Echo Generation Reviews
Echo Generation honestly feels like it could have been one of this year’s great indie games, but the developer's inspiration from 90s adventure games ended up being both a boon and a curse. It has a brilliantly refined style and atmosphere that provides a sense of nostalgia. It’s eclecticism in its music, art style, and enemy variety also worked to keep it fresh and engaging, but the frustrating balancing and dated puzzle implementation sullied its more immersive aspects, and can’t be overlooked.
t’s beautiful to look at and has an engaging turn based combat system but Echo Generation has a few core issues that undermine its best qualities. An unfocused narrative leads to confused and unclear quest lines which, combined with some curious design choices, means the game doesn’t manage to fulfil its obvious potential.
Echo Generation has potential to be an indie darling. Perhaps if it eased up its combat prompts and set some clear goals in its storyline, then it wouldn’t be a pretty but aimless experience that it is now.
At the end of the day, this is one of the games that doesn't try to reinvent the wheel or appear more than the rest of its peers, but it also lacks a strong personality and a concrete reason for existing. It's difficult to recommend it to veteran players of the genre, as they may well get bored with the ease of the gameplay, but it's a strong recommendation for those who don't know turn-based RPGs, being a good entry point to discover better and unique games.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Through a lean and straightforward adventure, Echo Generation: Midnight Edition is a perfect choice for anyone who wants an adventure tailor-made for newcomers to RPGs, or even video games in general. But some details, or even lack of ambition (if the developers were looking for that) make it a difficult recommendation for more experienced players or for those looking for challenges.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Voxel-rich graphics. A high-spirited Stranger Things vibe. Clever turn-based quick-time-event combat. But also dopey dialogue, endless fetch-questing, and weirdly placed grind. Echo Generation looks great, tastes half-baked.
There’s a lot to like about this game. The setting is intriguing, the characters are fun, and the art style can be spectacular. However, problems with some pretty core concepts bring the overall experience down. In conclusion, while Echo Generation has solid visuals and music, these are sadly out shadowed by clunky combat and frustrating game design.
Anybody who enjoys a sci-fi yarn that blends Stand by Me with The X-Files, or grew up in the ’90s, will find plenty to enjoy here.
There are so many odd design choices in Echo Generation that grinds my gears. However, the more frustrating game design elements were often overshadowed by how much I enjoyed exploring the world, taking in the fantastic art design and listening to the game's music.
Echo Generation is a fun homage to several different flavours of genre greats. An exceptional aesthetic and sound design balances the eerie with the nostalgic well, and good writing goes some way to making up for dull mechanics and lacklustre progression.
Playing Echo Generation conveys a chiaroscuro of sensations. You are impressed by the beautiful graphics, a very inspired soundtrack and an effective and creative turn-based combat system. On the other hand, however, the numerous structural limitations of a product that with a few more tricks could have proved even more brilliant than it turns out to be in practice do not go unnoticed.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Echo Generation is a gorgeous turn-based adventure game with an awesome retro vibe. It doesn’t always live up to the adventure it promises, with combat sometimes feeling too lengthy or repetitive, and it’s not always clear what you should be doing, but if you’re browsing that Xbox Game Pass library and wondering what to try next, or if you’re looking for something that captures that sense of childhood adventure, you should give Echo Generation a try.
Echo Generation is visually striking, with a lot of intriguing concepts and solid combat and gameplay at its core. Unfortunately, a lack of focus with the narrative holds it back from being a truly impressive RPG. The boss battles alone might be worth the price of admission, and there's still other bits to enjoy, but those looking for more meat would best be off searching for another tale of adventurous kids from decades past.
There’s a lot I like about Echo Generation. The adolescent youth in sci-fi suburbia story is really charming and aided thoroughly by the game’s gorgeous voxel visuals and delicious soundtrack. There were definitely some parts held down by archaic design decisions, such as the utter lack of a hint system or direction and the need to grind experience, especially on new party members. However, Echo Generation also has a lot of fun tried and true RPG design to it as well. All-in-all, it makes for a game where the good journey, music, and combat will likely overcome most of the distracting missteps you may come across.
Echo Generation: Midnight Edition has a great voxel look, great references, and a fun story, but be prepared to do a lot of fetch quests and grinding to progress!
If the game’s pacing, its toolsets and some of the missed opportunities mentioned throughout this review were in place, the score here would be much higher. Even with rose-tinted glasses on as someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s, I can’t bring myself to overlook Echo Generation’s glaring pitfalls, which is a shame because it nails nostalgia and reference and feels. It’s just a slog to pull those things out of it, and then some. Still, I see a bright future for this studio and the potential for this as a series moving forward, because there’s a lot to build on here. It also begins life on the right voxel foot as a Game Pass offering, so those pitfalls immediately just become the grind they are with very little money handed over on your part.
So overall, fans of RPGs, fans of the occult, fans of aliens, ghosts and crazy science experiments, I would seriously recommend checking out Cococucumber’s Echo Generation especially over Halloween which is the perfect time for this kind of story. Well written dialog and an interactive and engaging combat system supported by an amazing soundtrack, this is going onto my Game of the Year list.
All in all, there’s a lot of heart to this little gem. It’s got some rough edges, particularly in its refusal to hold players’ hands. Players might find they need the extra help, and for that, we’ll have a plethora of guides to help smooth over that issue. But the fact does remain that there’s a lack of guidance where it counts here. It’s worth keeping in mind that this game doesn’t want, nor need, to take itself seriously, so someone hoping for a long-lasting, deep plot should approach with caution. Lastly, if there’s one thing someone could take from this game, it’s that voxel’s back baby, and Cococucumber proves it in spades. The shading, atmosphere, and vivid coloring make the whole world pop in ways that only Cococucumber could’ve pulled off. If you’re in the mood for an ’80s-inspired sci-fi adventure with solid combat and beautiful, voxel-based visuals, Echo Generation has exactly what you’re looking for.
That said, Echo Generation is a fun, unique way to spend 8 or so hours, and I don't regret my time with it at all. It's a charming experience full of engaging gameplay and fun secrets to discover, and should a sequel ever come out I'll be first in line to discover those secrets as well.