ECHO Reviews

Patience training. Not fun at all.

This is worth buying purely for the architecture and atmosphere. It feels like you're exploring the last few scenes of Kuberick's 2001: A Space Odyssey combined with the manga Blame. It doesn't overstay its welcome, which is a good thing as the game-play can become repetitive towards the end. I liked how the story doesn't explain itself in great detail and allows for a degree of interpretation. I wish there was more quiet time to explore the palace and become lost in its infinite awe, as opposed to constantly evading the ever present threat of the "Echoes". This is almost an example of high-art when it comes to video games, but some of the generic tropes prevents it from being so. This is still an amazing game and definitely worth your time.

Fantastic little stealth game, eerie and contemplative, well acted and a good design hook.

Its only a horror game because its about awful rich people and familial abuse. featuring Objectification but not the one your thinking of

Medicore at best. Good ideas and poor execution. Overall very slow pacing and quite sluggish.

I really tried to enjoy this game, I really did. It clearly has some creativity to it, and I can appreciate a smaller game using its budget wisely with the repeating assets and all, but the story and gameplay are both utter chores to suffer through. I played offline on a Steam Deck for about 5 hours [the time shown next to my review is probably incorrect] and I just kept waiting for it to get better. I had a moment when I realized "oh, so this is the whole game now?" and that's where I stopped. Far too much of the game is "hold control stick forward and walk slowly while characters share vague exposition." When it's time for gameplay at all, it is very dull and very uninspired stealth segments. You don't use tools meaningfully or interact with the world. It's more like rolling dice and hope you're lucky enough to run between enemies and get to the next stage as quickly as possible. The repeating nature of the levels and design recycling doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it is completely at odds with stealth gameplay. For example: It's not clear what cover you can hide behind or what doors you can use. Far too often you'll find yourself in wide open spaces where stealth isn't possible at all. Ammo is very limited, and the more you use your gun the more the enemies use theirs. The more you sprint, the more the enemies will sprint toward you with no chance of evasion. The game forces you to use "stealth" in brightly-lit, wide-open spaces. It just doesn't work. With that said, I appreciate what this game was trying to do. Some of the basic mechanics and ideas are interesting. If you enjoy difficult games which require replaying the same levels over and over, you might enjoy this a lot more than I did. It's not without merit, and might be worth a try on sale.

This game will stick with me for a while. Just sat there in silence after every dialog. Short and concise.