tdstr
2019
everyone in this game talks like an r/furry_irl user but it gets points for making the demon goat guy ace like now i can self project!!
edit: nvm im just gay
edit: nvm im just gay
2021
i don't think a game has ever gone from "pretty good 7 or 8/10" to "reduced me to a blubbering mess" that quickly before. and "shit that makes you cry" is like, my favorite genre!
there's a bit to be said about the blinking mechanic and how janky it can be at times, and the game doesn't give you as much agency as i'd have liked surrounding one specific character i didn't care much for, but who fuckin cares. shit made me cry. not get choked up, not tear up, full-on fuckin cry. absolutely insane
there's a bit to be said about the blinking mechanic and how janky it can be at times, and the game doesn't give you as much agency as i'd have liked surrounding one specific character i didn't care much for, but who fuckin cares. shit made me cry. not get choked up, not tear up, full-on fuckin cry. absolutely insane
2021
cool enough slots rougelike kind of thing. decent for a couple rounds, def check it out if you got it in one of the itch bundles but it does kinda wear out pretty quickly. good if you're not expecting much from it
2022
didn't expect it to be for me, it wasn't for me. played at request of a few of my friends and got it steam shared. played like 2 hours and i had fun killing some random boss in some cave but basically everything else in the game 1-3 shots you and i know thats the point so yeah, not for me. can definitely see it """objectively""" being a game with a lot of work put into it but i just cant see myself ever willingly picking this up again
played 2 chapters, i could see it might pick up a bit in chapter 3 but the intermediary gameplay is so grating i really don't wanna boot it up again. "talk to everyone about everything" gameplay is already just really not fun to me but when asking the same person the same thing multiple times is often needed to progress it makes for a particularly miserable experience
made me realize the part i like about sonic adventure 1 is the fact that i don't have to play like half of the game if i don't want to
also the knuckles stages suck this time, every change they made to the mechanics from a1 made it actively worse
also the knuckles stages suck this time, every change they made to the mechanics from a1 made it actively worse
2015
i get the appeal but its implementation of a lot of stuff (particularly conveyor belts at corners) feels waayyyy too jank, it feels like i'm fighting against the engine. i can tell this problem is just gonna get worse as the game ramps up in difficulty so, uh, i'm good
2020
wait how did this come out after rusty lake hotel this was like a million times jankier
2013
perfectly fine platformer game with plenty of cool moments, that is, until you reach the 3rd level's "boss fight". fuck that shit i was stuck there for like 20 minutes and once i finally got past it, it just threw me the same thing but even harder. fuck outta here
2013
can't really speak on this game's quality as a bullet hell game but as a rhythm game it's just not all that good. frankly this game's biggest downfall is its soundtrack, i'm not really sure who thought a folktronica + chiptune soundtrack would work for a BULLET HELL ULTRA HARD RHYTHM GAME. not that these genres are bad on their own, but they really don't fit into the context of this sort of game, and skipping through the levels, locked and unlocked, it never really seems to get better. where's the j-core? where's the techno? etc etc
this of course lead me to spending most of my time with this game with the auto-gen levels, which, of course, are autogenerated and come with the problems that that always seems to come with in rhythm games. they don't really match up with the music at all aside from maybe a couple moments per song and the difficulty per track is deterministic which leads to a sort of crapshoot if you're as mediocre at bullet hell as I am. i mean even vib ribbon had this one figured out in, like, 1999. plenty of levels seemed way easier or harder than they needed to be, and since there's no slider to change that you're just kind of stuck with that if you want to play that song.
so your two options are: play levels that are properly mapped but the music is so underwhelming for this kind of game you get bored, or play levels where the music is properly energetic but that don't really match up with the music in any meaningful way and also may be dirt easy or way too hard. if you like bullet hell games maybe give this a try but if you're in it for the rhythm part just go for something else
this of course lead me to spending most of my time with this game with the auto-gen levels, which, of course, are autogenerated and come with the problems that that always seems to come with in rhythm games. they don't really match up with the music at all aside from maybe a couple moments per song and the difficulty per track is deterministic which leads to a sort of crapshoot if you're as mediocre at bullet hell as I am. i mean even vib ribbon had this one figured out in, like, 1999. plenty of levels seemed way easier or harder than they needed to be, and since there's no slider to change that you're just kind of stuck with that if you want to play that song.
so your two options are: play levels that are properly mapped but the music is so underwhelming for this kind of game you get bored, or play levels where the music is properly energetic but that don't really match up with the music in any meaningful way and also may be dirt easy or way too hard. if you like bullet hell games maybe give this a try but if you're in it for the rhythm part just go for something else
This review contains spoilers
wow, uhhh... i hate to be harsh on a game some of my friends clearly like a lot but this is not good??
the first playthrough is pretty miserable to sit through. if you were on the internet in 2017 and know the twist, it's a painful wait until the game gets "good". even ignoring that, none of these characters have any sense of depth (Monika aside, but at this point in the game she's still acting pretty bland). You can tell the game is trying to jab at dating sim tropes, but it doesn't mean anything when it just uses the tropes anyways. "Wow, isn't it weird that in dating sims every single person here wants to go out with you?" and then the game does exactly that without really expanding on it. The point of the first half is obviously to lull you into a false sense of security, but for me personally, had I not known the twist I probably would have dropped it before I even got there. Every day at the club offers basically nothing if you're not in it for the wish fulfillment, which I'm certainly not. And even then, as I said before, like none of these characters have any depth to them so I'd think it'd be pretty hard to really care about any of them (foreshadowing: this comes back to hurt the game later on!)
When you get to the second playthrough and the game goes into "hyperrealistic blood" mode, the game gets a tad better, but it's still really held back by the trope-laden writing. Even with an entire main character missing, a lot of the dialogue is recycled from the first playthrough without the option to skip most of it. There's a couple interesting moments around here, particularly when Monika starts overwriting the script and changing what other characters say, but 80-90% of the time the story's still consumed by boring and tropey dialogue. The conclusion of it, that being Yuri's death and the multi-day time passage that comes with it, is definitely the best (and boldest) moment of the game but it really doesn't justify the 2 and a half hours of mediocrity and eye-roll-worthy dialogue that precedes it.
This is the point where the game goes all out on breaking the fourth wall and Monika talks directly to the player. I don't think breaking the fourth wall this thoroughly necessarily dooms the game's universe and characters, but when pretty much the only thing shown of any of them doesn't broach beyond establishing that X character is supposed to be Y trope (shy edgy girl, childhood friend, cutesy but brash) it's not very hard to believe that they're programs and that they don't actually have free will. This extends to Monika as well; all of the characters, Monika included, are pretty obviously designed just to fall for the MC. Monika discovering the rules of her universe didn't "give" her sentience, she's just doing the exact same thing she's programmed to do, just with a new tool at her disposal. This makes deleting her character file (something she all but tells you to explicitly do) a pretty easy thing to do.
The last section of the game is just another repeat of the first day. Monika's gone but once again it pans out basically the same way (but not exactly so you're not allowed to click the skip button). Eventually Monika comes back and deletes everything again and plays piano and sings a song to the player. The end. I know there's some other minor endings but I'm not going to play them because this is as far as most people play anyways.
==============
DDLC, I'm sure, is better when you go in blind. But if the only draw in a piece of writing is the fact that certain twists happen, and not how they happen, how is the game any different than a Wikipedia plot synopsis? DDLC is a game that has some good ideas but utterly fumbles its execution time and time again throughout the whole playthrough. Horror is much like comedy in that it needs a buildup for the punchline to hit. DDLC could have used the first act to slowly build up the horror (and admittedly the only time this game really does this right is at the very end of act 1 during the leadup to the death of sayori) but act 2 is filled with punchlines with no leadup. The game is still happy dating sim whatever and then a character sprite is glitched out oohh spooky before things go right back to normal, just in time for the next scary moment 2 minutes from now. Things happen but there's no gravity to any of it and before you can blink it's all deleted anyways. I think a lot of people like this game because "oh look X fucked up thing happened that means its dark!!" but the game has no tact in handling these things. Two characters commit suicide but you don't even get a tangible reason why, just a vague "whoops monika sure did mess things up right?" (the most you get is sayori's confession that she's depressed, but it's clear that this is something Monika added, not something that has always been true). It's hard to sympathize with any of them when you don't really know anything about them. The game doesn't give the characters themselves the light of day, only the archetypes they're meant to represent, and as a consequence there's no gravity to anything that happens.
tl;dr: the first half is boring no gf wish fulfillment and the second half is creepypasta. ddlc half-asses both and they're both worse in combination because of it.
the first playthrough is pretty miserable to sit through. if you were on the internet in 2017 and know the twist, it's a painful wait until the game gets "good". even ignoring that, none of these characters have any sense of depth (Monika aside, but at this point in the game she's still acting pretty bland). You can tell the game is trying to jab at dating sim tropes, but it doesn't mean anything when it just uses the tropes anyways. "Wow, isn't it weird that in dating sims every single person here wants to go out with you?" and then the game does exactly that without really expanding on it. The point of the first half is obviously to lull you into a false sense of security, but for me personally, had I not known the twist I probably would have dropped it before I even got there. Every day at the club offers basically nothing if you're not in it for the wish fulfillment, which I'm certainly not. And even then, as I said before, like none of these characters have any depth to them so I'd think it'd be pretty hard to really care about any of them (foreshadowing: this comes back to hurt the game later on!)
When you get to the second playthrough and the game goes into "hyperrealistic blood" mode, the game gets a tad better, but it's still really held back by the trope-laden writing. Even with an entire main character missing, a lot of the dialogue is recycled from the first playthrough without the option to skip most of it. There's a couple interesting moments around here, particularly when Monika starts overwriting the script and changing what other characters say, but 80-90% of the time the story's still consumed by boring and tropey dialogue. The conclusion of it, that being Yuri's death and the multi-day time passage that comes with it, is definitely the best (and boldest) moment of the game but it really doesn't justify the 2 and a half hours of mediocrity and eye-roll-worthy dialogue that precedes it.
This is the point where the game goes all out on breaking the fourth wall and Monika talks directly to the player. I don't think breaking the fourth wall this thoroughly necessarily dooms the game's universe and characters, but when pretty much the only thing shown of any of them doesn't broach beyond establishing that X character is supposed to be Y trope (shy edgy girl, childhood friend, cutesy but brash) it's not very hard to believe that they're programs and that they don't actually have free will. This extends to Monika as well; all of the characters, Monika included, are pretty obviously designed just to fall for the MC. Monika discovering the rules of her universe didn't "give" her sentience, she's just doing the exact same thing she's programmed to do, just with a new tool at her disposal. This makes deleting her character file (something she all but tells you to explicitly do) a pretty easy thing to do.
The last section of the game is just another repeat of the first day. Monika's gone but once again it pans out basically the same way (but not exactly so you're not allowed to click the skip button). Eventually Monika comes back and deletes everything again and plays piano and sings a song to the player. The end. I know there's some other minor endings but I'm not going to play them because this is as far as most people play anyways.
==============
DDLC, I'm sure, is better when you go in blind. But if the only draw in a piece of writing is the fact that certain twists happen, and not how they happen, how is the game any different than a Wikipedia plot synopsis? DDLC is a game that has some good ideas but utterly fumbles its execution time and time again throughout the whole playthrough. Horror is much like comedy in that it needs a buildup for the punchline to hit. DDLC could have used the first act to slowly build up the horror (and admittedly the only time this game really does this right is at the very end of act 1 during the leadup to the death of sayori) but act 2 is filled with punchlines with no leadup. The game is still happy dating sim whatever and then a character sprite is glitched out oohh spooky before things go right back to normal, just in time for the next scary moment 2 minutes from now. Things happen but there's no gravity to any of it and before you can blink it's all deleted anyways. I think a lot of people like this game because "oh look X fucked up thing happened that means its dark!!" but the game has no tact in handling these things. Two characters commit suicide but you don't even get a tangible reason why, just a vague "whoops monika sure did mess things up right?" (the most you get is sayori's confession that she's depressed, but it's clear that this is something Monika added, not something that has always been true). It's hard to sympathize with any of them when you don't really know anything about them. The game doesn't give the characters themselves the light of day, only the archetypes they're meant to represent, and as a consequence there's no gravity to anything that happens.
tl;dr: the first half is boring no gf wish fulfillment and the second half is creepypasta. ddlc half-asses both and they're both worse in combination because of it.
2018
ehh, i can see the purpose for it when it came out (before echo was finished) but it barely touches on anything horror/drama-wise (which are generally my favorite bits from echo) and the plot stuff is already explained in the final version of echo, so there's very little reason to play this now imo. some of the character moments/lore stuff are nice though, however miniscule.
the sidestories they added in the 1.01 update of echo are much better as far as "more of the same vibe" goes, but this is alright if you're interested in seeing a peek into the teen years of the echo crew
the sidestories they added in the 1.01 update of echo are much better as far as "more of the same vibe" goes, but this is alright if you're interested in seeing a peek into the teen years of the echo crew
2015
i originally wrote a review of this that was basically just a stream of consciousness thought dump i had when i finished it (i'll put a pastebin in the comments) but it kind of goes over some themes and stuff that show up in the game that i think are cooler to discover yourself as you play, so i'm rewriting it (also because this game has been on my mind nonstop since i finished it and so i've had time to think about why i enjoyed it so much)
Echo is an extremely well written horror/character drama story--it's a little funny that this game filled with furries contains some of the most realistic and human writing i've seen in a story in quite some time. this is a very confrontational piece of art for something that vaguely looks like a dating sim; all of these characters have very real and lasting problems that you're not going to fix in the span of a week and the dynamics between all of them are all very very interesting, both to watch unfold and to pick apart after the fact.
and that's saying nothing about the horror in this game--it's extremely harrowing and it's constantly tense. echo likes to deliver both tense character moments and tense horror moments with a certain method of description, where each line of text is a successive gut punch after the last. it's a style of writing that fits the game really really well and makes the moments with lots of description or internal monologue really pop out. it's the sort of narrative where a simple plot summary misses a huge amount of what makes it good, and yet the rest of the story never feels like it's overburdened by level of detail.
i could gush about every aspect of this story for hours; how tightly-woven everything is, how it takes advantage of player expectations while making an effort to remain within its universe, how good the player choices are, but i think i should probably just stop for now and tell you to play this game. it's free. heed the content/age warnings, they're not a joke, this game can get pretty heavy at times. good luck.
--------------------------
1.01 edit: the short stories are cool, definitely play if you're wanting more from echo after you finish, but maybe wait a couple days/weeks as most of them are retellings of stories you hear about over the course of the main game. they're definitely not "necessary", but they capture the feel of the main game pretty well, certainly better than route 65
Echo is an extremely well written horror/character drama story--it's a little funny that this game filled with furries contains some of the most realistic and human writing i've seen in a story in quite some time. this is a very confrontational piece of art for something that vaguely looks like a dating sim; all of these characters have very real and lasting problems that you're not going to fix in the span of a week and the dynamics between all of them are all very very interesting, both to watch unfold and to pick apart after the fact.
and that's saying nothing about the horror in this game--it's extremely harrowing and it's constantly tense. echo likes to deliver both tense character moments and tense horror moments with a certain method of description, where each line of text is a successive gut punch after the last. it's a style of writing that fits the game really really well and makes the moments with lots of description or internal monologue really pop out. it's the sort of narrative where a simple plot summary misses a huge amount of what makes it good, and yet the rest of the story never feels like it's overburdened by level of detail.
i could gush about every aspect of this story for hours; how tightly-woven everything is, how it takes advantage of player expectations while making an effort to remain within its universe, how good the player choices are, but i think i should probably just stop for now and tell you to play this game. it's free. heed the content/age warnings, they're not a joke, this game can get pretty heavy at times. good luck.
--------------------------
1.01 edit: the short stories are cool, definitely play if you're wanting more from echo after you finish, but maybe wait a couple days/weeks as most of them are retellings of stories you hear about over the course of the main game. they're definitely not "necessary", but they capture the feel of the main game pretty well, certainly better than route 65
very very good but i'm like 30 hours in and i'm starting to feel the game drag quite a bit so i'm probably gonna put it down for now. this isn't honestly a new thing for me when it comes to bethesda games because i'm not sure i've actually finished the main story in any of them, lol.
excellent and basically unrivaled sense of progression and i'm fascinated by what this game has to say so I definitely wanna come back to it eventually but the last couple times i've booted it up the magic of the earlier parts of the game just weren't there for me.
is it because i've finally stumbled across enough OP gear that i can now very easily deal with pretty much every enemy i run into? is it because i just got to the point in the main plotline where i have to run around the map to 7 different places and get approval from a bunch of random people? is the cumbersome inventory management finally getting to me? is it because i fell off of playing it for like a week and a half because the guy who's steam library i was aping this from with family sharing was busy with elden ring (lol)? honestly probably all of the above, and i figure i should probably stop playing now before that sours my enjoyment of the first 30 hours of my playthrough
excellent and basically unrivaled sense of progression and i'm fascinated by what this game has to say so I definitely wanna come back to it eventually but the last couple times i've booted it up the magic of the earlier parts of the game just weren't there for me.
is it because i've finally stumbled across enough OP gear that i can now very easily deal with pretty much every enemy i run into? is it because i just got to the point in the main plotline where i have to run around the map to 7 different places and get approval from a bunch of random people? is the cumbersome inventory management finally getting to me? is it because i fell off of playing it for like a week and a half because the guy who's steam library i was aping this from with family sharing was busy with elden ring (lol)? honestly probably all of the above, and i figure i should probably stop playing now before that sours my enjoyment of the first 30 hours of my playthrough
1993
i bet this shit hit different in 1993
regardless it's still relatively cool, although the puzzles can be quite antiquated at times but it's so awesome when you figure one out its not really a huge deal and they kinda balance one another out. of note i did pull up a guide when i felt completely clueless but i tried to only use it when i was at an absolute brickwall and only to get over that one roadblock and then put it down right after. worldbuilding is dope and apparently the puzzles are a bit less obtuse in riven which definitely makes me look forward to that lol
regardless it's still relatively cool, although the puzzles can be quite antiquated at times but it's so awesome when you figure one out its not really a huge deal and they kinda balance one another out. of note i did pull up a guide when i felt completely clueless but i tried to only use it when i was at an absolute brickwall and only to get over that one roadblock and then put it down right after. worldbuilding is dope and apparently the puzzles are a bit less obtuse in riven which definitely makes me look forward to that lol