9) B is for... Before the Echo

The challenge: To play through each of the games on my Steam library.
The rules: I have to play at least 1 hour of each game, in alphabetical order.

I was quite excited to play Before the Echo. I knew it was a rhythm RPG, and really that pushes a lot of buttons for me. The game begins as the protag (Ky) wakes up in a mysterious tower. He's told by a voice over an intercom (a lady called Naia) that he has to ascend all seven floors if he wants to escape. That's as much plot as I got in the hour I played.

The game itself is your standard rhythm game ala Dance Dance Revolution, with arrows that scroll down and make your vision wonky. The main difference is that the play is set across three boards.The Defensive board lets you block incoming attacks by matching arrows, the Mana board lets you gain mana by matching arrows, and the Spell board lets you cast a spell of your choice at the enemy you're fighting (by matching arrows). Before the Echo also has an RPG system of loot and XP and grinding, but I'll get to that later (you'll see why).

Rhythm is gonna get ya

First, let's start with the things I liked. The voice acting is really good for what seems like a game made by very few people. The music is fairly inoffensive, if you like that kind of 'I've downloaded an old Amiga hack' chiptune kind of thing. The art is pretty good too.

Ok, now I'm gonna come out and say it. I wanted to love this game. But I hate it. The gameplay itself is OK, except there aren't unique songs for each enemy, so you end up hearing the same three songs over and over again. And it will be over and over again, because of how the craft system works. 

You *have* to craft a key, at minimum, to advance to the next stage (I say at minimum because really you need to craft upgrades too). Each time you fight an enemy, you have a % change of getting a drop, which obviously gets less for the rarer items. So you grind the monsters until you get the random tat you need to craft. Then when you craft you have to expend your hard earned XP to have a chance at making the item. And it can fail. The base chance is 50%, without expending more XP. This means you'll be listening to those three songs, then maybe failing to craft, then listening to them three or four times each all over again. It grates on you very quickly.

I only like 100% organic grind, not this artificial nonsense

But I could forgive it that. The gameplay is repetitive and grindy, sure, but it does try to do something new with it. So why do I hate this game? Because, within the hour I played it, there was a rape joke, a homophobic joke, and so many racist jokes I lost count. Seriously, it was gross.

WTF is this shit??

So yeah, BG, do not buy, do not play.