Right off the bat I have to say that I am very much biased with my review of this VN. I had been part of this VN's fandom since 2018 and only recently fell out of love with the fandom's complete saturation of man-children who can't seem to understand basic narrative threads.
However, I will attempt to avoid mentioning that further within this review. I will now start the review proper.
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Echo. What can be said about this absolutely amazing horror experience? The way the creators use the VN format to effectively scare the player is damn genius and one of the reasons this story could never be told outside of that format.
The set-up is simple: You are Chase Hunter. A otter who grew up in Echo and are coming back for spring break to do a school project and a chance to reunite with your childhood friends: Flynn, Carl, TJ, Jenna, and Leo. You get to Echo and everything seems fine for the first 2 days of your trip. On Monday however, you and your friends go to a river near Lake Emma, the place where your friend, Sydney was found dead. This sparks an argument between Flynn and the rest of you. After said argument is over, all but you and Carl have left the area and you must make a choice: Which one of your friends will you go after?
This is where the route choice presents itself. And I must say, it is an excellent set-up. I will review each route individually and give my opinions on each.
Carl's Route:
Carl's route is the one I played first. Before I get into the nitty gritty of the route, I must mention how you begin his route. You sit down. That's it. You just click his name and sit down next to him. It's a very passive way to begin a route and matches Carl to a T. You see, Carl lives a very sedentary life. He plays video games, eats, smokes weed, and sleeps. But beneath that exterior of laziness is a great character who I fell in love with.
This route consists of Chase attempting to mediate between Carl/James Hendricks I and Jenna/John Begay. The nightmare dimension part of the route is expertly written and I seriously love it to bits. Except for one detail: Raven. Raven is a useless "character" who also ends up in the nightmare dimension with Chase, Carl and Jenna. His contribution to the route essentially boils down to: be a plot device and help Chase separate Carl and Jenna. That's it. For this reason, Carl's route is my least favorite of the routes in the game.
Overall, Carl's route is well written and intense, but is taken down a few notches by the presence of Raven.
Leo's Route:
Oh boi. Leo Alvarez. A character I greatly despise and am sick of seeing everywhere. Anyway, Leo's route was the second one I played. I fell for the trick of thinking Leo was buff wolf husbando and was quickly proven wrong by his actions before and after the hysteria starts. He manipulates Chase into believing that the rest of their friends know they are together when in actuality Leo lied to them as well. He behaves like an absolute fuckin' psycho for the majority of the hysteria. And he's just overall not a good choice for husbando. We'll get to who is soon, don't worry.
Leo's route has some of the most terrifying moments in the game for me. Brian's torture of Chase, the mine scene, the bad ending. All of these moments gave me legit fuckin' nightmares and I'm still scared of Brian. The writing in this route, as usual, is amazing. Howly and McSkinny utilize the visual novel format to great effect here. This is also the first route where we get a hint that we're actually playing as Samuel Ayers from The Smoke Room.
Overall, I think this route is quite good. It's better than Carl's by a long shot, that's for sure.
TJ's Route:
Fuck man. I don't even know where to start with this one. This is my second favorite route in the game. Solely for the emotional impact that the ending had on me. This is one of the only routes in the game that has a single ending. And it's a banger, lemme tell you.
The main reason you would pick TJ's route is to comfort him after Flynn yelled at him. I should know, this is why I picked it! But the game skillfully turns this desire against you over the course of the route. The way the writing slowly turns your own desire to protect TJ against over the course of six hours is nothing short of fucking incredible. I went from enjoying TJ's company, to being unsettled by the intrusive thoughts choice, to being freaked out by the diner bathroom scene, to being horrified by the hotel bathroom scene, and finally to crying my fuckin' eyes out by the end. I will never experience this route for the first time ever again. And that fact makes me very sad.
TJ's route is fucking amazing. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk!
Flynn's Route:
Flynn Moore. The black sheep of the Echo fandom. It would seem Flynn ignites rage in the majority of the fandom for simply having trauma. But that is neither here nor there. I shall simply say that Flynn's route is my favorite in the game.
This route is the only one with overt sex scenes. I was surprised when I experienced this because I had thought Echo to be a mature game that knew senseless NSFW content ruined good stories. But I was proven wrong! The sex scenes in this route serve the purpose of showing Flynn's main coping mechanism: Sex. Flynn was the closest in the group to Sydney before he died. Syd's death greatly effected him because of said closeness. However, he was never able to express his grief over his best friend because his other friends made him bury it deep down to avoid hurting TJ. This lead to an embittered man with deep-seated issues that were never resolved.
These issues fuel the main conflict of his route: he wants to find out how Syd died all those years ago but he's unable to because of his trauma. He spends his nights trying to wash away his problems in the arms of strangers but nothing works. Even The Smoke Room isn't enough (Speaking of The Smoke Room, that scene made me extremely uncomfortable.) Eventually, he does discover the truth and the POV switches from Chase to Flynn. And here is where I realized this route was my favorite. Everything after the POV switch is 10 times better than what came before solely because we, the readers, get to know Flynn quite well, but the in-universe characters still just see his emotional shield. It's a genius way to get the audience to empathize with Flynn while at the same time not ruining the story's continuity.
The scene in "The Smoke Room" with "Sydney" is still one of my favorite moments of the entire game. The monologue that the Echo entity gives to Flynn and us is nothing short of masterful writing. And the ending happens. Flynn becomes the very monster that haunted his friends as children. He becomes part of The Amalgamation as I call it. A collection of all the souls that died violent deaths in Echo. The final part of Flynn's route is surrealistic writing done to amazing effect. The final line made shivers go up my spine.
I love Flynn Moore. He is an extremely well-written character and his fate in both this route and TJ's left me feeling empty inside. I love this fucking route so damn much.
Jenna's Route:
This was the final route to be completed. Therefore, it was the one I played the last. I really like this route. It tied a lot of stuff together. Jenna is a character who I personally dislike. She is a manipulative cunt who uses her traumatic family life as an excuse to talk down to all the other characters and I just found her to be insufferable.
However, playing this route gave me a new perspective on her. This route focuses the most on the Tetanus Alley gang: Micha, Heather, and Jeremy. Thus this route also focuses the most on Jenna's traumatic family life. The writing of this route is, as expected, amazing. Howly and McSkinny never disappoint, well Adastra sucked ass, but they still can write good shit.
I now must talk about THAT scene.
Lemme me set the scene: You've been playing this game since 2018 and you're slowly realizing the fact that you're almost done reading the entirety of it. You start reading the latest update and get to the hotel scene where Jenna and Leo argue over Chase. You get caught up in the moment and then HE appears: Chulpa. He just FUCKING WALKS ONTO THE SCREEN IN THE ONLY CASE OF ANIMATION IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME! I shat my fuckin' pants and screamed like a banshee.
And from there Brian enters the scene again and tortures Chase and Leo in quite possibly the most graphic scene in the game. But then Brian is killed by The Amalgamation and Chase and Co. leave his trailer only to find the truck that killed Samuel Ayers in the '60s.
Here Leo delivers a speech that semi-redeemed him in my eyes. Not fully. But I sympathized with him at the very least. And yes, there is a distinction between "empathize" and "sympathize". Maybe look it up yourself, you dolts lmao.
Overall, Jenna's route was a perfect conclusion to a 6 year in the making visual novel that changed me in ways I never thought possible: I'm a furry now! *le gasp*
Thanks for reading my review of Echo the visual novel.
-Kallier
P.S.
If you want to watch me experience the game for the second time, here's my 37 part, 48 hour long series I did on my YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs_BZI-CHxZwiWUQYaahpfPKj2aF5-7DI