Echoes of the End is a character action game that incorporates a lot of 3D platforming and puzzle-solving. While the game itself looks okay and, from the outside, even seems like an interesting, if niche, indie title, I found a considerable amount of flaws in its design.
Echoes of the End
Developer: Myrkur Games
Price: $40
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (reviewed)
Monstervine was provided a PC key for review.
Character action games’ combat has been primarily relegated to implementing and relying on parrying as a game mechanic. Some games find ways to use this to excellent effect, but with Echoes of the End, you really start to see how this type of combat struggles, especially when our protagonist is supposed to be a magic user.
In Echoes of the End, the player takes the role of Ryn, a focus-user who recently lost her father and is referred to as a ‘vestige.’ Starting the game, she’s joined by her brother Cor, who ends up in a sticky situation with the army of a nearby country and ends up bartering for his sister’s freedom.
Throughout the first chapter, we’re introduced to Echoes of the End’s systems, and the developer immediately stops innovating after that. They set up the design early on, and the game proceeds continually with those same functions without evolution whatsoever.
While playing, you’ll confront a platforming puzzle. Either lattices along a rock wall, a platform to rotate, or some way to hold open a door. Likewise, you might come across a platform that needs moving, and because Ryn is a vestige, she can move objects. So maybe you need to throw a large cube towards an area to climb so you can get over a wall.
Maybe most annoyingly, Echoes of the End has no intention whatsoever of explaining these marvels of architecture. You’re met with structures that, for the most part, seem like they’re falling apart, but always have these pathways to get around. Lots of hanging rope and the like. We’re left wondering why on earth these structures are here, what their purpose was, and why they spent so much time building lattices on rockfaces as part of their architecture.
Sprinkled in between these puzzle pieces are encounters with 3 – 5 baddies at a time. Ryn has a fairly large sword she wields with a single hand, and it is made to play both a defensive and offensive role. Primarily because, despite always having a companion at her side, enemies are only concerned with fighting Ryn.
This has led to a few hilarious fights where I figured out enemies can’t climb or jump. So I could put Ryn somewhere the melee enemies can’t get to and have the enemies simply stare at her while my companion wailed on them. Unfortunately, companions can’t land finishing blows, so even when skipping out on work, I still had to sign off on the enemy death warrants.
Combat can be spiced up by using Ryn’s object manipulation to throw enemies into each other, off cliffsides, and use her blast or energy-absorbing abilities. And theoretically, yes, that would make things more enjoyable. However, in practice, this is dismal at best.
Targeting in Echoes of the End is not your friend. I’d often want to throw an enemy into another enemy only to have the targeting stick to an object and never highlight the enemy, either getting me into a tough spot or being outright killed. To throw an enemy, they have to be highlighted, the throw button held, and then you pick a direction to throw the person.
With how inconsistent the controls are at accurately determining what the player wants to do, this can be devastating during an encounter. Furthermore, it takes entirely too long. Enemies are on you in a snap, and do NOT let up on their attacks very often, especially if there’s more than one in your vicinity.
This is where Echoes of the End really falls apart: the combat. Since release, developers Myrkur Games have promised multiple patches, and while it seems like they’re very interested and intent on supporting this game, we’re still a ways out from seeing an enjoyable or worthwhile combat system.
That’s not to say anything about how the game expects you to dodge and parry. Simple tasks that seem inconsistent at best. Sometimes a spark will appear near an enemy’s weapon to indicate they’re attacking, but most of the time they don’t. If an enemy gets an attack off, other enemies don’t let up, and you don’t receive temporary invincibility (iframes), so missing one parry can end up being like missing three or four parries.
When finishing off an enemy, Ryn will always perform some kind of superfluous animation, often resulting in maiming or decapitating the enemy. These flourishes are fun and add a little extra spice to an otherwise simple and dull combat system.
So intent on making sure that you don’t receive iframes in Echoes of the End, though, if multiple enemies are attacking you at once and Ryn finishes an enemy off, she begins the animation, and the still-living enemies nearby simply give up their attacks and walk away for a moment. Arguably, this is far more jarring than simply giving the player iframes and letting the enemy’s attacks go through without dealing damage.
But if you were just going to have the enemy stop attacking, why not treat an execution like a parry and have the enemy’s swords hit a fake parry and bounce backwards? Much of the design is like this, leaving the player questioning so many bizarre things that exist in Echoes of the End.
Then there’s the performance. I was given a PC key for Echoes of the End, and truthfully, my PC isn’t the best. Usually, I’m playing indie titles that don’t require much power on my SteamDeck or prefer consoles. Echoes of the End struggled IMMENSELY on release. How I can get the latest Call of Duty or Battlefield game to run on high and achieve 60fps and barely squeak out 20fps on medium in Echoes of the End is beyond me.
However, the latest patch managed to snuff out a lot of my issues. So much so that I was able to raise the graphical settings to high (mostly) with the help of DLSS and consistently achieve 60fps. Remember how earlier I said the developer seemed intent on fixing the game? This is one of the big reasons I think that.
The Final Word
Echoes of the End really struggles to provide a satisfying experience. Between the combat and the puzzle-solving, Echoes of the End is not a very satisfying game. I believe the developer realizes this, and I hope they’re able to realize their vision to great success, but, for now, I can’t recommend Echoes of the End.
MonsterVine Rating: 2 out of 5 – Poor
