Echoes, maybe fittingly for a game split between two worlds, can be equally compelling and frustrating. It engages novel ideas for the franchise — inserting some survival horror mechanics into series that should be ripe for them — and taking on noticeable creative risks with its doubled worlds and augmented difficulty. But it wears out its welcome well before the end with an overlong fetch quest that fails to recapture the flow of the first game's artifact hunt, and its world, while atmospheric and gloomy, only really has one aesthetically-arresting zone. Couple that with one of the worst final boss fights I've ever played and generally overburdened combat throughout, and it's a hard game to recommend to anyone who isn't already deep into the series' marginalia.