Echo Night

[Tabonga 1,974]

Anyone else play this?  I rather liked it - it is mostly a slow paced but engaging horror mystery (the voice acting* could have been better - most of the voices sounded like they were on downers and weren't very believeable).  The ending is somewhat jarring in that it consists of a gameplay style that is totally at odds with the rest of the game.

*It is one of the few games where I left the game soundtrack on. 

 

[Rocketship Evan 55]

Its a great game. Very low key and atmospheric.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Rocketship Evan

[MagusSmurf 563]

So there I was thinking “I hear Overblood 2 is pretty neat, I should get around to playing overblood 1 and then it sometime.”

and then I thought “MagusSmurf you idiot nobody likes overblood 1 for anything beyond so bad its good monents why are you considering this when there’s still allegedly decent-to-good stuff even just on PS1 like Galerians and Echo Night # 2 you haven’t played? Or hell, Dino Crisis 2 and Parasite Eve II which you already own?”

and then I thought “wait, what the hell was Echo Night 1 even about? I remember the setting and a few bits and pieces but none about how any of it fit together. Uh. Guess I’m replaying that then.”

then I did that.

6/10 pretty decent game. It’s got a neat atmosphere with some cool moments and I can largely overlook the bad voice acting. Found myself heading for a walkthrough a few too many times though and when I did I felt there was usually some kind of issue or oversight with the game’s design rather than JUST me being dense. And while I liked the macabre story and all, the characters who weren’t William generally ended up sketched too lightly to make much of an impact.

[MagusSmurf 563]

And beat Echo Night 2: The Lord of Nightmares. 6/10

It looks better and it's got some quality of life improvements over the first game but not massively so and it's hard to really call it better overall. We've even got another practically-unsolvable-if-you're-not-a-music-guy puzzle and this one's probably less amenable to trial-error than the first game's. It's technically skippable but the alternate solution locks you out of the best ending (lots of ways to do that actually and yeah that wasn't my favorite design decision either). The haunted mansion setting is much more standard and the main antagonist and final confrontation were less memorable. This one does probably does have generally better characters though.