How much would you sacrifice for the people you love? Of the many narrative threads with which OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition weaves, it is the one that keeps coming back to. If those loved ones seem lost, when would you give up? Would you give up? And if they were gone forever, would you trade the rest of your life for a few snatched moments with them?
OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition is not a game to play if you want to keep your handkerchief dry. It’s a game that played us like an instrument, knowing each string to pluck or press each valve. We were haggard at the end, and it’s a testament to the designers and writers that we never felt emotionally manipulated at any point. This is as authentic and wonderful an experience as To The Moon, What’s left of Edith Finchand other narrative tearjerkers.
Explaining what OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition is is a challenge. We have not come across such games yet. You could reduce it and call it one graphic story. There is certainly plenty to read, with every aspect of the game requiring you to master the text. There are moments on your ship, talking to your crew, that are most like a visual novel, but then you’re also out in the field, exploring stations and moons on foot in two and a half dimensions. It’s too interactive, too eager to let you explore to really be a visual novel.
In other respects it feels like a game where the codices of games like dragon era. Your knowledge of the universe and its history is scratched together from found objects and artifacts. One of the most haunting and successful elements of OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition is that everybody seems captivated by the past, to the point that people are sleepwalking into the future. It gives the universe a sense of entropy, a decrease, as humans cling to what was once important.
And then there’s the star map navigation, which is reminiscent of the mining sections in Mass Effect 2. The universe is presented as a zoomed-out map, but that map is amazingly dense. Virtually every dot on the map is a location to explore, whether abandoned or inhabited, and you’re at the whim of what lies there. Events appear, with choices that can lead to a dice roll (customized by the items and events you’ve experienced before), or simple dialogue choices. Other times, you can use saved scout kits to return with salvage, which in turn can be converted into cash or upgrades for your ship. Build those upgrades and you’ll find yourself better positioned to explore the star map. Longer journeys, better protection against enemies, and greater reconnaissance capacity are all possible.
Above all, OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition is an accumulation of all these things, perfectly intertwined to create an experience that – if we were to compare it to anything – most resembles Heaven’s Vault. Inkle’s masterpiece shares OPUS’ ubiquitous sense of loss and a world like a palimpsest, desperately trying to find its own identity, even though its foundations are in the past. Although they are very different games, we recommend fans of one to check out the other.
Because OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition is a masterpiece in its own right. Every bit of the 5 out of 5, OPUS let us search and linger through every text fragment it gave us, compiling its history. We were thoroughly beaten.
It’s magnanimous, and that comes from the relationships that anchor the story. It is the story of Jun and Eda, who take turns being the center of the story. Eda is a witch, although not officially – she never passed the exams that established her as such. But this isn’t the pointed interpretation of the term: she’s more of a space siren, able to hear and interpret star songs, then sing it back to open various gates scattered across the universe. These are forgotten, the victims of a war that has wiped out virtually everything.
Jun, meanwhile, is a nobleman who has been effectively banned by his clan, East Ocean, for a mistake from the past. He is overshadowed by Kay, an elderly bodyguard who has followed him to exile. Desperate for abandoned lumen caves, Jun claims them in the name of East Ocean and returns a hero.
Early on, the paths of these two characters cross, and an uneasy alliance is forged on Eda’s ship. Eda’s other crew member, Remi, is extremely wary of Jun, and there’s a sense that things are foaming up to a critical moment. Are Eda and Jun going to fall in love? Will Jun abandon them all for his clan? Will Remi find a way to send Jun to the authorities?
The story is told decades in the future from Jun’s perspective, so at least He is safe at the end of the story. But otherwise the pieces can fall in all sorts of ways, and it’s up to you to watch – almost helplessly – as they do. Events take place over seven chapters and about ten hours – largely depending on how much you dive into the Mass Effect 2 star maps – and you’ll be run through the wringer once or twice just to be sure.
So much of OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition, almost perfect, comes from these characters. The relationship between Jun and Eda is so cute chaste and hesitant, and the rest of the cast toasts at first, but then becomes favorites by the time the curtains fall. Likewise, the world-building is superlative: if you wanted to construct a Silmarillion-esque text to sum up all the factions and their histories, you absolutely could.
Oddly enough, though, our favorite moments were in the exploration. OPUS: Echo of Starsong – The Full Bloom Edition’s star navigation feels like a board game at times, as you pull a card from the event deck and wonder if you have enough fuel or shields left to make the journey home. Learning this board game, mastering and then clearing the systems that remain unexplored has been a constant highlight. We found ourselves returning to older chapters immediately after the credits rolled so we could see every visitable location.
There are a few flaws here and there. That event deck we mentioned can lead to instant and sudden death, often thanks to a bad dice roll. The randomness of these moments threatens to enrage, until Jun waves his wand from the future and says, “It didn’t happen that way,” taking us back to the moments before that death. We would have preferred a harsh punishment and the opportunity to redeem ourselves. But we couldn’t stay mad at OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition for long.
We are still thinking about OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition. It’s a game that dares to be many things at once – a visual novel, a space exploration sim and a tomb-raiding adventure – and then, even more daringly, manages to master them all. But above all, it is a story as operatic and tear-jerking as the name suggests. We were completely and utterly in his net.
What unites the characters is the need for a last moment with the person they love. At the end, we felt their pain: we needed more time with OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition.
You can buy OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition at the Xbox store
How much would you sacrifice for the people you love? Of the many narrative threads with which OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition weaves, it is the one that keeps coming back to. If those loved ones seem lost, when would you give up? Would you give up? And if they were gone forever, would you trade the rest of your life for a few snatched moments with them? OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition is not a game to play if you want to keep your handkerchief dry. It’s a game that we played as a…
OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition Review
OPUS: Echo of Starsong – Full Bloom Edition Review
2022-09-22
Dave Ozzy
Advantages:
- Beautiful anime-style animations and characters
- Extremely detailed world build
- Did you bluff towards the end?
- Fully engaging starmap gameplay
- Stellar writing
cons:
- Chooses some unreliable arbitrariness
Information:
- Thank you very much for the free copy of the game go to – Bought by TXH
- Formats – Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC
- Version Reviewed – Xbox Series X
- Release Date – August 25, 2022
- Introductory price from – £20.99
TXH score
5/5
Advantages:
- Beautiful anime-style animations and characters
- Extremely detailed world build
- Did you bluff towards the end?
- Fully engaging starmap gameplay
- Stellar writing
cons:
- Chooses some unreliable arbitrariness
Information:
- Thank you very much for the free copy of the game go to – Bought by TXH
- Formats – Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC
- Version Reviewed – Xbox Series X
- Release Date – August 25, 2022
- Introductory price from – £20.99
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