Review: Echoes of the End – Enhanced Edition

Developer – Myrkur Games

Publisher –  Deep Silver

Platforms – Reviewed on both PC and PS5 Pro

Review copy given by publisher

Echoes of the End is the latest game from Myrkur Games and was released as an Enhanced Edition recently that made some sweeping major updates to the game. I never even heard of, much less played, the original edition but had heard some really great things about Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition so I was excited to try it out and was pleasantly surprised.

The main character Ryn is like a medieval Jedi with powers that resemble the Force but with a steel sword for a lightsaber. She can use her abilities to move around the environment to solve puzzles, throw enemies around and smash them into each other, and even drain the life straight out of her enemies. She is extremely overpowered and even on challenge difficulty I found the game generally pretty easy due to the powers that I focused on first and just my overall experience with action games with dodging and parrying. I even stopped parrying all together to just try and dodge attacks to even the playing field, because it would just interrupt the enemies too much. The only thing to match her power is her attitude which I didn’t particularly like at first and found her annoying, but she has her reasons for being so brash that is revealed throughout the adventure.

You also have a sidekick character that plays an important role in the game named Abram. He is an elderly man who has access to some helpful tools for environmental traversal but also buffing you and debuffing your enemies. When you level up your character you can choose to spend some skill points to increase his abilities like powering up your sword to stun enemies or the ever important revive ability which has a 15 minute cool down but can make fights even easier. His backstory is interesting but somewhat easy to foresee where his story is headed but it is still enjoyable to see unfold.

Along the way Ryn and Abram will find many hidden treasures, most of which are lore details that you can quickly read in the main menu but occasionally you will find Runes or Outfits that when unlocked provide more Runes that you can equip to provide you with passive stat increases like better healing and dealing more damage. The outfits however are completely cosmetic, so feel free to rock the best looking armor you find and never look back. As mentioned previously, upon leveling up you get skill points which you can use to unlock new abilities and combat moves which will help you crush your enemies.

The environments are beautiful at times and remind me of Lord of the Rings. From icy mountains to volcanic depths, from towering castle walls to seaside villages, you experience it all and it never grows old arriving at the next local in your journey. I wish other games would take note of this as we often spend way to long in one location or sometimes experience the same type of biome over and over again but thankfully this strays away from that.

I would say that there is sometimes too heavy a reliance on environmental puzzles over the combat which for some maybe welcome but for others might find boring. I found the balance enjoyable most of the time but others I wanted the action to kick back up. Fortunately most of the time solving puzzles without hints led to trophies and treasure so I made an effort to complete everything I could in the game.

Story wise, Echoes of the End does a decent job especially for the budget of providing a solid AA experience. It had a lot of cinematic moments and the pacing was just right most of the game. Characters were generally likable but I would say my favorite character was Abram. He had that scholar intellectual personality but never came across as pompous, he genuinely wanted to help Ryn throughout the adventure which put me off to Ryn because of her attitude for the first few hours of the adventure together. The main villains were likable and provided just enough anarchy to cause havoc without being so one note that it was unbearable. I guess like Ryn and Abram, the two villains balanced each other as well. 

The run time for completing the game on the highest difficulty for me was 14-15 hours. Except for the first boss I rarely died or had to replay large portions of the game so, at a semi-normal pace, I would assume people would get a similar run time. They definitely set up the game for a sequel and hopefully we will get to see that at some point to finish the full story but what we have here is a solid adventure that ends where it should without overstaying its welcome. After you complete the game you can play New Game+, which is repeatable & offers new enemy variants with different attacks and abilities, and gets harder and harder each run. This can certainly add some replay value if you want to experience that and you can also select individual chapters to replay if you want to go back for missed treasure. 

Overall, Echoes of the End is a good game. On the PS5 Pro, I only experienced one bug which I had to actually shut down the game and start it up again to fix. I think there was a severe lack of marketing for the game and it is a serious hidden gem on the market. If you are looking for a God of War style game with a splash of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings you will find a lot to enjoy with Echoes the End.