You know the story. FromSoftware burst
onto the game development scene in 1994 after eight years of developing business
applications on computers. Their first effort was King’s Field--an almost launch
title for the PlayStation 1 in Japan. They followed this up with King’s Field
2 and 3, Armored Core, Armored Core: Project Phantasma, Shadow Tower, Echo
Night, Armored Core: Master of Arena, Spriggan: Lunar Verse, and even a Dreamcast
title, Frame Gride, all between 1995 and 1999. But in that penultimate year of the 20th century,
From had one more PlayStation 1 title to unleash, and that was Echo Night 2, a sequel
to their ghostly horror adventure. Instead of the haunted ship of the first game,
From went more traditional for the follow up. So turn out the lights and settle in as we explore
FromSoftware’s haunted house in Echo Night 2. Echo Night 2 is a first-person, ghost-busting, horror adventure video game developed
by FromSoftware and released for the PlayStation 1 exclusively in Japan on August 5,
1999, less than a year after its predecessor. In a move not dissimilar to From’s production
cycle, I covered the first Echo Night almost exactly a year ago on this channel. I didn’t
plan that. Just sort of happened this way. Unlike the first Echo Night, the
sequel was never released in English, though a fan-translation was completed in
2015, and the duo behind it did great work, so if you’re looking to play Echo Night 2 without
understanding Japanese, this is the way to go. By the way, the full title of the game
is Echo Night #2: Nemuri no Shihaisha, which the fan translators chose to render
as Echo Night #2: The Lord of Nightmares. If you want to get literal about it, the title
is more like “ruler of sleep,” but lord of nightmares sounds better for a horror game,
so I think the creative liberty works here. ANYWAY! To quickly recap the first game, Echo
Night 1 mainly took place on the Orpheus, a haunted ocean liner. It followed Richard
Osmond in his quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious Soul Stone
and its connection to his father’s disappearance, as well as his family’s
generations-long feud with the Rockwells. Along the way, you met ghosts who were mostly
friendly, and you solved puzzles to free their spirits and collect the astral pieces they
left behind. This usually involved traveling to the past to uncover some regret that
was keeping them bound to the mortal world. There were also some tortured souls
who would act as enemies throughout, and these ones involved more direct
confrontation to ease their suffering. Echo Night 1’s story was, uh, well, there
was one. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it storied as best as it could.
It ended up being memorable though, thanks to its unique setting and atmosphere. The sequel, developed by a team made
up of mostly the same personnel, takes a lot of steps forward in terms of
storytelling and design, but takes some steps backwards in other areas. Before we get
into all of that though, let’s set things up. In Echo Night 2, you once again take the role of
Richard Osmond, but not the same Richard Osmond from the first game. Echo Night 2 apparently takes
place in an alternate timeline. In the first game, the present time was 1937, and that Richard
Osmond was 25 years old. In Echo Night 2, the present time is 1949, and our
Richard Osmond here is also 25. So unless Richard Osmond is some
sort of time traveler, oh wait... No, no. We’re not going down
that rabbit hole. I’m not gonna make this more complicated than it needs to be. According to the opening narrative, Richard Osmond’s girlfriend, Christina
Collins, went missing three months ago. She worked at a local college and was last
seen entering the library’s reserve section. The police investigation has gone cold, so
Richard has taken it upon himself to start his own search. His friend, Kent Palmer, works
at the library where Christina disappeared, so Richard asks him to do him a solid and
sneak him in in the middle of the night. What an absolute creep. As Richard looks over the entry log and finds
the section Christina was last perusing, a book from that area falls to the floor. Richard picks it up and
flips to a photo of a woman who looks remarkably like Christina.
This turns out to be Jessica Clancy, part of a wealthy family that owns a
large estate out in the countryside. As Richard makes the night drive out there-- And
why is he driving out there at night? When are horror protagonists going to learn that there
are proper times of the day to do things? Like visit creepy mansions in the woods?-- Anyway, as
he drives, his narration tells us of how Christina was adopted as a child and never knew her birth
family. He reasons that she must have gone to the Clancy residence to see if there was any
connection between her and Jessica. But the PS1’s limited draw distance lets him down, like it has
so many of us, and he crashes into a fallen tree. In a dreamlike sequence, we see an
unknown man and a red-haired woman speaking in a long hallway. There’s
a woman’s face on the double doors at the end of this passage, and
that looks really cool, actually. Anyway, the man mentions Christina’s
name and says she’s all that he needs. The woman says that he’ll need to
kill Christina to get what he wants, but warns him that he’ll lose
even more in the process. The man then pulls out a gun
and shoots her in the head. Richard wakes up, unsure of what
he’s just experienced and finds himself in bed. A man is standing
nearby, and this is Brian Knode. Brian was out just wandering
the forest at night, as you do, and happened upon Richard’s car. He
pulled Richard from the wreckage and brought him to the Clancy residence, which
apparently, he didn’t even know was here. What was Brian doing out in the forest at night? And was he really unaware
of the Clancy residence’s location? For now, there’s no time for questions.
Brian leaves to try to find a way to turn on the lights. Out in the hallway,
he’s discovered a distribution box, but they need a key to turn the power
on, so Richard heads off to search for one as Brian just stares real hard at it.
Yeah, don’t strain yourself there, buddy. At one end of the corridor, we can find the
passageway we saw in the dream sequence and beyond those creepy woman-face doors is a
glass coffin with a woman inside. Richard at first believes that it’s Christina, but upon
closer inspection decides that he isn’t so sure. In a nearby room with a large fish tank,
Richard uses his lighter on a candle on the window sill and reveals a ghost boy trying
to open a cabinet. The boy says he needs to get the fish food inside, but when the lights went
off, another ghost came out and hid the key. Richard is then transported into
the past, where the lights are on, the fish tank is filled with water and
fish, and the little boy is alive and well. He asks Richard to open the cabinet
nearby and get the fish food. Doing so, the boy feeds his fish, then asks
Richard to put the food back for him. Goddamn rich kids, think everyone else in
the world is just their servant. The kid then throws Richard a key and says, hey lock
up that cabinet too while you’re at it. [__]. After locking the cabinet,
Richard returns to the present, where he can use the key to open it. And the
ghost boy is now able to feed his ghost fish, which was the last obligation tying
him to this mortal plane of existence. This triggers the appearance of the
red-haired woman that we saw in the dream sequence earlier. She looks pretty good
for just getting shot in the head. She informs Richard that almost everyone in the house is
dead and asks if he’s going to save them all. She tells Richard to head to the garden
where the man who killed that little boy should still be around.
Great. Then she leaves. Richard collects the Astral Piece left
behind by the ghost boy and also finds the key to the distribution
board inside the cabinet. Returning to Brian, who by now practically
has steam coming out of his ears trying to think his way through this
distribution board conundrum, Richard uses the key to turn on the power
causing a ghost girl to appear behind them. Brian’s first reaction is to shoot
at it. No time to think. Gotta shoot. When this doesn’t work, he runs away, leaving
Richard to deal with the ghost. She disappears when he flips the nearby light switch, and
Brian comes out to check if the coast is clear. ”Is...is it gone?” Yeah, big guy, I took care of it. Brian once again says, hey screw
this, and makes a run for it. You know, I’m sure we’ll see more
of Brian’s character arc as we go along. Maybe we’ll find out why he was
out in the woods and what he actually knows about the Clancy residence. Maybe
he’s really an antagonist who brought us to this place for a purpose. Or he
could even turn out to be a true ally. Oop. Nope. He’s, uh...he’s dead. Now, Richard is all alone
and must explore the Clancy residence to find Catherine and escape this place. For the most part, Echo Night 2 plays pretty
much exactly the same as the first game. The controls haven’t been upgraded. You still
have a choice of several control schemes, and I chose the King’s Field style ones,
because that’s what I’m most familiar with. These map strafing to L1 and R1, while
look up and look down are L2 and R2. Even though the game was released in 99, well
after the dual analog controller was introduced, Echo Night 2 doesn’t allow use of the
sticks for movement. It’s all a little clunky. Unless you use an emulator and rebind
the controls, which is perfectly understandable, but I just went with the King’s
Field ones. You get used to it. One thing that helped the first game out was
being able to adjust the movement and turning speed to your liking. Unfortunately, Echo Night
2 doesn’t have this option. The movement speed is a bit faster than Echo Night 1’s default, but
it’s nowhere near as smooth as setting things to faster or fastest in that game. I don’t
know why they did away with this option. You have other special settings though, like automatically lighting nearby candles,
automatically healing when low on health, and enabling a compass, which
we pick up from Brian’s corpse. Aside from the compass, which
wasn’t available in Echo Night 1, but was a feature in all 3 King’s Field games
for the PlayStation, these other quality of life options seem uncharacteristic for From
“let-me-just-pound-you-into-the-ground” Software, but Echo Night’s focus isn’t on
difficult gameplay. They saved the difficulty this time around for
item hunting. And we’ll get to that. Much like the first game, you interact with
friendly ghosts, who appear when lights are on, many of whom require trips to the past to get
context for their continued attachment to the world of the living. Then you’ll need to
either solve a puzzle or find a specific belonging to set their spirit to rest. Some
of these are clever, like figuring out sheet music notation so a woman can play a song on
a piano. This draws her lover, who was lost in another part of the house and couldn’t find
her, to the room where they’re reunited. Or finding a broken violin and traveling to the past
where the owner, a servant, will fix it and place it back in the same spot, so when you return
to the present, you’ll find a working violin instead and be able to give it to the owner’s
ghost who had forgotten where he had put it. Those ones are pretty straight forward,
but there are others which involve multiple ghosts being connected to each
other, and you’ll need to solve each of their issues before returning to previous
ghosts and appeasing their spirits too. One example is a girl who was playing hide and
seek with some other kids. Each time you find one of the hiding children, they’ll give
you a sheep’s coin and pass away. Collect all 4 and give them back to the girl to
get her to pass away too. This one takes most of the game to accomplish and will
require careful exploration. There’s also one kid who is permanently missable.
And I will talk about that later. But yeah, then there are groups of servants
and family members who are connected and an old man ghost who won’t leave until all
the other ghosts are set free. There are 30 in all. And it’s easy to forget or get
confused about who is connected to who. Luckily, the game features an auto memo system
which keeps track of every character you meet and provides a brief description
of them, as well as their location. There’s an auto map as well, which is
extremely generous, especially coupled with the compass. All of the rooms and hallways
are named on the map once you enter them, so you can cross reference between
the map and the memo to keep track of the spirits you still need to help and
get clues on how they may be connected. Once a good apparition’s soul passes on, you collect the astral piece
or item they leave behind. The astral pieces can be traded in for special
items at a chapel that you can go to later in the game. Freeing all of the friendly spirits and
collecting all of the astral pieces is essential to unlocking Echo Night 2’s best ending. I’ll
cover the endings in the spoiler section. It’s not all Casper the Friendly Ghost
up in the Clancy residence though. Evil spirits appear in the dark. If they get
near you, they’ll grab you and attack. Your health is represented by a moon in
the top corner of the screen. You can heal with dried herbs and regular herbs
that you’ll find throughout the mansion. Evil spirits can be temporarily
vanquished by turning on lights, but as we saw demonstrated in the very beginning
of the game, you’ll need keys to distribution boxes that route power to different parts of the
mansion. There are only 2 of these keys throughout the entire game, so you’ll need to juggle where to
use them depending on what area you’re exploring. The only way to completely rid
yourself of a malevolent spirit is to find some item related to their
past that will put their souls to rest. Echo Night 1 had 3 enemy ghosts and a
brief sequence where you were chased by a living person. There are
also 3 ghosts in Echo Night 2, and a couple sequences where you’re
chased and shot at by a living person. The living person segments are more involved this
time around, but the ghosts and the ways in which you face them down don’t feel as interesting or
memorable as they did in the first game. Though, I will say, their backstories allow
them to resonate more in the narrative. The writing is definitely a lot tighter
and more evocative this time around, but I’ll cover all of that in more
depth when I get back to the story. There’s more than just the mansion to explore
in Echo Night 2. There’s a lake near the estate and you’ll be able to take a boat out
and travel to a few different locations, like some ruins and a research building,
that chapel I mentioned earlier, the tower of grief--not ominous at all–, as well as a clock
tower that opens up near the end of the game. This helps to keep things interesting, though
you’ll spend most of your time in the mansion. There are two parts to your mansion exploration,
and while the first bit is well-paced, the 2nd visit is a bit of a slog. There’s a
lot of backtracking up and down floors and to different wings speaking to the different
ghosts and slowly progressing the main story. Combined with the slow movement speed it really
brings down the pacing in the second half. As far as the visuals go, they’re an improvement
over Echo Night 1. The texture work is more detailed, lighting effects feel warmer, and
the character models are slightly less blocky. There’s not as much wild movement here to make
things feel awkward either. No jumping off the back of trains. Or rather, being yanked off
the back of a train by a shepherd’s hook. Give ‘im the hook! And while I enjoyed some of the hokey English
voice acting in the first game, since Echo Night 2 didn’t get an English release, we only have the
Japanese cast. Naturally, they all do a good job. Though I did miss the merchant
character’s voice actor this time around. As you’re wandering the various
locations, you’ll be accompanied by only Richard’s footsteps and
random background noisies. Noisies. As you’re wandering the various locations,
you’ll be accompanied by only Richard’s footsteps and random background noises, of which
there are very few, dripping water in some areas, some wind outdoors. Other than that
its silence during exploration. Music does crop up during certain
cutscenes and enemy ghost appearances, and it doesn’t stray too far from the
first game's use of pianos and strings. It sets the tone nicely, but
nothing really stood out for me. So the gameplay in Echo Night
2 is similar to the first, but expanded upon. The level design is
an improvement, but the setting isn’t as memorable. The enemy ghosts also aren’t as
unique, but their backstories make up for their blander visual designs. And the plot itself is
much more coherent, so let’s get back to that. After leaving Brian’s body by the
front door, Richard finds an old newspaper in the bar lounge that details
the crash of a zeppelin in 1927. Examining the newspaper sends Richard to the Zeppelin
just before its fateful accident. On board, you’ll meet a little girl who’s
looking for a lost teddy bear. This is Rebecca Morgan, and she mentions that
the stuffed animal belongs to Jessica. And Jessica is the name of the woman from
the book Richard found in the library, and the supposed reason that Catherine
ventured out to the Clancy residence in the first place. After finding Mr. Bear
and returning it to the little girl, you can then watch a scene of Rebecca and her
parents talking about how they wanted to take Jessica with them on the zeppelin ride, but
she caught a fever and wasn’t able to join. Jessica has always been sickly, but
her parents speak with hope about how the doctor told them Jessica would get
stronger as she grows and that next time, the four of them will take
a zeppelin ride together. Well, we all saw that one coming, didn’t we? Later, Richard finds his way to the west
courtyard and is attacked by the ghost girl from earlier and her dog, Dino. Inspecting
Dino’s grave in the corner of the yard sends Richard back to the past where the girl
is still alive and searching for Dino. Turns out he got himself trapped in the
wine cellar, and he’s got the wrench to fix the lift to get out of this place,
so after trapping the little bugger and taking away the wrench, Richard fixes the
lift and the two of them get out of here. Unfortunately, while he was gone, the girl
was stabbed. By her brother according to her, and she hands over her opal
necklace before passing away. As Dino howls in lamentation, Richard returns to the present. Avoiding the ghost of
Dino and passing the necklace onto the girl eases her spirit and she and
Dino are released from their torment. The ghost girl drops a horse head hook,
which can be placed by a portrait in one of the rooms revealing a hidden
room with the diary of Karen Clancy, the name of the ghost girl Richard just exorcized. In her diary, Karen mentions her
brother Albert who hasn’t been in the best of moods recently because
Jessica’s sickness has gotten worse. As the diary goes on, Karen writes
about how Albert is acting weirder and that he’s forbidden anyone from entering
Jessica’s room. He’s even stopped allowing the doctor to visit. Albert eventually shuts
himself up in a room in the Western wing of the mansion and only comes out to visit
the wharf and head to the Eastern ruins. In the last entry, Karen writes about how some of the housestaff have
mentioned seeing ghosts around. At this point, some pieces of the larger
plot are just starting to come together, but we’ve still got a long way to go. As Richard leaves the secret
space behind the painting, the radio in the corner suddenly
turns on. And when he leaves the room, he hears something being dragged
along the floor and a door closing. Passing through the entrance area again, Brian’s body is gone and a trail
of blood leads to the East Wing. This is a good spot to break for spoilers, so if
you want to experience Echo Night 2 on your own, skip to this time to get my spoiler-free final
thoughts. You can also use the chapter select. If you prefer my plot summaries
though, just continue watching. Richard eventually finds his way to
the central courtyard and runs into the groundskeeper, George Gibbs.
George tells Richard to follow him because he wants to show him
something. Not suspicious at all. Out on the wharf, there’s a boat in a shed, but
George can’t open it. Looks like a crank is needed to open the door. There’s nothing Richard can
do, so he tries to take George’s lantern away, which upsets the big guy and causes him to
leave, locking Richard in the wharf area. After waiting for a bit, something comes
floating along on the lake. Brian’s body. George shows up again. And this time
he’s got a gun, so it’s time to run away. Now here’s a logic-defying puzzle-based
encounter. Richard needs to run to the East courtyard, go to the fueling station, grab
a container of oil, then run to the garden area. In the garden maintenance house, he needs
to fill the generator with oil, turn it on, then run outside and turn a valve. Finally,
he needs to head to the greenhouse and flip a switch on the wall. All the while, George is
following with his gun and as you can imagine, getting shot hurts. A lot. 2 shots
and you’re dead without healing. Once you’ve flipped the switch in the green
house, George will enter and the sprinkler system will begin loudly soaking everything. The
water extinguishes George’s lamp, which he isn’t a fan of, so he runs away, dropping the crank
needed to open the boat shed on the way out. With the boat now available, Richard
can travel around the lake area, and the first stop is the Eastern ruins
that Karen mentioned in her diary. There, you’ll find your own lantern and come
into contact with the next malevolent spirit, Bridget Majorelle, the chief
researcher at the ruins. You can’t turn on the power in the research
building, but you have an oil lantern and access to an oil drum that can refill the lamp anytime
you wish, so she’s really never an issue except for the very first time you enter the building
without the lamp. So yeah, kind of disappointing. Inside the building you’ll meet the ghosts of
some researchers as well as a secretary named Illeana who turns out to be Bridget’s sister.
She’s working the longest day ever waiting for her coworkers to finish their duties. Richard
will find lab coats belonging to the different researchers. Putting them on and speaking to
Illeana will have her marking them out of office. Richard learns that this team was searching
for several artifacts that were said to be buried in the ruins. One that they’ve
already excavated is the Soul Stone, which is believed to bring about immortality.
Those of you who played the first game or watched my video on it, may remember
that the soul stone was actually a dagger that the Rockwell and Osmond family
were fighting over for generations. Visiting Illeana again, wearing the last of
the regular researcher’s coats will trigger a memory of the last time she saw her sister.
Bridget had misplaced a pen that her father had given her. She doesn’t have time to look for
it though, because Albert has asked to see her. She also mentions finally being able to
uncover a chalice they’ve been looking for. Bridget leaves and Richard just so
happens to have found the keepsake pen in the present. Handing it over to Illeana in
the past causes her to run after her sister, and Richard can take Bridget’s
lab coat from the bed nearby. Back in the present, Richard dons Bridget’s
lab coat and speaks to her sister. And finally, Illeana’s long day at work has come to an
end. In Illeana’s desk is a key to a safe, and inside is an ancient code document. The rest of the ghosts in the research
building can also be put to rest now. Richard explores the cave system underneath
the ruins and finds an Earth Heartstone. A plaque next to the hearthstone,
which can only be deciphered with the ancient code document, gives a clue
for how to solve the heartstone puzzle. Richard then heads to the tower of grief. And at
the top of this tower is a Heavens Heartstone. Richard needs to place the Earth
Heartstone here, but before that, he needs to head back to the ruins and place
the heavens heartstone in the cave. Beyond the door is the chalice Bridget mentioned.
And after lighting the candles surrounding it in the correct order, Richard can
take the chalice from its pedestal. Now it’s time to head back to the tower
of grief and place the earth heartstone, which transports Richard to
the very top of the tower. Here he sees Bridget’s meeting with Albert, and
we finally learn that the man from the dream sequence near the beginning of the game is Albert
Clancy, current head of the Clancy residence. You may have already pieced that together, but
this is the first concrete proof the game gives. Albert produces the Soul Stone dagger
and stabs Bridget. Back in the present, the evil spirit of Bridget confronts Richard,
but giving her the chalice frees her soul. Taking the item she drops and
placing it in the monument in the tower reveals a path to a glass coffin
with a mummified corpse inside. And here, Albert confronts Richard for
the first time in person. Albert reveals that Christina Collins is actually
Rebecca Morgan, Jessica’s twin sister. Somehow Rebecca survived the fiery zeppelin crash.
And then the authorities didn’t check the passenger log to find out that she was part of
the Morgan family and they just put her up for adoption and she became known as Christina
Collins, which is...weird, but you know, it was 1927. Things were different back
then. Is that an excuse? I don’t know. Anyway, Albert knows who Richard is and
knows that he’s looking for Christina, or rather, Rebecca. But Albert says he needs
her to save his wife, Jessica. When twin’s souls are made whole again the bearer will
receive immortality, according to Albert. So Albert has been killing workers
and members of his own family with the soul stone, absorbing their life
force, trying to imbue it with enough power to start the ritual that will
bring his wife back from the dead. At that moment, George grabs Richard, which
is kind of a neat thing, because you can try to struggle here, but can’t move anywhere
because apparently George has you from behind. Bad choice of words there. Albert comes up and sprays some chemicals in
Richard’s face and Richard passes out. Then, I guess they have their way with him.
I mean, you don’t know that that didn’t happen. I don’t know. What happens in
the grief tower stays in the grief tower. By the way, who the hell is this mummified
woman? Jessica’s up in the house, and she looks ok in her glass coffin. As much as
anyone can look ok trapped inside a glass coffin, I suppose. And it’s not Christina/Rebecca,
so I don’t know who this lady is. Anyway, Richard awakens in a prison
cell and George has taken all of his belongings. He tells Richard to be quiet
and not to mess with the bed on the wall, because if he breaks it then he’ll
have to come in there and fix it. Oooh. George gets hungry and leaves for a bit, but left
all of Richard’s belongings right by his cell, so it’s easy enough to get all his stuff
back. Then Richard goes and breaks the bed. When George comes back, he enters the cell
to fix it, but leaves the door wide open, so it’s easy-peasy to slip out and lock
George in. Richard doesn’t get very far before the big oaf breaks down the door
though and comes after him with a club. This leads to a chase through the prison,
and Richard ends up at a dead end near an underground river. And George is pretty happy
with himself now that he has Richard cornered. Bye, George. And then. Oh man, get this. And then, Richard uses the door George just knocked
down to go on a rafting adventure. The joy, the just pure joy I experienced when I realized
what was happening in this moment. Indescribable. When he got on that door, I shouted out loud,
“He’s doing it! Oh my god! He’s doing it!” There are even multiple paths to take through
the cavern, and at certain points you have to dodge falling stalactites. It’s stalactites,
right? Those are the hanging ones? Yeah. This is the best part of the entire game. At the end of his underground river excursion, Richard finds himself under the mansion
and runs into the red-haired woman again. She talks about Albert and how he’s killed so
many people, and how he said he was willing to sacrifice everything for the one he loved. And
this is why she told him about the Soul Stone. The red-haired woman seems hopeful that
Richard isn’t like Albert. Interesting. Now that we’ve returned to the mansion, there’s a lot to do, but the 2nd visit
feels more slowly paced than the first. I think a lot of it has to
do with the fact that the ghost that follows you around here is
not really a threat most of the time. In fact, I didn’t even realize there was
a ghost at first. There’s this chime sound that you hear getting louder and louder
in dark areas, but for whatever reason, it didn’t register with me that this was a ghost
getting closer. There are other parts of the game where you can hear noises coming from certain
rooms, so that’s what I thought it was at first. It wasn’t until after I had switched the power
on and entered a room where the lights were broken that I finally encountered the ghost
in this area. And it really just surprised me more than anything. When I got grabbed by her, I
just thought, “Oh [__]. There is a ghost here.” I think it’s also the amount of backtracking
you have to do in this section that makes it feel like a slog too. If you’re
going for all of the astral pieces, and I was going for all of the astral pieces,
but we’ll see how that worked out for me. During the friendly ghost encounter where Richard
goes to the past to fix the broken violin, he finds the red-haired woman asleep in a chair.
When he wakes her up she mentions her sister, then realizes that Richard doesn’t live at the
mansion. She says his eyes remind her of her sister’s eyes. Then, she tells him to leave,
and Richard is thrust back to the present. Could her sister be the mummified
woman in the coffin in the tower of grief? I’ll come back to this at the end. Richard ends up meeting many of the servants of
the house, as well as Albert’s grandmother and other main members of the Clancy family.
It’s interesting how they each have their lingering obligations in this world that
keep their minds trapped in the past, but once you free them, it’s like all the
intervening years and all the things that have happened suddenly descend on them, and they
realize what Albert has done and how awful it is. Richard meets a boy in one of the storage rooms
who’s reaching for a candle. If Richard gives it to him, the boy talks about how he
came from the countryside to work here, but has been screwing up a lot of stuff.
Patty the maid has been supportive of him. He wishes he could return to the countryside
and play by the big pine tree like he used to. This kicks off quite a long interconnected
series of ghost encounters. There are a trio of men playing cards in one room.
They then head off to the ballroom where Richard watches them dance with their
wives in quite a nice sequence. This allows Richard to collect several astral pieces
as well as the key to the housewife’s room. Inside there, Richard meets Albert’s
stepmother, and after going to the past and interacting with a mask on the bed,
we see a scene of Albert and Jessica talking about masks. I like how this scene is set up.
Everytime Richard turns, we jump through time. In the mask room, Richard attempts
to open the bedroom door there and is transported to the past. Placing
the mask from the housewife’s room on the display opens a secret room. Knocking
on the bedroom door and running into the secret room allows Richard to spy
on Albert through the eye holes. Albert comes out of the room with the Soul Stone, and talks about how the light is fading and
his sacrifice isn’t enough. Someone calls for him and he leaves the room. Richard then
takes the key to the bedroom and unlocks it. Inside, he finds a corpse stuffed
under the bed with a pine cone on the floor nearby. The boy in the storage room
mentioned Patty the maid and a pine tree. So now we know the identity of the ghost
who’s haunting this portion of the game. Giving the pine cone to the boy frees
him and he drops an earring. Returning to the mask bedroom in the present,
Richard encounters Patty’s ghost, but giving her the earring the
boy dropped frees her spirit. And now, we don’t have to contend
with any more ghosts for the rest of the game. But there are still
quite a few things left to do in the mansion. I’ll keep it mainly
focused on the main story beats. There’s a section where you need to
cross the roof to get to the last portion of the mansion that we’ve
yet to access. The wind up here is blowing you all around. It’s just a short
little sequence that I thought was neat. After that, Richard finds a room called the
Star Chart Archives as well as Albert’s father, Edgar Clancy. Each time Richard speaks
to Edgar, he sees Richard as Albert at different ages and asks him to put a book
back on its proper shelf in the archive. After accomplishing this, Richard opens
the Lion’s Room and confronts Albert. Before Richard is stabbed, he’s sent to the past again and witnesses a scene between
Albert and the red-haired woman. Yeah, this is the important thing you
need. Just, [__] it. Pick it up, [__]. Back in the present, the crimson moon
has appeared, and Albert just forgot to take the stone of awakening I guess,
because it’s still laying on the table. He also apparently forgot to stab Richard. So now that we have the stone of
awakening, we can head back to the corridor where we started the game
and release Jessica from her coffin. Before that, there’s one other thing I want to
mention. If you pass through the entrance hall during your 2nd visit to the mansion, you
can’t turn the lights on here without some distribution board shenanigans, and
you hear banging at the front door. Now that you’ve seen the crimson moon and
have gotten rid of all the evil spirits, all the lights are on everywhere in the house,
so when you pass through the entrance hall again, you find out that Brian’s ghost was the one
kicking at the door, still trying to get out. When you talk to him, he’s relieved that
the evil ghosts are no longer around and his soul is set to rest. So things
even tie up with Brian, which is nice. Richard uses the stone of awakening
and releases Jessica from the coffin. She’s appalled that Albert has been killing
everyone to try to bring her back to life, and says that her other soul is
trapped on the lake in the clock tower. Also, the eye of awakening bit is only one part
of the ritual, if you’re wondering why Jessica is even alive at this point. Albert still needs
to sacrifice the twin to keep Jessica alive. Before heading to the clock tower, you can get
any ghosts that you may have missed and here’s where the last hiding kid completely ruined
my chances of getting all the astral pieces. So here’s the thing, there are 4 kids hiding
throughout the mansion. I found 3 of them. Girl under the table in the dining room, boy
under the desk in the house husband's office, the damn kid hiding in the gym locker that
doesn’t open unless it’s between the hours of 9pm and 4:30am, and I had to wait around
for like 15 minutes for the damn locker to open. It’s the only part of the game where
time matters at all. You can actually check the in-game time at any point from the
menu. Time moves at one hour per minute, but it doesn’t have any bearing on anything
else in the game except for this goddamn locker. But anyway, the last kid, I had no idea.
There’s only one written guide I could find, and I’m not going to knock a guide writer, I
realize it’s a lot of work, but this guide is not great. And it says, the last kid is hiding
in the boat shed and to use the oil lantern to get him to appear, since it’s dark out there and
good ghosts only appear when the lights are on. Fine. But at this point in the game,
the oil lantern is gone. You lose it after encountering Bridget at the
tower of grief. Yet the guide says you can get the boat shed kid at the
end of the game, which is impossible. You actually need to get him anytime after you
get the oil lantern but before you encounter Bridget at the top of the tower. And as far as
I know, this is the only missable ghost in the entire game. Not being able to get him, though,
means you can’t give all the sheep’s coins to the little girl who was originally “it” in the game of
hide and seek, so her soul is never freed, and you can’t free Albert’s dad’s ghost either, because he
won’t leave until all the other ghosts are free. Now, it’s not really the guide’s fault,
because I’m the one who missed the kid, and there are noises coming from
the boat shed if you stop to listen, so that’s your clue something’s out there.
But if you do play this and use the guide to try to get all the ghosts, just know,
this part is not correct. You can’t get the boat shed kid at the end. You need to
get him while you have the oil lantern. So I’m screwed out of the best
ending on this playthrough. ANYWAY, Richard heads to the clock
tower and encounters Albert outside, who’s traded his sword for a rifle. He’s locked the front entrance behind him, so Richard needs to head in the
back and race Albert to the top. There are a couple spots where
Albert takes pot shots at Richard, but if you make it to the top quickly,
Richard finds Catherine in a cell. He gets shot by Albert, but as
Albert’s coming to finish the job. Three years pass, Richard tells
us that after Albert’s death, Jessica also died. He and Christina got
married and she recently gave birth to twins. This is the game’s normal ending, which triggers if you help out at least
one ghost and collect an astral piece. Now, there is another ending you can get at this
point. If you wait for a while before climbing the final ladder in the clock tower, you’ll
see Albert enter the room at the top first. I’m not sure how long you need to wait. I did
like 2 minutes and that was enough. Anyway, when Richard enters the room, Christina
and Jessica are already dead and Albert shoots him. Albert then drops his rifle and
pulls out the Soul Stone to stab Richard, but before he can, he’s shot by
somebody. We never find out who. Richard awakens in a hospital, brought there by
an anonymous woman. He mentions that the woman had lost her memories of what happened at the Clancy
residence. We then see Richard inside his house, and he says he married this woman and they live
a happy life together. So since they are twins, it’s unclear whether the woman is
Jessica or Catherine in this ending. I find it strange that Richard
doesn’t know, but yeah well. Anyway, I’m determined to see that good ending, so I went through the game again and made sure
to find that goddamn kid in the boat shed. And now, before heading to the clock tower,
we need to go to the chapel and trade in all of the astral pieces. You can grab some extra
items from the display case here by doing this, which is a nice bonus. The real reason for
turning in all of the astral pieces though is to fill out all of the stained glass segments of
a window in one of the rooms. After this happens, the merchant from the first game
appears. Finally this guy shows up. He informs Richard that he’ll need to
make a very important decision soon, and God how I miss the voice actor
from the first game. I could hear the dialogue spoken in his voice
in my head as I was reading this. He leaves behind the comet book, which is an item
from the first game. You can read this book from the menu, and it tells the story of twin sisters
who were afflicted by an incurable disease. A man appeared to one of the sisters and offered her a
stone that had the power to save her from death, but only if she used it to kill her own
sister on the night of a crimson moon. This sister told the man she could never do
such a thing, but the man just smiled and left. On the night of the crimson moon, her sister
died suddenly. She had the stone in her hand, but still she couldn’t bring herself to drive
it into her sister, so instead she ended her own life, in turn resurrecting her sister and
imbuing her with immortality. And even now, that sister who was brought back searches for
answers. Did her sister do the right thing? So the mummified corpse in the
tower of grief? The red-haired woman’s sister who sacrificed herself.
That’s some pretty good storytelling. This time, when Richard arrives at the top
of the clock tower, he gets shot by Albert, but as Albert is about to finish the
job, the red-haired woman shoots him from behind. She takes the soul stone
from him and exits through another door. After freeing Catherine, Richard
follows the red-haired woman to the very top of the tower, where
she offers him the Soul Stone. Now, there are two ways to handle this. One,
you can accept it, and in her disappointment, she’ll stab Richard and you’ll see a newspaper
report that details how Richard disappeared from the campus library and was never seen
again. Technically an ending I suppose. But if Richard refuses the dagger, the red-haired
woman will claim that she found the answer and calls for the merchant to appear. He does so
and explains that unless someone else inherits the Soul Stone, she’ll never be able to die
again, and he’s curious why she chose this path. She says that she just wanted to
know whether or not everyone was willing to crush anything in their
path to achieve their own desires, but since Richard didn’t, she now knows
there’s hope. She throws away the soul stone, and the merchant says this has all been very
interesting, and he’ll grant her death anyway. So I guess he had the power to do that the whole
time. A giant red orb starts to form behind her, and she tells Richard to leave
as she accepts her second death. We get a nice CG cutscene of the clock tower being
sucked away into a void and wind up in Richard’s house again. Three years have passed, Jessica
Clancy, Catherine’s sister, is still alive, but has chosen to continue living at the Clancy
residence. Richard is unsure whether Jessica survived because Albert was killed, giving
his own life for hers, on a technicality, or if it was because the stone was destroyed.
In any case, he and Catherine still keep in touch with her regularly. And everyone
seems to be living happily ever after. But there’s one more ending. If you are a complete bastard man, and don’t do
certain things the way the ghosts want you to, like, for instance, feeding the fish yourself
and using up all of the fish food. Then when you return to the present with the cabinet
key, the ghost boy will say there’s no fish food left and start crying because he can’t
feed his fish, so his soul is never freed. Because Dennis is a bastard man! The red-haired woman will appear
and instead of asking if Richard will save them all, she says that he
doesn’t care and leaves. Throughout the game when you come to critical
moments like this, you can choose to not help the ghosts or intentionally mess
up their requests and not free any of them. Then, when you go to the tower at the end, Richard
will free Catherine from her cell before Albert comes in. After getting shot once, Albert will
come over to finish the job, but Catherine will jump in the way. He kills her and doesn’t get a
chance to use the soul stone on her, foiling his plan. He drops the soul stone as he leaves, and
we hear a gunshot from the other side of the door. The red-haired woman then appears
and gives Richard the soul stone, telling him he only has one choice
if he wants to save Catherine. Outside the clock tower, Jessica is trying
to make her way inside. She comes over to ask what Albert is doing, and Richard
stabs her. The soul stone glows red. We know from Albert’s attempts, though, that Richard is also going to have to give
his own life if he wants to save Catherine. So that’s Echo Night 2. And yes, the storytelling is way more coherent and emotionally investing than Echo
Night 1’s whirlwind craziness. Setting the game in and around the
Clancy residence with all of the friendly ghost side characters playing at least a tertiary role in the main plot helped
to make things feel more cohesive. However, I still feel like the setting isn’t quite as memorable as Echo Night 1’s
Orpheus ocean liner. But the mansion feels more grounded and better connected to
the story than the ship did in the first game. The friendly ghost interactions are more
complex with several ghosts’ stories interwoven. But this ends up hampering the
pacing and causing a lot of backtracking. The enemy ghosts have more
interesting backstories, but don’t look or feel as threatening
as the ghosts in the first game. Also, I feel like they could have done more
with some of the mechanics they introduced, like the lights and distribution boxes. It
would have been cool if the power went out or if different combinations of keys were
required for different boxes or you know, something. Anything to keep up the
tension of the evil ghosts throughout. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know. This is
what I meant by things taking steps forward and backwards in Echo Night 2. I’m
really of two minds with the whole game. But I think the biggest thing is there’s just
that spark of weirdness and originality the first game had that’s missing in the sequel,
and it ends up making it feel less substantial. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Echo
Night 2 for its story and characters, but I feel like if I had to recommend
one of the PlayStation entries in this series to someone who’s never played
it before, I’d choose the first game. It’s got a wackiness to it that makes it
charming. It also features less backtracking and a shorter runtime, which makes it feel like
a better paced game. Echo Night 1 took me about 4 and half hours on a first playthrough
while Echo Night 2 took around eight. Still, Echo Night 2 had some excellent
moments and was fun to dissect and talk about. And so, where would the Echo
Night series go from here? We had a haunted ocean liner,
a haunted mansion. I mean, what’s next? I don’t know,
a haunted space station? Oh. And that’s it for the Echo Night 2 video.
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the hot summer streets of Yokohama. But until then, Echo Night 2. Check it out. Dungeon Chill. Out.
