The mid-range fantasy game, as a subgenre, is hardly new. It’s what developers like Spiders and Deck 13 have been peddling for decades and, frankly, there’s always a space for it. So often, in aping the bigger-budget blockbusters, it’s these games that find nuggets of new ideas and come up with new and interesting ways to layer old ones. Recently we’ve seen something of a slew of them, with titles like Forspoken, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, Blades of Fire, Eternal Strands, and Atlas Fallen. None of them set the world on fire, but they do all take risks with established features to varying degrees of success. Echoes of the End, from Myrkur Games and Deep Silver, does the same, meshing elements of God of War 2018 with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Flintlock.
But what does this actually mean? Well it means you get a game with fast-paced combat, force-like telekinetic magic, a constant companion NPC, and a fantasy world that’s so searingly generic it could be a sequel, prequel, or other-quel to any fantasy game you’ve played in the last ten years. And that’s not the sneering put-down it may appear to be. Echoes of the End is a competent adventure that won’t outstay its welcome, isn’t trying to change the landscape of gaming, and won’t break the bank thanks to its moderate price tag. In some areas it reminds me of Soulstice from 2022, a game that many overlooked but which told a tight story with fairly simple gameplay mechanics.
In Echoes of the End, you play Ryn, a “Vestige”. This means she can channel powerful magic stored in ancient, monolithic structures called Wards. Very few people understand the way this magic works now; all they know for sure is that at some point it caused a cataclysm that all but destroyed the world. Vestiges are feared and misjudged, though in many cases there’s good reason.
A month after the death of their father, a legendary soldier, Ryn and her brother Cor are on patrol around the countryside, policing the Wards to make sure no one interferes with them. This is the tutorial section, and sees you fighting off troll-like Durtars while getting to grips with Ryn’s abilities. You can move objects with your mind, pick things up and throw them, raise and lower lifts – later, you can remake destroyed structures so you can access new areas.
It’s in this opening area that you’ll first taste combat, which feels like a melting pot of numerous fighting engines. It has a very similar feel to Flintlock, with meaty swings of Ryn’s sword, but with magical abilities that seem distinctly force-like, such as banging two enemies together, blasting them off cliffs, or levitating rocks to hurl at them. Finishers make use of a sudden, brutal slow-motion camera that’s so janky it’s almost endearing. Because there’s evidence everywhere that the developer is really trying to sell the world and its history.
When the two meet another, much more powerful Vestige named Kara, they become separated, and Ryn finds herself travelling with Abram Finlay for much of the duration of the game. Abram is an old scholar and an expert on Wards and Vestiges, and is equipped with a powerful Focus Brace (a device that grants normal people limited access to magic) that can shock enemies and activate distant switches. He also has a kind of grapple hook that helps him reach high ledges with Ryn, and aid her in combat by lassoing enemies for takedowns.
What follows the meeting with Abram is a pretty by-the-numbers fantasy action game. You traverse a number of varying locales, some of which push the boat out a little in terms of design, particularly in the back half of the game, solving large-scale environmental puzzles involving switches, turnstiles, moving platforms, and elevators. The open vistas are often downright beautiful. The world of Aema is based on Iceland in terms of visuals and mythology, and it shows. There are viewpoints in Echoes of the End that gave me genuine pause, but which made it all the more frustrating when the game kept stuttering or freezing under the massive load of its visuals.
Animations, lip-syncing, and combat flow all suffer a little from what we affectionately term “jank”, with faulty collision recognition, delayed reactions, and enemy attacks that can and will float right through whatever you’re doing. It makes boss fights feel a little frustrating at times, with inconsistent hit-boxes and the kind of difficulty that takes a long time rather than causes you to actually die.
There are also elements that hint at abandoned design paths. You’ll find chests everywhere for example that often contain nothing but notes, or items that exist for flavour text only. The fact you can inspect your character in the menus and there’s no cosmetic loot to collect suggests it may have been a planned feature at some point. Glowing chests contain green or blue crystals that you combine to increase health and mana, but that’s about it. It means that while your game brain is hard-wired to reach every chest, there’s often little point, as only the really hard to reach or find ones contain anything useful.
What truly lets Echoes of the End down, though, is Ryn herself. The narrative is fine, presenting a clear goal and clear enemies with few twists, but the protagonist is just awful. I get that she has a tragic backstory and doesn’t trust her own power, but she is so fundamentally unlikeable that I found myself quietly asking her to shut the hell up every few minutes. She’s surly, aggressive, sarcastic and condescending, speaking to everyone like they’re either stupid or in her way. This wouldn’t be so bad if any of the NPCs she travels with weren’t utterly lovely and super helpful. She doesn’t come across as standoffish and concerned; she’s just not nice. It’s like P3 in Atomic Heart or Frey in Forspoken.
Despite its faults, I did enjoy Echoes of the End. It’s less likeable than Eternal Strands and nowhere near the level of quality of some of the games it draws inspiration from, but as a fairly linear, story-driven action game it’s more than competent. Nothing about it is original, but it’s still worth a look if you’re a fan of flashy action and environmental puzzles.
