#echo review

[thecraggus]

Echo Review

Echo's exploration of the conflicted character's past and present provides a pathway to a bright future for the Choctaw superhero. #Review

[franticvampirereads]

I loved this book so much. It was filled with all the political space drama I could ever want and just as much action to balance it out. I loved that Tennal was such a mess for most of the book and that Surit was his exact opposite. I loved when they argued, I loved when they were maliciously compliant with the law and also when they went rogue, and I loved when they became each other’s safe harbor. The other thing that I loved was that Tennal and Surit were both self sacrificing idiots in love. This was such a good read and I really want more of this complicated universe. Ocean’s Echo is getting five stars!

[jenn-the-butterfly]

AHA, I DID TWO OF THEM BECAUSE I'M AN OVERACHIEVER

Hard to believe it's been a year already since I started this project. Starting as a DCA-AU inspired off of All My Favorite Things because I stumbled across 8um8le's Stellar City blog, turning it into an AO3 fic under that idea and then watching it evolve into something I didn't even expect it to become once I loosened the shackles a bit. Azil has basically consumed my life (not sorry) in a way I haven't felt in ages.

And there's so much more to share! I'm hoping as I work on cleaning up the boys' designs and figuring out my own stylistic choices for how robots look, etc, I can shake them free from their DCA origins more, though I know at it's core it will still be there. Like that shoe in Wall-E that the tree is growing out of in the credits.

I can only hope that this project will continue to grow and solidify into its own thing as time wears on, and I want to meet each step with enthusiasm and brainrot. I want to be abnormal about this, I want to give off radiation damage with how much I give off "weird little freak" energy about this project.

That being said, I will keep pulling away from DCA tags and while I love the content and the fandom is cool, I don't want to keep mixing signals so please, do not tag DCA in my posts! (Thanks!)

Goals for 2025 will be continuing to work on the rewrite script and outlines for Free Runner, showcasing the different market grades by making adopts/customs (like Vistor), showing off some of the other characters I haven't gotten to yet (I haven't even mentioned Toast since like, last February), and pushing out more world building! Hopefully I'll have a map this year! (AHHH)

Special love and shoutouts to the new year!

@quilandscroll for being the coolest bitch, my best friend and only reason my sanity is still in tact (the real MVP) who still tries to boost me up with one arm even when the other is busy fighting her own demons. I love you to pieces

@scarredkitty who's been following my content through the year and is also a lover of fine machinery ;) the likes and comments really kept me going when I needed it most

@imagine-creative @dragongirl658 and @8um8le fellow DCA-turned-original-works who serve as inspiration and reminders that we are more than how we started and break away from being "just an AU" to something far more. I genuinely appreciate you

--Jenn & the boys

[candy8448]

Im playing echoes of wisdom and having so much more fun than i did before. Im near the very start (just started the gerudo quest) and im enjoying it a LOT more so im really happy

Exploring is fun, im getting a hang of what enemies are good for fighting what and im just having a good time

I like that the smoothie guy says the "don't spend it all in one place" when he gives you the 20 rupees, i love the little references like that

I have no idea how you level up your sword fighter bar or tri's powers im assuming u upgrade tri by going thru the story and something else for the sword fghter... ill figure it out

Love how both link and zelda sniff eachother clothes and makes coments on it, uts funny and cute

This game is so so cute

My mum was watching me play and was going crazy over how cute everything was lol

I always get the waypoints when im leaving the area im doing quests in because i enter from the most random angle climbing over the weirdest terrain to get into the area and then i leave and later when i leave after the quest is done i walk out the area in the normal entrance and see the waypoint and im like "oh!" Every time

[crow-caller]

my anonymous assumption is that you read warrior cats as a kid in an attempt to fit in with all the other kids reading it but you never really got into it. you liked the roleplaying at recess that came from it though

you're nearly right but underestimating my autism. cats were my first special interest (*i highly doubt this is unique for autistic babies). my first word was kitty. I made a songbook where I wrote out the lyrics to varuous public domain singalong songs and changed most of the words to 'Cat' or 'Kitty'. I made a warrior cats role playing card game and played it on my own. I was roleplaying at recess and friends' houses until we were 'too old'. I missed it terribly.

my username is based on an incident that happened when I was in the woods pretending to be a cat.

I belong with the warrior cats.

[jgndotcom]

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (2024, Switch)

[renton6echo]

The Bad Batch Season 3 so far: No character scenes, just plot, plot, plot.

There might be viewers who enjoy the abundant plot arc around the mystery of Omega’s purpose for Project Necromancer. However the lack of, what some people like to call, “filler” episodes has really ruined what I liked about The Bad Batch to begin with.

There is so much forward movement in the plot and unraveling the mystery of Omega’s blood that there has been no time for the characters to breathe and sit with what has happened to them in the last two seasons. There has been no room for the characters to actually TALK with each other without just talking about the plot.

No soft and sweet moments between Hunter and Omega, no cute downtime moments with Wrecker and Omega, absolutely no discussion of Tech’s death and the Batch’s grief, no character development for Echo, and no real time to flesh out the trauma Crosshair experienced on Tantiss. All around the characters are just hollow versions of themselves. Absolutely infuriating.

Not a lot of scenes, just plot.

It drives me crazy when Star Wars does this. In the end what makes me tune in every week are the characters. So when they cease to have a personality and are bodies just to forward the plot it makes it harder to want to tune in. I liked the moments of the Batch being a family, snarking at each other, having internal conflict with each other and facing their problems and trials together.

What we have this season are those emotional scenes constantly getting interrupted by this Mystery Box plot that we are forced to care about because they want to make the sequel trilogy make sense.

I get it. Saga/story continuity and all that but you can’t do that in one last season with 15 episodes and expect it to be amazing.

[lowpolynpixelated]

Echo Point Nova: Tribes Ascended

Echo Point Nova may be one of the best cases I've ever seen for people wanting to frag like its 2001. Today's gaming landscape, particularly the independent scene, is thriving with revivals of all sorts of proto-FPS genre shooters. From the singleplayer campaign driven "Boomer Shooter" games like Amid Evil and Zortch to those who long for the multiplayer days of Unreal Tournament with games like Splitgate or the squad tactics of Battlefield 2 with games Battlebit Remastered, these styles are certainly coming back into style. I want to talk about a very particular type of action that was lost long ago in a sea of games and buried revival promises, I want to talk about Tribes.

Releasing originally in 1998 as Starsiege: Tribes the game garnered its own following thanks to its fast paced movement centered approach to Deathmatch and Capture the Flag gameplay. Jetpacks combined with a physics engine bug that let you "ski" around maps a la sliding down slopes and ramping off hills made for incredible fun action packed fights. Three years later in 2001, Tribes 2 debuted making skiing an official form of gameplay, building on the fun of the previous title. The game fell somwhere in between quake arena and unreal tournament, with vehicles, large open maps, a bevy of scifi weaponry, and fast paced action. Though the series would go on all the way to 2012 with the free to play Tribes Ascend by HiRez Studios, the game has since been yet another title in an ever growing pile of "forgotten classics". Until now.

So what IS Echo Point Nova? Stay with me here, EPN (to save some time and typing) is a scifi action shooter where you explore an open world of floating islands with the help of a grappling hook, a hoverboard, and a momentum system that only slows down when you tell it to. EPN is in almost every way, a singleplayer/co-op successor to Tribes. Trading out the scifi weapons for a more modern military arsenal doesn't take away much of the fun. Zipping around and clearing out hordes with a .50 cal sniper rifle is just as fun as a railgun, and blasting mechs with an RPG is just as satisfying as a triple rocket launcher could be. The game WANTS you to feel fast, to feel dangerous, like only the best of the best could stop you. All it's missing is proper PVP, which the developer wants to add support for soon as of the writing of this article. Lets get more specific though.

Level Design:

One half of the puzzle is how EPN's world gives you truly unbridled freedom to explore at breakneck paces. If you thought the vistas and cliffs of breath of the wild being open was impressive, this puts that to shame handily. A massive world of floating island arenas awaits you, all you have to do is get there. As mentioned before the game provides you with a few modes of transit, a grappling hook, your hoverboard, and a set of supplementary equipment like air boost pads and grenades that you can use to gain height very quickly. Movement in the game is nothing short of gorgeous. Fast, fluid, and effortlessly smooth, you can glide and hop your way to just about everywhere.

Let's talk more about the hoverboard, arguably the games most shown off feature. Holding down what would traditionally be a sprint button allows you to speedily glide over any form of terrain the game can throw at you. Grass, snow, sand, lava, all of it. On top of this, touching any flat surface that isn't the ground or a floor with the hoverboard will allow you to grind across and up said surface, gaining you some sweet style points in the process. The game is VERY generous with the grinding, and lets you stay on unless the terrain itself is too uneven to glide over without launching yourself off. Using this you can scale entire mountains and grind circles around the poor enemies of the game, giving them little chance at keeping up with you. Combined with the grappling hook, which allows you to propel yourself in whatever direction you're aiming despite where you grappled on to, you can reach truly dizzying heights and speed with ease. All of this is to say that the game's level design allows for pure freedom of movement. Rarely will you find yourself not jumping or grinding your way around spacious combat arenas laden with half pipe ramps and grind rails. Verticality is KING in Echo Point Nova, and the world knows that. Vast desert expanses, rolling mountaintops, fractured shards of floating rock, its got it all and it is good.

Gameplay:

Though I already went over the gameplay a bit in the last section with the movement and traversal, I'd like to focus a bit more on the core shooting of EPN and just how good it feels to do so. The game gives you access to a decently sized array of pistols, SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles/DMRs, and explosives to do in the cyborg mercenary armies that oppose you. All of which feel incredible. Perhaps the only negative point I could give is that many weapons can often feel very fast and loose, but the game's projectile system more than makes up for it when allowing you to pepper entire areas with two entire glock magazines. Complimentary to the guns are the perks you earn from doing the game's core combat loop of arriving in an arena and spawning enemies until you've killed the requisite amount for that particular challenge. Perks can range from giving you more ramming speed on your hoverboard (oh yeah you can ram enemies with your hoverboard by the way) to the very first perk you gain, Adrenaline, slowing down time for a few seconds via a refillable meter you gain just for moving at high speeds.

Combat becomes a gravity defying dance of bullets and explosions. Ramping off enemies here, grappling them into them there, throwing out a grenade to pop a shield and riding the explosion shockwave up to the scifi quad-copter that's firing missiles down at you the entire time. Its a beautifully chaotic mess that relies on your mastery of the game's movement to be proficient in. Sure you could just run around Call of Duty style and pop cyborgs in the head, or you could send them into the endless abyss by slapping them with two and a half feet of hoverboard all the while sending a .50 cal round through two of his friends.

It is a joy to experience. The exploration is always rewarding leading you to new challenges that give you either new perks, a new gun, or a fun hat to wear over your character. If you played the dev team's previous game, Severed Steel, you know exactly how high energy and impressive the combat encounters can feel.

Story:

Honestly? It's nothing special. You crash land onto one of the many floating islands, a mysterious voice tells you to get your gear as comrades from whatever scientific group you're a part of tell you to also grab your gear and survey your surroundings. It's VERY loose, and it's perfect that way. The boss fight set pieces don't come bogged down with lengthy cutscenes or anything at all to break the pacing. Voice acting is kept to enemy shoutouts, and everything is told through text logs that you're guided to pretty steadily throughout the game. EPN's story is just what it needs to be and the devs know that. Severed Steel boasted an equally loose but compelling story following the game's protagonist rising up against her scifi imprisoners, and Echo Point Nova is just as short and sweet with its writing. Serviceable, short, and just right.

Soundtrack:

How could I ever talk about this game without mentioning the positively electrifying soundtrack. Composed by artist Floating Door the OST has a range of action driving Drum and Bass tracks that just make you want to go faster. Ethereal synths combined with strong pulsing bass tracks create an otherworldly feel as you grapple and hoverboard your way around the islands, picking up into heavier more chaotic tracks when enemies are found or an encounter is started. It reminds me so much of the more techno/trance inspired soundtracks of later PS1 and PS2 titles that I can't help but grin and nod my head as I zip around blasting things with an RPG. No notes, 10/10, it fits the game beautifully and is a strong set of tracks to listen to on their own. Give it a listen!

Conclusion and comments:

I got away from myself a little bit in this review, but I'd like to close by doubling back to that Tribes comparison. Does Echo Point Nova have EVERYTHING that tribes had? No. It's missing things like vehicles, structured modes of play, hell even proper PVP matchmaking, but that's not the point. The spirit is what lives on in EPN. That 2000s fast paced techno-shooter with weird movement and momentum. The rush of a movement shooter before that phrase was even considered to exist. I don't think this game is Titanfall+DOOM 2016 like a lot of other reviews like to say. What I WILL compare it to if I must, is Halo, Tribes, and just a hint of classic Call of Duty (think COD 4). It's wonderfully made with a clear amount of love and respect for old school shooters. Refined to a razor edge of fluid mobility and rock solid shooting. I really do think its a big step towards keeping the spirit of old games alive without just remaking them or making things that only exist as tributes to them. If I've gotten anything wrong, and the devs never played anything like Tribes before, then that's fine I've been wrong before and I will be again. But playing this game was like playing a love letter written in voxel landscapes and high speed firefights. One that I'd happily reread over and over, or at least listen to the music.

Check out Echo Point Nova here:

[cranes-menagerie]

Ok, having watched echo....yeah this thing is a much needed breath of nice, fresh air

Yeah it has it's flaws, but they're much less common then stuff like secret invasion,quantumania,she hulk, and what if. I love the dynamic between Maya and her family. And as much as I love daredevil, I'm glad that they didn't make his scene all about him.

It seemed more like Maya was just one side of this much larger battle. Kind of like if they made a story about a goon encountering batman, rather than batman himself. Kingpin is terrifying in this show which I love that we finally get something like the Netflix shows. I'll admit it is not a perfect rendition of the Netflix type of marvel, but it is very reminiscent which is great. The only other show to give me this vibe is moon knight which is my favorite Disney plus show that marvel has put out. Echo is amazing and I highly recommend watching it

[sidewalk-scrawls]

I'm enjoying a lot of the components of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom -- The mechanics are very different from traditional Zelda games, so that's been a fun change of pace, and it's very nice to get to play as Zelda.

However, I *loathe* the meta-narrative implications of some of the decisions Nintendo made regarding mechanics -- Zelda does not have her own sword, and fighting creatures is essentially an exercise in avoidance because you have no way to directly attack them or to reliably defend yourself. The main avenue for killing creatures is to use Zelda's wand to spawn copies of other creatures to attack those enemies. *Occasionally* you can fight with a sword, but you do that by channeling Link.

So yeah, it's impossible to play this game without thinking, damn, it would be cool to be able to fight directly. Link gets to fight! But Zelda has to be dainty about it for some reason.

Like. It's 2024. Weirdly sexist, Nintendo!

[ezras-left-thumb]

PART 2 - FLASH STRIKE (TBB SEASON 3) (SPOILERS)

Emerie walked in. Of course she did. The way my jaw D R O P P E D when the two made the dreaded Eye Contact. Oh, Echo. The 501st were never good at lying.

And Emerie's lil eyebrow raise has me worried.

"Echo." WHAT THE FUUUUUCK. "I-I was doing my job."

STOP. REDEMPTION ARC? EMERIE YOU'RE MAKING IT VERY VERY HARD TO HATE YOU.

wait stop his ears were such a jumpscare why didn't i think of that

Oh my god Emerie yesyesyes come to the liiiight.

Oh my stars. Unless we're getting a surprise part 2 I don't know how or what the hell the production team is gonna put us through. We have half an hour (potentially 1.25 hours from what I've heard) to wrap up this ENTIRE show.

So many things have been left unanswered. Is Wrecker alright? Did the Batch make it inside OK? Do Emerie and Echo find Omega and the others? Where is CX-2? What happened to him? Who will die in the finale, because it's Star Wars and we never get a happy ending?

and is tech really dead, or is he coming back?

[jodjuya]

Just finished "Echoes of Wisdom".

Pretty fun game! It's like playing through a Legend of Zelda adventure if you were a Pokemon trainer.

Most dangerous monster to send out in infinite waves: Peahats. Especially once you can send out three at a time. It's a helicopter made of swords! Very handy against the final boss!

Finally, "Echoes of Wisdom" easily contains the best feature ever put into a Zelda game since the series' inception: the ability to dress up in a kitty costume that bestows upon you the magical ability to talk to cats.

It's incredible. ����

Five Triforce segments outta five!

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

[bitchboi-gogurt]

guys i have a theory

[nikibogwater]

Niki Blethers: Echoes of Wisdom gameplay (spoiler free)

I've only been posting about EoW's story/characters/aesthetic so far. I think it's time to gush about the gameplay itself for a while. Honestly, I would've done this sooner, but I've had the hardest time finding the words to describe just how GOOD this game feels when you're playing it. Like the title says, there's no spoilers in here, just discussion of raw gameplay, but I've gone ahead and put most of it under the cut to avoid clogging everyone's dashes.

First thing I noticed right off the bat is the movement and controls. I don't know what voodoo witchcraft the devs used to make this, but just moving around in the world feels so silky smooth. Which is excellent, because it turns out a surprising chunk of the gameplay involves rudimentary platforming.

You can jump in this game. Just, right off the bat, no items required, that's a thing you can do. And it's not like Link's little hops in Breath of the Wild either. These are proper jumps.

Outside of combat (which I'll get to in a minute), you mainly use the Echoes to explore. Building bridges, getting up on high ledges--stuff like that. There's no weird collision or confusing perspective that makes placing Echoes difficult. When you move, you move in the way you actually WANT to, and when you interact with an object, it goes the way you'd expect. I know this shouldn't surprise me--this is Nintendo after all--but janky platforming is one of my pet peeves when it comes to gaming, so I deeply appreciate how polished EoW's is.

EoW draws a lot of inspiration from Breath of the Wild when it comes to puzzle-solving. Once again, there are multiple different solutions to any given challenge, and progress isn't locked behind acquiring specific pieces of equipment. But unlike BotW, EoW doesn't give you all the puzzle-solving mechanics you will ever need at the start of the game. Instead, it merely provides you with the means to acquire those abilities for yourself.

Once you've made it through the tutorial section, you will only have a handful of basic object Echoes, plus a couple of weak monsters to help you fight. At this point, the world opens up for you, and you can go just about anywhere you want (though the story can only be progressed by completing Main Quest objectives, which are a bit more linear than they were in BotW). There's a real incentive to explore Hyrule here, because discovering new objects and creatures is the only way to expand your arsenal of Echoes.

Case in point, I've mostly just been focusing on the main quest storyline, and haven't spent as much time exploring all the different areas. As a result, I ended up finding myself encountering a puzzle in the main quest that I wasn't able to solve with my current collection of Echoes. I had to leave and go find new ones. If that sounds like a tedious backtracking nightmare to you, don't worry. This game is very generous with Waypoints that you can warp to at any time and from anywhere. Getting back to where I was after I'd found the Echo I needed took roughly 30 seconds.

Now, while I love the Echoes as a gameplay mechanic, they are also the source of my one and only complaint with this game: namely, the inventory system. Throughout the game, you will inevitably collect dozens, if not more than a hundred individual Echoes to choose from, and finding the specific one you want quickly becomes a chore after a few hours of gameplay. I've said this in another post, but Nintendo really needs to figure out a way to give us a customizable quick-select function--some way to equip just a handful of Echoes to a scroll wheel so that you don't have to bring up the pause menu to avoid cycling through your entire collection of Echoes. Coincidentally, this was also my biggest complaint for Tears of the Kingdom. I guess someone over at Nintendo just really enjoys scrolling through long lists of items. Anyways, it's not a huge issue, it's just one of those annoying things that feels like it should've been ironed out at some point during beta testing.

While EoW feels very comfortably Zelda-ish in all other aspects, the combat is radically different from what series fans are used to. I think that more than anything is going to be what makes or breaks this game for people.

Outside of Swordfighter Mode (which I will also get to in a minute), Zelda cannot do any direct damage to enemies by herself. If a monster gets close enough to hit you, you don't have any immediate defense or counter-attacks. This means that every encounter with an enemy has to be approached from a small distance. You have to think about how you're going to defeat enemies before you actually fight them, otherwise you will get overwhelmed.

While you are given plenty of objects to hurl at your foes, a lot of the combat will be fought by your own monster Echoes. There's a large variety of creatures to collect Echoes of, and they all have different abilities and fighting styles, which means certain monsters will fare better against one kind than another. But the game doesn't tell you about any of those advantageous monster match-ups. You have to figure those out for yourself.

Creature Echoes can be directed to attack anything you're currently Z-targeting, or they can be let loose to attack according to the whims of their AI. Echoes can also be directly moved around with the Bind ability, which is handy for repositioning any monsters who might've gotten stuck on some terrain or what have you.

You have a limited amount of energy to spend on Echoes, which means you can only have so many out at once. That energy is immediately replenished once an Echo is defeated or recalled, which allows for some pretty hectic swapping strategies that are a lot of fun to pull off. Individual Echoes have their own energy costs, based on how strong they are. So you can't just sic 3 copies of the same mini-boss on every Moblin who is unfortunate enough to cross you.

The best way I can sum it up is that the combat is like a turn-based strategy game set in real time. And as someone who has played an ungodly number of hours of Fire Emblem, I really enjoy it. I downright revel in strategically summoning minions to fight for me (my favorite attack is spawning in a bunch of crows like a malevolent little witch). However, if you're someone who prefers the more direct style of fighting from past Zelda games, this might end up being a deal-breaker for you.

Swordfighter Form is your other major weapon in combat. For a limited amount of time, Zelda can assume Link's abilities and weapons, allowing her to attack enemies directly and do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. But since this ability has limited duration, and the energy guage has to be manually refilled by collecting a specific item, it cannot be your go-to default way of handling every fight. Swordfighter Form can be upgraded as you progress through the game, allowing you to extend its duration and increase its moveset and damage output. But it's always going to be something that you use sparingly, mostly just to get yourself out of overwhelming combat scenarios.

So yeah, I think that just about covers the major gameplay mechanics. In conclusion, Echoes of Wisdom is not only its super cute aesthetic, banger soundtrack, and engaging story. Ignoring all of the more superficial stuff, at its core, this is a really good game, that feels really good to experience. If you've enjoyed any of the past 2D Zelda titles, or even just want to see what all the fuss is about, I genuinely cannot recommend this game enough. Regardless of its differences in presentation, Echoes of Wisdom was made with the same level of care and craftsmanship as any of the other entries in the Zelda series, and I've adored every moment of it so far.

[landgraabbed]

i'm sorry but telling people to buy veilguard on every platform they own simply because the game needs to do well for the studio to survive and because you want it to do as well as bg3 is some of the most ridiculous shit i've seen

[itzshrike]

If you saw my previous poll, no you didn’t. This one’s new and improved