Now let me start off by saying that I have only played the Sega Genesis version of Ecco for a few minutes in my whole life, so I can’t give you a nice detailed list of the differences between them; ask someone else. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, onto the review. Overall, this was a decent game. It was fun to swim around as a dolphin and do a few flips in and out of the water, but the mission…quest…things you have to go on weren’t so much. Some of them were rather boring, like having to slowly move through a large cave while having a school of glowing fish follow you.
You have to worry about two different “health” meters in this game, which aren’t too hard to get used to. The first meter is actually your health, as in how much damage you can take, and the second is your breath bar, which is how long you can hold your breath. You refill the health bar by eating fish, and the breath bar by going to the surface for air. The story itself is pretty ridiculous, but not necessarily in a bad way. It’s about the world being in danger and all of the dolphins and humans having to travel in strange bubbles through space. A few dolphins are left on the planet to defend it, and guess who 
becomes the world’s last hope? Yeah, Ecco. Despite the drawbacks, it’s still an okay game whether you are a fan of Ecco or not.
The controls are very easy to master, as the only things you can really do are swim, dash/ram forward, and send out sonar (I’m sure you can handle the three buttons). And soon after beginning the game and going through the little tutorial/training the other dolphins give you, you will be more than ready for anything this game has in store for you.
The visuals are probably the strongest point of the game. The underwater scenes are quite pretty, with various marine creatures to see, such as whales, sharks, sea turtles, jellyfish, and of course, many different varieties of fish. The world itself is made up of gorgeous coral reefs and rocks and water and sand and anything else you’d normally find in the ocean. Now, as I am not a marine biologist or any other type of marine thing, I cannot say that everything is completely accurate, but who cares; it’s puuurdy.
The replay value of this game is pretty low, because although it is a fun game to play around with, it won’t have you coming back to play again and again…at least, it didn’t have that effect on me. If you are a fan of Ecco or Ecco-type games, you might get more enjoyment out of this game, but my time playing this game was mostly spent swimming around and eating fish.
This game is good fun for those of you who like to just play around with your games for short amounts of time without really feeling a need to complete them; if you are that type of person, then this might just be the game for you. If you are looking for a strong game that will keep you enthralled for hours and hours on end, try an RPG. I bought this game for 20 bucks at an EB Games, and for such a low price I’d say the game was worth it. If it was 50, I’d say buy .hack instead.
