
Echo night is an oddity from the playstation library. The goal of the game is to find you're father but the game isn't quite so clear on how or why you are doing it the way you are. You start by jumping into a painting, into the past, where apparently your father is. On top of this there are also ghosts, an alien, and a man possessed by the devil who has killed everyone on the ship.
The game is considered a survival game, but your survival is to turn on lights, which you can almost always do by looking to the left or right as you open a door and turning on the light. Puzzles are very basic usually, just someone has lost X item, and you need to give it back to them. In terms of how it looks, I think it was pretty good, and clear, especially compared to earlier fromsoft. It is very clear when someone it evil and when someone is good, and the music is pretty nice too. But the basic gameplay, bizarre story, along with the less outdated King's Field I'm not sure I would easily recommend someone play it.
The game is considered a survival game, but your survival is to turn on lights, which you can almost always do by looking to the left or right as you open a door and turning on the light. Puzzles are very basic usually, just someone has lost X item, and you need to give it back to them. In terms of how it looks, I think it was pretty good, and clear, especially compared to earlier fromsoft. It is very clear when someone it evil and when someone is good, and the music is pretty nice too. But the basic gameplay, bizarre story, along with the less outdated King's Field I'm not sure I would easily recommend someone play it.
please dont go to space
I genuinely find it funny that the true ending is locked behind a gambling minigame, more games should do that.
Feeling kinda thrilled after finishing Shadow Tower, I moved straight onto Echo Night. It's another flawed banger for sure. A new genre for the studio here; after multiple entries in their dungeon crawling and mecha series, Echo Night is their attempt at a first-person adventure game in leu of PC classics such as Myst.
How'd they do? The results are enchanting, even if the game is marred by the same amateurish and cryptic qualities that characterised their prior work. It's quiet, slow, eerie, and sad. It's also surprisingly interactive - every toilet can be opened, though there is never anything inside, and every tap can be turned on, though the water has stopped running. Poking and prodding through this place where people once lived and then died, their souls trapped until the player helps them find peace... It's disquieting, affecting stuff.
Where the game loses me is in its attempt at survival horror mechanics. There's just not enough opportunities for the player to take damage for the health system to be worth it, or at least there's far too many healing supplies. Some of the puzzles are also too cryptic, but a vast majority are fine.
Despite these niggles, I loved Echo Night. It typifies the early console gaming era where experimentation and reaching passionately beyond one's grasp was far more common. Echo Night released on the PS1, it has ghosts made out of polygons feeling sad, and it's very sincere about it.
How'd they do? The results are enchanting, even if the game is marred by the same amateurish and cryptic qualities that characterised their prior work. It's quiet, slow, eerie, and sad. It's also surprisingly interactive - every toilet can be opened, though there is never anything inside, and every tap can be turned on, though the water has stopped running. Poking and prodding through this place where people once lived and then died, their souls trapped until the player helps them find peace... It's disquieting, affecting stuff.
Where the game loses me is in its attempt at survival horror mechanics. There's just not enough opportunities for the player to take damage for the health system to be worth it, or at least there's far too many healing supplies. Some of the puzzles are also too cryptic, but a vast majority are fine.
Despite these niggles, I loved Echo Night. It typifies the early console gaming era where experimentation and reaching passionately beyond one's grasp was far more common. Echo Night released on the PS1, it has ghosts made out of polygons feeling sad, and it's very sincere about it.
Echo Night is such a vibe, man. The dark, eerie ship, the slow, methodical movement, the lack of music... it creates this strange tension... one that's hard to describe. It's creepy! I wasn't really invested in the main story but I really enjoyed this just for that feeling of exploring the ship and helping out the crew in whatever situations they were in.
Echo Night is an interesting evolution of From Software's use of this style of game that is a pretty sharp departure from the King's Field games. This is a mostly narrative, mild horror puzzle game that feels a bit like Resident Evil without any combat. I don't think it is that successful.
The story involves the main character traveling to his father's house, where he finds a picture of a ship and discovers the ability to enter it and explore its history. This power isn't very clear or even explained, but it seems like you can just arbitrarily enter objects that are important to people in order to explore that importance, usually gaining information, bringing back objects, or resolving whatever problem is stopping their ghost from moving on.
Over the course of the game, you manage to put all the spirits on the ship to rest, uncover a secret war spanning generations for control over two magical stones. This sort of starts off in an intriguing way, but is very predictable and pretty uninteresting by the end.
Most of the game takes place on a ship, exploring the environment and looking for items, solving puzzles to get to new areas, or completing simple requests to help the ghosts that are present move on. None of these are particularly challenging and mostly just end up being straightforward fetch quests.
It looks good and runs well. It has the mostly locked framerate present in King's Field 3 and better textures, most likely enabled by these much smaller environments.
There really just isn't too much to this game. It seems like it has some interesting ideas, with the main character's ability to enter and alter the past through important objects, but nothing really comes together and the gameplay itself isn't super compelling. An interesting piece of From's library, but probably not worth playing except for the most dedicated fans.
The story involves the main character traveling to his father's house, where he finds a picture of a ship and discovers the ability to enter it and explore its history. This power isn't very clear or even explained, but it seems like you can just arbitrarily enter objects that are important to people in order to explore that importance, usually gaining information, bringing back objects, or resolving whatever problem is stopping their ghost from moving on.
Over the course of the game, you manage to put all the spirits on the ship to rest, uncover a secret war spanning generations for control over two magical stones. This sort of starts off in an intriguing way, but is very predictable and pretty uninteresting by the end.
Most of the game takes place on a ship, exploring the environment and looking for items, solving puzzles to get to new areas, or completing simple requests to help the ghosts that are present move on. None of these are particularly challenging and mostly just end up being straightforward fetch quests.
It looks good and runs well. It has the mostly locked framerate present in King's Field 3 and better textures, most likely enabled by these much smaller environments.
There really just isn't too much to this game. It seems like it has some interesting ideas, with the main character's ability to enter and alter the past through important objects, but nothing really comes together and the gameplay itself isn't super compelling. An interesting piece of From's library, but probably not worth playing except for the most dedicated fans.
bad controls, weird story, simplistic puzzles or obtuse, no real medium.
what
from the developers of king's field
I really appreciate the look and feel here, it's just the kind of mysterious PSX stuff I was hoping for from early Fromsoft. An adventure game that manages to keep an air of mystery without ridiculously obtuse puzzles is a rare thing, and I appreciate it here. I only quit because I do not deal well with being scared. It's just not a feeling I enjoy, and scrambling for the light switch every time I open a door (while effective, especially given the clunky controls) gets me afraid and paranoid in a way I don't like.
I am such a baby.
I am such a baby.
i love this stupid game. yes it looks horrible, yes it's cheesy as hell, yes it has obnoxious controls too, but it has something man.
i remember when i played this as a kid, i was frantically looking for ps1 first person games (all my friends had ps2s with cod and shit) and i ended up trying out this game. what a blast man, it's got this early from software charm, it's like a cross between those 90's fmv games (like myst, or warp's stuff) and king's field, since this game is literally all 3d, almost no prerendered cutscenes which is kind of amazing for the psx.
plus the level of interactivity is amazing too, like you can open up a ton of random stuff, press buttons, light switches... it's very fun. like i opened all toilets in the game for some reason (none has anything inside), but just solving point and click style puzzles in a first person game, going through this cheesy horror setting with some kickass midis, what a game man.
i remember when i played this as a kid, i was frantically looking for ps1 first person games (all my friends had ps2s with cod and shit) and i ended up trying out this game. what a blast man, it's got this early from software charm, it's like a cross between those 90's fmv games (like myst, or warp's stuff) and king's field, since this game is literally all 3d, almost no prerendered cutscenes which is kind of amazing for the psx.
plus the level of interactivity is amazing too, like you can open up a ton of random stuff, press buttons, light switches... it's very fun. like i opened all toilets in the game for some reason (none has anything inside), but just solving point and click style puzzles in a first person game, going through this cheesy horror setting with some kickass midis, what a game man.
É um adventure japonês bem charmoso com uns elementos de survival horror bem leves, um walking simulator simples e divertido, talvez o maior defeito dele seja realmente essa simplicidade, mas os locais, o mistério e os puzzles fazem o jogo ser bem agradável, menos na parte do cassino mas nem da pra falar muito pq acabou bem rápido, obrigatório pra quem curte a from.
Story is сoncentrated shit and the gameplay is no better
This review contains spoilers
Hey, remember at the end of my review for the first Armored Core when I said I’d be reviewing Echo Night? This was mostly a cheeky joke referring to Dark Souls, but I did have the intention of playing this game eventually. Well, here I am, having completed Echo Night before not only Dark Souls, but also Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Despite the fact that I haven’t beaten Resident Evil, what I have played shows a lot of how Echo Night was lacking. In Resident Evil, enemy encounters are made engaging because of the different options and factors to consider. In Echo Night, most interactions just involve running from enemies. It also hurts a bit that resource management really isn’t that… Hey wait a minute, this is exactly how I started my review for Yomawari Midnight Shadows! These games are pretty similar, honestly. However, a few things separate Echo Night from Yomawari Midnight Shadows.
While enemy interactions are shallow, the purpose of these enemies is usually just roadblocks. Sometimes you do just have to run from an enemy (Especially later in the game), but often you need to use an item or something to make the ghost go away or find a way to turn on a light. It’s a missed opportunity, but it was never meant to be the crux of the gameplay. That crux would be the puzzles involving the pacifist ghosts. Usually, you help a ghost who’s not at peace for some reason, and in return you get an item needed to progress. The puzzles for finding out how to help these ghosts aren’t great, but they’re fine, and some are fun. I can’t really discuss them without spoiling the solutions, but it’s mostly simple stuff that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings.
In terms of the story, it’s alright. Most of it consists of trying to solve the mystery of this boat that went missing called the Orpheus. There’s some stuff about a red stone and blue stone, and your dad has something to do with all of this, but you’re not given much to go off initially. As you progress though, you help the ghosts on board and learn their stories, and possibly more about the greater plot. It’s an alright concept, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. First, I rarely feel like I’m actually aboard a ship. A lot of the game is inside rooms that aren’t necessarily characteristic of boats. Second, helping ghosts often involves teleporting through space and time, which is something that just happens without any explanation or player input. It’s not just like you get to view past events either, you must take items from the past to use in the future. There are probably more natural ways to get across these backstories than what we have here, and I generally enjoyed the puzzles that took place on the boat more. Well, I say that, but the stuff on the boat itself is some kind of teleportation from the beginning of the game where the player character’s father is missing. When you’re teleported to the boat, it’s just hanging out in the water. Is the boat actually somewhere in the physical world? It went missing, right? Maybe this is a nitpick, but I just don’t want to be wondering about time-travel stuff in a horror game.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this game. This was made by a small team, after all. It’s not entirely fair to compare it to something like Resident Evil. It does have the atmosphere down. The sound design is pretty solid and the visuals do feel unsettling in many ways. However, there’s one way that the game could’ve been great independent of budget: Writing. I mean, sure, it was pretty much inevitable that the voice acting would suck (I still love it for the goofiness), but the actual words the characters say could’ve been good. I know this is a Japanese game originally and maybe the Japanese version has incredible writing, but in English, the writing is very disappointing. In horror/puzzle games, it’s often fun to interact with an item and get some flavor text. Maybe it tells us a bit about the character. Maybe it paints a more vivid picture of the world than the limited graphics can display. In Echo Night, 9/10 times you interact with something, it says, “There is a ___.” You look at a chair? “There is a chair.” You check out a bed? “There is a bed.” This is not hyperbole, almost everything that isn’t absolutely tied to solving a puzzle has this kind of description. Could they not be bothered to write something else?!? Did they only have a week to localize the game? I don’t know, but it hurts the final product, and it’s truly a shame.
Echo Night is passable. It’s pretty rough around the edges, something that could also be said about Armored Core, but that game was unique and more focused on a specific premise. Maybe I’ll play the sequels someday, but I think it’s time I play another Fromsoft game. You know, the one that put them on the map for some people when it came out back in the day, where you battle monsters in a brutal world. Yep, it’s finally time. I’m playing King’s Field next! See you then.
Despite the fact that I haven’t beaten Resident Evil, what I have played shows a lot of how Echo Night was lacking. In Resident Evil, enemy encounters are made engaging because of the different options and factors to consider. In Echo Night, most interactions just involve running from enemies. It also hurts a bit that resource management really isn’t that… Hey wait a minute, this is exactly how I started my review for Yomawari Midnight Shadows! These games are pretty similar, honestly. However, a few things separate Echo Night from Yomawari Midnight Shadows.
While enemy interactions are shallow, the purpose of these enemies is usually just roadblocks. Sometimes you do just have to run from an enemy (Especially later in the game), but often you need to use an item or something to make the ghost go away or find a way to turn on a light. It’s a missed opportunity, but it was never meant to be the crux of the gameplay. That crux would be the puzzles involving the pacifist ghosts. Usually, you help a ghost who’s not at peace for some reason, and in return you get an item needed to progress. The puzzles for finding out how to help these ghosts aren’t great, but they’re fine, and some are fun. I can’t really discuss them without spoiling the solutions, but it’s mostly simple stuff that requires you to pay attention to your surroundings.
In terms of the story, it’s alright. Most of it consists of trying to solve the mystery of this boat that went missing called the Orpheus. There’s some stuff about a red stone and blue stone, and your dad has something to do with all of this, but you’re not given much to go off initially. As you progress though, you help the ghosts on board and learn their stories, and possibly more about the greater plot. It’s an alright concept, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. First, I rarely feel like I’m actually aboard a ship. A lot of the game is inside rooms that aren’t necessarily characteristic of boats. Second, helping ghosts often involves teleporting through space and time, which is something that just happens without any explanation or player input. It’s not just like you get to view past events either, you must take items from the past to use in the future. There are probably more natural ways to get across these backstories than what we have here, and I generally enjoyed the puzzles that took place on the boat more. Well, I say that, but the stuff on the boat itself is some kind of teleportation from the beginning of the game where the player character’s father is missing. When you’re teleported to the boat, it’s just hanging out in the water. Is the boat actually somewhere in the physical world? It went missing, right? Maybe this is a nitpick, but I just don’t want to be wondering about time-travel stuff in a horror game.
Maybe I’m being a little harsh on this game. This was made by a small team, after all. It’s not entirely fair to compare it to something like Resident Evil. It does have the atmosphere down. The sound design is pretty solid and the visuals do feel unsettling in many ways. However, there’s one way that the game could’ve been great independent of budget: Writing. I mean, sure, it was pretty much inevitable that the voice acting would suck (I still love it for the goofiness), but the actual words the characters say could’ve been good. I know this is a Japanese game originally and maybe the Japanese version has incredible writing, but in English, the writing is very disappointing. In horror/puzzle games, it’s often fun to interact with an item and get some flavor text. Maybe it tells us a bit about the character. Maybe it paints a more vivid picture of the world than the limited graphics can display. In Echo Night, 9/10 times you interact with something, it says, “There is a ___.” You look at a chair? “There is a chair.” You check out a bed? “There is a bed.” This is not hyperbole, almost everything that isn’t absolutely tied to solving a puzzle has this kind of description. Could they not be bothered to write something else?!? Did they only have a week to localize the game? I don’t know, but it hurts the final product, and it’s truly a shame.
Echo Night is passable. It’s pretty rough around the edges, something that could also be said about Armored Core, but that game was unique and more focused on a specific premise. Maybe I’ll play the sequels someday, but I think it’s time I play another Fromsoft game. You know, the one that put them on the map for some people when it came out back in the day, where you battle monsters in a brutal world. Yep, it’s finally time. I’m playing King’s Field next! See you then.
Nice little puzzle adventure game. Probably not great if you're going in for horror stuff but other than that and some ps1 jank it's pretty good.
Interesting little point and click on the PS1 that's worth playing if you're interested in FromSoftware's pre-Souls days.
Controls are a little clunky but you can adapt to them pretty quickly. Most of the puzzles are pretty intuitive too and I only had to use a guide once or twice throughout my playthrough.
People call it a horror game and I didn't find it particularly scary but that may be a product of its age and my own desensitization to the genre in general, so your milage on spooks may vary
Worth a play for sure
Controls are a little clunky but you can adapt to them pretty quickly. Most of the puzzles are pretty intuitive too and I only had to use a guide once or twice throughout my playthrough.
People call it a horror game and I didn't find it particularly scary but that may be a product of its age and my own desensitization to the genre in general, so your milage on spooks may vary
Worth a play for sure
Exorcizing a ghost so hard they gain facial features and fucking die
Cute little game with some excelent visuals.
Sad horror adventure by from software. This unique game such a gem of PS1 game library
It was aight. Vibe game. It goes for more somber atmospheric vibes than scare attempts as the game involves talking to the spirits of the already deceased in order for them to rest in peace. Puzzles can be pretty obtuse at a lot of points so a guide might be the way to go. Visually the graphics are really good for PS1, everything is fully rendered in 3D and the environment design is fantastic. It didn't really rock my world or anything too crazy, but it was a solid game to just vibe in.
oh except the gambling hall, that place is the deepest layer of hell
oh except the gambling hall, that place is the deepest layer of hell
o jogo tem seus problemas principalmente quando falamos sobre controle, a jogabilidade é esquisita e muito confusa, porém, o plot é bem interessante e tem mecânicas únicas que eu gosto demais. eu reconheço que não seja uma perfeição, mas eu acho esse jogo muito bom, foi uma experiência única.
Second GOTM finished for October 2022. Controls are borderline unplayable until remapped through something like emulation, and even then the movement feels and looks janky. The story was mildly interesting at first, but just become more and more nonsensical. Some purposefully obtuse goals and item collecting certainly didn't help. The creepy aesthetic helped prop up an otherwise disappointing game.
really cool game with four equally bad endings. i love the atmosphere and all, but it feels like the game loses its unique identity in the last sections, and it's a bit disappointing. everything up to that is really cool, though! i can't say i didn't enjoy my time with the game, so try it out if you're up for a decent puzzle-horror game.
Pretty fun horror adventure game from a bygone era of From Software before they exclusively made Dark Souls.
Videogames strike me as the perfect venue to explore ghost stories, considering that so much of what makes them effective resides in the relationship they establish between the deceased of the tale and the setting in which they haunt. The interactivity and sense of presence provided by games enables the development of a ghost story with the tangibility that other forms of storytelling can't replicate, and its a shame that so much of the use of ghosts in videogames usually amount to simple jumpscares that fail to explore the range of the genre outside of survival horror (Fatal Frame still rules, tho).
For this reason Echo Night peaked my curiosity, with its premise of saving lost souls trapped in a boat that disappeared at sea. Sounds like the perfect setting for a ghost story, right? A doomed cruise ship, filled with the hopes, dreams and fears of people of all ages and social classes left forever unresolved, sailing the open sea for all of eternity, real Titanic shit. Ahhh, it's always the ones you root for that disappoint you the most...
Echo Night's biggest failing to me rests in its inability to make you feel like you are indeed on a ship. Being an adventure game, it's disheartening to witness how little panache Echo Night has to offer regarding the description and detail of its world, being content with explaining to you that a lamp on closer inspection is indeed just a lamp. And it's fine that the budget wasn't there to give the look and sound that would sell the idea, but if I so, I question why they didn't lean instead more on the power of words to do that job for them.
Additionally, while I appreciate the ambition to add intrigue and mystery, the murder plot is needlessly convoluted and detached from the plight of what should have been the main event of the game, the ghosts. Lacking any presence or emotional baggage, the ghosts serve as mere obstacles to tackle with little reason for their existence within the overall story, and minus some forced hostile encounters added to spice up the gameplay, you are left feeling that you are pretty much alone on a deserted ship.
It's an unfair comparison, but I can't give Echo Night a pass when games of its era like Silent Hill managed to be more effective at feeling tragically haunted and at giving life to seemingly empty rooms. Ultimately, the biggest criticism I have for Echo Night is that I fail to see why it had to be a story about ghosts, and why that ghost story had to be set on a ship.
For this reason Echo Night peaked my curiosity, with its premise of saving lost souls trapped in a boat that disappeared at sea. Sounds like the perfect setting for a ghost story, right? A doomed cruise ship, filled with the hopes, dreams and fears of people of all ages and social classes left forever unresolved, sailing the open sea for all of eternity, real Titanic shit. Ahhh, it's always the ones you root for that disappoint you the most...
Echo Night's biggest failing to me rests in its inability to make you feel like you are indeed on a ship. Being an adventure game, it's disheartening to witness how little panache Echo Night has to offer regarding the description and detail of its world, being content with explaining to you that a lamp on closer inspection is indeed just a lamp. And it's fine that the budget wasn't there to give the look and sound that would sell the idea, but if I so, I question why they didn't lean instead more on the power of words to do that job for them.
Additionally, while I appreciate the ambition to add intrigue and mystery, the murder plot is needlessly convoluted and detached from the plight of what should have been the main event of the game, the ghosts. Lacking any presence or emotional baggage, the ghosts serve as mere obstacles to tackle with little reason for their existence within the overall story, and minus some forced hostile encounters added to spice up the gameplay, you are left feeling that you are pretty much alone on a deserted ship.
It's an unfair comparison, but I can't give Echo Night a pass when games of its era like Silent Hill managed to be more effective at feeling tragically haunted and at giving life to seemingly empty rooms. Ultimately, the biggest criticism I have for Echo Night is that I fail to see why it had to be a story about ghosts, and why that ghost story had to be set on a ship.
SUPERIOR!