I wanted to like Before The Echo, but while initially showing promise, the game starts to drag the more you play it.

First off, the writing is... not good. It is clearly someone’s earlier work and it detracts more than adds to the story. The protagonist is unlikable, his personality is 'snark' and 'blows up at people for little to no reason', and he is treated as the smartest being in existence by the story. Not the mention he sort-of supports eugenics. His ally only differs from him in the fact that she has her anger issues under control. The first boss is racist and the second is a quasi-racial stereotype. both are played for laughs, but both fall flat. There is this weird out of place rant against astrology that has more development than some of the characters.

The art is tolerable, but some of the characters look weird, like in proportions. the music is alright, at least the first few times you hear each song.

Onto the gameplay. It starts decently enough. When you start the game, you are presented with three enemies and each one has a different soundtrack associated with it, then you get to the next floor, and find that some of the enemies there share music with enemies, and that really sets the tone for the rest of the game.

The game feels stretched. The reused music, the forced grinding, the chance-based crafting, some of the enemy models are just reused and recoloured, to learn spells you need to play music that you have already heard many times before. The designer sat down and thought about how he could squeeze more hours out of the players.

If you strip away all padding, the bad crafting system, everything that necessitates grind, any enemy that reuses assets, there are some good bones there. But unfortunately, everything that builds on the foundations makes it worse.