Somber Echoes Steam Charts & Stats

Did my first run on the Xbox Series X and second on PC. Enjoyed my time with this 2.5D metroidvania which can quite challenging at some points. Interesting boss designs, nice sci-fi sceneries influenced by Greek mythology and a good soundtrack. The map is huge and there's enough to explore. The story is told by narration, memories that can be found and by environment. But I have some observations; some of the later platforming puzzles to open Nocturnal gates can bring some trial and error, I could use a 4th Aether Core on a few of them. The 1st boss is a difficulty spike when confronted underleveled, getting the parry right can help a lot, but sometimes it doesn't and you still will get hit (I missed the dodge roll a little bit here) While progressing in the 2nd phase of the final boss the whole floor will be covered in lava, less would have been nice. Confront this boss when everything is fully upgraded. I played the console version mostly through streaming via the Xbox App on Windows 10, It sometimes suffers from input lag. For example, while zapping from one aether lantern to another, also from a supernova, pressing the left trigger is not registered and I can start over again. Reconnectiing the USB-cable to the controller solved issue this every time. Did not had this problem on the PC-version. The game runs surprisingly smooth on the Sapphire Radeon RX-590 8 GB Nitro Edition (combined with a Core i7 6700K), Rendering settings were automatically set on "Epic" and FPS rates varied between 70 and 90..It runs from a Samsung T9 external SSD drive (4 Gb) and I use a 25 inch Asus TUF Gaming monitor set on 144 hz refresh rate. I wonder why the recommended system requirements are so high. Somber Echoes is challenging at some moments but not too hard if it comes to completing the story and reaching 100% completion (ingame and for achievements/trophies). It would be nice if DLC is planned for this game and I hope the soundtrack will be sold separately in the future.

I'm about half way through the game, but I can already tell I like it. Having weighed in the pros and cons, I can definitely recommend it. Here are the things that I liked, and disliked, about this game. [b] Liked [/b] - Smooth and responsive controls. Movement feels natural and intuitive, very important in games like this. - Accessible UI. Simple yet comprehensive, all the info is there without feeling overwhelming. - Graphics. One of the highlights of the game, the environment looks gorgeous all the time and it has some of the best VFX I have seen in a while. - Audio. Whether it is music or SFX, it is there to underline the mood or specific events, never feels intrusive. - Mechanics. The Aether Lantern makes platforming very fun, and useful when fighting as well. Aiming and throwing the spear is also one of my favourite things to do in this game. - Difficulty. Although there are no difficulty settings, the balance seems just right, nothing stands out. - Lore and story telling. Interesting combination of sci-fi horror with Greek/Roman myths. There is enough depth to carry the narrative without feeling unnecessarily intrusive. Lovely details, like the narrators accent, and the laconic speech, make me think it was all well thought out. [b] Disliked [/b] - Fast travel. It can be a bit of a pain to get to where you want to explore, sometimes the checkpoints are too far, it felt like a chore. Just to make it clear, I think the number of checkpoints are fine, in terms of resting/saving/upgrades, etc. It feels rewarding to survive a lot of things before you find one, as it should. It's just the travelling part that is unnecessarily painful. Maybe introducing more checkpoints just for fast travel, "portals" if you will, would make it feel less annoying. - Enemy variety. The bosses are fine, it's just the regular level enemies that feel repetitive. Once you figure them out, it's just rinse and repeat. What impresses me the most in this game is that it is a case of quality beats quantity, and it was made by a small team.

I don't really play Metroidvania's, but I picked this one up after I watched TheRadBrad playing it and I found it ADDICTING. Didn't want to put it down until I got 100% completion. Thank you for a terrific game!

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.

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.