Echoes of the End takes some big swings with its original fantasy world, gorgeous visuals, and solid third-person puzzles and combat. At the same time, it’s hampered by technical issues and a 13-hour story that — while short — still manages to feel padded in places.
Not your average fantasy tropes
Echoes of the End is a linear third-person action game where you play as Ryn — a woman with mysterious powers whose homeland is invaded, forcing her to step up and defend it.
Ryn is a Vestige, which means she has powers connected to the wards that protect her land. She’s joined by Abram, a quirky inventor-type who gives a good deal of levity to the otherwise sombre tone. The game throws you into the middle of Ryn’s story, with the broader world revealed through context rather than heavy-handed exposition dumps.
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I really enjoyed the original world inspired by Icelandic culture. Ryn’s world isn’t post-apocalypse, per se, but it follows the fall of a great civilisation. This means you’ll spend your time clambering through the ruins of half-working ancient technology. And as we find out more about their civilisation and what led to its downfall, the pieces start to fit together. Another Vestige has grand designs on that old world technology. She wants to use it for her own nefarious purpose — classic villain stuff.
Sun’s out, guns out
There’s a good deal of God Of War (2018) in the DNA of Echoes of the End. Like Kratos’ adventure, you’ll go through puzzles and combat encounters back to back. Echoes of the End doesn’t reach those lofty heights, but you can see and feel the similarity.
Combat starts simple, but comes into its own further along the story. Initially, you’ll just be swinging your sword and using your powers to throw pieces of the arena at your enemies. However, as you level you’ll earn abilities to slam enemies into the ground, unleash shockwave combos, throw your sword, and more.
The God of War inspiration in Echoes of the End is most evident in flashy finishing attacks. In these, Ryn will chop off limbs, skewer her sword through an enemy’s helmet visor or slam them unceremoniously into the floor. These finishers were great, and varied enough that I rarely saw the same one twice in the same fight.
Throughout the campaign, you’re accompanied by an AI companion named Abram. Abram — like Atreus in God of War — is used in puzzles as well as combat. In combat, he’s useful for stuns and lockdown attacks, but he doesn’t deal much damage alone. In puzzles, however, he’s put to clever use — locking parts of mechanisms, guiding you with audio cues, and, in later challenges, offering information from a different perspective.
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Pretty as a picture
Echoes of the End is a visual treat, with its Icelandic-inspired landscapes on full display. You’ll see towering mountains, massive glaciers and moments where you’ll stop at the edge of a cliff and say “wow”. Through the story, you’ll journey from rocky mountains to cityscapes and subterranean lava caves.
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Unfortunately, it’s in motion that the game starts to feel clunky. Every climbing surface — whether vines, ladders, or wooden walls — uses the same animation, making characters appear to slide along rather than interact with the environment. There were plenty of times when Ryn would get stuck on geometry, or wouldn’t grab a ledge when I needed her to, sending her plummeting to her death.
There are also glaring performance issues. I was playing on PC, with an RTX 4070 and a Ryzen 7 CPU. And while the game looks excellent, I consistently had frame stutters, even in combat. The developers have a day-one patch planned, which will hopefully address some of these inconsistencies.
Early on in the game, as your resources and abilities are limited, I felt technical issues stood out more. But in the latter portions, where you have more abilities, the puzzles are more complex and combat is more involved, these issues felt less glaring.
Head scratching
You’ll spend a lot of your time on puzzles, interspersed with small combat encounters. At first, these are fairly standard — redirecting water flow to turn wheels or opening and closing gates one at a time to get through.
There are some really unique puzzle mechanics later on in the story. Like one where you can rewind destroyed sections of the map to open up new sections. Or another where you have to walk across invisible bridges while being guided by Abram.
But as I neared the end of the game, I hit at least three false starts where I thought “okay, this’ll be the big final fight”. Then you get locked out or thrown into a volcano and have to learn a new puzzle mechanic to puzzle your way back up. It’s a short game, but these felt like unnecessary padding.
Should I buy Echoes of the End?
Echoes of the End takes a big swing with a new fantasy world of intrigue, magic and political conflict — but does so without answering many of its own questions. It also has a handful of consistent issues that can get in the way of your enjoyment if you’re a stickler for those things.
Did I enjoy Echoes of the End? Yes, I enjoyed my time with it. But these issues should be taken into consideration before any new players jumps in.
I hope Myrkur Games can further develop this world — what’s here feels good, even if it’s rough around the edges. Echoes of the End is out now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam.
Quest Daily scores Echoes of the End:
6.5/10
Access to Echoes of the End was supplied to Quest Daily by the publisher.
