Somber Echoes Steam Charts & Stats

Awesome mechanics. Only 5 hours in and completely hooked. Great Metroidvania action.

The background scenery is the best I've ever seen in a side scroller. Every room seems different and looks beautifully done. 10/10 on the artwork. Great little metroidvania. Combat feels good and exploration is fun. The story is interesting the narration is nice. About 17 hours or so for full completion. Would recommend at full price.

Some extensive sort of narrator's text, fulfilled with names that are hardly recognizable even knowing Greek mythology, is not why you can place "Story Rich" tag at the second place. Requested a refund.

I really wanted to like this game, as it puts an interesting emphasis on traversal. However, story and presentation are drab, uninspiring and nowhere close to instigating. The entire thing is narrated in a wannabe-epic poem fashion laden with Greek mythology overtones... which could work, but doesn't. The way it is, the writing and the narrator do the game a lot more harm than good. And the world itself feels just uninspired. Well-done though the traversal mechanic is, navigating such a world just doesn't feel fun or fulfilling. A shame.

A short well-crafted metroidvania. Well worth the price and a lot of fun.

A resounding yes. Fairly priced Metroidvania that (in my opinion) does everything right, while also not overstaying its welcome. There ARE better Metroidvanias out there, sure, but this one is more than decent and can be completed easily in like a week playing for 2 to 3 hours a day. Took me 11 hours to find everything (I looked up a few missing things, but I got like 95% on my own), the game only says 8 hours, but I trust Steam more. ;) Graphics are fine, soundtrack is fine, voice acting is ... different, but fitting, kinda. Not sure if intentional, or if Eastern European "accent". Level design is also decent, backtracking is EASY thanks to liberally spaced out checkpoints that also act as FT stations, as soon as you lift the lockdown in an area (but even then it's not that bad, since there are other means of fast travel). Combat and platforming feels fluid and pretty much always in control, with the sole exception of the lantern that can sometimes overshoot your target, and certain "energy highways" that your character sometimes doesn't attach to properly. The spear is fun to use, otherwise you only have a basic melee attack, but it's omnidirectional. The parry is fair, but not a break or make mechanic. Mostly used in boss fights. But it's really not that difficult to pull off, especially with upgrades. The bosses are fun and fair to fight against, I only wish there would have been more, but then again, it's a smaller game. Each area has its own unique enemies, and there are tons of hidden rooms you can find relatively easily. The few items I was missing were from moving through an area too quickly or by not checking the map that there was still grey to explore. Different endings, etc. The only thing that annoyed me were the constantly respawning enemies in one section that should in theory no longer constantly respawn, because the boss that spawned them was dead ... and the 2nd main weapon felt entirely useless, unfortunately. I didn't need to grind out anything apart from maybe 10 minutes to get the final upgrades. All in all, this one is decent, solid and doesn't tax you too much. The only thing I'd really like to see improved is the tagging system. You can "rename" rooms or put pins on the map, but the former is relatively useless, the latter disappear after exiting the game. Some actual map annotations would have been cool. Otherwise solid 8.5, maybe even 9/10. For what it is! Didn't experience any crashes, but 2 times when I had already beaten the game and tried to unlock the other endings (also very fair by the way, because the game just puts you back outside the final confrontation area, instead of forcing a restart or NG+, so EVERYTHING is unlockable in 1 playthrough, even after beating the final boss) the screen would simply turn black and the only way to fix this was to forcibly terminate the game. No progress was lost this way, but still, might want to look into that.

I guess it's a 6/10 for me. This game is nothing special, but also it's not tragic. I recommend it only if you really don't have anything else on your radar.

This brings back some serious Super Metroid nostalgia. It's nothing crazy, super fancy, or over-the-top. This is a metroidvania through and through. Tight controls, interesting lore and story, fun without an insane difficulty, and a well-crafted, interconnected world. Each area is visually distinct with assets being similar enough to spot puzzles and secrets. Music is great and matches the aesthetic, genre, and story. It's honestly a shame I can't find it anywhere for purchase! The story, if you know your Greek mythology, is a great nod to the myths of Olympus and the interconnected stories of the very human gods (especially all the infidelity). The setting is also an interesting mix of Classical period and Science Fiction, bordering on Space Fantasy, which fits as a love letter to Metroid (especially with an FMC) and with a respectful retelling of old Greek myths. If you like Metroidvanias, pick this one up and enjoy at least 10 hours of great gameplay.

TLDR, if you absolutely [u][i][b]NEED[/b][/i][/u] a new metroidvania this checks that box, but honestly, you're better off just replaying Shadow Complex or another, far better title. I was initially sold on the trailer showing off the movement tech and indeed the movement is fairly solid. But that’s about where the good ends. What starts off as a standard metroidvania quickly devolves into mediocre and ends poorly. A lot of the other Steam reviews accurately suggest this as a 6/10 game. It’s not good, it’s not really that bad, but it’s unfortunately a solid framework/skeleton with varying degrees of execution. At the outset, the game does the common metroidvania practice of dumping you into it and letting you go on your way, but it never evolves past this. Some games prioritize exploration rather than guiding you where to go, but this one feels like it goes too far in that direction, often leaving you running headlong into dead ends and staring at the map for multiple minutes to try and figure out where you’re supposed to be heading. The map design isn’t great but it does eventually become enjoyable to traverse in part after unlocking enough movement powers. That said, it’s never all that [i]fun[/i] to go running around and backtracking and without the fast travel it would be arduous and further ruin the game’s pacing. The movement feels good for the most part aside from some late game overly exacting platforming requirements. It also ties into the combat as some of the movement tech is useful, but unfortunately that’s the end of the good with the combat. The basic attacks feel lackluster at best and infuriating at its worst moments. There’s a spear you can throw as a ranged attack that is horrible to aim and use, often missing your target because you were holding the left stick to move while attempting to quickly throw it. You also have to retrieve it and doing so is a frustrating affair in the midst of combat and an annoying one outside of it, especially if you’ve missed and it’s gone sailing to some other part of the screen. There’s also a bow that I literally only used once because it burns a significant chunk of health to use and I never found myself ever needing it after its tutorial. Adding to the unfortunate combat woes are the upgrades or lack thereof. One of the best parts of a metroidvania to me is traversing the map, getting into nooks and crannies, and finding the dozens of tiny incremental upgrades for your gear. Unfortunately, [i]Somber Echoes[/i] eschews this by having extremely rare upgrade materials for your items scattered around infrequently, and the upgrades themselves need to be purchased at save points with the material [b]and[/b] a currency. Enemies tend to drop said currency in small amounts but the primary source tends to come from crystals or found survivors that take place of those incremental upgrades. Unfortunately, that leads to the problem of having thousands of upgrade currency with nothing to upgrade due to a lack of material, which is impossibly frustrating. Similar to that, the narrative is annoyingly doled out piecemeal in terrible fashion. The story itself is told via fromsoftware style drips of information you pick up in disjointed fashion and is difficult to parse which, in turn, makes it difficult to care about. In total it’s a fairly novel interpretation of Greek mythology but it was only revealed upon either completion of the game or a secret room that gives away the twist. However, the actual written words are awful. “Like this, most of the sentences in the game go.” I don’t know if it was a translation/localization issue or a conscious decision to make it sound “interesting” or “archaic,” but it’s impossibly frustrating to listen to/read and it persists in nearly every line of dialog in the game. The game also suffers technically. The hitboxes are a little weird, swings feel off, one of the most commonly used traversal powers tanks the framerate by about 20 FPS any time it’s in use and makes any combat or platforming around it far more difficult and unwieldy than it needs to be. The game isn’t ugly but it’s not something worth looking at from either an artistic or technical standpoint. It's just overall an unfortunately sub-par product and I wish the developers had more time and money to make it a truly great game. I’d like to think that a second outing could see some of the game’s massive shortcomings shored up but these days this industry sees whole studios who create successful games shuttered, so I can’t help but feel that this may be an unfortunate misstep that doesn’t afford them the opportunity to improve and come out with a far better title.

This game looked promising so I got it on discount to give it a fair shot. I was drawn in by the promise of perfect deflections, but was often dissatisfied. Overall maybe a 6/10 for me. Not horrible by any means but I found myself more frustrated and annoyed than enjoying the game. For an indie title I hope it means better things to come. I found the bosses tedious and unnecessarily punishing yet at the same time ridiculously easy. I trivialized most of the bosses by killing them in less than 30 seconds with in-game weapons and mechanics, but only after figuring out how to mitigate the frustrating aspects long enough to get my damage in. i didn't get the 'I did it!' feeling after beating any of the bosses. Every time I had the same "Ugh. Finally" feeling. Hitboxes and deflection timings were strange and unnatural to me as a soulslike/sekiro parry veteran. They feel like they need significantly more attention to perfect. For how large the map is, the powerups and items feel very frequent yet the rewards dont feel satisfying. Same with the enemies. There could have been significantly more enemies and varied enemy types but for most of my run I feel like I saw the same 5 things. There was only 8 bosses too which was really underwhelming. I was expecting at least ten with solid enjoyable fights but what I got felt more like annoying minibosses constantly tugging on my shirt like, "Hey! Listen! Better things are coming *Wink wink*" but then they didn't and kept being the same annoying stuff in different wrappings. My experience wasnt completely negative though! I do like the art style and the set dressings are a lot of fun. The environments and particles and lighting do look really pretty but are the least of my concern when playing a game. I would rather play a low poly game with incredible gameplay than something of a higher fidelity that feels like too much budget was put into art instead of design. I would say this game is worth it but only if you get it on discount for maybe 10$ for a quick 5-10 hour experience.