Opus: Echo of Starsong Review

On paper, what Opus: Echo of Starsong claims to be looks like an interesting mix of a visual novel, a large sci-fi universe, some adventure and management elements, and a story focused on music. In the end, though, none of the elements are focused on enough to deliver any meaningful payoff, and the whole thing feels far more grindy and slow than anything.

Opus: Echo of Starsong starts off interesting enough, following the main character Jun as an old man recalling “a girl he knew briefly”, which sets the game back to the main story, all under the guise of it being a memory. These mechanisms for story delivery are not used very often, and it is likely because of some serious flaws present with this plot device, such as knowing he obviously lived, mixed with a degree of pretension that the story is worth listening to in the first place.

Set in a sci-fi world of pirates and people exploring magical asteroids, Jun is a special cave runner who has the ability to use machines to manipulate song magic to open up doors in asteroids. Followed by his guardian Kay, an old war veteran, they quickly meet the romantic interest of the story, a girl named Eda, and her pilot Remi. The gameplay revolves around heavy visual novel talking segments, followed by some very light exploration and puzzle solving as Jun walks around various asteroids.

The failings of Echo of Starsong are nuanced. There isn’t an obvious thing to point to and say, “See, this is why this game is tough to recommend”. Rather, what the developers tried to do in so many cases simply misses the mark slightly, leaving the player with a bad feeling of that it was close to being good, but is mostly just awkward. As an example, the exploration parts are annoying, there isn’t anything interesting to do, and it’s a detraction from the plot to just walk forward and climb some ladders to trigger the next scene.

If there is one real problem, it is the plot. The characters are not stereotypical, but they are just really shallow. For how much talking happens, nothing interesting really occurs or develops. The best character in the game has a complicated past that gives a lot of depth to encounters, but is killed off pretty early in the story. The game uses it as ammunition to keep the plot rolling forward, but the absence of the character really just demonstrates how much weaker the surviving cast feels by comparison.

Additionally the romance/chemistry feels entirely forced, as the girl characters are a mix of stilted and nagging, yet readers are supposed to find them endearing, rather than wishing Jun would push them out of the airlock for a more interesting plot. It is no joke to suggest the narrative would have been better served by him wondering what would have happened if he hadn’t airlocked them a long time ago.

Big events are told in flashbacks, but none of them hit the way they are supposed to. The main character’s are simply are too business-minded and cold for any real emotion to come through. The dialogue, which could loosely be described as banter, mostly stems on petty arguing. It is not funny nor endearing, and for what is supposed to be a heavy or emotional plot, it is line upon wasted line that makes the characters feel forgettable.

Two other hooks used, that of music and a grand sci-fi galaxy, also fall flat. For a game about music there isn’t a single song that stands out. Ambient videos on YouTube have notable beats better than the songs encountered here. Normally a lack of good music isn’t a killer, but given how integral it is supposed to be in the plot, it is heavily noticeable. In some ways, it feels like literal irony for how uninspired Opus: Echo of Starsong‘s music is.

On top of this, the story is told in tiny chunks where the player learns about the world to piece together. There is nothing wrong with this approach necessarily, but there is so little of the main plot or an overarching storyline that nothing is able to be tied together. Players learn about five different flowers and tons of different gods, but hours later it is still Jun getting nagged at with the girls he is with, and it goes beyond frustrating into infuriating. Each new planet is “a place I’d rather forget about”, but nothing notable is shown. Maybe the description is more apropos than intended.

What is left is this strange mess where there is a good story in there somewhere, possibly, but it is mired in too many things that should have been cut and cleaned up. The management aspects are minimal and only serve as an annoyance. The story drastically needed a coherent plotline to tie all the disparate things together. Instead, it’s like picking up scraps of sentences and creating a story in the reader’s head about what might be happening. In the end, Opus: Echo of Starsong is a mix of an unengaging plot, and with characters still treading the same themes hours later, it makes it tough to recommend.