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    Before the Echo

    Game » consists of 4 releases. Released May 05, 2011

    An Xbox Live Arcade Indie Games and PC release that combines Dance Dance Revolution-style combat into an RPG world.

    A Little Bit Of: Sequence

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    lim_ak

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    Edited By lim_ak

    Slightly late with this one. Oops . Luckily the video ended up being pretty small so I actually have it ready for today.

    Real mixed feelings on this one. On one hand you have a really interesting combat mechanic which I would love to see how it works on either a guitar controller or dance pad. And on the other you have a kind of super grindy dull RPG which is a shame because that core is really cool. I say dance pad because the rhythm part kind of looks like 3 separate DDR grids that you swap between and then hit each arrow as it comes down, I don't actually think it would work on a dance pad because there is a heck lot more going on.

    You swap between your defence, mana and spell grids. The defence grid prevents you from taking damage, when you cast spells you need to hit the sequence on your spell grid and well mana is probably self explanitory. It makes for an interesting balance of I just cast this spell, so do I continue casting it and take a bunch of damage or just wiff the spell so I don't die. And you kind of have to constantly make decisions like that in only a few beats. I kind of don't want to see how insane it gets on the harder difficulties because on the medium setting I was having a pretty rough time of it and some of that wasn't even during a boss battle.

    The rest of the trappings of Sequence I'm much less enamoured by. The equipment and crafting seems like a cool idea but the fact that crafting costs you XP and has potential to fail just seems like it was designed purely to make the game artifically long by just forcing you to grind out enemies. The game's broken out into 7 floors and I did like 12 battles before getting to the boss, the problem is that I was fighting the same 3 dudes over and over again just to get the loot drop I needed to craft the key to the second floor. It sort of bodes poorly for the rest of the game really. Also I'll let the video speak about the voice work for me.

    Anyway I might play more of it and this time not with a 360 controller, seriously I can't hit up and down on a d-pad at the same time, but it's a cool combat mechanic and I would like to see what Iridium Studios come up with in the future.

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    lim_ak

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    #1  Edited By lim_ak

    Slightly late with this one. Oops . Luckily the video ended up being pretty small so I actually have it ready for today.

    Real mixed feelings on this one. On one hand you have a really interesting combat mechanic which I would love to see how it works on either a guitar controller or dance pad. And on the other you have a kind of super grindy dull RPG which is a shame because that core is really cool. I say dance pad because the rhythm part kind of looks like 3 separate DDR grids that you swap between and then hit each arrow as it comes down, I don't actually think it would work on a dance pad because there is a heck lot more going on.

    You swap between your defence, mana and spell grids. The defence grid prevents you from taking damage, when you cast spells you need to hit the sequence on your spell grid and well mana is probably self explanitory. It makes for an interesting balance of I just cast this spell, so do I continue casting it and take a bunch of damage or just wiff the spell so I don't die. And you kind of have to constantly make decisions like that in only a few beats. I kind of don't want to see how insane it gets on the harder difficulties because on the medium setting I was having a pretty rough time of it and some of that wasn't even during a boss battle.

    The rest of the trappings of Sequence I'm much less enamoured by. The equipment and crafting seems like a cool idea but the fact that crafting costs you XP and has potential to fail just seems like it was designed purely to make the game artifically long by just forcing you to grind out enemies. The game's broken out into 7 floors and I did like 12 battles before getting to the boss, the problem is that I was fighting the same 3 dudes over and over again just to get the loot drop I needed to craft the key to the second floor. It sort of bodes poorly for the rest of the game really. Also I'll let the video speak about the voice work for me.

    Anyway I might play more of it and this time not with a 360 controller, seriously I can't hit up and down on a d-pad at the same time, but it's a cool combat mechanic and I would like to see what Iridium Studios come up with in the future.

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    ShaggE

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    #2  Edited By ShaggE

    I really like this game, but it needs more songs badly. I'm not asking for each enemy to have its own music, that'd be crazy, but a little more variety would be nice.

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    swoxx

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    #3  Edited By swoxx

    @ShaggE said:

    I really like this game, but it needs more songs badly. I'm not asking for each enemy to have its own music, that'd be crazy, but a little more variety would be nice.

    Indeed.

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    JCTango

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    #4  Edited By JCTango

    Pretty neat game - the songs available aren't bad either. I sure wish you could input your own music to generate tracks though.

    @lim_ak said:

    Anyway I might play more of it and this time not with a 360 controller, seriously I can't hit up and down on a d-pad at the same time, but it's a cool combat mechanic and I would like to see what Iridium Studios come up with in the future.

    I actually play with a 360 controller for this game - what I did was I separate the arrows based on left and ride sides of the screen. The two left arrows are controlled by the D-Pad, and the two right ones are controlled by the controller buttons. Once you get the hang of it, it gets pretty simple - the only problem is when you run into "floor the seventh", where sometimes the guardians switches the arrows around on you.

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    huntad

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    #5  Edited By huntad

    I've been wanting to try this one. Maybe i'll give it a shot later this month. I'll probably play it with a logitech controller that I have (if it's possible).

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    lim_ak

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    #6  Edited By lim_ak

    @JCTango said:

    Pretty neat game - the songs available aren't bad either. I sure wish you could input your own music to generate tracks though.

    @lim_ak said:

    Anyway I might play more of it and this time not with a 360 controller, seriously I can't hit up and down on a d-pad at the same time, but it's a cool combat mechanic and I would like to see what Iridium Studios come up with in the future.

    I actually play with a 360 controller for this game - what I did was I separate the arrows based on left and ride sides of the screen. The two left arrows are controlled by the D-Pad, and the two right ones are controlled by the controller buttons. Once you get the hang of it, it gets pretty simple - the only problem is when you run into "floor the seventh", where sometimes the guardians switches the arrows around on you.

    That sounds like a pretty cool solution, I might try that sometime. I wonder if there's a way to just map the d-pad controls to both the d-pad and the face buttons probably not but it would be cool considering I don't think those buttons are really used for anything by default in battle.

    @ShaggE: I haven't gotten super far yet so I don't know how many tracks there are but if there are really that many repeats that kind of sucks.

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    deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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    This game has such a great idea that is marred by baffling execution. Why they're dropping directions instead of buttons is nonsensical, add to it that the rhythm part wasn't matching the music on my end (and no amount of ms tweaking was fixing it).

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    JCTango

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    #8  Edited By JCTango

    @lim_ak said:

    I wonder if there's a way to just map the d-pad controls to both the d-pad and the face buttons probably not but it would be cool considering I don't think those buttons are really used for anything by default in battle.

    That's actually how it is on my end on default! :)

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