Echo Generation: Midnight Edition Review

Echo Generation is a title that totally missed my radar, originally released on the 20th of October 2021. Developer Cococucumber is bringing this ‘90s-inspired turn-based adventure game back, but better than ever, in this special Midnight Edition. If you missed the initial release of this game, prepare yourself for a nostalgic journey through an Earthbound-esque eerie sci-fi story.

The first thing you do in Echo Generation: Midnight Edition is select your main character. You can select from nine different pre-made options. I selected a girl with a really cool hat and named her Alana. What can I say? I’m not the most creative person around. We begin in our character's bedroom, which is decorated with a bunch of cool Godzilla-like monster posters, a tape deck, and action figures. A computer sits in a room, housing a script she's been working on for a movie she wants to make with her friends, named Alien Skin Eaters. On the floor of the cluttered room, you find a comic book called Hockey Heroes that will teach you Body Check, which is a quick bump attack that will cost you one special point to use. Three lights will change from red to green. When this happens, you will hit the attack button to smash into the enemy to damage them. Our main character has a few comic book series that they are reading that will teach them different themed abilities. The main character has hockey attacks and axe moves from reading the Wacky Woodchopper books, but their little sister Lily has boxing glove moves from the She-Volt series, ninja stars from Shadow Star, and knife skills from Fatal Edge to use. Even the pets and animals that you recruit to your team learn moves from magazines; my cat Meowsy learns his moves from the PURRfect magazine. Having the ability to use Healing Lick and Static Shock is incredibly helpful in fights! Unlike humans, pets are restricted to only three moves. Your team consists of only three characters, but Echo Generation makes it very easy to switch the members around by just entering the pause menu, to make the needed swaps.

When you aren’t fighting enemies or random animals and monsters in the streets, you will be performing a tonne of fetch quests. To advance in this game, you need to find the specific items that the residents of Maple Town are looking for. The journal that you carry makes keeping track of all these requests quite easy; without it, I’m not sure how you would remember what specific items everyone wanted. For example, your first quest is to find a traffic cone to give to your sister Lily. This is the easiest quest to complete, as you just need to leave your house and walk down the nearby streets to find one.

Once you have it in your possession, you give it to Lily so that she can join your team and accompany you on your quest. Plus, this means your mom won't cut your allowance for the summer months. Some quests take a bit more work, like trying to get a bus pass, which is the only way you can go downtown. To get this pass, you will need to find scrap metal to trade, or if you want to get wire cutters, you will need to travel downtown to the local bookstore and retrieve a book on quantum physics. The game gives you a dial-up transporter that you hook up to pay phones that you find in the area that will act as quick travel points to save you a lot of time. You will have to travel to each place multiple times (especially to the suburbs where you can go to sleep in your bed to recover your health), so it would take forever if you had to walk everywhere!

The battle system in Echo Generation reminds me of titles like Super Mario RPG where having precise timing determines how strong your attacks are and if you can block incoming enemy attacks. Some attacks are very easy to use, but these ones are usually weaker. The harder it is to perform, the stronger it typically is; these also tend to be the attacks that cost more skill points to use. Some are surprisingly complex to perform, so much so that I found it just easier to use a weaker attack that I knew I could time properly, though this does make for a battle system that keeps your attention — no button mashing to power through the fights here. Be aware that if you use items during the battle and you are defeated, those items are gone when you come back, so use them carefully or be sure to restock before your next fight.

When you are victorious in battle and gain enough XP to level your character up, you can select one of three rewards: upgrade their health, increase their max HP by five, improve the max strength of your attacks; or obtain more skill points so that you can use more of your special attacks in each fight. As you progress, it will take more experience points to get to the next level, but you will be stronger, so chances are you won’t be defeated as easily in battle.

One of the things I love most about Echo Generation: Midnight Edition is the great voxel style of the visuals. All the environments and characters look great and vibrant, with smooth animations and impressive attacks. It was a lot of fun fighting against smart-talking racoons, skeletons, aliens, and the killer prom queen. There was a lot of variety, depending on which area you were exploring. The music was also very impressive, especially when you find different mixtapes on your travels. The soundtrack for your upcoming homemade movie is especially good, with creepy, suspenseful music and a hand-drawn label with the S shapes drawn just like kids in elementary school would draw them. This totally reminded me of when I was a kid!

Echo Generation: Midnight Edition feels like an old point-and-click adventure title where you are looking for anything in the environment to interact with. In the beginning, I found the game slow-going to start until you started levelling up your characters and finding the items that you can trade to people around town to get what you need. Once that happens, the game really feels like it opens up, and it feels like you are getting somewhere. However, at times, it can get frustrating to figure out exactly what you need to do next to progress the story.

This is a game that is worth checking out, especially for the awesome art style, entertaining story, and silly sense of humour. Just be prepared to be searching for that perfect item that you need to get what you need to progress. If you like shows like Stranger Things with paranormal elements mixed with great ‘90s references to classic titles, this is a game you will want to try out for yourself!