StephChars v4 - Echoes Of The Abyss Update v4.2

This is peak i love this, the characters, the abilities, the Goofy dances, the gameplay, i could go on and on but i won't 1000000/10

Don't really interact a lot with in here, but man Echoes might just be my favorite character to play as. I haven't played a lot as Skip or Jana (haven't even touched Kou lol) but Echoes feels pretty cool to play as. Nothing much, really love the mod and it's characters!!

I don't write a lot of reviews on here, but I wanna make an exception here because the Echoes update gave me words.

Skip, Jana, and Kou are some of the best character mods for this game, they're insanely creative and recontextualize the entire campaign. Skip makes you seek out enemies as a resource, Jana's primary movement mechanic uses the walls that most characters either don't interact with or don't want to interact with because climbing is slow, Kou is probably the most straight-forward of those three but cancelling his moves between each-other gives what would be a pretty basic moveset unique execution.

Echoes doesn't feel as thought-out. The other characters, along with many other characters outside of this mod, have some kind of cost to any level-skipping abilities. Tails' flight slows him down, Knuckles' climbing is slow, Metal needs high speed to keep boost, Skip needs scrap to make shields, Jana and Kou have high skill floors, X Sonic spends rings at an incredibly fast rate to use his best move. The intent for Echoes seems to be to have a reverse snowball effect where making a mistake weakens you and you aren't allowed to make many mistakes, but I think she's far too lenient for this to be interesting, and her particular skillset (combined with the type of game this is) prevents that approach from really working.

She essentially works on her own health system separate from SRB2's normal mechanics of rings and shields, and that's obviously there to make her less forgiving, but then for some reason she doesn't lose abyss when she gets hit during her attacking states. This means that her moves are designed to come at the cost of "fragility" that the moves themselves completely offset. I feel even without that design decision, the lost's health system isn't a good way to balance a character here. The thing is, the lost ultimately has a pretty lenient health system, getting to take 1 hit per room isn't that bad of a deal in isaac, and even if you stretch "per room" to mean "per checkpoint" for this game there isn't exactly a habit of checkpoints being spread far apart even in mod levels. Additionally, Echoes's abilities are simply so good that they would completely negate this downside even if getting hit during void caused you to lose abyss, because srb2 is not a game where it's particularly feasible to get hit when you're flying through the air at high speeds, and the situations where speed would put you into danger are often ones that would kill you regardless of the health system change.

If you were to keep the health system as her gimmick, I would recommend the possibility of changing abyss loss to be more permanent, having him refresh only on level clear, maybe life monitors as well.
Additionally, I actually think her abilities could cost rings. It's strange that rings are totally functionless on her unless she has emeralds, and introducing this cost would at least force her to engage with level design with a bit more thought than just flying over everything for free.
At the very least, I wanna know why getting hurt during her attacks doesn't make her lose abyss, I just don't know what the thought process was there.

Reading that she was inspired by an isaac character left me really confused as well, because you made a character who is followed around by a ghost.... and didn't base her mechanics on Forgotten or Tainted Jacob? Really my very first impressions were just disappointment that Abyss doesn't do much, to the point where you can turn him off and the character continues to function exactly the same. The character is like, finished, so it feels rude to make a comment that amounts to "why isn't this something completely different", so feel free to write off this last paragraph entirely.

my bad on the previous one i didn't understand how the characters were designed


YOU'RE TELLING ME YOU PUT POWER RUSH STRATS IN A PLATFORMER GAME

so,
i think this is the best srb2 character set, let me just start with that before i start really digging into the thoughts i've formed from playing with it so much. the only reason i have so many thoughts is because i've played with them so much. the movesets are creative enough but natural enough to make up an entire cast that feels "right". these could be the stars of a 3d platformer.

but uh
they're not in their own game

which is kind of why i'm hesitant to give 5 stars

srb2 is a very horizontal, canyon-like game in terms of level design. these movesets just don't do that justice. kou is probably the closest you'll get.
now, granted, i'm the type of person to look for characters because i think "default, cheat, and nerfed cheat" is just a bad way to design a main cast and i think mods are a good way for srb2 to escape the shadow of sonic 3's characters more than anything
so it might be a me problem
but i find that i enjoy characters more when you can do more horizontally the more verticality you sacrifice, and i especially enjoy it when that horizontal capability is actually worthwhile
my favorite example is how x-sonic gives up all horizontal speed for a jump, but can trade it in for a larger jump. simple, effective moveset design
with the most horizontally capable character here, jana, you want to actually maximize airtime as much as you can to maintain that state
it's not a terrible idea but it feels cheap, especially since you can just start it again for free, and making unnecessary walljumps is also completely free and even rewarding, giving you more room for error

the risk/reward of speed that srb2's so good at is completely flipped on its head with jana and i don't think it's in a good way. going through the level quicker is easier than going through the level slower, so the replayability is just shot.
the rest of these characters just don't have much speed capability. skip could actually do a lot with being essentially hat kid, having that low-to-the-ground landing roll that hat kid could chain, and the air cancel, but the speed gain on the former and speed loss on the latter are just decidedly not enough to matter
echoes has... almost the same thing going on, but arguably more direct. do you want to do a horizontal float or a vertical float. you can do a recovery roll out of the float on landing, and from there, you're most likely to do a horizontal float, so you'll start building up speed with chaining. and she has the same problems. barely any speed from horizontal moves, verticality retains speed too easily. but for some reason, forfeiting your verticality *doesn't* retain speed? also the recovery roll is so precise i'm convinced it's a bug, actually, so there's that.
kou is just a way to play the levels with some neat tools to get through. he's the character for you to play as when you say "i like 3d platformers, i want a 3d platformer, srb2 is one, who's the character for people like me". skip kinda fits the bill there too, but i'm a bit more willing to accept it with kou because he's the big heavy slow guy, and he actually has a fairly high skill ceiling in terms of speed and platforming once you really dig into him.

I downloaded the latest update to this mod, which adds Echoes & Abyss. I have to say, they've got to be my favorite character to play as! That being said, however, I would like to mention that Echoes's Abyss Vortex is quite difficult to see through, and a friend of mine has said that it's an eyestrain. Might I suggest an accessibility option to make effects like that less intrusive? Her weakened version of the Vortex is a fair example of what I mean.

It's honestly a good thing that i came back to review this, and i must say, is that i really liked Echoes, even though during the Metal Sonic Fight, i could barely see in First Person, but hey at least she's a pretty nice addition, and i can't honestly believe it's been almost 5 years since this addon started with just Skip, like time really flies.

Lowkey these chars are just ok i like there designs but there gameplay style is not really that fun but overrall cool mod

The version 4 of this mod is ELECTRIC! I just started toying around with echoes+abyss and its insanely fun to go around and mix the movement abilites in way to reach new heights, even using the spin move to walljump around! alll around 10/10 mod with good balacing, and i love the health system. Keep cooking!

i just have something is there a way you can use slade to reactivate kou spinning from a strike and to reactivate the wallroll because i saw some code in slade and i didnt know how to edit it all im just asking is the location of the code that reactivate his wallroll and rolling from a punch

Great mod but I have One Question if OP don't minded but is Kou the Fox

A Boy or a Girl

just out of Curiosity nothing to crazy

The reason on why i gave it 4 star is bacause it crashes when SRB2 The past is loaded. Please fix

my old review sucked don't worry about it

this review's primarily about kou because i like him the most out of the 3

skip is great, i like the hat in time inspired style
the crafting is unique but i do think it's a little strange how you keep all of your scrap between levels and there's no way to craft quickly (full stop, crouch, AND go through a menu? yucky ew no good)

jana is a little boring i'm gonna be real
it's mega man zero alright and that's about all i have to say

anyway as for kou
his combination of moves lets him absolutely schmoove and that's Pretty Damn Cool
and also YOU PUT A TIGER DROP IN A PLATFORMER YOU ARE LEGALLY HIP AND PROBABLY WEAR SNAZZY SHADES

BUT there's a little grime even with kou
first of all, why does he slide after everything? makes it really hard to keep momentum
then there's also the STUPID level of recoil on his titan drop meaning in some cases it's not worth using because you'll just send yourself off a cliff
but then there's the homing
OH DEAR GOD, THE HOMING
he'll often aim RIGHT BELOW an enemy, causing you to slide on the ground first and then hit them, which feels very iffy
not to mention, sometimes i'll be trying to use the punch for platforming, but then kou decides "nah, i'mma do my own thing" and AIM FOR AN EGGMAN MONITOR INSTEAD, WHICH GOT ME KILLED ONCE AND I AM STILL MAD ABOUT IT

oh yeah and by the way why does he not have the wall climb dash from his trailer that would've been very convenient to have since he doesn't wall climb anywhere near as fast as knuckles does

in summary despite my small rant kou is a very solid character but i cannot give him 5 stars because of the strange decisions made

Words cannot describe how much I love this trio

Each character has their own flavor of gameplay and their own charming personalities

Skip is so adorable and his gameplay is so fun. The ability to craft item boxes that also change Skip's gameplay slightly makes him feel so creative, the mechanic is just well done overall. Even without the item box mechanic, his base moveset flows extremely well for me

Jana took me a bit to get used to, her wall slide / wall jump being a passive ability can make her a tad frustrating to use in certain situations but once you get used to it, it ends up being VERY satisfying to use. She feels very speedy yet easy to use, though I really wish she could use her dash move in the air. Also the fact that enemies actually get sliced in half from her blade is such a nice touch

Kou is just on a whole new level, quite possibly one of my favorite addon characters ever. At first his slower play style was a tad off putting for me, until I started playing with him more and more and finding out that he can cancel his dive attack with his punch. The homing effect the punch has on item boxes and enemies makes it quite a satisfying move to chain with, though there are times where I feel like the homing could be a bit better. I also wish his punch could home onto springs since punching springs seems to give him a boost. Also I am just amazed by how many sprites he has, specifically on his taunts like there are just SO many and I love it so much, they show off his personality perfectly. His counter is so fun to use, it amazes me at how many things he can actually counter, the only issue I have with it is that if you counter in the air, Kou can't really do anything besides fall. I also like how Kou's abilities get effected depending on what shield he has, but since Skip also has this gimmick, I kind of wished Jana had something similar. Also I love how Kou can straight up punch trees that really caught me off guard lol

Overall just a very fun and well made character pack

Honestly, it's kinda insane (in the best way possible) how good this addon is. Each one of these characters feels pretty good to play and while Skip and Kou don't feel quite as fun or fast (that's purely down to personal preference) as Jana, they're still pretty neat (sidenote: Jana is kinda busted in a fun way when it comes to blazing through levels thanks to her nigh limitless wall jump shenanigans. Good job!)

It's all fun and games until SMS uses haymaker/any damage move and you click spin as kou

I'M NOT GONNA SUGARCOAT IT: "Press Spin just before taking damage"

This has to be one of my favorite mods, the good ol' Skip with his crafting system and A Hat In Time gameplay, Jana channeling the Megaman Zero fanboy part of me and of course, the brand new funky mode, also know as Kou being extremely fun to play as, the parry mechanic has to make him one of the best characters for bossfights in the entire mod catalogue, the only issue is how buggy he is in general, like, sometimes you hit the parry, but somehow still get damaged, other times you hit an enemy with the dash punch and you end up launching yourself into the stratosphere, sometimes if you hit a parry you can just start spaming the spin button and become invincible until the first glitch I mentioned happens and just die for no reason, I'm pretty sure this and more issues I haven't run into yet will be fixed eventually, but for now it's still a really really fun mod, Jana will never not be my favorite, but Kou is still an excelent adition one of the coolest things I've seen in this game

i made my account just to make a rating on this addon because jesus holy christ kou is amazing. when i saw the titan drop i literally fell to the floor and started doing the "FUUUUTUUUREEE" thing that squidward does in sb-129 i cant believe komaki taught a buff dog

I love this new version so much, Kou is such a fun character to play as and the eastereggs/extras for the characters are really cool! 5 Stars from me :D