Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future
Sega Dreamcast
Nostalgia Factor:
I first played this game back in the year 2000, shortly after it first came out. Being a big fan of Ecco for the Sega Genesis, I was eager to see how the series would translate to 3D. Immediately, I found myself hooked to this game. It was able to portray the deep sea and the open ocean with exactly the sense of wonder and adventure that I'd been hoping for. Graphically, it was drop dead gorgeous and everything I wanted from a next-gen Ecco game.
As much as I liked the game, I wasn't very good at it. I would play it for hours on end, struggling to get through one simple area. I found the game to be extremely vague at telling you what to do and where to go next. Whereas the Genesis Ecco games were linear and focused, you could get lost in this one very easily. Each level would take me days to get through. It would have been better if I had the Internet to help me when I was stuck. But back in 2000, the Internet was a luxury I was not afforded in my household.
But still, I didn't have anything better to do back then. I was 18. I was fresh out of high school, just sitting around on my butt all the time. I plugged away at this game day after day after day. BUT THEN. I met a girl. You know how young love is. I put the game down and just... never came back to it. She was interested in the Dreamcast, and I think I put on Ecco a few times, just to show off the game's graphics. But I was never able to progress any further. I remember specifically the level I stopped on: the level where Ecco is swimming through a tube full of futuristic gears and grinders.
In the years that have passed since I stopped playing this game, I've tried to come back to it multiple times. In fact, I still have my copy for the Dreamcast. I remember coming back to it shortly before I started this blog, somewhere around 2012 or 2013. I made it to the shark boss fight very early in the game before losing interest in the game. And then a few years later, I tried again. I petered out even faster this time around.
Jump forward to late 2025. As people who have been reading this blog should know, I've been trying to get my five year old son into games. One of the first games I remember showing him was Ecco. He really liked this game, directing me where to swim and what to do. After he went to bed, I continued to play Ecco. I thought to myself: this time I am going to beat the game, darn it.
But again, I ran into trouble. I was having a really hard time getting into the game. Every time I would think "hmm, what am I going to play tonight?" I would immediately try to think of something else to play that was not Ecco. I'd play for a few days. Stop for a week. Play for 20 minutes. Stop for three weeks. Play a couple levels. Come back two months later. Once again, I was on the brink of giving up on Ecco. I just wasn't having a whole lot of fun with it.
Eventually, I had to force myself to buck up and power through it. There's not many games I've been playing since my youth that I haven't completed or finished. I told myself that I needed to beat this game in honor of young me. So after wrapping up the last few games on my to-play list, I came back to Ecco and forced myself to sit down with it, not allowing myself to start another game until Ecco was over.
I'm now glad to say: it's over. Let's move on, shall we?
Story:
As much as I enjoyed the storyline for the first two Ecco games, I couldn't really get into this one. For one reason, I thought this was a continuation of the original Ecco series. It is not. It's a complete reboot with a brand new Ecco. So this threw me off the first time I played this game. I was very confused.
But even coming into the game knowing that it is a brand-new story, I still struggled to truly get into it. The storyline is similar, with time-traveling aliens attacking Earth. But while the original Ecco slowly unraveled this mystery as the game went on, this game beats you over the head with it 10 seconds into the first cutscene.
In the future, humanity and dolphins have teamed up to create a galaxy exploring empire. While exploring the far reaches of the solar system, they become involved in a bitter war against a race of aliens known as The Foe. During battle, the Foe perform a sneak attack on Earth, sending one ship into the atmosphere to travel into the past and alter the timeline so humans and dolphins never team up. Ecco follows the ship into the past.
This is where things get weird (as if they haven't been weird from the jump). The aliens disrupt "first contact" between humans and dolphins (when dolphins reveal to humans that they've been hiding their intelligence this whole time). This sets a timeline in motion where humanity enslaves the dolphins. Thus sets in motion your journey to defeat The Foe and restore the timeline.
Gameplay:
Ecco's transition from 2D to 3D is not without its warts. The camera can be hard to handle. The swimming controls can be a bit jank. It's hard to adjust yourself or turn around sometimes. I often found myself getting completely stuck in objects within the environment, or trapped in corners where I had to struggle to get myself turned around.
The controls are basic on paper. Action takes place from a behind-the-dolphin perspective. The analog stick points you in the direction you want to go. There's a swim forward button. There's a charge button. There's a sonar button (which you can use to talk to other characters, or hold down to get a map of your immediate surroundings). Other buttons control things like the camera angle. Like most games, there is a health bar on the screen. Unlike most games, there is an oxygen bar next to it. As Ecco is an oxygen-breathing mammal, you will need to emerge from the water to take a deep breath every once in a while. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who played the first two games in the series.
Neither should the combat. You defeat enemies by charging into them repeatedly. You can also use the charge button to storm little schools of fish. Eating a fish restores some of your health. Additionally, you will use the charge button to shoot yourself out of the water like a cannon. You will need to do this to jump over walls and gain access to new areas. Later on in the game, your swimming and launching skills are put to the ultimate test in the Hanging Waters stages. But we'll get to that very soon.
As you play through the game, you will unlock special powers, such as extra health/oxygen boosts, which last for a limited amount of time. There's a power up that increases your charge damage. There's another one that grants you the power of invisibility. Yet another power up makes it so your sonar damages enemies.
One of the reasons I got stuck is because the game almost never directs you where to go. I was surprised at how quickly I had to turn to the internet to get help on how to proceed. I think the game would have been better off making the first few stages linear. Instead, they are interconnected and you can travel back and forth between them. This made it super hard to figure out if I was in the right area or going the correct way. Later on in the game, the levels are linear and are not interconnected. I have no idea why they had to do this right in the beginning of the game.
Back when I was a teen, I powered my way through this area because I had nothing better to do with my time. I could play for 6 hours straight and scour every inch of each stage. That was the only way I made it through, because like I said, I didn't have access to the Internet back then. I'm honestly shocked I had made it as far as I did, because some of these stages are freaking brutal in their obscurity and lack of general direction. And then throw in a lot of really super cheap deaths on top of things. Luckily, I have the Internet here in present times to turn to when I am stuck. I don't have the luxury of being able to sink 6 hours into a game each day. But even with exact step-by-step instructions for what to do in each stage, I still struggled.
This game is hard. There is no way around it. Even when you know exactly what it is you need to do, it can still be difficult to accomplish due to the awkward mechanics. That early battle with the shark: again, I don't know how I beat it when I was younger. On my current playthrough, I switched over from the Dreamcast to my Retropie and used save states once I saw how tough this game was going to be. And even then, it still took me like an hour and a bunch of reloading old saves to micromanage my way through the shark battle. But using save states turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. This game can be really cheap with its constant deaths via surprise attacks by things like hidden eels and shit.
People like to talk about the Genesis Ecco games being soooo difficult. Those people need to play this game. Now THIS is hard. It makes the Genesis games look like a walk in the park. For the most part, the difficulty is manageable if you plug away at the game and sink a lot of time into it. But there are some stages at the end of the game (the aforementioned Hanging Waters stages) that are downright diabolical. I don't know how anyone could have made it through these stages without going completely insane. They are like the Tides of Time water tube stages, but in 3D. You have to be exactly precise with every jump. One missed jump either sends you to your death, or down to an area where you have to make multiple difficult jumps in a row to get back to where you were. And that's just for one shot at getting it right again. Using save states, it sometimes took me 15 to 20 attempts to make just one jump. Luckily, I could just load it right up again and try again. But if I was playing on original hardware? There is no way I would have had the patience for this. It's insane.
Graphics:
You can't knock this game's graphics. It's amazing that this game is already over 25 years old. It looks great. I don't think I've played a game that portrays ocean life so vibrantly. The colors are bright and beautiful. The ocean floors are full of coral reefs and starfish. There are whales, sharks, and schools of fish swimming around. The full wonders of the ocean are on display.
As the game progresses, it gets darker and more science fiction oriented. It feels more grim and isolated. You'll be swimming through a lot of metallic underground structures. There will be lights, electricity, that kind of thing. It is very atmospheric and moody. Towards the end of the game, things brighten up again with the Hanging Waters stages. As much as I like to knock the difficulty of these levels, they are freaking gorgeous visually. Google a video of these levels if you have to. You'll see why I am so impressed that this game is over 25 years old. There weren't many games that looked like this back in the year 2000.
Sound:
This game's music is all about creating an immersive atmosphere. It can be majestic when you are swimming in the open ocean, being blown away by all the amazing visual sights. It can be dark and brooding when you are swimming through a dark tunnel at the bottom of the ocean.
That said, this isn't really a game you play expecting to hear any catchy tunes. Nothing from this game went onto any of my gaming music playlists. It's all about atmosphere.
Overall:
I really wish I liked this game more than I do. I enjoyed the Genesis Ecco titles. I beat them a bunch of times as a kid. I can pick them up and play them at any time and have a good time with them. This game, however? I am never playing this again. Ever.
I'm not saying this is a bad game. It's just not a particularly fun one. There's a reason it took me 26 years to complete it. There's no direction. Your goals are never made clear. You can wander each stage for 4 hours looking for where the hell you are supposed to go next. That isn't fun. You almost have to turn to the Internet for help. GameFAQs and YouTube videos were my friend as I played this game. I am sure there are people who have beaten this without outside help who are reading this and looking down on me from their high pedestal. But if you are reading this: you are few and far between.
And then throw in the annoying difficulty challenges in the game. Running out of air. Enemies that kill you with one hit. Annoying boss battles. Chase sequences that demand exact perfection. That Hanging Waters bullshit. These frustrating segments suck the fun right out of a game that was already struggling in the fun department to begin with. You know what I don't like to do? Play through long segments of the game that I've already played through before after dying. This game is full of that crap. Another reason I'm happy I switched over to the Retropie from the Dreamcast for this review. So I could use save states. Even then, this game still felt like "homework" half the time. Whenever I would look for a game to sit down and spend the night with, I would never want to pick this. That's why this one playthrough of the game took me over 6 months.
I feel like I'm really dogging on this game. When all is said and done, I don't feel like I necessarily hated the game or anything. There's a lot to love: the setting, the concept, the visuals, the immersive nature of the game, etc. I like the idea of a 3D Ecco the Dolphin game. But the execution of this particular game just did not do it for me. It may do it for other people, but not for me. Which is a shame, because I loved the Genesis titles and I always try to be positive about Ecco when I speak about it online, because I want people to go out and play it.
But they don't need to play this one.
THE GRADE:
D+
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