Before the Echo

Before the Echo is a mashup of the rhythm and RPG genres. You play as Ky, a young man who wakes up one day to find himself in a tower filled with vicious monsters. The voice of a woman, Naia, serves as his guide through the seven-story tower. Ky will have to fight many monsters, including guardians, to make his way to the top. As Ky makes his way through the tower, the truth behind what's really going on will slowly be revealed..

Much like a traditional RPG, the player will battle enemies in order to gain experience and become more powerful so he can fight increasingly stronger enemies. However, instead of traditional battle mechanics, every battle plays out as a rhythm game. You have three windows of arrows to keep track of simultaneously. In the Mana window, you hit arrows to build up mana to cast spells. in the defense window, you hit the arrows that come down to avoid attacks from the enemy character. The spell field is where you attempt to cast a spell, which is also the only way you can damage your opponent. Screw up the sequence of arrows here, and you'll have wasted your mana on a useless spell. The player switches between all three fields until the monster is dead.

In addition to the battle mechanics, there are also crafting and spell-learning systems. Crafting uses your experience points and item drops you have earned in a luck-based system. Spell learning plays much like a traditional rhythm game, as you are given one arrow field to play in.

The game has a soundtrack by Ronald Jenkees and DJ Plaeskool, in addition to fully voice-acted cutscenes.