Echo Generation: Midnight Edition [Review]
Nostalgic RPG Echo Generation gets remastered in new Midnight Edition with various improvements.
Echo Generation: Midnight Edition. Credit: Cococucumber
Cococucumber has released Echo Generation: Midnight Edition, a remaster of their turn-based RPG adventure. The game follows the hero and their sister as they investigate weird events in their small Canadian hometown. What’s going on a the top secret research facility on the outskirts? Does their father’s disappearance a couple years prior have anything to do with it? The game has a distinctly kooky Stranger Things vibe and an obvious, heavy Earthbound influence as the kids face off with robots, ghosts, aliens, and more.
Echo Generation has two main components to its gameplay: adventure game exploration and turn-based active RPG combat. You’ll explore Maple Town and its surroundings, solving item based trading puzzles, doing quests for different people in trade for items or keys you need to progress. Sometimes I ran in circles trying to figure out how to get what I needed, but it didn’t take me long to figure out. The Midnight Edition’s new quest log feature doubles as a hint system.
Echo Generation: Midnight Edition. Credit: Cococucumber
RPG combat is similar to the style popularized by the Paper Mario series. Combat is turn based with an active timing element that requires you to time button presses, mash buttons, input directions, and more in Quick Time Events in order to increase attack power or block some damage. Succeeding in these QTEs is crucial; the fights are much harder if you fail.
Throughout Maple Town, you’ll find comic books that will award your characters powerful special moves of different types. Some cause status effects on enemies, but the higher damage output is more valuable. Pulling some of them off can be tricky because of the QTE button presses required. These specials consume SP from a pool shared by your whole party that will replenish after each fight.
Combat ends up being somewhat dull because of one truly viable combat strategy that renders all fights nearly identical. Fortunately, random combat encounters are rare. Only a couple areas in the game seem to have them, I assume so that you can grind for experience or money if you’re desperate.
Echo Generation: Midnight Edition. Credit: Cococucumber
Along with the main character and their sister, you’ll have a third party member, a pet companion; over the course of the game you’ll recruit a few of them. Each has different abilities, but the game doesn’t do a great job of encouraging you to mix strategies. The first pet, your cat, is by far the most useful, and since only the active pet will gain experience, you’ll want to keep him in your party the whole time to make sure you can level him up often.
Each time a character gains a level, you’ll have the option of choosing a stat to boost: HP, strength, or SP. The game has a clear best battle strategy—use powerful specials while saving enough SP to use your cat’s healing skill. Once you get that rhythm down, you’ll want to level up stats to accommodate that strategy. You don’t gain that many levels over the course of the game, so there’s not much room to diverge, since you can’t respec. I only lost one battle before locking down that strategy, then it was smooth sailing.
Echo Generation: Midnight Edition. Credit: Cococucumber
The game’s world is rendered (mostly) in voxels, essentially 3D pixel graphics. It’s a charming visual style and it works here to give the game a retro flavor without being 2D. Though Echo Generation makes exceptions to its voxel look, I wasn’t bothered by the lack of consistency. I think the artists made good choices on how to best use the style to the game’s advantage. When combined with modern lighting effects, shadows, and glows, the voxel style really pops.
The writing in Echo Generation reminded me of classic LucasArts titles. Characters have distinct personalities, even if some are one-note. In a game like this, it’s fine if someone exists just to get a single laugh or be part of a ridiculous puzzle and then never be acknowledged again. Most of the time, talking to an NPC a second time won’t get you a different line of dialogue; mercifully, the game lets you hold a button to skip dialogue you’ve already read. Some of the characters in the story go to some unexpectedly dark places and I loved it.
I haven’t played the original version of Echo Generation, but now that this Midnight Edition is available, I don’t think it’s worth going back. The new version sports better graphics and quality of life improvements such as the addition of a quest log. The new fast travel feature alone makes Midnight Edition worthwhile.
Echo Generation: Midnight Edition is available now on PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch. You can get the Standard Edition on Xbox platforms.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Steam Deck
