Echoes of the End Review — Apocalypse Reverberated

Echoes of the End is a third-person action adventure with a heavy emphasis on cinematic storytelling, in the same vein as the God of War franchise. Inspired by Icelandic mythology, Echoes of the End presents a breathtaking world, some solid lore and storytelling, and good writing that is strong enough to immerse players even past the game’s issues. Said issues, however, are numerous and mostly come into play with the game’s combat, which, unfortunately, is the main mechanic and the one that will take up most of your time playing. Riddled with bugs, performance issues, and general jankiness, Echoes of the End feels more like an Early Access title than a full release, and hopefully will continue to receive updates and patches to fix it.

Echoes of the End follows Ryn, a so-called vestige, a natural magic user whose existence is deemed by many to be responsible for the doom of the empire of Aema and the end of civilization as the world once knew it. Teaming up with a disgraced scholar, Ryn is tasked with uncovering the conspiracy of a madman who threatens to rekindle old conflicts and even ruin the world all over again.

I want to say first of all that Ryn is probably one of the most interesting aspects of the game’s storytelling. Echoes of the End takes a very “magic is shunned/considered evil” approach in its storytelling, and Ryn, being directly connected to magic as a vestige, is cleverly written to reflect this. Her entire character is based around a lifetime of trauma, being told that she’s dangerous and proving the theory correct on numerous occasions. She’s haunted by who she is and every loved one she’d accidentally hurt throughout her life, and is realistically written as reclusive, angry, and self-loathing, but not in a way that is overly distracting or takes away from the actual heroics she accomplishes through the story.

Worldbuilding and storytelling are the best parts of Echoes of the End. Something about the game reminded me of the incredibly unsuccessful Forspoken before I got into it; I’m glad to say that this phantom resemblance is unwarranted (and probably just has to do with the game’s graphics and color palette). The world in Echoes of the End is interesting, beautiful, and expansive, and a lot of lore feels naturally compacted into small, constrained levels.

Unfortunately, much of this beauty is likely due to the use of the Unreal Engine 5, a development engine notorious for its performance issues. When making a game with UE5, you need to do an extensive amount of testing, as the engine’s performance varies drastically from system to system. In the case of Echoes of the End, I (as well as many other players) found a considerable issue with framerate and stuttering. Despite being well beyond the recommended specs, I personally experienced an issue where certain textures in the floor simply would not load in, which wasn’t fixed after a reinstall.

Combat in Echoes of the End is kind of a mixed bag, and it is where the game’s issues really show themselves.

On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with the combat in Echoes of the End. It’s a basic combo system with blocking, dodging, and parrying, and a magic system to overwhelm your enemies. Nothing in the game was quite as fun as using Ryn’s magic against enemies, especially when you’re flinging them against each other or into your ally for a backstabbing attack.

However, there are a few issues that seep into the combat and really kill the fun. Awkward camera issues can cause your camera to move while locked onto enemies or even get stuck in strange positions that blind you to the area around you. Animations are stiff, floaty, and long, and often will lead to you taking a hit when an enemy simply swings faster than you and connects before the input has ended. Parrying is tricky and essentially impossible to use in a group fight with multiple enemies.

Though the game allows you to get stronger over time, the early game can feel kind of weak or unsatisfying. I think if the game had a larger mana pool and put more emphasis on using your magic over sword attacks, combat would feel far more fun, and the player would fit better into the power fantasy they want her to. Fixing parrying is also a must, as its current implementation is just awkward at best.

It is both a good sign and rather unlucky that the developers are already addressing many of these issues, hoping to fix them for future versions of the game. While it shows great initiative from the developers that they want to actively patch the game and bring it to a playable state, it also shows how much an Early Access version of Echoes of the End or an extended testing period would have benefited the game. The game, however, will suffer from this premature launch, although I hope it pulls through and becomes the game it deserves to be before too long.

Echoes of the End is a great story and an incredible virtual world locked behind performance issues, with a sub-par combat system that could be greatly improved with some quality-of-life tweaks and bug fixes. While the potential for an exciting adventure game is there, I’ll have to warn players to wait for the developers to polish and fix the game. Until then, Echoes of the End is a pass, worth it only if you can ignore all of the performance issues and problems with the game’s combat.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Echoes of the End. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Echoes of the End is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.