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[Holey Moley]

Holey Moley Website System Administrator Offline

look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology

Holey Moley says,

Last night I began playing the PSN US version of Echo Night that was released like less than a month or so ago.

I've just never gotten around to EN. For a long time I would play Japanese games, and my enjoyment of them would drop off with a puzzlish game like Echo Night, so I waited, and waited, having never gotten to playing it as a kid.


I was surprised that date on the game was 1999. This could be post-Shadow Tower even, and closer to Sword of Moonlight than any other game. The character models are vaguely Sword of Moonlight like (although) some featuring something like eyeballs.


I really enjoy EN, it feels like King's Field in a new setting more or less. From Software games of this era are like nothing else. I am also surprised to learn just now, sitting down at a computer, that the US Echo Night is the first game in the series. I really expected it to be a situation like with KF2 where the US port is actually the first sequel...

I'm also a little more than surprised about the release dates of Shadow Tower and Echo Night. I remember seeing EN around alongside King's Field, but I guess I was wrong about that. Both of these games came out in and around 1999. I graduated in 2000, and kind of lost track of games for a while around the same time, and I was working too, so I'm surprised I even got in a solid game of Shadow Tower before that time. I don't remember buying it new. Time must have felt super compressed back then.

My guess is I would see EN alongside ST, and not King's Field. I feel like I remember seeing the PS2 Echo Night around that time. But in those days new games would come out yearly, so that's quite possible considering EN2 was passed over for a US release.


I really, really don't like puzzle games. So far the first Echo Night has felt like an adventure with practical puzzles, which I don't consider to be puzzles. But I have a feeling that's going to change before the end of the game, but my overall personal praise for the series will hinge a lot on whether or not it limits itself to practical puzzles. Impractical puzzles just don't exist in real life, and so they detract from the overall vividness of a game for me, and add to the frustration. The only time I experience anything like a video game puzzle in real life is when I am loading the dishwasher!


PS: I really like the artwork in EN, and EN2's artwork looks even better. I really look forward to adding that to SOM's library of art resources for building games. Especially because it tackles different kinds of settings than in King's Field games. I also look forward to adding many of EN's innovations to Sword of Moonlight.


EDITED: I bought EN2 off the Japan PSN last night. It's a decidedly non-From Software looking game. Or maybe it looks a little bit more like a post-PlayStation next-gen From Software game. There seems to be a lot fewer cracks in the level geometry. I'm not sure why those exist in From Software games, and in many PlayStation games, because I remember that many PlayStation games didn't have cracks, although I could be wrong. The manual says Naotoshi Zen (sp?) was only a supervisor; I meant to look at the EN manual and see what his role was there, just as an indicator of whether the game is in-house From Software or not.

At places EN feels like a SOM fan game. EN2 seems somehow more polished than EN but somehow simultaneously less substantial in every way, and more hastily put together.

Formerly "Holy Diver" ("Holy") [Holy will be back as soon as I'm back to full form]