The first Echo Generation was a nice little distraction that came out a few years ago. The art style made it look like the world and characters were built out of Lego bricks that helped give the story’s Goonies-meets-Costume-Quest posturing some real flare.
The real problem was that the light RPG system didn’t give me much to dig into. I was happy for the developers that the game seems to have done well enough to spawn a sequel that was promoting a more elaborate combat system and more iteration on the art. I am less happy to see that they released a Midnight edition of the first game that has very obvious AI art all over the over.
My advice, if one of the strongest aspects of your game is your unique art style – maybe don’t make people question that by using generic cover screens.
Anyway, I think those paragraphs gives a clear enough understanding of where I was when I started playing Echo Generation 2, might as well start the review.
The first thing that is apparent is the advances that Echo Generation 2 has made in terms of its visuals and its inspiration. The Character models are more detailed, more expressive and the atmosphere is more akin to the later seasons of Stranger Things. There is an escaped psychic girl that makes enemies’ heads explode, blood splatters everywhere and the overall monster design is more grotesque.
The combat is still instanced and turn-based, but it now has an assortment of cards to build out into decks.
In the beginning it is pretty straightforward – there are cards that do damage and there are cards that grant armour. Each turn the player can play one card from their hand and then enter a Quick Time Event to mitigate some of the damage that enemies might deal to them.
As the characters level up and explore, more tactics open up. Each character gets the opportunity to play more than one card per turn, and the cards themselves get more complex. Many of the cards offer status effects that hamper the enemy, like making them take poison damage, or reduce their defence temporarily. There are also better defensive options allowing for high evade chances, health regeneration etc.
A curious variation that encourages building larger decks is that some cards can only be used a certain number of times during a fight. This doesn’t matter in shorter skirmishes, but during longer boss battles there are added sets of tactics to consider – do I use the poison card now, or wait until the enemy is more vulnerable?
Some enemies also have an overshield – this overshield makes them more resistant to damage and requires that the player use cards with matching symbols to the ones above its head to destroy the shield.
This should encourage customising the deck in preparation for fights, but I was able to kill bosses without doing it.
Most of the challenges feel this way – they are interesting ideas, but there is no reason to really engage with them. At least, in that if you fail, you keep all XP progress and can simply grind fights until you exceed the level of it. I can see the appeal for certain players, but for me it just flattens the whole experience.
I started playing this on the ROG Ally prior to release, the problem was that it crashed all the time, so I had to stop. I can imagine if this gets fixed this would actually be a good way to play the game. If you enjoy that sort of thing.
ROG ALLY CORNER
The same can be said for figuring out the optimal card build for encounters, you can do that, or just stick to your preferred build and grind (or not, because a lucky run will have you win anyway) a level.
Echo Generation 2 ends up being a missed opportunity. It could have improved on the original, but instead it is convoluted without driving the player to meaningfully engage with these.
Conclusion
Echo Generation 2 is a pretty adventure that doesn’t have a particularly compelling hook.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
