It's like Guitar Hero and Final Fantasy crashed into each other, and there was a huge explosion, and everyone was dismembered and concussed.

Sequence [later renamed "Before the Echo"] is probably the most complicated game I've seen that also isn't interesting at all.

It's a rhythm/RPG hybrid, in the same way that Puzzle Quest is a matching/RPG hybrid: actions, like attacking, are performed by matching notes as they drop down. (Well, not "notes," but Dance Dance Revolution step-arrows, for some reason.) Okay, that's only two types of gameplay, not that hard to manage-- well, except that there are three different "lanes" to watch, which must be switched and focused on one at a time. One of them builds up spellcasting mana; one of them casts spells (and failure means a loss of mana with no effect); and one of them prevents damage, as in, not switching to and succeeding in this lane causes damage. All of these are potentially going at the same time. It's like The World Ends with You, but with three screens instead of two.

So I was already a little confounded by the time I finished the tutorial. Well, I thought I had finished the tutorial. Then the game started belting out all this stuff about items. And crafting! And keys, and, yeah. No thank you.

The kicker is that the game's production values, which might have compelled me to at least tolerate it a little longer, are really no good. The art is bland, including the in-combat art, which actually makes the gameplay appear more dull. And scenes inbetween combat are filled with poorly-written, poorly-acted dialog that's often painful to listen to. If these characters were real people, I would make up an excuse to get away from them.

Progress: Got to the "safe room."