i’ve been struggling to come up with a good answer for the former. my attachment might be a little insubstantial; it certainly lacks the formal intricacy of siren or resident evil, and it definitely doesn’t pioneer anything for the genre, but its rhythm/texture/cycle structure/environments are so compelling and intoxicating and i find myself thinking about it all the time. really great sound design too. also you can play an antiquated ancient japanese version of backgammon in it if you find the pieces in the different routes.
echo night i can’t necessarily vouch for, i’ve enjoyed what i’ve seen of the second game in the series in particular, and i appreciate the consistently oblique treatment of narrative and story information (the third game also looks potentially interesting, though i don’t know much about it). i brought it up in my original post mostly because déraciné’s narrative and mechanics feel directly inspired by the echo night series’ adventure game conceit of projecting through time to solve problems and retrieve items to help spirits to move on (except this time you’re the spirit helping humans, of course).