[ECHOSTASIS]

This is a rough ride to hold on. Beforehand: I'm writing this review not having finished the game and will update the review as soon as I have. Spoiler: [spoiler] The game mostly focuses on dreamscapes and cores (the reality of androids and humans) or was it called "constructs" for the androids? Can't remember exactly what it is called. I haven't been playing for some time, so forgive me for mixing up some definitions. It explains the dreamscape of RED/Liliana (The Enigma Machine) and/or Liliana/RED (MotheRED) quite well if you dive into the terminal's answers. Is it demOS yet? [/spoiler] Explaining a lot from the games before (The Enigma Machine, Mothered) and finishing the trilogy this game is where it needs to be exactly...but...the gameplay loop is sometimes awful. It's just trial and error which gets boring and even annoying consuming a lot of time. You're doing the same stuff over and over again because you can just stay in the dreamscapes (Levels) in a limited amount of time and have to try again and again and again. As it's part of the concept I'm not really sure hjow to relate to this. For me it was just exhausting but for you it might not be that hard to complete. Aft…

A [STORY] or perhaps a trilogy that the [ENIGMA] STUIDO created which is a very unique and philosophical horror experience, the series needed a bit of patience to complete... but I [THINK] everyone should have played it once for how good the [STORY] telling is.

peak

If [HER] [STORY] isn't enough to make you question anything, then I don't know what will. [ECHOSTASIS] is the fantastic conclusion to a story that made me feel emotions I rarely like to acknowledge and also made me think about a lot of scenarios for what the next couple of years and decades of technological progress might confront us with. The [ENIGMA] TRILOGY is a journey, and one I fully recommend to anyone interested in games with a good story that just provoke a thought, maybe explore a topic you've never really given much about or shine a light on an angle you've never really thought of. Despite some tedious segments and a lot of trial and error in some cases, the [ENIGMA] TRILOGY made me feel this sort of existential dread I haven't felt since I first played Frictional Games' Soma, paired with a feeling of nostalgia that I don't have the words to describe, but I am eternally grateful for being able to experience it. There's this really cool article/analysis by Ian Bryce Jones on the Enigma Trilogy which I can only recommend since it goes a little more into detail about some meta aspects especially of the game's prequel MOTHERED that I didn't really pay attention to but now …

My thoughts: The best written [STORY] in any game dare i even say in this medium. evrybody who even has a small spot in his heart for destroying dystopian tragic melancholic horror should play this. Never in all my time playing video games have i thought that something so brilliant could exist i think i never [feel]t more touched, more pensive while playing any game. The perfect ending to a perfect [STORY]. Obviusly no game can be perfect but, for me personaly it is just that: [PERFECT] still, there are problems but some of the problems mentiond by people that gave this game a negative are redundant because much of the game plays with the fact that it shouldn´t be pleasing because the mechanical level of this game plays out the [FEELING] perfectly that you are inside a multi-connectec [ANDROID] mind. It brings sacrafices of comfort to simulate your suffering.

If you hate the game, just cheat. It's OK. I enjoyed this game much more after I started cheating. I understand that the frustration and repetition is all part of the storytelling, making the player struggle the way the characters in the game are. But in real life, I don't have time to do all that. I'm an adult. So I used the cheat LSHIFT + RSHIFT + SPACE, which was kindly built into the game without penalty to the player. This made it much easier for me to appreciate ECHOSTASIS. The storytelling is great. The atmosphere is fantastic. The way it relates to MOTHERED (and HOME) and The Enigma Machine is satisfying too. I recommend playing all of them.