Echoes of the End begins with Ryn, our heroine, and her younger brother Cor, as they make their way through a rocky, mountainous region of their land of Aema. Ryn is a ‘vestige’, a person who has magical powers feared by the majority, leaving her a fiercely independent spirit who prefers solace to the city. Cor, on the other hand, is a youthful optimist that seeks out adventure naively, often at his own risk. As the game begins, we find that large, vital crystal formations called ‘wards’ have begun to be destroyed, and whilst trying to find out what is causing this, Cor gets kidnapped, leaving Ryn to try and locate him with the help of Abram, a mysterious older adventurer that luckily happens across her path just as her brother is taken away.
This is accompanied by the beautiful creations of composer Viktor Ingi Guðmundsson, who has created quite a keening and epic cinematic work that acts as the soundtrack to Ryn’s quest. Indeed, finding out that the studio is based in Iceland really hammers home the rich visual and aural identity of the game, and does set it apart in tone from similar entries in the action-adventure genre.
Combat is also quite fun, with timing and dodges being key, as you are pretty much always outnumbered, with boss fights requiring careful management of your mana and the timing of your attacks. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it is all satisfying, nonetheless.
Being a vestige, Ryn is imbued with various powers that are mostly telekinetic in nature, whilst these can assist in combat, and can see you blasting an enemy in the face to stun them, or hurling rocks at them from a range – always fun! – they will mostly be used in the puzzle sections, the constant, unending puzzle sections, and that is very much where the game lost its way for me, personally.
There’s something that didn’t gel from the start with how the switch / platform based environmental puzzles are inserted into gameplay. In this land of towering, harsh mountains, open rocky plains and scattered ruins, the fact that there are various cogs, blockages and magical switches scattered about seemed somewhat fanciful, and solving them is hampered by some technical hiccups that are quite unfortunate.
There’s something that didn’t gel from the start with how the switch / platform based environmental puzzles are inserted into gameplay. In this land of towering, harsh mountains, open rocky plains and scattered ruins, the fact that there are various cogs, blockages and magical switches scattered about seemed somewhat fanciful, and solving them is hampered by some technical hiccups that are quite unfortunate.
There were some moments whereby I walked out into an open area, defeated some of the shambling, ogre-like enemies, and then took stock of my surroundings to find a crevice which I assumed I had to jump down a few feet…only for the game to fade to black and reset me back on the plateau I was previously on, so I’d see a ruined tower just up on a ledge, so I’d assume there was a sneaky hidden chest – of which there are many dotted around – but I’d jump to get purchase on said ledge… only to find myself awkwardly sliding down an invisible wall with Ryn making no effort to grab on.
This happened far too often for my tastes, whereby the thought of using this gorgeous, raw landscape to jump, duck and crawl my way through was instead pushed to one side as I was forced to – in an extremely linear fashion – tediously make my way through constant magic-powered cogs and gears, rotating waterways and jutting ledges, with the assistance of Abram, who can handily manipulate the switches from a distance.
They feel juxtaposed with the positives of the game and whilst I understand there has to be obstacles to overcome, the fact that this game is so rich in atmosphere, backed by a basic but enjoyable narrative with well-written, flawed characters and the incredible landscape - the fact that you are then relegated to these ‘by the numbers’ puzzles just wore me down and my enjoyment of the game began to seep away as it dawned on me that these would be taking up the majority of my time with Echoes of the End, not helped by the slightly floaty movement animations that affects Ryn as she makes her way around the world.
SUMMARY
There are a lot of very good things about Echoes of the End, mainly linked to the lore, visuals, audio and voicework, but the core puzzle gameplay dragged it down for me. I can imagine some folks – for whom environmental puzzling is a boon – will really connect with the game, but for me, I wish I’d spent more time with the characters and combat than walking into myriad locked-off areas and gritting my teeth for yet more puzzles that felt like padding.
There are a lot of very good things about Echoes of the End, mainly linked to the lore, visuals, audio and voicework, but the core puzzle gameplay dragged it down for me. I can imagine some folks – for whom environmental puzzling is a boon – will really connect with the game, but for me, I wish I’d spent more time with the characters and combat than walking into myriad locked-off areas and gritting my teeth for yet more puzzles that felt like padding.
7/10
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