Echoes of the Past: The Castle of Shadows Collector's Edition is rated 3.6 out of 5 by 23 .

Rated 5 out of 5 by pennmom36 from Echo's of the Past: The Castle of Shadows CE The Royal House Museum cordially invites you to attend their newest exhibition featuring 19th century art, which includes a fascinating portrait of a mysterious woman who often disappears from the painting! You're no stranger to the Royal House, who seems to have a bond with you, and insists that you solve all problems created by that bitter and relentless witch. Another featured artifact is a beautiful golden Amulet stand, the whereabouts of the Amulet itself is a mystery. Your destination into the past reveals this mystery, that evil witch is at it again! She has broken the Amulet in pieces, scattering the pieces throughout the kingdom. Can you find all the pieces to the Amulet so the Royal spirits can finally rest? This isn't an easy game, I found myself looking at the Strategy Guide on more than one occasion, which is something I don't usually do, so for that reason alone I recommend the Collectors Edition over the Standard Edition. Throughout the kingdom you will see several "ghostly" objects, grey and misty, which are missing objects that need replaced once found. Ghostly spirits will also appear with a dilemma of sorts, once you solve their dilemma, they will reward you with a piece of that all important Amulet. The Hidden Object Scenes are very well done. The first time you play the HOP, the items are interactive list finds. The second time you revisit that scene, you will replace items found from a different scene back into that scene where they belong. Some of the scenes are repeated a third time with multiples of a single item such as 15 feathers or 15 arrows for example. Each scene contains two mirrors that aren't on the list, which will give you an extra hint for each mirror found, however the hint system is very vague outside if the hidden object scenes. The Mini Games are my favorite part of this series. Almost every puzzle is unique even though this is an older game. My favorite was correctly placing figurines upon two shelves with only scraps of torn images as clues. This Collectors Edition doesn't have a lot of frills, Wallpapers, Concept Art, a Bonus Chapter and a Built in Strategy. As I stated earlier, this is a difficult game at times, and the fact that I could use the built in Strategy Guide when I got stumped, was invaluable, enjoy!

Rated 5 out of 5 by neilskinut from Get them all All the echoes of the past are great fun games. Not too much moving all around to keep play flowing.

Rated 5 out of 5 by Rebr2009 from First-Rate Game ! The story in the beginning is excellent and already holds you! The graphics are excellent, and also the effects. Really good Atmosphere. Sound is great! - without loud noisy and screamings as in so many other games. Many places to go, lots to do, very interactive and interesting game.. Many HOS and puzzles, and most are new and different from the usual. All objects found on a HOS, after will be placed in a different scene - very entertaining and innovative! All "Echoes of the Past" are excellent and very enjoyable games !

Rated 5 out of 5 by Hookedonbigfish from Up with the best - Excellent This game is akin to the Ravenhearst and Dire Grove games. Plenty to do, plenty places to go and an enthralling and challenging game. The graphics are good and clear with clean lines and good detail. The dialogue is interesting and to the point - no wasted hoo har. The plot is to find numerous items to free several ghosts to gather vital pieces of an amulet that was broken and strewn throughout the various scenes in the game. The puzzles and mini games were what you would expect in a Collectors Edition, most require plenty of thought and require careful attention to the subtle clues in the scenes, together with referal to the journal or diary constantly. The hidden objects are quite reasonable without being dead easy as they range to varying degrees of difficulty to find. There is a fair amount of backtracking, to find various items which are to be used in other places but you would not have it any other way in a C.E. game. The bonus feature is equally as good. Buy it, well worth the money.

Rated 5 out of 5 by WarmBuns from Better than first Echoes of the Past game The storyline kept making want to see the ending. At first the puzzles were easy like the first game (Royal House of Stone), but once you progressed to the castle they got a little more challenging. All in all it was fun and with the bonus of the Collector’s Edition I think I completed it in about 3hrs 30mins which is a much better length then the first game of the series. The artwork was good, but it lost a point visually for the Hidden Object Scenes. Granted the first game had a grainy resolution for the Hidden Object Scenes and so did this one, but what made the difference was the spacing of the objects in this game. It made it a little easier on the eyes, but it was still hard to stare at it for awhile (hurts the eyes when it is blurry looking like that). This made the difference between it being Good rather than OK (which I gave for Royal House of Stone's Visual Quality). There was voice acting again in this game which was done well. Although, you could tell that the actors were trying really hard to make an accent for the character speaking that was not their natural accent. It did not bother me too much to affect the rating. I do recommend this game because it is the back story for the next Echoes of the Past game called "The Citadels of Time".

Rated 5 out of 5 by madchemist from a bit of a different HOG I just finished the CE version and I really liked it. They tried something different with the hidden objects and I think it really worked. My only problem with the game was that the strategy guide was outside of the game, meaning that you have to leave the game to get some help. Now maybe that was a good thing since I wasn't as tempted to peek at the solutions but it was awkward. However, overall I really enjoyed it and will now replay the earlier games of the series I had already bought..

Rated 5 out of 5 by mcs123r from Great game It does have the walkthrough guide within the game, but, you have to go to the main menu and click on extras in order to get any help that you might need. Once you get use to have the list of items at the top compared to usually having them on the side or the bottom, the game is great and I believe that I will purchase it to play the full version.

Rated 5 out of 5 by MARTINMYSTERE from Echoes of the past I have to repeat myself. As in the others two installments of the series, it's an enjoyable game likely to keep you addicted to the story in progress and admiring the graphics. Puzzles interesting with the right twists to keep you puzzling (they are puzzles, isn't it?) over them.

Rated 5 out of 5 by margmac58 from nice game this game was fun to polay and the graphics were great.