Embrace yourself with all your flaws, and listen to the voice within
Story
The Thousand Peaks is recovering from a war that lasted 20 years from numerous factions, it was all thanks to this natural resource called Lumen. This is the source of life that helps the galaxy run its technology and other machinery. You play as Jun, an exiled prince from the renowned Yinghai Nobles. He comes across a woman by the name of Eda, a witch who is discriminated form the faction her own kind is allied with.
Then there is Remi, who is the shipmaster and Eda’s childhood protector, the three embark on a journey across the Thousand Peaks and come across many distant lands. Each character has a goal that they want to accomplish and they will come across many hardships on their travels.
Pros and Cons
Pros
-Fantastic story that can be very emotional
-Amazing characters that have a lot of depth
-There are humanoid Capybaras~
-Lots of lore to find and see in the world
-The usage of sound is a very creative idea
-Beautiful 3D art style that looks stunning
Cons
-The issues were so minor that they did not meddle with my experience
Characters/Gameplay
The story for Opus: Echo of Star Song is amazing; they are rejected by most people and are trying to live together in peace. There is a lot I want to say about the story and the characters but I really don’t want to spoil this visual novel. I also liked how Jun has actual character development in him and that I really liked, it breaks the trend of uninteresting main characters in visual novels.
I do have two personal favorites of mine, one of them is Eda, she is a witch whose kind is no longer useful after the war. She wants to travel to the Thousand Peaks to reach a certain goal, I don’t want to talk too much about it but I can understand her motives. She isn’t afraid to miniplate people, if need be, as well but she has a soft side and prefers to be a pacifist. She is very happy to have met Jun and appreciates all he has done to help out.
My next favorite character is Bones, he is a side character but he was overall enjoyable. He may do things rough and works in methods that are illegal but he has a sense of honor. He will help people at times, which is very nice. I would also like to talk about Remi a tad bit, she was also enjoyable even when she can be a bit of a jerk, however, I can see her reasoning in a way.
I would love to talk more about these characters but I would spoil this VN, everyone is honesty a great character to talk about. They have a lot of depth to them that makes them fantastic characters.
Although I would also like to point out that there are humanoid Capybara’s in this VN and I should point out that Capybara’s are the greatest creatures to walk this Earth. The only issue is that these humanoid Capybaras are all jerks.
Although Opus: Echo of Star Song does have some gameplay to it, you will have to travel to different spots in the game to reach a certain destination. You will need gas to travel from place to place and if you run out, you will get a ship that will help you or you can buy it at shops. Since Jun is a cave explorer, he can go out and find stuff for the ship or stuff to sell at shops to buy supplies. You can even find information to go explore other caves as well.
The ship can even be upgraded to have stuff like carrying more gas, extra armor, etc. There will be times when your ship will get attacked, so having the armor does help. There will also be times when you will be put into an event and given a choice on what to do. Some of these can be side quests or a run-in with someone, depending on what you do, you will be rewarded. However, some of these events do require some luck to be done. It all depends on how things go but there is a lot to experience.
I should mention that there is lots of lore in the game for you to find, it helps with the world building and the characters will even have some thoughts on certain locations. It not only adds to the world but to the character development as well.
There is also a usage of sound in the VN as well, Eda has the power to use her singing voice to open other doors. Jun will then have to line up certain lines on the symbols on each door for it to open. I really liked how this was used, I do recommend playing the game with headphones to get the best experience possible while playing.
Graphics and Performance
Opus Echo of Star Song is a very beautiful game, it has a very colorful art style that is very pleasing to look at with some very nice scenery. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. I experienced no issues while I was playing and it should be fine to run on a decent computer.
Final Verdict
I was gifted Opus: Echo of Star Song by a very dear friend of mine who really enjoyed it and I must say, I also enjoyed it from start to finish. I haven’t played a VN that has impressed me this much in years and I felt no moment of slow down while I was playing. This is one of the few titles I can recommend picking up at full price but if you want to wait for a sale, that’s fine as well, as I can see paying for $32.50 CDN may be a bit much for some people.
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