Echoes of the End Review - An Echo of Something Great
First impressions are important. Upon opening Echoes of the End, you’re shown the big bad and given the general gist of what they’re trying to achieve. It’s all very grand in scope, but instantly you can tell that something is awry, bubbling away below the surface. I don’t mean in terms of narrative; it’s more of a feeling. Animations feel a bit stilted, and things feel just a bit strange. It’s the first title from Myrkur Games, so I’ll forgive some teething issues. Those first impressions do colour your opinio,n though.
You play as Ryn, a Vestige who has the ability to control the game’s form of magic. She’s working with her brother Cor to perform magical maintenance on the wards, giant magic crystals that supposedly protect the people of the region against outside dangers. For me, Ryn was almost instantly unlikable. She was petulant and stand-offish, and Cor felt like an absolute milksop. It wasn’t until over halfway through the game that I could stomach the main character, and even though there are narrative reasons for her behaviour and the actual performances were good, it was difficult for me to stomach.
If I were to say anything about the game, it’s that it’s great to look at. I love the design of the enemies, I love the vast and sweeping vistas. Even this, though, feels like a double-edged sword. Unreal Engine 5 looks amazing, but I’ve only ever seen it used well technically a few times, and this title is no different. I had numerous technical hitches, massive frame drops and freezing issues. Most of the time, this wasn’t a problem, but sometimes it would happen during combat or exploration and cause me to lose some progress. Not awful, but definitely took me out of the moment.
In terms of combat, things feel very God of War-lite. Echoes is an action game in a similar vein, so not inherently surprising. You’ll use your sword and magic to kill enemies, Cor or Abram (another companion) will assist as best they can. Enemies attack with various abilities that have telegraphs that require certain counters. It’s fun enough, but combat also feels a weird combination of oddly floaty and very burdensome. Attacks feel like they have no weight at all, so often you’ll die in combat without realising you’d taken a bunch of hits. Dodging feels heavy, and there’s no way to dodge whilst an attack is in motion, so you end up taking things a lot slower just to make sure you’re leaving room for dodges and parries. I do like the use of magic in combat, though, where you can throw enemies around or blast them. Your abilities expand upon progressing through the game, and there are some fun additions. Each combat section is pretty short, so even if combat feels a bit off, at least it’s over quickly.
Outside of combat, the other main thing you’ll be doing is environmental puzzles. I actually really liked these. You’ll use your magic to alter the landscape, moving platforms into position, rewinding or fast forwarding decay on traversables, using your companion’s abilities to freeze objects for moving on. Even though each chapter feels like it focuses on a specific method of puzzle solving, they’re enjoyable enough to mix up the gameplay.
Platforming around is also pretty cool. The areas are apparently inspired by Iceland, and there was a good variety here. Caves, lava flow, ruins, it’s all cool to navigate. It’s pretty linear, and I don’t have a problem with that. Some of the animations feel a bit wrong here, though. Climbing feels completely weightless, and the jumping didn’t have a great feel to it. Gripping ledges and ropes was like rolling a dice sometimes too, where if you were at the wrong angle, Ryn would just refuse to grab a ledge. Similar with jumping, it felt a bit unforgiving too. Often enough times, she would bounce off the thing I was trying to grab on to, and checkpoints for climbing sections are not friendly at all, so you’d lose a few minutes progress sometimes, which was not fun.
For as much as I like worldbuilding, there’s a lot of it here which doesn’t get fully explained until much later. The wall you need to climb to understand what the hell anyone is talking about feels massive, but slowly it’ll make sense as you get more about the context. I still don’t feel like I have a great grasp on the lore, but somehow, I’ll survive. Some of the juicy lore morsels are hidden away in collectables, down side paths that can easily be missed. Great for those who want to dig through every path before progressing, but not so much for those who don’t.
All in all, Echoes of the End is fine. It looks great, but it has performance issues. Puzzles are fun, but not enough mixing of concepts (and the companions keep trying to spoil the answers). Combat has some variety, but it’s janky and unforgiving. The narrative is enjoyable, but I want to push the main cast off a cliff. It’s not a super high-budget game, so expectations do need some tempering, graphic fidelity aside.
Echoes of the End was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
