Echoes Of The End PS5 Review. Developer Myrkur Games is off to a great start in their first major title. Echoes of the End is a stunning-looking title that borrows from the best of titles like God of War, and while it’s not at the same level as the major blockbuster, it certainly holds its own against some of the best.
Echoes Of The End PS5 Review
In Interesting Story Made Better By Two Solid Characters
Echoes of the End follows Ryn and Abram as they set out to stop an invading army hell bent on destroying their protective Wards and their lands and villages. The story doesn’t do anything revolutionary, and it treads familiar ground. That’s not to say there aren’t some fun surprises ahead.
Its story is brought to life by Ryn and Abrams’ conversations as they discuss the mysterious world and the kingdoms that inhabit it. Abrams provides a lot of knowledge and history about the locations you visit and the monsters and face off against. Ryn, who is a Vestige, holds knowledge of magic and magical constructs.
Echoes of the End is a linear adventure, but its locations are a blast to explore. Ryn and Abrams travel through various locations, from burning villages and erupting volcanoes to underground ancient cities.
Plenty Of Exploration And Thoughtful Puzzles
Each location is brimming with detail and puzzles, with the latter being one of the game’s main highlights.
Though you can get hints that tell you how to solve these puzzles, the environmental puzzles aren’t too challenging to figure out. I enjoyed every one of them, though some of the platforming puzzles can get frustrating due to the game’s sometimes delayed input detection.
As you progress, new mechanics unlock for environmental puzzle solving. Areas feature illusions that look like walls or complete paths that aren’t there. You’ll also encounter locations where you walk on walls and even the ceiling of locations as you try to solve the various puzzles.
Borrowing From The Best In The Industry
Combat borrows from God of War, and dare I say, Jedi Survivor. Combat is simple and can be complicated if you choose to use all the abilities Ryn can unlock.
Abrams isn’t controllable but holds his own. He constantly grabs hold of enemies to hold him off, throws rocks, and even runs in and drop-kicks opponents. He doesn’t do very much damage, but you can order him to use his electric shock tools to stun enemies.
Ryn has plenty of abilities at her disposal, and she can upgrade her abilities across four skill trees—three of her own and one for companion abilities.
The three skill trees focus on Ryn’s sword skills, unlocking new attacks and combinations, as well as Vestige power abilities and Defensive skills.
Fun Abilities That You Probably Won’t Use Often
Although Ryn can unlock some cool abilities like throwing her sword like a boomerang, other skills, like new combo attacks, feel almost pointless because of the enemies’ relentless aggression.
Not because they aren’t helpful, but because you won’t have a chance to use them. Almost every enemy will recover and counterattack before you can even pull these attacks off. Most combo attacks come after the second or third strike, but due to how long some of them take to charge up and initiate, enemies will be on top of you before you even land the attack.
This left me constantly doing the same two weapon strikes and then going in to parry an attack. To make up for the barrage of attacks from your enemies, Ryn is also able to use her Vestige powers.
A Jedi In Medieval Fantasy
These powers are essentially “The Force.” Ryn can push her enemies, pulling them in every direction, lifting them and slamming them into the ground, and my favorite, creating a Vortex that pulls all the enemies in the area into each other.
Vestige powers aren’t unlimited; you have a stamina bar that uses these powers that refills as you fight. The stronger the power, the more stamina it consumes.
Combining these abilities with your attacks is fun, but it also feels disconnected. The attacks don’t feel like they flow smoothly between the two, and it just feels like you’re waiting for one animation to finish before another begins.
A Stunning World From A Distance
Visually, Echoes of the End is gorgeous. There are plenty of scenic views and locations to travel through, and the character models look great. The game is pleasing to the eye to say the least.
Though it’s beautiful for the most part, not everything is up to par. Fire effects, especially at the end section of the game, look horrible, like something you’d see from the original DOOM.
Voice work is also commendable, with everyone doing their best for a small studio developing its first game. The characters also speak with an accent indicative of the region these characters may be inspired by.
The soundtrack is kind of what the industry had come to expect from this type of game. The classical epic you would expect, but none of it sounds memorable, and you can hear the constant looping of the tracks during the various sequences throughout the experience.
I encountered several minor issues in the game. The game doesn’t always do a good job of recognizing your input. For example, every time I try to grab an object to fling at enemies, I constantly push the button to grab an object and try to fling it, but the game doesn’t recognize the grab, and I end up rotating the camera instead.
This was also an issue with some jumping puzzles, and block buttons just weren’t being recognized.
Echoes of the End is a fun game, and I enjoyed my time with it. It has some rough moments, but it’s not anything that can’t be resolved with a few patches. Myrkur Games is off to a great start, and I can’t wait to see what they cook up next.
Echoes of the End is out now on PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
Review code kindly provided by PR