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.