An Odyssey: Echoes of War Reviews

its good, but short or me

If you play this as an rpg, you'll probably be disappointed. But as a Choose Your Own Adventure Novel, it's phenomenal! Now, granted, I came into this a pretty big fan of ancient greek myth already, and I don't know how much fun it'd be with less background knowledge, but I just came of my third play-through and had a fantastic time - actually, a lot more fun than the previous two. The second play-through was arguably the least fun: I mostly did it to get new achievments, was focused on trying to win as many challenges as possible and utterly failed. The thing is, it's really hard to figure out what stats influence what "roll". I don't want to get into spoilers, but for some scenarios I made the same choice every time and still can't figure out why sometimes it fails and sometimes it succeeds. There are also some choices that ended in success multiple times, but had the details changed, so playing the game multiple times actually makes it seem a lot more in-depth than it appears on first play-through. In the first play-through I honestly assumed I was playing as Odysseus and made my choices in early game (such as picking my weapon) purely based on that, and surprisingly, it was my most successful play-through too. But the third, and by far the most fun, was when I got invested in a particular story line early in-game and then just went from there. The story telling is really strong, so if you're playing to get emotionally invested rather than cleverly beat the game, it honestly is great. If you're here without any knowledge of greek myth, looking to beat the game as efficiently as possible, or honestly even understand the mechanics, this is probably not the game for you. But if you're here to enjoy a good story? Absolutely recommend! Edit: I feel like I should also note this is a fairly short game. Since I could skip reading a lot of text on my 2nd and 3rd play through, all three together only take me up to 4.3h of play time -- I think the first play through took a total of 2h, or maybe 3h.

a short read with choices that range from costly to deadly. Highly typical of other yarns that draw from the myths and legends of old. Highly recommended if your into todays endless stories of ego, gore, pain, suffering and loss. Not so recommended if you want something light and pleasant to pass the time.

I enjoyed the humor in the written responses and the payoff with many of the choices. There were some unexpected escalation that surprised me. The inclusive nature was fantastic and shows a replayability that will make it fun in the future. 4/5

I don't usually play CYOA/Text adventure games, but the premise of this game was too good to pass up. The game's writing is excellent, and the protagonist's development over the course of the game is very well done. This is one of the few CYOA stories I've seen where the narrative itself is actually gripping. Moreover, the number and variety of endings is quite impressive. Contrary to some of the other reviews, I felt that the player has a lot of freedom in this game to do what they want to do. I will say this in part seems heavily dependent on the choices you make, and I could see how some endings (particularly the worse ones) feel more constrictive. The author is also clearly very knowledgable about the ancient world and Greek mythology. The game is more than just a retelling of the Odyssey; it also brings in features from other Greek myths and Greek tragedy. For those player's who have a good knowledge of the Classical world, these intertexts are a really nice touch. That said, the game isn't easy, and it will throw some curveballs at you at times. When playing the game, you need to be prepared to not succeed at everything. Some players might get frustrated by this, so it's good to be aware before going in.

A decent game, if one knows the ways of the works of the ancient Greeks. Sometimes, small decisions beget enormous accidents. Sometimes, the world goes awry for seemingly no reason, or your actions are not your own. Sometimes all the pretty things are broken. This is the way of ancient Greek plays; the gods are petty, things go wrong, and everything is a mess. There is a character the gods expect you to play, and fighting this usually ends badly. If one keeps this in mind, the game is good. If one hasn't had to study works in a language a thousand years dead, however, it may be a challenge.

It's difficult to give this a "recommended" vs "not recommended" review, since there are very good things and very bad things about it. The main positives I would list would be the excellent writing and above average character development (for a COG game). However, that's not enough to elevate this to "recommended" for me because the stats are completely broken. For one thing, they don't appear to raise or lower very much after the first few choice, at least not the leadership/strength/speed/etc. ones. I guess those are locked in after the prologue? They certainly were in my game, anyway. I guess there's a way to make this work. But here's the way to NOT make it work: make the stat checks so ludicrously difficult to anticipate and also to pass that you keep failing at everything. Oh, and it's not enough to just be good at one or two things and then just keep relying on those skills, you have to be good at everything because there are lots of multiple checks. Remember how your skills literally never increase after the prologue though? And once you've failed, the "you fail" text is as humiliating as humanly possible. There's no "good try but you just can't do it" here, it's "You fail so hard that you're too ashamed to even give out your name, your crew looks at you with pity and scorn, and then a seagull craps on your head." No thanks.

Stats are misleading. With high sword fighting, I choose to use my sword to free my crew member from the giant but I fail because my swift stat is not high enough? With a high born leader stat I choose to get my crew to work together to shovel the sheep dung but I fail because my humility stat is low? With the Amazon queen, even tho I have high sword fighting, I fail because my strength stat isn't high enough? The scenarios and choices are what I would call landmines. While a choice may be worded as if it favors a certain stat build, you're thrown constant curve balls for having low stats in other areas that aren't even hinted at. Furthermore the game is built where you can really only build up 2 main stats in each area so it requires a lot of meta-gaming knowledge to succeed and that I can not abide.

Let me preface by saying this: I completely support the author of this game, and hope they continue to make more. I'll detail my issues and thoughts below, but if the game is on sale, I wouldn't recommend against trying it out. It's about three or so short hours of playtime, and you could easily go through a second run if you wanted. I did not, but there are reasons for that. (Mainly the ending, which I feel like happened quickly, and with little input from me--but maybe I chose the wrong choice? Maybe it was my fault lmao, and that's totally cool, I just felt like it happened so quickly that I didn't quite understand how in an instant all of it occurred) Pros: super cool old rules of hospitality, timely names, familiar faces, some hard-hitting decisions and truths throughout (I really loved the siren interaction, that was cool) Cons: I felt often that I was cornered into making certain decisions. I understand the story is inspired/based off the original text, but I was lowkey hoping I'd have more flexibility to change the narrative. That's on me for expecting that! One such scene of me being forced into something was the cyclops moment, where I told my crew not to steal anything, and that we were leaving. The cyclops comes, we talk, he gets drunk, and all of a sudden the crew AND me start ransacking his place when I already made it clear that I didn't want to do that. It... was frustrating to say the least. I know it goes this way more or less in the original story, but if so, why present me with the choice of saying I don't want to steal only to show that choice didn't matter mere moments later? There are a few circumstances I felt had a similar outcome like this, that left me frustrated and feeling like I wasn't really making any meaningful choices other than if I was being a heroic bully or a depressed saint. Let me be clear: I loved moments in this, specifically the character Circe was awesome, and the sirens were interesting to see. This writer for sure can craft a story, but I feel like they were just a bit boxed in with this. I look forward to seeing what they create next, but for now, I'd say give this one a pass unless it's on sale.